For
our latest VIP outing,
Ten Ton Hammer recently paid a visit to Icarus Studios to
speak with the devs behind the post-apocalyptic powerhouse,
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/fallenearth">Fallen
Earth.
Joining us for the interview were Senior Game Designer Marie
Croall, Lead Environment Artist Cory Farris, Lead Scripter Michael
Broadwater, Marketing Manager Jessica Orr and last but certainly not
least, Media Specialist Tricia Jenkins. With an all star lineup like
that, you know this is one VIP interview you won't want to
miss!
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/membership">Premium
membership at Ten Ton Hammer is
definitely packed with some
awesome perks. One of the most popular among them is our exclusive VIP
Interview series where we let our members strap on their interview caps
and provide us with questions for the devs of their favorite MMOGs. The
following interview consists of questions submitted by Ten Ton Hammer
readers with additional questions provided by resident wastelander
Reuben "Sardu" Waters.
Achievements
and the Upcoming iPhone App
By and large one of the coolest
things we saw when Ten Ton Hammer made
the trek to Boston for the first official
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/PAXEast2010">PAX
East was the upcoming
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/paxeast2010/fallenearth_iphone_app">iPhone
app for Fallen Earth. Apparently
we weren't the only
ones impressed by what the team had to show us:
Premium
Member Tregok asked: Are you any closer to releasing the apps?
Media
Specialist Tricia Jenkins: The
app itself is pretty much
finalized, we're just working on the pricing model and what
we want that to be if anything. We're still expecting [the
release] to be within the next couple of months.
Premium
Member Rocqu asked: I know you're in the middle of
development for the iPhone app. Will you be offering other mobile
versions, for instance, the mobile 6.5 or Android?
Tricia
Jenkins: [AFK Interactive] is
working on Android, Blackberry,
Java and BREW phones, and we're still hoping for a
simultaneous launch.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Will the new achievement system be something that
players will be able to access through the app once it's
ready to unleash on the masses?
Tricia
Jenkins: Not in this first
launch, no, since
achievements are so
new.
Senior
Game Designer Marie Croall:
Achievements came together
really
quickly. They were not on the board when we started the iPhone app.
Even when the iPhone development was well underway we didn't
have a sense of achievements yet.
Tricia
Jenkins: But we do plan to
update the iPhone app so
I'm sure that's something that down the line we
could add.
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When
launched, the Fallen Earth iPhone app will offer players true mobile
interaction with their in-game characters.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Since achievements are one of the newest features for
Fallen Earth, could you give our readers a brief overview of how that
system works and the types of things players can look forward to with
it?
Marie
Croall: There are 5 different
categories of achievements.
“Crafter” is really what it sounds like. As you
level up your crafting you get achievements for that.
“Explorer”
is really neat. There are these little
tourist telescopes like the ones at the Statue of Liberty that are
actually a model and they're in the world, and you can go and
click on them. Some of them are in very hard to reach places, and some
of them are in towns and they're all sort of weighted
differently but are really in almost every location in the game,
including some that I didn't even anticipate.
They're labeled for how difficult they are, and there are
some that are in just crazy ridiculous locations.
Lead
Environment Artist Cory Farris:
It's going to take
players a while to find all of these I'm pretty sure.
Marie
Croall: It's really fun. The day
they went in we were
testing it and it was like, hey, what's this? I got an
achievement!
There are also gambling
achievements. Sadly I get the ones for losing
chips. And then there are also some that reward people for doing story
content. Really everyone is going to get achievements.
Lead
Scripter Michael Broadwater: You
get achievements for earning AP,
for earning money, for killing things that you're already going
to kill. And really, we've found that everybody likes
achievements.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Does the
achievement system offer players any kind of
tangible rewards for completing some of the more
difficult ones?
Marie
Croall: There will be soon. We
don't have them in yet
but there is a full plan for them.
Ten
Ton Hammer: Will there be a way to share your overall score with
other players?
Marie
Croall: The score right now is
one of those things that
we're still in the process of identifying what it's
going to mean overall. I think a lot of that comes down to seeing what
players are doing and how fast they're earning them, because
the score needs
to be meaningful to them.
It's sort of like Deathtoll. We
introduced a number and then
the players went out and did stuff with it, and then we looked at
things and said, oh, they’ve told us that we need to do
something different. So rather than implement a system that's
going to change upon player contact it's a lot smarter to
hang back, and see what players do with it. Then we can say, alright,
the average player has got 5,000 points, so now we know that 10,000 is
awesome.
Michael
Broadwater: It's like Blood
Sports with the ranking
and the leaderboards. We could build every potential, possible thing we
want to do with it and then put that
out, or we can start giving
people Blood Sport arenas now and from there start giving them these
new features. So we can either give you a huge meal in a year, or we
can give you smaller courses over time. And we'd much rather
give people that course over time so that they're not waiting
and looking around for something to do.
So we can say here are
achievements. Can you do anything with them yet?
Well, right now you can earn them. Next time then maybe you can share
achievements. Next time achievements can do X, Y and Z.
Marie
Croall: The reward system will
mostly likely be next. The system
is built in, but we just need to see what the best way to implement it
is. Fixing Deathtoll really cleared up a lot of what we can do.
It's really amazing - our post-launch content is so
much better because we know what players want. We learn. Whatever we
come out with after Deadfall is going to be better than Deadfall.
Here's the thing, Sector 1 is the worst sector we will ever
do, it has
to be just by default because it's the first one
we did. Then there's stuff that we learned in Sector 2 that
we got to implement in Sector 3. Sector 4 is going to be so
awesome
because Deadfall achieved this level that now we can do.
Player Housing and Future Plans
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Prairie
Chicken – It’s what’s for dinner!
Premium
Member
Rocqu asked: I know player housing has been talked about
in the past. Do you still have it on the board for development down the
road?
Marie
Croall: I've got to answer this
one as frankly and
honestly as I can. We went from 110 people to 35 so I can tell you as
honestly as I can that everything is still on the schedule, but that
schedule just got a lot longer. We've got to do what we can
with the people we have. We have an amazing level designer, but the
emphasis is on the fact that there is only one Cory. Now, until I can
clone him... and even that might not work out the way I
intended because one of them is probably want to go to the beach or be
with his family and all that stuff.
Cory
Farris: Or talk weird and not be
able to form a proper sentence.
Marie
Croall: Or the Cory that keeps
running into the wall by the door.
But seriously, until we can figure out where we're at, all of
that stuff is pretty much in limbo.
Michael
Broadwater: We're still going to
make new things and
we're still going to put out new content, but some of these
big features like housing we've got to reevaluate but we
still want to do them.
Marie
Croall: There's a lot we want to
do, but it would be so
irresponsible for us to say yes, but it would also be irresponsible if
we said no. We just don't know. These are huge features, but
[housing] is still on the schedule; we haven't cancelled
anything. We'll see how things go.
Premium
Member Rocqu
asked: Now that the Blood Sports update is set for
release, what's next for Fallen Earth?
Marie
Croall: Assault! After that
feature-wise, there are a couple of
things on the table. At this point we do sort of get the opportunity to
sort of look at all the features we had planned and figure out what is
best for us. There are a couple of things that would be easier to
implement that I think would be really fast and would be really easy to
do with the team we have. Something that might rhyme with
“fast travel” could be on the table, so something
along those lines that's a system that we have a lot of the
tools in place for.
Ten
Ton Hammer: I'd imagine you'll also be watching
how players react to Blood Sports and tweaking that system if needed as
well.
Cory
Farris: My favorite thing that
I've seen since we pushed
Deathmatch and Survival to the PTS is that there are actually two
player made YouTube videos about Deathmatch that are really well made.
That sort of gives me a small window into how players are playing the
content that we're giving them. The more of that
type of stuff that we see as feedback from the community, I think the
better we'll be able to tweak the content after release.
Marie
Croall: One of those videos came
out after we released the Bridge
and we got to see how players were playing the game, and there was a
guy who could solo what we thought at the time was massively tough
group content. We looked at that and were like,
“we’ve got to get to work”. So videos
like that are good because we can actually see what people are doing
and it's not just a guy posting on the forums,
“Lolz I pwnd your boss!” So once we see those
videos, or the PvP videos are so awesome, because you can actually see
what they’re doing. You can see what players are doing, if
they're exploiting or if they're being exploited,
so that kind of feedback is really helpful.
Cory
Farris: Now that Blood
Sports is
out and a large part of this
patch is a PvP patch, one of the things we want to do is assure people
who are PvE centric that there's a lot of content there for
them too.
Marie
Croall: Next time we'll probably
do something
that's weighted more heavily towards PvE, but this time PvP
just needed a big old hug. Plus Blood Sports is just an awesome name.
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Community and Fansite Support
Premium
Member Rocqu asked: When will you be offering an online store
for swag? Tee-shirts, mugs etc. I would love to see some kind of parody
items making fun of elves.
Marketing Manager Jessica
Orr: The first step in that whole mix is basically just to
expand our web capabilities in terms of store options and
stuff. We've got some plans for a web refresh
coming up soon. It's a little ways out still yet, but it is
something that we want to do eventually.
Rocqu
also asked: Many fansites have been created since Fallen
Earth’s release. What, if anything, do you have in store to
help keep these sites viable and help them help you get more subs?
Jessica
Orr: We're actually trying to
implement some
processes to work with those guys a little bit more. Actually just
yesterday we added a
href="http://www.fallenearth.com/node/18" target="_blank">section
on the web page where all their
sites and
links and stuff are showcased, and we've also added that
stuff to the forums. We're trying to basically go through
some social media tools and give those guys some props, and we had
talked about essentially doing a rotation where we'd promote
a different fansite each week through Facebook and Twitter and just
drive some traffic there.
I mean, it is a lot of work on
their part and we do appreciate it
because there are some things that we can’t say about our
game, but they can say it for us. And the kind of information they
provide is extensive.
Marie
Croall: And some of them are
just gorgeous.
Cory
Farris:
href="http://www.globaltechatlas.info/" target="_blank">GlobalTech
ATLAS.
Marie
Croall: Yes, GlobalTech Atlas,
we should definitely mention that
guy. It's so impressive with the maps and
everything...
Michael
Broadwater: It's not like I
haven't used
that site before.
Cory
Farris: It's actually more
impressive than our own wiki
in some aspects.
Jessica
Orr: I remember the day
GlobalTech Atlas came out when the NDA
was lifted, all of us were sitting back in the content room and nobody
was saying a word because we were all just scrolling through it.
Michael
Broadwater: Not only did it have
all
of this information, but
it was all right.
Cory
Farris: The level maps for every
level in the game are on that
site.
Jessica
Orr: So it's extensive, and
they've worked
really hard to do it and we definitely want to give credibility to
that, and we definitely want to include them as much as we possibly
can. We've got some other ideas just in terms of adding their
main contact into our press list so that they get news exactly when
it's released and things like that, that are more perks to
being in that small network than just giving them a little bit of
credibility by being on the website and stuff like that so
we're starting to roll that stuff out.
Ten
Ton Hammer would like to thank Cory, Jessica, Marie, Michael,
Tricia and the rest of the Fallen Earth team for taking the time to sit
down with us. We would also like to thank our premium members for
submitting their questions to be used in this interview!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Fallen Earth Game Page.
