The massively multiplayer online gaming audience is one of the most
critical, intelligent, and observant of any game genre. We constantly
banter back and forth at each other about the qualities of a href="https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=2A1CD3F89155A54BF04B238F5416F5A6.app11_05?topicId=8202577914&postId=82016815097&sid=1"
target="_blank">Blood vs.
Unholy specced Death Knight or the recommended way to
slaughter your
opponent as a target="_blank">Chaos Marauder. Developers are
constantly trying to
capture that audience's attention and make them discover the numerous
ways to play their game.

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Even
concerning items like physics in space, gamers will find something to
argue about.

However, this same intelligence and attention to detail can be the
target="_blank">stake that drives into the heart
of game that is nothing but a
blood-sucking corpse. Even if a game has received an incredible amount
of attention in its prereleased state, gamers will tear through the
content then spit it back out again when a game hits store shelves. And
that's why the developers at NetDevil are spending an incredible amount
of time making sure that they appease the massively multiplayer online
gamers along with the space action fans that are going to be attracted
to their upcoming MMOG, href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/306"
target="_blank">Jumpgate Evolution.



In target="_blank">Part One of our interview with
NetDevil's Hermann Peterscheck, we
discussed everything from capital ships to exploration to the recently
announced target="_blank">150,000 beta testers that are
signed up for JGE. As we
continue the interview in Part Two, we began our conversation with
Hermann focusing on those MMO gamers and how they're going to respond
to a title like Jumpgate Evolution. With the gameplay in style="font-style: italic;">Jumpgate
Evolution promising to be action-packed, how would MMOG
players that
are used to slower types of gamplay react when they first jumped into
an action-based game?



"We spent a lot of time deliberately trying to address that very
issue," Hermann said. "There are a lot of people that have played the
game that have a traditional MMO background, but maybe they've played a
space shooter sort of game in the past. Or maybe they haven't, but they
like the idea of a challenge. In any case, most of the MMO gamers have
responded with the fact that the game isn't as hard to master as they
thought it would be."



"Most of the gamers come in thinking that they're going to have to
concentrate on maneuvering and working the weapons on the ship, and
they discover it's pretty easy. It's just an alternate game experience
from the traditional MMO. It's not so hard that you can't do it, and we
spent a lot of time to get that result," Hermann continued. "On the
other side, we get players that aren't MMO gamers and they remember
games like Wing Commander and Freelancer, and they sit down and think
it's really cool because it IS like the Freelancer experience. It's
nice to have that feeling of not alienating either of the two groups; I
think we're going to be able to grab a piece of both of them."



Speaking of playstyles, another dilemma that occurs with MMO gamers is
the fact that the gamers are used to having a variety of different
options in a very short amount of time. Even though typical space
shooters don't have that sort of variety [ style="font-style: italic;">I couldn't craft my own
Interceptor in X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter!--Ed.] Jumpgate
Evolution is
hoping to include a robust economy, intelligent craft, and still
include a large overarching story to the entire game.  Will
players feel like they're playing a game that's "on rails" or will they
have the epic amounts of freedom that should be inherent in any game
set in the vastness of space?



"I like to think of it - at least internally - as the href="http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/hansolo/index.html"
target="_blank">Han Solo
experience. He's a guy that sometimes goes off on his own and does
smuggling runs to make money, and then sometimes he joins a greater
cause and fights in these giant battles," Hermann said. "He's really
all over the place."

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The Jumpgate
developers are trying to hit that "Han Solo" experience.

"I think that character represents everything that players will want to
do in the game," Hermann continued. "Most of the other characters in
Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi genres tend to be very
stereotyped as either good or evil. Han is this character that moves
around in all these different circles, and he encompasses all the
players' experiences."



It may be true that gamers do tend to bounce around a game trying out
various parts of the system, it's also important to remember that even
while bouncing around, most players tend to always bounce back to the
story and try to drive that element of the game forward whenever
possible. In some games, that story is driven through in-game cut
scenes ( href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/47"
target="_blank">Guild Wars) and other games use
in-game quest text or elements
like that. We talked with Hermann about the use of cut scenes to drive
story, and he had some fairly concrete ideals about that aspect of JGE.



"We’re trying very hard to stay away from things that
“pause” the game," Hermann said. "While
it’s really cool in Final Fantasy to get these nice ten
minute cut scenes every hour or two, that would be terrible in an MMO.
I don’t want to be bothered by that. I can only imagine the
chat surrounding that, 'Hold on guys, I’ve got to watch this
cool movie for 10 minutes.'"



"We want to do those sort of elements without necessarily stopping the
gameplay," he continued. "I think a really great example of this is
System Shock;
they fed you information while you were playing.
We’ve been looking much more at techniques to use in that
regard. Fallout 3
also does this fairly well. We want to tell a story
while you’re actively engaged. By doing that, you almost
subliminally tell players the story, and it immerses them even more. It
doesn’t stop the game flow, and I think that’s
crucial in MMOs since other players are depending on you. That
doesn’t mean you never do it, you just have to do it at very
key points. The beginning of the game is a good example; we want to
control the camera angle and the audio and that sort of thing
because…it’s cool! But you don’t want to
do a lot of it when you’re in the game."



Storyline and cuts cenes are great "filler" sort of content for
players, but the staff at Ten Ton Hammer can tell what players really
want to know about Jumpgate, and that's the ships! While we talk about
player ships in almost href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/40416" target="_blank">every
interview, we always try to check with
Hermann to see what the state of player ships is in JGE. It's like
opening a present from your grandparents, you expect the same answer
every time [How many
Christmas sweaters do I own?--Ed.] but sometimes
you receive a nice little surprise. This time, Hermann gave us a little
nugget of information about how players might be able to get a variety
of different ships.



"We haven’t really set a specific number of ships that
we’re going to have in the game," Hermann answered. "That
said – off the top of my head – we have about 20-30
ships for each nation that are in various states of balancing. I think
we’re going to have a lot more than that though.
Here’s the thing that happens: we have tons of AI ships now.
Every time we put an AI ship in the game, people go “I want
to fly that!” It’s really an interesting thing.
When people see something different, they want to fly it."



"We’re grasping onto that idea and we’re trying to
figure out ways that will allow people to have those ships," he
continued. "Maybe we’ll set something up as a faction reward,
for instance if you got a perfect rating with “The
Combine” you could buy their ship. That’s something
that we want to reward, because people do want to have lots of variety
of ships."



Even though players may have lots of ship options, it's often important
for players to look and feel unique while they're out in the universe.
Players want to feel like they're piloting href="http://starwars.com/databank/starship/slavei/index.html"
target="_blank">Slave I or the Millennium
Falcon rather than one of eight million TIE fighters spewing out of the
docking bay of a capital ship. Ship customization is certainly
something that players are going to be interested in, and although
Hermann didn't have any concrete answers on the topic, he assured Ten
Ton Hammer that it wasn't going to be a worthless system when it made
it into the game.

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Ship
customization won't be a half-assed system in the game.

"I don't want to throw in a half-assed customization system, because I
feel like a lot of games just put it in to mark it off a list," Hermann
said. "We don't want to just throw something together and only do it
"that" good. We don't want to short change the player. "



We concluded our interview with Hermann by asking him about the current
state of the game, what they're working on, and what players should
expect over the next few weeks. With a bit of teasing, Hermann again
mentioned fighting larger objects in space as one of the team's main
projects.



"Our goal right now is to get people in testing and see what they think
of the game," Hermann stated. "Of course, on top of that there are
always new features that we're trying to implement into the game.
Answering questions like, what is our medal system going to look like?
How is loot progression going to work in the game? How many ships are
players allowed to own?"



"We're also working on a couple of ideas that are very very cool, and
they're going to revolve around fighting larger objects in space," he
concluded. "When we release video footage and screenshots of those
experiences, it's going to take their perception of the game to the
next level. We're just waiting to show it to the public when it's
ready."



As always, we'd like to thank Hermann for his time, energy and
unbridled enthusiasm. It's always a pleasure to chat with him about
Jumpgate Evolution, and we hope we can find time to talk with him again
in the near future!