March 2nd Discord QnA
– Steven talks player feedback, Pet system, Summoner class, Open World structures and Castle Siege leaks.
Q: Will you be at PAX east this month?
A: I decided this week that it is best for the studio not to attend the PAX East event and instead stay focused on development. Because we do not have a marketing team that manages the booth, it takes live developers out of the office for that week, and can include another week of downtime recovering.
Q: When someone is discussing something in discord about a decision you’ve made or your company. Do you feel like your more receptive to the positive feedback and that sticks with you , or the negative . Or both equally ?
A: To be honest, sometimes when I see a discussion on discord or reddit with certain assumptions, I hate having to bite my tongue. Lol. If I picked every uninformed opinion to jump on, I’d be fighting a losing battle. However, there are informed feedback and I enjoy relying on certain content creators to funnel the discussion in an organized manner.
Q: It must be a huge letter if it takes about a month to write.
A: The letter doesn’t take a month. It’s the answers that are dependent on development that take the time
Q: I’m still not sold on the “open world” PvP all the time with the corruption system.
A: Corruption will prevent most people from pking. But flagging may occur. Depending on the situation or rivalry. Meaningful PvP is the focus.
Q: Steven you still believe in game release before 2020?
A: Stay tuned for the letter on March 7th and tune into the live stream on the 8th.
Q: I actually just did get a question in my mind. Steven, will there be wonders of the world? Great, standing structures of either the past or the present that dominate the landscape they’re upon?
A: Yes. Mainly those are points of interests. The first ever area in the world map we built had a colossus like structure that had been destroyed. So the base of it was still intact and it was a giant foot. Wearing a sandal.
Q: How’s the A1 map looking? I don’t want to play other mmorpgs while I wait.
A: A1 map is the world map. And it feels very very large.
Q: Combat pets vs summoner pets, whats the difference?
A: Combat pets, cosmetics creatures and summoner pets are all three different things. Summoner pets level with your skill tree and only summoner primary classes can have these, whereas a combat pet needs to be nurtured and will take a part of the leveler’s experience to level up. Cosmetic creatures have no combat abilities and just walk around you or fly. I want to have a pet system that lets you leave cosmetic pets at your freehold and you can accumulate herds of them. And they will just wander in proximity to the freehold untargetable and invulnerable
Q: Does this mean everyone is gonna be forced to use combat pets for that slight damage boost?
A: Not necessarily, their damage is a percentage of the characters damage output and shouldn’t really impact the overall damage output. whereas summoner pets are a direct vertical increase in damage for the character output. But these things will be tested and played with in alpha/beta. There will be an option to remove pet targets from your tab rotation.
Q: Why be a summoner at all if you get a pet as anyone?
A: Because the combat pet system does not increase your damage output, whereas a summoner’s pets do. It has more horizontal skills that make your character more versatile.
Q: Regarding the negativity around the game currently.
A: I wouldnt worry too much, when people begin to see our Alphas and Betas, discussion will be about gameplay/mechanics/art and it will calm down. It is part of the development process, this is why triple A studios tend to stay quiet till they are in Beta. But I’d rather deal with the toxic times and get more involvement and discussion to gleam info from
