IGTV: Global Agenda Dev Interview page 2

14 Dec 2009 at 22:56:47 by

TH: It's a team-based game. We worked hard to make sure that the combat was based on complimentary skills and that's part of the thing that makes it so unique, is the combination of twitch, plus build-management, plus co-operation with your team that's pretty unique, and there's not necessarily anything providing that. So it is a team-based game. What we really tried to do was to provide a good path for players that want to go solo, that want to be the mercenary, lone wolf in the shadows, to find a way to contribute to a team and to basically reward them for what they want to do anyway, and let them play the game the way they want. In the game, your first beginning introduction to the world is solo content, so you can learn the mechanics and learn it on your terms.

We also have some no-consequence areas where you can try out your skills and hone them without being judged at all, so we've got a virtual reality arena where I can hop in there and see Stew, but win or lose, it's simply a way to practice skills without any loss or gain of XP or credits. If I'm not quite ready to extend an invitation for someone to be in a pre-made team, all I have to do is join the type of game that I wish to participate in, whether that's a PvE mission at low security, or medium, or hard (that corresponds to difficulty levels - or a multiplayer PvP, where I want to try capture the robot, or now I want to try an attack/defend, or now an escort, I just choose that map type, and on the back-end, there's a matchmaking system that will basically put me with other players to make sure classes are balanced, my player skill is balanced, and it'll just be a fair match overall. We've worked hard to have tools so that if I'm thinking solo and I want to be that recon, sniping from afar, there's going to be a team that's going to want me to contribute and the matchmaking system will help pair me with those folks.

SC: Really, outside of the very earliest levels, you're always with other players, but we make it very easy for you to pair up with other players, and you don't have to be an inherently social being in order to jump in real fast and get games. You don't necessarily need to have brought friends in. We make it easy to get in to play solo, but you're always playing with other people, other than in the first... maybe hour of gameplay.

TH: I'll add real quickly, as a lot of our frustrations with other games is the opposite angle where you do have friends that you want to play with, and sometimes there are a lot of hurdles to actually play with those friends. Whether it's a shooter that balances teams and divides me from Stew because there's not even numbers, or an MMO where there's such a difference in levels that he played last weekend and I didn't and now I can't catch-up, so we've done things both in terms of the levelling process - to keep it not a huge difference in levels - and matchmaking on the back-end, and built-in functions like voice chat so we don't have to have an extra server if Stew and I want to talk with each other when we go into the game. A lot of the tools like that are for players who do have friends. We want them to be able to play with each other, because it is fundamentally a multiplayer social game, and we wanted a lot of tools around that.

TH: We do not have a purely first-person view. We actually did, at one time, but through playtesting, continually players would go back towards the third-person. A lot of that is because, even though it's a shooter mechanic, we actually have a pretty sophisticated melee. It's not just one knife kill and then the person's dead, as in a traditional shooter. There's a bonus if I attack someone from behind, there's a blocking mechanic, there's secondary effects by class. We also do have jetpacks, we have grappling on walls, we have a lot of other dynamic actors in the world like turrets that take you out very quickly if you're not watching, so the situational awareness that comes with third-person was continually something that players went back to. Most of the ranged weapons do have a scope mode, which is effectively first-person - you're not seeing your character in that world - and they do in many cases improve the accuracy. So that is a style of weapon and device that's available to players, and playing in scope for those that tend to be most comfortable there, but fundamentally it's a third-person shooter and all the systems are designed around that.

SC: The beta's coming along great. We just had a test this past weekend, and we've been going through the survey results this week - they were all very positive, I think. You always know how well things are going based on what people are commenting on, and I think we were very pleased with the areas where we were getting strong feedback and needing improvement were very much aligned with the areas we've been spending time and effort on, and generally, great results.

The number one complaint, by several miles, from our beta community right now is that they just don't get to play enough, and I think it always speaks well when people are thirsting to play your game more and more! In terms of release timelines, we're continuing to work on the game. Right now, we're pushing hard amongst ourselves for a February release. We haven't announced a specific date around that until we get a little more testing under our belt, but we're definitely in the home stretch, I think, going towards the launch of the game. One of the key things you'll see from us before the Christmas holiday is the ability to start to pre-order the game, so we definitely want folks to stay on the lookout for that, and we'll have announcements around when the game is available to pre-order soon.

You can find out more in our next video and transcript right here.  The next part discusses subscription models.

Comment