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Happy New Year!
As interesting as 2010 was, it's refreshing to be headed into a new year. The first few months are going to be particularly busy for us as we wrap up the effects portion of the combat revamp, release our first high-end group content, prepare to release Sector 4 Alpha County and begin a series of improvements to the economy.
For this month's State of the Game, I thought I'd go into a little more detail on some of the upcoming features we've previously mentioned and try to answer some the most frequently asked questions:
Sector 4
What's it about?
The Grainway was owned and operated by GlobalTech as an experimental ―farm of the future.‖ When the Shiva virus hit, their experiments got out of hand, resulting in the wall being built to keep Kaibab from being contaminated. The wall is one of my favorite parts of the sector—it's been keeping everyone and everything in the Grainway isolated, with some interesting results.
Our Art Director, Devo has kindly sent along some concept art to give a better idea of the kind of environment players will get to experience (see attached!).
What’s in it/How is it being released?
We are planning to release Sector 4 in four counties. The first of the counties, Alpha, gives players their first look at what's behind the wall and why it was built. Alpha County will raise the level cap by 5 levels and introduce all new recipes, abilities, mutations, gear and consumables. We expect Alpha County to hit the server in Q2.
Why is it taking so long?
I've sort of touched on this briefly, through other formats, but the overall game balance was a big concern for us this past year. There were several areas of combat that we needed to adjust before we could properly design encounters and instances as we moved forward. Additionally, our art team has been taking these past few months to make huge improvements that are necessary for the gameplay, story and setting. As important as it is to us to get the new content out, it's more important to get it out right. Both content and art are very focused on auditing the existing content to make the necessary revisions to ensure quality for release.
Schedule
When is the next patch?
The next content patch will be in February. A more specific date will be dependent on both internal testing and external feedback.
What's in it?
I'm going to briefly touch on each of the major parts of the patch, then go into more detail. Right now, the things we are focusing on are:
The Scavenger Boss system which introduces new bosses and encounter areas as well as recipe rewards for high-level players.
The first pass at the economic fixes – we're adding more auction house NPCs and looking at component drop rates first.
Skill and mutation balancing – Our systems team lead, Sarah, is hard at work bringing the skills and mutations into line with the physical combat changes.
Effects Balancing:
Why are you changing them?
Many of our skill and mutation lines are too similar and the abilities within them lack a unified feel. One of the things we are trying to do is give each line their own distinct style.
We also want to differentiate better between offensive, defensive and support skill lines and make fully fleshing out a character of either type possible in addition to hybrids of them.
We are aiming towards having fewer, yet more useful abilities as well as making the level of your skills matter when using them.
We have also added functionality for entirely new kinds of effects and we are excited at the prospect of using them to enhance Fallen Earth's different playstyles as well as open up new potential for bonuses on equipment and abilities.
As we get closer to the release date we will provide more information about the changes and the reasons behind them.
Economic Improvements:
What are you doing to fix the economy?
As we prepare to expand on our crafting lines in Sector 4, there are some changes we will be making to better support crafters. The economic fixes aren't something that's going to happen overnight, and will take a series of changes in multiple areas. We need to address many issues, including demand for goods, supply of components, drop rates and reasons to trade.
The first thing we are going to look at is component drop rates from both nodes and creatures. We have been looking at how often components are harvested from nodes, looted from creatures, bought from merchants, sold to merchants and used in recipes. Based on this information, we will make a first pass on the kinds of harvest nodes in each area and the drop rates. After we resolve those issues we will be looking at fatigue and durability. Currently, items do not need to be repaired, restored or replaced often enough to make any impact on the economy.
From there things get more complicated. Fallen Earth was always intended to have more of a player driven economy, however current merchant set up makes this difficult. We will be making changes to what finished goods merchants offer as well as what components are available. There are several issues that will have to be addressed before we can make any permanent change. For instance, we need to make sure there will be enough components in the right areas to support a player driven economy before we remove higher tier components from merchants.
A thriving player driven economy should be a central part of our game and we're working very hard on getting it there.
High-End Group Content:
What will it be?
There are several ways we want to implement high-level group content. The first example is the Scavenger Boss system where players can use crafted items to summon bosses. These bosses will drop new components for upgraded gear. The next steps will include Progress Towns and territory control features.
When will it get here?
The Scavenger boss system will be in the February patch and as we get closer to the release dates for the other systems we will put out more information about them.
Communication:
Do the devs pay more attention to one type of feedback than the rest?
No. Feedback comes from several sources, including, but not limited to, Help Chat, forums and emails we get from support and /bug systems as well as personal emails players send. We also spend quite a bit of time in game playing and observing.
How often will players get updates on new systems/game direction?
As soon as we have concrete information, we'll share it. It's very easy for us to get excited about a new feature and start talking about it too early, which can be troublesome if we have unexpected problems and have to delay or start from scratch. I'd much rather give you guys the correct info the first time. We will, however, be putting more features and changes on the Public Test Server far enough in advance to get more player feedback.
We continue to post on the forums when we can provide an answer or give players more information, and we'll be in game and on the PTS a lot more often.
Thanks for starting your year with Fallen Earth. We have a lot of exciting content coming in the next few months.
Marie
Senior Game Designer
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