Developer Question And Answer, Episode 6
From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)
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[edit] Developer Q&A 6
Q: Will you be able to customize you pet Jaffa, and if so how and to what degree?
A: Goa’uld pets they come in a few varieties, and the variety actually sets the individuality of the pet. What I mean by that is that some pets excel at range combat other pets excel at melee combat and even other pets can heal or buffs or do these other things for their master. As for customization of these pets, we are looking into ways of how we can do that. We will definitely have naming capability. But outside of that we do not have a vast plan for that but we will look into it
Q: Will each race have unique character animation or they will all move and behave in the same manner. I have seen many a game that use the same animation for each race making it look akward and non realistic for lots of the races.
A: I agree, a lot of the game will use the same set of animation for all their characters and we certainly can't have an Asgard using the Jaffa animation, which would be really stupid and obvious. But we do have a ton of animation to do so we start with the same animation for a lot of the gender. To make the female animation we will start with the male animation and tweak it where necessary to make it more feminine. But we do shoot for having different animations for each race and even across gender male and female. But to save time we start with the same animation. Now some of the races like the Goa'uld and the Asgard will have completely unique set that the other races do not even have. In that case they will be totally unique. We want them to have a different feel instead of having the same stuff
Q: Will gear have randomized variable statistics at creation? If I find 10 P90 will they be identical or can their statistics vary for the better or the worse than based starting value without modification.
A: Yes, We will definitely have multiple kinds of different weapon, we will have different weapon that will be in the game that will have like base statistics to go with. So something like SMG's will inherently be different than different assault type weapon. But in addition to that we will also have multiple version of P90. The joke that kind of goes around the systems team. We like to call the P90 of the whale to give you an idea of what it will be. But trust me we are not going to make the P90 of the whale, just purely the joke inside.
Q: I am interested in the act of healing yourself and being healed by other character. Will SGW have a similar system like fantasy game where you just drink a health potion without really interrupting the combat action? Or do you need to take cover because you are disabled while you or a medic applies a bandage on your wounds or inject some kind of alien drugs?
A: Healing in our game is a little more of an intimate activity than in other MMOs. Because we do have it based upon ranged target. What that mean is if I need to go and heal one of my teammates I actually have to get in close proximity to actually heal them. I can't stand back out of the combat area and kind of magically wave a hand and heal. It is far more up-close in person. So what that means is that our healing classes actually have to get into battle. They have to use cover; they have to use line of sight blockers. The heals are interruptible, this type of things. It really incorporates the healing dynamic into the combat and the field of battle. It is very exciting so. Playing a healer is not so much a job where you can stand back and time your heals. You really need to go out there and get close to the players. And it is also on the players themselves to come closer to these classes that can heal. If, you know, they need some healing and that is kind of how that works. The cool thing is that healing in our game it is somewhat a dangerous activity outside of any agro management. It really is in the heat of the battle and you need to keep your head down.
Q: The Kull warrior also known as the super soldier from SG 1 strikes me as being a great addition to the arms race feel of the game. Can we expect to see the Kullwarriors and is it a possible addition to the game at some points either as a pet or a mob factor?
A: The current plan is that the Kull is in the game as a mob. There are no plans for the Kull as a pet although that certainly might change. However the Kull technology is the key to many technological items in the game.
Q: when players move through an active Stargate will they be able to see the wormhole effect which might also act as a loading time or the transit between planets be instant with no visual effect?
A: You know that is something we sat down and discussed it. That's how we could make it but there have been several other things of that nature that we thought would be cool and we ended up doing it. As an example we actually set up a gate just for the hack of it, test the portal ability road running on one side and jumping on the other. So you know we play around a lot with our engine to get use to it and familiar with it, to find what we do and don't like about it and come up with elegant solution. And using that as a load screen is definitely a possibility. We know how to display it very easily, how to use the particle effects and scrolling texture or whatever else to create that. The only thing I am not sure of, and it might be more of an engineering thing, is can we actually load a level during, when you have a level queued up overloading another one, its might be unreal limitation or not. Either way we will figure it out and definitely, if it is possible and it is something we want to commit to then I would not be surprised to see something like that happening because it is really a nice effect. It creates a sense of adventure and anticipation and that would have a big pay off I think
Q: It has been well established that the cover element in combat will be critical to success in a fire fight. To that end, will boulders offer greater protection than trees, will a weapon eventually cut down trees and will the attackee be exposed, will grenades or bombs bounce on rocks?
A: I'll start to answer this question from the backend then forward. Bullets and grenades bouncing of rocks are not going to happen and we also won't be able to have trees cut down by bullets. I do not believe that we have anything planned for the terrain deformation of that kind of stuff with our game right now. However there will be different types of cover, our goal is to make the game, as I have said many time here about, fun and one part of the fun part is in order to keep the pace of combat we have to make you look at the scene and say "I know what that kind of cover that is going to give me". So we are definitely working to make sure that when you look at a piece of cover there is an expectation of what kind of protection you will get from it. So when you are looking at a field, you'll say: "Oh, whoa, that piece up there, that is the best piece of cover I can get to, I need to fight to get there" but, as you know that may or may not be the easiest place to get to from where the mobs are. But it will give lots of interesting game dynamics
Q: What level of specialization of non cosmetic customization will we have? How is the diversion in specialization for the archetypes? Are there other options like talents or traits?
A: We spoke of this a little before but we will reiterate as it is a current hot topic on the forum. So let’s start right in. Each archetype as 3 trees of specialization (NDT: see T1 or T2). So when I go to my trainer for my archetype I am presented with 3 different trees of specialization. What these trees do, we tried to really diversify them so. What it comes down to is "how do I like to play my character?” I like to do these particular types of actions they are really fun and so there is a tree that does that and I'll go down that tree and I'll get all kinds of ability and I play the same character, or my buddy play the same character, and he does not really likes that as much as I do. He is going to go down tree B when I went down tree A. We are going to play drastically different. In the sense that, not that they will be unrecognizable from each other, but they will really have these cool abilities that define their play style. And that is always what we have tried to do with our specialization. We also want for replayability reason players to be able to rather easily respecialize their character and try out these other trees and try living in the middle of the trees grabbing as many different abilities as they can. And making it balanced and viable in the game system, that is what we are trying to do. Outside of ability trees for customization we have looked at item diversity and so forth based upon these trees will require different types of items, different weapons. And what you really want to do with those items is enhanced them and make them better so you go to the crafting system or you go through auction house and buy these enhancement and make your weapon the best that it can be based on the gameplay that you have chosen. That really is pretty simple but it is far more robust than you might think or deep than you might think.
Q: Will there be faction or race specific planets and if so will they be capturable?
A: Yes there will be faction and race specific worlds. We are planning to have every races new player experience be very much directed to who they are and playing on an individual world that no other faction will get to see. These will not be capturable worlds. Right now we do not have plans for capturable worlds. We have plans for worlds that are in conflicts with controls for different points but not capturable worlds.
Q: The recently aired SG trailer shows death glider flying across the battle field. Will death gliders be enemy mobs in the game? Can they fire on a player walking across the world? Will the player be able to shoot them down?
A: What we want to do is give the players the feel that they have in the show and in the trailer, you know death gliders zooming across the sky. And it is something we definitely want to do. How we are going to show that to the player we are not quite sure. We will have DG in the game whether or not it is a DG you can attack, that is not necessarily going to happen, maybe in scripted events in instances you will see something like that.
