We're wrapping up work this week on Zanesville and Needle Eye, while moving on to Kingman and Mumford. Our item balancing work is continuing on, as is our work on the tutorial revamp. We got our first draft of the exterior of the tutorial level in game now and it's mighty impressive.
This week I'm going to be hitting two subjects that we've been working on lately, one that folks ask about and one that folks haven't because, well, they didn't know it was there.
Clans
This is just a short overview of how clans work:
Players can organize themselves into clans in Fallen Earth, with clans requiring 10,000 chips and 10 members to start but once they are founded can have any number from 1 to 250 members. Clans have at least three ranks, but the Clan Leader can create up to ten ranks, each with its own permissions list saying who can invite/remove, promote/demote, use the clan vault, accept clan war challenges, etc. There can only be one Clan Leader at a time, but he can delegate responsibilities and permissions where other people can have most of the power he does.
Clans can enter into Clan Wars, by which they challenge other clans to do battle in PvP zones. When the war is declared a point goal is agreed to between the two clans with points being earned by each clan by killing the opposing team. The first clan to reach the goal wins, and money can be wagered on Clan Wars by the parties involved. The particulars of the Clan War, such as point goal, length, start time, handicap for clans of different power levels, and preferred location are set between Clan Leaders. We're also working on other reward systems (aside from earning chips betting on your clan to win and bragging rights) for Clan Wars to further encourage people to take part.
Research
A new facet of our crafting system that our items expert Brandes came up with is a research system where players can find out how to make better items through hard work rather than creature camping, trainers, etc.
Say you learn Axes 1 from a trainer, a knowledge that teaches you to make a number of different axe types. The same trainer also teaches Axes 2 and Axes 3. Axes 1 has a set of instructions (our new term for recipe, it just sounds better) for Research Improved Axes 1, which requires certain supplies and a large amount of time. If the player uses those instructions they get an item only they can use that teaches them the Improved Axes 1 knowledge, which includes instructions for making better versions of the axes from Axes 1. Merchants don't sell and creatures don't drop Improved Axes 1, so it can only be gotten through tradeskills by those who put in the effort.
Over time these researched instructions give better and better results compared to standard items.
1. Since, in the future, we will bully you into adding flight based vehicles, are you taking into account the future possibility of things like gyroplanes when designing the world and its layout?
While there are areas we wouldn't want people to fly to (we sometimes use distant corners of the map to hide levels like the tutorial and such) those areas will be blocked off by radiation and plague zones, so theoretically we could allow flying vehicles in terms of terrain. Using cheat codes I can go fly around the game currently by turning off gravity (but that doesn't behave at all like an aircraft so no one say it should be an easy thing to implement and we should get on that). So yes, theoretically, there is nothing structurally from stopping us from doing flying vehicles (well, the load times involved in having such a long draw distance unencumbered by terrain line of sight would be pretty hefty, but that's about it).
2. Will fatigue play a factor in foot travel, and if so, to what extent?
None really. Foot travel across some of the distances in Fallen Earth is bad enough, but putting more difficulties in the path of the player we found to be counterproductive. Our early testing had a system where players consumed Stamina while moving faster than a walk, and once they ran out of Stamina they slowed down.
Everyone hated it.
Players had to stop and sit down when running from town to town, and it really got in the way of getting to the fun in the game. Most folks don't consider running to be particularly fun, so we'd rather get them to the fun stuff than put another barrier in their way.
Fallen Earth: QOTW Tackles Clans, Research, Flight and Fatigue
Fallen Earth team tackles several subjects in this week's QOTW feature, revealing clan formation mechanics and costs, crafting research and training, movement fatigue and the particular fan question about flying vehicles in the wasteland!
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