Fallen Earth: QotW #23: Role Playing, Vehicle & Weapon Usage + Status Update!

Cynagin posted today the Question of the Week feature spiced up with a status update on the Fallen Earth development:

In addition to some questions, we figured we'd give you a basic status update as to what's going on currently with Fallen Earth. We're going through intensive testing of our systems and content, which has produced a lot of good tweaks we're working on implementing. Content-wise, we're chugging along as always, writing missions and working on game balance, but we've also got new stuff coming down the pike that we're working on. We're introducing a new category of skills, called Interactive skills, the first two of which are Bargaining and Tracking. Interactive skills are improved by use rather than AP expenditure and mainly deal with the more complex interactions players have with NPCs. We don't have enough of it finished to deliver a Question of the Week about it, but we want to let you know we are adding new mechanics in addition to content.

And on to the Questions:

1. How will we acquire vehicles? Will it just be a quest, or maybe a node spawn which you can repair with science or claim if found? If we acquire vehicles through quests, will they be randomly selected, or will it be the same one every time?

Getting a vehicle will be a long and arduous process. Players will have to find information about cars, research the components using their Tradeskills, gather the necessary resources, and finally spend the weeks in the actual crafting. Some of these goals can be accomplished through missions, others through simple resource hunting. Vehicles are highly customizable (different chassis, body panels, engines, etc.), so players customize their vehicles during construction.

Vehicles will not be simply found intact, unless a player wants to give one away. A vehicle represents a huge investment of resources and work. It will likely be a status symbol in the Fallen Earth.

2. Will we be able to use our weapons inside an allied town ?

Yes. You can attack most folks any time you want, with a few exceptions:

You can only attack other players in PvP zones, where you can attack anyone not in your squad. The inability to attack members of your group only applies to attacks using the reticle that are a hit/miss situation, such as normal weapon strikes.

You can't attack neutral town guards or guards of your faction normally; you have to use an ability like Melee Smash to make them hostile. This is to prevent accidental friendly fire against guards who may get in your way during fights, causing them to turn on you. You can attack guards of enemy factions without restriction.

3. RP info: Do we come from the clone vat with memory of the Fallen world, or are we fresh from storage?

Not really wanting a spoiler, but we used to have a lot of speculation about character backgrounds, which pretty much dried up due to the tutorial video. Don't get me wrong, love the idea, great setup and all, but amnesia is a bit limiting if everyone has it.....

We're leaving it up to players as much as possible. No one ever says, "Hey, you have amnesia"; they just explain things as if you have no memory. That may simply mean they don't expect you to know much. The end result is that you wake up in a strange place with a cloning collar around your neck; how you got to that point is up to you.

Later in the game, there are missions in which players can explore the cloning background to learn details about the individual or individuals they were cloned from, but players who don't go that route will have their own series of missions. Like most things in Fallen Earth, if you go along with the clone story you'll see one type of content, and if you don't you'll see different content. We're not forcing a choice. The clone content will be more in-depth, though, since we can't plan for the variety of histories players may bring to the game, whereas we can plan for and control the eventualities of the clone characters.

4. Will Vistas be able to grow food?

Yes, but so will everyone else, to some extent or another. Vistas will simply be the best at it. We'll have more on this once the farming/mining/ranching/management aspects of the game are through testing.

5. Who is Captain Pouches?

A being of pure evil. It came from Australia on a black horse with a heart of hate and claws of steel. Throughout time it has been known as the Destroyer of Worlds, Generalissmo Pouches, and the Keeper of Death in Its Fuzzy Pocket. It brings fear to our offices and order to our days.

Fear speaking its name for you may attract its malevolent gaze. I already have said too much, it comes for m...!