FreejackeR
12-14-2007, 00:27
Developer Q&A Episode 1
David Read: Welcome to developer Q&A where the fans get to pick the brains of people bring stargate worlds to life, episode 1 includes a terrific line up of questions answered by Developers like Joey Ybarra, Dan Elggren, Chris Klug, Zeb Cook. Thanks to everyone who submitted and for those who didn't we look forward to seeing you in episode 2, Now on to your questions.
David Read: Lord-Kazim asks Dan Elggren will a player Goa'uld ever have the power to be as strong as a system lord? with his own NPC army's? Dan Elggren has the answers
DE: The Goa'uld will have allot more power than your typical player in the galaxy the magical power, powers as well as the ability to have pets in the universe, so you will have you jaffa that will sorta grow with you and you will be able to control in the galaxy the powers up to you
David Read: Jayna wants to know will combat include keyboard targeting and target lock ? Bill Slease Answers.
BS yes we intend ermm the combat to include both keyboard targeting and target lock, their will be some ability's you can use while your moving so you wanna be able to lock the target and be able to use those, there will be other ability's of course you can't.
David Read: Gary asks Derek Sunshine, since you can't model entire planets how are you planning on limiting the regions that players can get to in outdoor areas?
DS: Well where planning on surround most of the map either by natural barriers mountains lakes, oceans etc. or like placing city's things like that, that will keep the player interested inside the play space rather then wandering out into the wilderness.
David Read: Aeon asks Howard Lyon when creating the different alien worlds particularly the ones that weren't seen in the shows where are you getting your design idea's from? Howard Lyon answers this;
HL: You know that's a great question, we do allot of brain storming with the designer team with the content team were we go over the emotions we want the area to convey ahem that actually helps allot in deciding what kind of lines we gunna have are we have gunna have sharp and jagged lines and we gunna have deep and maybe deep and disturbing colours and lots of contrast or are we gunna have lots of curves and you know soft S curves and, and more inviting and appealing shapes so we brainstorm on that before we before we go into actually executing the concept and then from there we'll try and draw allot of inspiration from really anywhere anywhere we can find it maybe something laying around the office it gives us a spark or browsing on the internet really just anywhere we can get it from if something is already establish in the Stargate world lore we'll go will will gather as much reference as possibly can and build on it from there, we try and add a take on it so that in the game Stargate worlds that everything we do will stay true both to the stargate lore but also fit with in the stargate worlds Universe.
David Read: Leonhart wants to know will Unas be found anywhere in Stargate worlds?? and is it possible there'll be a playable race in a future expansion? Chris Klug Answers.
CK: I don't really believe that Unas make a viable player character race, for the following reasons, the game is really a sci-fiction arms race ultimately I mean that's what the show is, the shows about acquiring Goa'uld technology or preventing the Goa'uld from acquiring other technology and that's a note that show has played over and over again and while the Unas are an important part of the Goa'uld myth and the Goa'uld history, I don't see what role they would play in a game that's sorta based on science and technology as for whether they are gunna be in the game or not that final decision hasn't been made yet, we are not ruling anything out, but I think I can safely say there never gunna be a play character race.
David Read: R-J wants to know, what direction is the Dev team taken with regards to player economy can we expect to see a standard bizarre auction house type of market system ?? Zeb Cook answers;
ZC: Well certainly we gotta have a player economy we are planning and putting in an auction house and the thing about player economy is is it in some ways its kinda like republicanism, free market the less you do in many ways the better and so we are looking at you know how we can we make sure we can monitor and how the flow of money is going in but we don't really want to be the people who are trying to set or dictate the prices of what people sell back and forth, our biggest goal is to make things are worth selling and that includes things for the crafter's to make that are actually that other people will want to use, I mean an important part of how we see things is, that the way you get a hi-healthy economy is that crafter's make things that people want, but to make things people want, crafter need items that other people can find, and so you get this whole process going and then suddenly you have inflation and everything spins out of control, that the whole part of us being able to track the flow of money and trying get allot of you know hopefully er-early adequate testing and because you know the last thing people want it is for us to come in and go in like ohh by the way we are changing the prices of everything and people are like "ahhh".
Soimafreak asks Conan brink, how will the servers be set up? will there be many isolated servers scattered around the globe with a few major clusters on each continent or something else?
CB: We will be locating our servers near by to where our users are we will be clustering them as need to provide the best possible minimal latency and high response that our users demand.
David Read: Jade asks Joe Ybarra, How many subscriptions is Stargate Worlds aiming to get? Joe Ybarra answers:
JY: Well when we started the Stargate Worlds projects we actually identified four key audiences that we wanted to address, and I'll speak little bit about each one of them, the first one is first time MMORG game players and by that I mean customer that have been playing games perhaps console games or other types of PC products but have never played an MMO, to address this audience we need to do quite a few things to make the product accessible, exciting, and easy to break into cause we can't assume these folk have ever seen Stargate before so we have to make sure they understand the mytho and the story lines of the series before we can really embrace them and bring them into the fold, the second group of people that we address are the existing MMO players of which there are several million of them worldwide and we want to make sure that our game has the depth and the complexity and the richness they all expect and as an on going effort here we post launch we will be providing new content that will appeal to new time users, the third group that we want to address is the international customer's by which I mean those folks that are not in North America the majority of the revenue as of this year 2007 still is outside of North America so we want to make sure that our product appeals to those another aspect of that is Stargate as a television series is actually quite popular outside of North America and we want to make sure the fans of the show are not disappointed in that area as well, last but not least is back to that same group we want to make sure that we appeal to the stargate fans, so that imply's we must stay pretty close to the canon of the show, and add material that's appropriate, because we have real great working relationship with Brad Wright and Robert Cooper the folks in charge of the TV series we believe that we'll be able to extend the property in a fashion that will be very satisfying not only to our customers but also to the creators of the property as well, so by addressing all four of these audiences and by investing the amount of money, Research time and effort on the part of the entire team here we are expecting try and build a product here that will have very wide appeal and hopefully be successful.
David Read: Phil aka Hoshi ask Chirs Klug, Am curious to know you plan on offering with regards to role-play tools ? many MMO claim to the RPG tag but only offer role-play in the shape of text driven quest and very rare help its own community to live in the world it has created? Chris Klug has the Answers;
CK: Well I don't think, as much as a MMO is sort of a riff on a role-playing game its not really a role-playing game, certainly there will be lots of emotes, In fact I am working on the emotes right now these emotes will be very stargate centric there not just going to be the typical I mean you'll have some typical emotes but I literately just left a meeting where we were going over a very specific Stargate list of emotes and the story is proberly more fundamentally apart of the game play than in other MMO's, so at times it might feel like a role-playing game but, like other MMO's the choice of what to do and where to go and how to get there is more driven by what you want to do that night and what you want to play than anything else, I think its a couple of steps more towards what a real role-playing game is but its still an MMO.
David Read: Zoeff would like to know, Will stargate worlds have multi-monitor support? it would be nice to have most of the GUI on the secondary monitor and the main screen on the primary monitor, Demitrus Coombes answers:
DC: Currently that is not part of the plan but it is definitely something we can look into, as of right now we have not approached that subject but it the future we hopefully will.
David Reed: Bael Zon asks Zeb Cook, For people who choose to be military members of the SGC will the ability to move in rank be handled through complete quests and mission and will they be able to earn medals for actions taken in the battlefield?
ZC: Those are really both great idea's, and I say the really great idea's sound vague cause we are looking at doing some stuff so that they can earn rank um and the idea I would really want to have some method of earning medals earning recognition for player that he can then choose to display whether its actual rank that they display that way or some other kinda thing we haven't quite absolutely finalize, but I really like this idea and hopefully we can get some like this in.
David Read:That's it for episode one of the Developer Q&A, remember to stay dialled in to Stargate Worlds.com, for the latest news and info on upcoming MMO, and if you have the time drop in on our forums and connect with fans just like you, until next time.
Transcribe by FreejackeR
David Read: Welcome to developer Q&A where the fans get to pick the brains of people bring stargate worlds to life, episode 1 includes a terrific line up of questions answered by Developers like Joey Ybarra, Dan Elggren, Chris Klug, Zeb Cook. Thanks to everyone who submitted and for those who didn't we look forward to seeing you in episode 2, Now on to your questions.
David Read: Lord-Kazim asks Dan Elggren will a player Goa'uld ever have the power to be as strong as a system lord? with his own NPC army's? Dan Elggren has the answers
DE: The Goa'uld will have allot more power than your typical player in the galaxy the magical power, powers as well as the ability to have pets in the universe, so you will have you jaffa that will sorta grow with you and you will be able to control in the galaxy the powers up to you
David Read: Jayna wants to know will combat include keyboard targeting and target lock ? Bill Slease Answers.
BS yes we intend ermm the combat to include both keyboard targeting and target lock, their will be some ability's you can use while your moving so you wanna be able to lock the target and be able to use those, there will be other ability's of course you can't.
David Read: Gary asks Derek Sunshine, since you can't model entire planets how are you planning on limiting the regions that players can get to in outdoor areas?
DS: Well where planning on surround most of the map either by natural barriers mountains lakes, oceans etc. or like placing city's things like that, that will keep the player interested inside the play space rather then wandering out into the wilderness.
David Read: Aeon asks Howard Lyon when creating the different alien worlds particularly the ones that weren't seen in the shows where are you getting your design idea's from? Howard Lyon answers this;
HL: You know that's a great question, we do allot of brain storming with the designer team with the content team were we go over the emotions we want the area to convey ahem that actually helps allot in deciding what kind of lines we gunna have are we have gunna have sharp and jagged lines and we gunna have deep and maybe deep and disturbing colours and lots of contrast or are we gunna have lots of curves and you know soft S curves and, and more inviting and appealing shapes so we brainstorm on that before we before we go into actually executing the concept and then from there we'll try and draw allot of inspiration from really anywhere anywhere we can find it maybe something laying around the office it gives us a spark or browsing on the internet really just anywhere we can get it from if something is already establish in the Stargate world lore we'll go will will gather as much reference as possibly can and build on it from there, we try and add a take on it so that in the game Stargate worlds that everything we do will stay true both to the stargate lore but also fit with in the stargate worlds Universe.
David Read: Leonhart wants to know will Unas be found anywhere in Stargate worlds?? and is it possible there'll be a playable race in a future expansion? Chris Klug Answers.
CK: I don't really believe that Unas make a viable player character race, for the following reasons, the game is really a sci-fiction arms race ultimately I mean that's what the show is, the shows about acquiring Goa'uld technology or preventing the Goa'uld from acquiring other technology and that's a note that show has played over and over again and while the Unas are an important part of the Goa'uld myth and the Goa'uld history, I don't see what role they would play in a game that's sorta based on science and technology as for whether they are gunna be in the game or not that final decision hasn't been made yet, we are not ruling anything out, but I think I can safely say there never gunna be a play character race.
David Read: R-J wants to know, what direction is the Dev team taken with regards to player economy can we expect to see a standard bizarre auction house type of market system ?? Zeb Cook answers;
ZC: Well certainly we gotta have a player economy we are planning and putting in an auction house and the thing about player economy is is it in some ways its kinda like republicanism, free market the less you do in many ways the better and so we are looking at you know how we can we make sure we can monitor and how the flow of money is going in but we don't really want to be the people who are trying to set or dictate the prices of what people sell back and forth, our biggest goal is to make things are worth selling and that includes things for the crafter's to make that are actually that other people will want to use, I mean an important part of how we see things is, that the way you get a hi-healthy economy is that crafter's make things that people want, but to make things people want, crafter need items that other people can find, and so you get this whole process going and then suddenly you have inflation and everything spins out of control, that the whole part of us being able to track the flow of money and trying get allot of you know hopefully er-early adequate testing and because you know the last thing people want it is for us to come in and go in like ohh by the way we are changing the prices of everything and people are like "ahhh".
Soimafreak asks Conan brink, how will the servers be set up? will there be many isolated servers scattered around the globe with a few major clusters on each continent or something else?
CB: We will be locating our servers near by to where our users are we will be clustering them as need to provide the best possible minimal latency and high response that our users demand.
David Read: Jade asks Joe Ybarra, How many subscriptions is Stargate Worlds aiming to get? Joe Ybarra answers:
JY: Well when we started the Stargate Worlds projects we actually identified four key audiences that we wanted to address, and I'll speak little bit about each one of them, the first one is first time MMORG game players and by that I mean customer that have been playing games perhaps console games or other types of PC products but have never played an MMO, to address this audience we need to do quite a few things to make the product accessible, exciting, and easy to break into cause we can't assume these folk have ever seen Stargate before so we have to make sure they understand the mytho and the story lines of the series before we can really embrace them and bring them into the fold, the second group of people that we address are the existing MMO players of which there are several million of them worldwide and we want to make sure that our game has the depth and the complexity and the richness they all expect and as an on going effort here we post launch we will be providing new content that will appeal to new time users, the third group that we want to address is the international customer's by which I mean those folks that are not in North America the majority of the revenue as of this year 2007 still is outside of North America so we want to make sure that our product appeals to those another aspect of that is Stargate as a television series is actually quite popular outside of North America and we want to make sure the fans of the show are not disappointed in that area as well, last but not least is back to that same group we want to make sure that we appeal to the stargate fans, so that imply's we must stay pretty close to the canon of the show, and add material that's appropriate, because we have real great working relationship with Brad Wright and Robert Cooper the folks in charge of the TV series we believe that we'll be able to extend the property in a fashion that will be very satisfying not only to our customers but also to the creators of the property as well, so by addressing all four of these audiences and by investing the amount of money, Research time and effort on the part of the entire team here we are expecting try and build a product here that will have very wide appeal and hopefully be successful.
David Read: Phil aka Hoshi ask Chirs Klug, Am curious to know you plan on offering with regards to role-play tools ? many MMO claim to the RPG tag but only offer role-play in the shape of text driven quest and very rare help its own community to live in the world it has created? Chris Klug has the Answers;
CK: Well I don't think, as much as a MMO is sort of a riff on a role-playing game its not really a role-playing game, certainly there will be lots of emotes, In fact I am working on the emotes right now these emotes will be very stargate centric there not just going to be the typical I mean you'll have some typical emotes but I literately just left a meeting where we were going over a very specific Stargate list of emotes and the story is proberly more fundamentally apart of the game play than in other MMO's, so at times it might feel like a role-playing game but, like other MMO's the choice of what to do and where to go and how to get there is more driven by what you want to do that night and what you want to play than anything else, I think its a couple of steps more towards what a real role-playing game is but its still an MMO.
David Read: Zoeff would like to know, Will stargate worlds have multi-monitor support? it would be nice to have most of the GUI on the secondary monitor and the main screen on the primary monitor, Demitrus Coombes answers:
DC: Currently that is not part of the plan but it is definitely something we can look into, as of right now we have not approached that subject but it the future we hopefully will.
David Reed: Bael Zon asks Zeb Cook, For people who choose to be military members of the SGC will the ability to move in rank be handled through complete quests and mission and will they be able to earn medals for actions taken in the battlefield?
ZC: Those are really both great idea's, and I say the really great idea's sound vague cause we are looking at doing some stuff so that they can earn rank um and the idea I would really want to have some method of earning medals earning recognition for player that he can then choose to display whether its actual rank that they display that way or some other kinda thing we haven't quite absolutely finalize, but I really like this idea and hopefully we can get some like this in.
David Read:That's it for episode one of the Developer Q&A, remember to stay dialled in to Stargate Worlds.com, for the latest news and info on upcoming MMO, and if you have the time drop in on our forums and connect with fans just like you, until next time.
Transcribe by FreejackeR