Am Samstag Vormittag der Games Convention haben wir es dann doch noch geschafft, die Flagship Studios zu interviewen. Nachdem wir etliche Male vor den Hellgate-PCs auf Ivan und co gewartet hatten und die Hoffnung schon fast aufgegeben war, schauten wir nochmal um die Ecke, und siehe da, Ivan Sulic, Tricia Gray, Charlie Lapp und Patt Haris liefen vorbei. Schnell gestoppt und gefragt konnten wir das Interview sogleich in einem VIP-Zelt von Microsoft führen - Dank Ivans Camcorder in ansehlicher Qualität, dank unserer Aufgeregtheit mit ein paar Versprechern, die nicht nur bei uns nachträglich für einige Lacher gesorgt haben, sondern auch bei den Flagship Studios. Doch seht oder lest einfach selbst! Hier geht's zum Video-Download (86 bzw 173 MB)
Eine Deutsche Übersetzung dieser Niederschrift findet ihr hier.
GamersUnity: Well, Ivan, glad to meet you.
Ivan Sulic: Me too!
GU: We heard about a lot of stuff in the past, but we didn't get answers to the really interesting questions like multiplayer, the monthly fee, the third class and so on. More and more time is passing, and the fans are getting nervous, so what shall we do?
I.S.: Well, first of all we still have a lot of time left in development. The game is not coming out tomorrow so we try and space out what we do and don't release information-wise. 'Cause if we put out too much, than you have nothing left to talk about once we launch. That being said, there are other issues, that govern wether we talk about specific details. Most important is that sometimes we just don't know how it's gonna turn out in the end. So if we start telling you "Oh it's gonna be exactly like this" and then it's not, we basically come off as liars. So our best interest is to sort of keep quiet.
Now, specifically talking about classes and multiplayer: We have announced some specifics about multiplayer, like that we're gonna have LAN-play and, you know, TCP-Play and some type of MMO-like component. That's all we've really said. And unfortunately that's all we can say, going forward, in terms of those types of mode-specifics.
And for classes i think our current plan is to do a TGS-bild, which is a new build that doesn't feature any new classes but will have new quests and environments and characters and the like. And then after that we will be *peep* for *peep* when they do windows *peep* games and that'll be a duplicate of the TGS-build only in english and then, following that, at some undisclosed point - i believe it's in oktober/november - there should be magazine coming out with more specifics on classes. I think that's the current timeline. So hopefully that will appease the fans, if not just e-mail Lee Dotson and tell him how much you hate him.
GU: It's really unusual to use such a high amount of randomization in a game. Noone ever did that, except for Diablo II and now Hellgate. We are worried about the balance, especially in multiplayer and PvP - as far as there is some. Is it still possible to form your character, to create the char you really want to play or is there too much randomization. Because if there are randomized Skills, randomized items, randomized levels... Everthing is randomized! So, how do you build the character you really want?
I.S.: First of all, i don't think there are randomized skills, right? Not currently. Maybe that was something that was in originally or an idea that has been tossed around...
Pat Harris: There might be enhancements to skills that are random. Enhancements to skills you already have. But no just out of the blue random skills.
I.S.: Okay. So your baseline-skills should be pretty standardized accross classes. And in terms of the actual randomization: We do randomize all item drops, enemies and environments. The environments really have no bearing on gameplay, especially in a PvP setting. 'Cause we don't have a lot of AI routines that play off of environments. And for PvP: We don't have a lot of interactive environments. So it's okay, that those are randomized. The Monsters are randomized mainly to affect the player. Not in a Player versus Player setting. There are some balancing issues that are coming in there but, you know... Since most of the guys have already worked on Diablo and Diablo II they are pretty much familiar with the types of balancing issues that are coming up. So i don't foresee any problems coming up there, but like said: PvP could pose somewhat of an issue but it's all just time. If PvP is an issue, they spend more time on it. That's pretty much what it is. That's where Beta comes into play. And it's probably gonna suck, the first beta run. Everything sucks the first time we put it in the game and then you spend a hundred hours working on it and suddenly it's good. I think that's development, just trial and error and fixing it.
Charlie Lap: There are our random quests as well.
I.S.:Oh, yeah. So we have random quests as well. So there are three types of quests. There is the story quest, there is the factional quest that you can get from non story-critical NPCs at the towns, and then there are randomized quests also. They are inside the instance. Those shouldn't have real impact on gameplay either, i mean they do impact gameplay because there's a lot of new things to do, but not in terms of balancing.
GU: And one question about the loot-system. We have heard - and seen - you just pick up stuff by pressing the 'F' key, and you can pick up everything you want. How's that going to work in multiplayer? In World of Warcraft we've seen such a lot of socalled "ninja-looters". You are waiting for that one item and then it drops and you think "Wow, that's my sword!" and then some mage goes up there and picks it up. And you think like: "Oh. Well." What are you going to do about that?
I.S.:It's easy. It won't work. We have actually different systems that we wanna develop, that just weren't in this current build. This "Press 'F' to pick up anything in a radius of your character" is just a placeholder system. So the Way it's finally implemented is to be discussed. I don't think we know yet. That again will come up in Beta. We will deliver serveral different functions and when everybody hates two or three functions, than we can decide which one is the best to go with. But that beeing said: There shouldn't be any souldbound items, just to throw that out there. (laughs)
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