MMOs, Console Games and anything else with buttons
ArenaNet have posted an interesting profile of one of their concept artists, Theo Prins.
If you appreciate art or have an interest in how some of the GW2 vistas are created, then have a read.
If you like creating your own game art, we’d love to show off your work. If you’re interested, drop us a line!
For those you aren’t into podcasts, below is a summary of the topics discussed in our interview with The Secret World’s Joel Bylos.
As you’ll see, there’s a range of interesting topics covered. Please note: the responses are my interpretations and paraphrasing. If you want the words direct from Joel then please listen to the original interview.
Here we go:
| Question asked by | Question | Paraphrasing of answer by Joel Bylos |
|---|---|---|
| Simon | ||
| Any other teasers for future plans or upcoming issues? | Nice hint about next auxiliary weapon in Issue #4. New York Raid, player will be going back to their old friend Dave Screed AND meeting other characters from the CGI. Halloween event – all the background content is now patched, ready to be put live. Not a typical Halloween event, will need to dig through old irish lore. Puzzle raids will be available in a ‘few months’. | |
| How confident are you that the monthly update schedule can be adhered to, especially once you get through all the mapped out future content and have to start creating additional content with the heavily reduced staff resources. | We now have a set pipeline for content releases including better bug testing and we’re confident it’s all possible. We also have an overlapping development plan to help ensure stuff comes out regularly. | |
| Different body-types, instead of the standard ‘one-body, many heads’ in a future update? | Looking at other options with body shape but the clothing is attuned to the body and clothing system doesn’t allow different body shapes. Trying to ninja some other things that will make people happy | |
| Do you see any parallels between TSW and AoC? | Learnt hundreds of things from AoC. Big two were consistency of content throughout the game and that the technology needs to be completely stable (approx 95% of AoC users who left the game, left when they reached Tortage and the city killed their computer because the tech wasn’t stable enough / framerate too poor. | |
| What’s your overall feeling about the MMO genre and the ‘game-space-in-economically-challenging-times’ | ||
| Reviewing MMO’s. Are all reviewers gibbons? How do you review an MMO given it’s depth, complexity and essential time commitment. Should reviews be promoted only as ‘first impressions’ with caveats? Should it be illegal, on pain of death, to ‘review’ any MMO before the third content patch drops | ||
| Fluffy question… Rift giving a buck per Storm Legion purchase to a ‘save the pandas’ charity. | Great fun from Trion poking fun. Important to acknowledge Blizzard have done important things for the MMO space, just wish they’d lose some more customers to TSW 😉 | |
| David | Tell us a little about your journey from Australia to Funcom | |
| How good was the response to the lifetime subscription offer and is it something likely to be offered ongoing? | Think it’s going well but haven’t seen numbers recently. Lifetime subs are a big part of the core audience. | |
| What’s a measure of success for TSW over the next year? | Current team is still in place and growing, customer base is growing, and in general that it’s a game people talk about in 5 years as an influential game on others. In-game want to fix PvP and other things that can be done poorly, more inter-faction conflict. | |
| Without mentioning other MMOs by name, what mistakes have you seen them make that you’ve already avoided or hope to avoid? | Play lots of MMOs but don’t really judge them from a developer perspective. More about having our own rules – we were always committed to no-class system, no gathering professions, making crafting really good, can’t kill another human unless infected or enemy faction. Just having those sort of guidelines to drive the vision of the game. Investigation missions were a key thing that was non-negotiable. Future marketing should be based on the story aspects, not gear progression. No desire to go beyond tier 10 gear in general. | |
| The Angry Postman | Joel, TSW had an incredibly dedicated (yet small) audience almost from the onset. Long, detailed ARGS catered to that audience, and yet it seems very little was done to advertise the game outside of this core group of people. Do you plan to help get the game more mainstream attention going forward? The game is awesome, and unique and needs to be played by more people. | Yes -we need to promote the game more widely and we’ll be attempting to do that |
| Ed Goldstein | The Secret World delivers a solid story, but the largest complaint from the community is that there is a lack of scaling to prepare people as they move from zone to zone. I think the largest problem is that once they hit Blue Mountain the casual player finds that if they did not build their character correctly that they’re incapable of continuing on their own. | We misjudged difficulty. We made Kingsmouth easier and Savage Coast slightly easier then Blue Mountain was where we wanted the difficulty to be. We don’t communicate clearly enough on skill point allocation. Looking at making story boss fights a little easier. Starter decks coming in 1.4 which will help as well as based on the inner wheel to give guidance on good builds. If you do roughly 70% of mission in an area you’ll be fine to move on. Hell Hotel wasn’t meant to be first area people went to in Savage Coast – was a legacy development issue. |
| “So my question is a little complicated, do you see any method by which you can either educate players that when they zone complete that they have some understanding of the goal they are working towards to allow them to say, “”Wow I’m ready for the next zone.”” | ||
| Failing that, do you see any chance of granting those confused players an opportunity to reset their skill points? (The largest problem seems to be players spending too many points in weapon skills as opposed to talismans. I.E. they have 5-6 weapons at rank 3 at the end of Savage Coast, but only major, minor and talismans at 1-2 ranks. – At the end of savage coast level by the way, talismans should be at 4 minimum. | ||
| This is not limited to Blue Mountain by the way, the same is true of Egypt, City of the Sun God, and finally Transylvania. (Though I feel that in many cases Transylvania is easier then City of the Sun God.) | ||
| Belladawna | Does your new position mean you can out drink Ragnar? | Always been able to out-drink Ragnar 😉 |
| Are there any plans to build a high res in game model view? | One is used internally, aware of third party options, no plans for official one at this stage | |
| hyperjumpgrandmaster (Reddit) | What are the plans to make PvP more meaningful? Is there a timeline for any of these changes? | Open World PvP is not very likely to happen a all – too much of the game relies on that being the case. Cinematics don’t offer protection while being watched. Issue #4 will see changes in Fusang and PvP that doesn’t require the player to go to a specific location – factions fighting each other during special events etc. |
| “Are there any plans for open world PvP outside of the fight clubs? Maybe a “”hostile”” server where PvP is always on after reaching a certain amount of skill points?” | ||
| Voodoo Shark (Reddit) | Are there plans to streamline current skills and mechanics? | Definitely looking into streamlining – some skills too similar across weapon types. Will also address on auxiliary weapons with some new mechanics. Another new auxiliary coming in Issue #4 update |
| Will there be a more consistent free trial? | Big changes in trial set-up – announced in around 2 weeks |
Following hot on the heels of our Secret World special edition Episode 42, there’s lots to talk about this episode, with all the content updates being released across a bunch of MMOs. Also a big welcome to guest co-host Luke LePage who writes our regular World of Warcraft column.
Points of discussion:
SWTOR
– 1.4 update
– BioWare Live Stream
– lack of communication on updates
– Lore Update: Cortosis
WoW
– Luke and David’s general impressions of Mists of Pandaria
– Early sales of MoP down?
– Favourite early levelling areas
TSW
– Issue #3 content update
– Joel Bylos interview
– 50% discount offer
GW2
– account security
– general impressions
Marvel Heroes
– October 1st for Open Beta
– Shout outs for our forums, Facebook page, Twitter account and Simon’s Twitter account.
Please review or rate the podcast on iTunes if you can – it makes a huge difference!
Listen via iTunes or right here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:00 — 24.7MB)
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This is a special edition devoted to our interview with The Secret World‘s Game Director, Joel Bylos. Episode 43 will be live tomorrow if TSW isn’t your thing, although it’s worth hearing a senior MMO designer’s ideas all the same. If you are into TSW then you’re in for a treat as Joel covers a lot of areas of the game and gives some hints on the future of the game. A big thanks to Joel for taking some of his valuable Sunday morning at a park with his family to speak to us.
Points of discussion:
– Joel’s journey from Australia to being game director at Funcom
– What being Game Director involves
– Question from The Angry Postman: promoting TSW outside the Alternate Reality Game niche
– Transparency of Funcom/TSW with the struggles over recent months
– Question from Ed Goldstein: scaling between zones
– Question from Belladawna: Does the new position mean Joel can outdrink Ragnar?
– Question from Belladawna: Plans for an official hi-res model viewer?
– Question from Hyperjumpgrandmaster: Making PvP more meaningful, open world PvP an option?
– Question from Voodoo Shark: plans for streamlining skills and mechanics?
– Question from Voodoo Shark: ongoing free trial offers?
– Any other teasers willing to be disclosed? (Yes – including a heavy hint on Issue #4’s auxiliary weapon)
– The impact of layoffs on the team and optimism for the future and bringing some people back
– Can the output of issues be maintained?
– Ability to change body-shape in the future?
– Lessons learnt from Age of Conan?
– Lessons learnt from other MMOs?
– Rift doing panda charity donations (and a lame joke from the host on funding a different type of panda)
– Comparing TSW, GW2 and WoW combat
– What’s a measure of success for TSW over the coming year?
Post your thoughts on the interview below – we’ll have a summary of Joel’s responses posted in 24 hours or so but nothing beats listening to the full thing – enjoy.
Please review or rate the podcast on iTunes if you can – it makes a huge difference!
Listen via iTunes or right here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:29 — 19.9MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Blitzkrieg is a new regular column devoted to the very popular MMO World of Tanks. If you’ve got a topic you’d like our resident expert Matthew “Scope” Pearce to cover, drop him a line!
G’day fellow gamers – recently Patch 8.0 of World of Tanks hit the live servers with its brand new physics engine, a graphical overhaul on some of the original maps, and also the introduction of a second TD (Tank Destroyer) line added to the Russian tech tree with four new TDs all up.
First up in my review is the brand new tier VII TD the SU-100M1
The SU-100M1 is equipped with the 100mm D-10S mod. 1944 gun with 131-219mm of armour penetration which deals 173-288 of damage, and sports a health pool of 830, and has a top speed of 50Kmph, with 90mm of frontal armour.
The armour for this tank is rather low for its tier, however its strength lies in its low profile and high camouflage rating, and how fast it can react to the ever changing battle with its amazing speed.
The upgraded gun 100mm LB-1C can shoot 9.52 rounds a minute with an accuracy of 0.33 at 100m, and an aiming time of only 1.7 seconds, which makes this TD an incredibly accurate borderline semi automatic sniper rifle with an average of 2070dpm (damage per minute).
The SU-100M1 tank destroyer offers players the speed of a medium tank, and the firepower and accuracy of a tank destroyer giving yourself more opportunities to move to your favourite bush, or sniper spot quicker and easier than before.
Next up is the tier VIII TD the SU-101
The SU-101 comes equipped with the tier VII 100mm D-10S mod. 1944, has 990 hit points and has a top speed of 54kmph with 120mm of frontal armour.
The SU-101 plays as a slightly faster, more heavily armed TD than its predecessor.
This vehicle is a counterpart of the Jagdpanther II – it even looks the same.
There’s one difference though – the gun on the SU-101 is a TD version of the tier X IS-4’s top gun, and boy is it powerful.
Let’s compare the stats on the guns. This powerful 122mm M62-C2 gun is in a small nimble platform that has a nice 120mm of armour angled at 60° which means you can bounce quite a few shots from range while packing quite a punch and retaining good accuracy and a comfortable rate of fire.
Now for the tier IX TD the SU-122-54
The SU-122-54 TD is based on the T-54’s medium tank hull with a max speed of 48kmph and 1530 hit points, while sporting a newer upgraded 122mm M62-C2 gun.
The strength of the SU-122-54 is not only in its powerful new gun though – it is also the smallest of the tier IX tank destroyers, making it harder to hit as well as having the best camouflage and thus making it harder for enemy players to spot you .
The SU-122-54 is also a great flanker due to its lower profile allowing it to move around unnoticed far easier than other tier IX tank destroyers.
And now for the tier X tank destroyer: the Object 263
The Object 263 is completely different from its predecessors as it is based on the Russian tier X IS-7 heavy tank.
The Object 263 has 250mm of sloped frontal armour, making it one of the hardest tanks in game to penetrate frontally from range. It’s got 1900 hit points with a maximum speed of 55kmph meaning it is also the fastest tier X tank destroyer in the game.
But wait it gets even better. The Object 263 comes equipped with the 130mm S-70A that has the best accuracy of 0.32 at 100m out of all the tier X tank destroyers as well as a rate of fire of 5.45, which gives it the title of the fastest shooting tier X tank destroyer and making it capable of dealing over 3300dpm.
This tank destroyer is a killing machine on crack – not only does it have an accurate gun that has an insane ROF (Rate of Fire), more armour then the most heavily armoured tank in the German tech tree (the Maus), but it also has an incredible speed of 55kph while the Maus can hardly get to 20kph on open ground.
Coming from playing the German tech tree for the majority of my World of Tanks career, with the amazing accuracy that comes with being a German tank commander and loving my Jag Tiger ,I have reluctantly started to climb the Russian TD line in order to get a tier 10 version of my beloved JT as the JpzE-100 just doesn’t feel like an upgrade from the JT but more of a downgrade.
So over to you, what do you think of these new TDs?
This weekend we’re pretty excited to be spending some time one-on-one with The Secret World‘s newly minted Game Director, Joel Bylos.
Aside from being a friendly guy, Joel is also an expat aussie, so we’re here to both give him some homegrown hospitality whilst grilling him on everything TSW.
It’ll be an interview for our Flash Point podcast, and so we’d love questions from the TSW community to pose to Joel alongside our own.
So – if you’ve got a question, post it in the comments below and we’ll ask as many as we can, with a full shout-out to each person on the podcast. Hard / critical questions are fine but please keep it civilised.
Ask away!
If you’ve been sitting on the fence about giving The Secret World a whirl, you might want to check out Funcom’s 50% price reduction off the digital download version. It’s being offered over this weekend only.
You get 30 days of playtime with that, so for under US$24.99 you get a relatively cheap month of quality MMO time.
Why not give it a go?
Back in February we posted a rather funny review of SWTOR from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, and he’s backed up with another cracker review, this time for Guild Wars 2.
If you like cutting sarcasm then waste no more time, watch this:
What I like most about the review, aside from the gold humour, is that fact that it’s overall pretty accurate – do you agree?
There’s always something happening in MMO land but I have to say that this week’s been one of the busier ones. What, with Mists of Pandaria landing, The Secret World releasing its Issue #3 update and SWTOR putting Patch 1.4 live, there’s a hell of a lot on offer.
So let’s open up the discussion across those three games: what are your thoughts on what’s been offered this week for your favourite game? Are you in a renewed honeymoon period with the game, still really disappointed or somewhere in between?
Let us know!
Ok, I have to admit WoW can still make me laugh. I’m early days in my levelling up in Mists of Pandaria, and have just completed the quests of which the title of this post comes from.
I won’t spoil anything by detailing who Gizmo and Socks are, but well done Blizzard on an amusing quest line combined with some slightly different gameplay to boot. I particularly liked the sniper work required.
Over to you fellow MoP’ers – did you enjoy these quests?
With Patch 1.4 well and truly live (full patch notes here), I had missed the detail on whether SWTOR players on the three oceanic servers had received the 12th character slot. The question was asked on the official SWTOR forums, and Joveth Gonzalez answered in the affirmative:
Yes! Oceanic servers now have 12 character slots with the latest update
Yes you CAN be like the rest of the world now!
Having a whole 4 toons on local servers, this is far from an issue for me, but it’ll be a bonus for some. We’d love to hear from you if you have 12 characters and how this has helped you – jump in!
Well it’s fair to say you could knock me down with a feather. True to their promises, Funcom are churning out new content for The Secret World on schedule now as promised.
Issue #3 is now live and it has two new missions plus a bunch of new Lair missions. In addition to that. there’s a bunch of bug fixes. Then, in the lead up to Halloween during October, The Cat God makes an appearance.
Here’s the full patch notes for Issue #3 for you:
“ISSUE# 3: THE CAT GOD” GAME UPDATE 1.3 – SEPTEMBER 26TH
HIGHLIGHTS
Two new missions are available with Issue #3:
- ‘The Binding’, which brings you to the City of the Sun God in Egypt to learn more about the Seven Sentinels. This truly epic investigation mission is definitely one of the most challenging and extensive.
- ‘Dogs of War’ plays on the mounting conflict between the vampires and their allies. Use your wits and battle prowess to instigate a war between the werewolves and the vampires.
There are also a full set of new Lair missions available!
The Cat God himself, after whom Issue #3 is named, will make his appearance in October as we are getting closer to Halloween. The Halloween event will run through the end of October and into the first week of November, and will include several missions which set off a brand new storyline including a new villain. So there’ll be plenty of opportunities to take on the challenge and learn what’s behind this new, dark threat to The Secret World come October!
GENERAL
- Fixed an issue that caused some nVidia users to occasionally experience a Stop Error (BSOD) when zoning.
- Fixed an issue with leech heals. “Reap and Sew” has been re-enabled.
- Female hairstyles should no longer be offset by one in the list during character creation. ‘Sideswept Twist’ is no longer showing twice in the list of hair styles available for female characters.
- Agartha: The portal to Hell Eternal (Elite) is now easier to access.
- All of the faction marks have been updated to make them more visible.
- Fixed an issue with hair clipping through some hats.
- The ‘Close shaved’ hairstyle for males no longer shows over the character ears when viewed from the side.
- Mark of the Templar and Mark of Blood no longer have the same visual effect on a target.
- Social pets: The “Tabby-Cat” has been more accurately renamed “Calico Cat”
- Fixed an issue with some shadows in The Shadowy Forest.
- You can now swap weapons when you do not have one drawn.
MARKETPLACE / BANK
- Fixed an issue with in-game messages that could not be received by some players.
- Deleting a mail without removing an attachment first will no longer cause the item to eternally remain in sender’s bank.
- Added a message warning users if they are the last member leaving their cabal, that anything left in the cabal bank will be lost.
- Fixed the possibility of visually displaying very large expiration times in the marketplace.
GUI
- Saved gamma settings will now load properly.
- Shared gear manager builds do now appear correctly in the GUI.
DUNGEONS
- The Facility: When Nodes get smashed you now immediately lose the buff if you are already inside the radius.
- Darkness War – Wayeb-Xul: Bomb Mayans should now always explode at 0 HP.
- Hell Raised: The Black Iron Artefacts no longer sound like they are machine-guns.
MISSIONS
- Dawning of an Endless Night: To lessen the inventory clutter, we removed the Deep Shaft key from the Illuminati box in the Franklin’s mansion. Players that already have the key will still lose it upon finishing tier 17 of Dawning of an Endless Night.
- Into the Darkness (Dragon): The Phoenician agent now sounds like he’s been corrupted by the filth.
New York
- Mainframe: The entry field shown during tier 4 now provides information on how to enter data.
Kingsmouth Town
- Death and the Instruments thereof: the diesel tank is no longer temporarily locked by other players.
Blue Mountain
- Detritus Prime should appear more reliably in tier 1, though he still enjoys long walks in the bog.
- The Haunting: Thomas is back in the fight during ‘Protect Margret and Thomas’ in tier 3.
Carpathian Fangs
- The Motherlands: Fixed an issue with one mapmarker.
- Stalker in the Darkness no longer resets during the fight.
- Too Deep: Thirsting Shades will now provide the proper update when killed.
- Too Deep: Metamorphosing Shades will now provide credit to all players involved in their death.
- Too Deep – Tier 3: The mission goal now correctly instructs the player to kill a Shade from Beyond.
- There are no Flowers in Pricolesti: Interacting with the mobile phone will now provide team credit.
Besieged Farmlands
- The Forest God is no longer holding an invisible mug throughout the cinematic during tier 2.
The Shadowy Forest
- Singing Stones – There is now an animation played when picking up a melody from a stone from tier 1.
- Hungry like the Wolves – Tier 1: The Lone Wolf now shows a proper animation when he rotates to wait for you and when he returns to his patrol path.
City of the Sun God
- Akir the Sun Guardian will now visit the City of the Sun God once in a while!
The Scorched Desert
- Black Sun, Red Sand: There is now a visual indication that the tablet is “locked” for use while the guardian is alive during tier 4.
ABILITIES
- You can no longer change a build in the gear manager while an ability is on cooldown.
- Perseverance should now trigger on activation of Frenzy abilities regardless of the result.
- The grenades from ability ‘Dirty Bombs’ are now placed on the ground when possible.
Blade
- Updated the tooltip for On Guard to say that the effect can stack up to 5 times instead of 10.
Fists
- Reckless will no longer be triggered by Canonball.
- Warmth now consistently works on other targets and it no longer requires you have put points into Follow Up to function properly.
Rocket Launcher
- The animation for the Big Red Button ability no longer shakes the character for a second or two in the beginning.
WORLD DESIGN
Blue Mountain
- Getting between the scaffolding and the wall in the casino won’t make you slide out of control anymore.
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