How do you handle the Ages of Empire Online problem? As in, you have players with varying degree of investment. You can't really guarantee that players will only be adjacent to players with about the same degree of investment. And with a game like this, the more hours put in, almost always means a stronger empire.
Player progression will be horizontal instead of vertical.
For example, vertical development results in things like more resources/unit of time and more damage per attack.
Horizontal development results in variety, one player can unlock a new weapon with an effect on it that another player does not have.
The game maintains its balance by restricting the total amount of deployed forces based on the command point value of the unit and its attached parts.
Thus, new player will have less variety but the same capacity than an experienced player.
Developing one's economy will help for trade and replenishing losses so a larger empire will have that replenishment advantage; however, they still have to maintain that size with the same capacity.
Why does the kickstarter video say that the game been in development for 7 years? I understand thats when the idea was born, but if he started from scratch, then when did actual work on the game begin? Unless, you're telling us making Pong Clones (arbitrary example) means that you can make a MMO RTS? That seems like quite a stretch to say thats when it started. Interest and desire isn't a real start.
When development started 7 years ago it was with about 2 maybe 3 people to get the server architecture working. About 4 years ago we started doing major development and showcased our techbuild which had the server architecture holding thousands of systems in a seamless galaxy.
Many MMOs take 8-11 years of development with large studios undergoing various stages of development.
How do you plan on handling the RTS and/or 4X Late Game problem? It doesn't seem like there win state, but there does seem like there a point where player time in the games is more about managing then about doing the 4Xs. There a Dune inspired MMO browser game, that is horribly crippled by being unable to solve the late game issue. Sure there room for new players start in a new instance Galaxy, but the old players will always out strip you and anything you do, is of no consequence.
That assumes we are making a 4X game. 4X basically stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.
Thus, there is a beginning and an end. Because Novus Aeterno aims to continue, there is no end point. We have had to work with a different design idea in mind. We use something called D.I.M.E.
DIME is used by actual militaries to better understand and make decisions in the real world. It stands for Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economy.
We are building the game to allow players the ability to play however they want within those 4 pillars of gameplay. We do not need to be restricted by an end point.
There will be no instances in the main game, players cannot be wiped out completely; unless you join a hardcore instance which we plan to launch parallel to the main galaxy allowing complete player annihilation.
Does your game include a Post Scarcity Economy? If not, why not?
Scarcity will not come from base resource production but the production of components and crafted modifications. The way technology works is through a fairly randomized discovery system, scientists come up with hypothesis for new theories and technology which can be researched. These will never occur in the same order for every player and as new technologies are added you can find new players discovering the new technologies before existing players can. The variety in technological production can create some supply and demand between players who have tech another player wants. The only way to share is to trade the produced components.
Most first major products fail, no matter who is behind it. Why shouldn't we be extremely skeptical over this one? It seems like your development team has a hodge of experience, and it also seems like none of them have enough experience to really pull this off. Why isn't this just going to turn into nother Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning? That game started off with Brain Reynolds (Alpha Centurai, Frontier Vill) worked, and actually a lot of industry vets to work on, and even got Todd McFarlane and a notable established writer to work out the worlds fiction.
One of the advantages of running with a small team is that we can utilize more agile software development practices granting us the ability to adapt to the market while keeping costs down low. Larger studios definitely have the muscle to churn out a game but they have a very hard time changing direction. When a game takes 4 or more years to develop, being able adapt to changes is incredibly valuable. Many big developers run into the problem were they cannot make enough changes once they get the project rolling. We can make changes, quick and cheap.
Why did you start your kickstarter during Holiday seasons when most folks are trying to pay off Halloween, pay for Thanks Giving and X-Mas?
We've brought this up in more detail on live streams; we are out of money and developing the game on the skin of our backs. Publishers love what they see but it is such a different game from what they are familiar with that they can't publish us without us implementing horrible pay to win systems. Metrics don't exist for a our game because games like ours don't really exist, publishers want to see another game they can compare to ours.
Are you concerned with running it so close to the end of the year, that payment processing may make you have to pay taxes twice on the kickstarter money? This happen with the Angry Video Game Nerd movie.
I'll bring this up with the others.
How have you been financing this team for the the last 7 years? Has any of it been Venture Capital groups?
Angel Investors. Living on rice, bread, crackers, etc. =]
How are you going to tackle, what plagues every MMO, the opening period server hell?
More stress Testing. From our current stress tests, if we have enough people on our opening to cause server hell, we would be celebrating and gladly buy better server hardware.
How is this not just going to be nother boon dongle like Horizon?
Can't really comment there, I havn't been following Horizon much.
What does this game do to merit the 'true' RTS MMO thing? How is that just not the Scotts Man fallacy parading itself as marketing?
If I order a ship to move from one side of the galaxy to the other, he will eventually travel the entire distance. I will be able to view this journey without any loading times and he will likely encounter 3 players per solar system he passes by. We generate around 1,200 systems for quick testing so there could be up to 3,600 players in that galaxy. Which is small for what we will open with.
So, by literal definition of an MMO (which requires something like over 64 players being able to play with each other at one time) we clear that bench mark.
Many RTS games that claim to be an MMO will still have up to 32 players, on a single map. They are not seamless maps, we have shown in live streams were players watching the stream have traveled a couple of systems away to engage the recording streamer.
Phwew, made it through! Tough questions, thanks. =]
Author
Topic: Novus Aeterno OP updated (Read 15631 times)