Nedan en intervju som två av Aventurines utvecklare gav för den grekiska radiostationen Sentra FM:
• Manos (Radio Producer): Good evening everyone! You are listening to the "Users" radio show on Sentra FM 103.3. This is our video games radio show and today it's a special day, since our guests are two developers from Darkfall Unholy Wars, who also worked on Darkfall Online. Manos Gryparis is on the microphone, and I have with me Adam Oikonomopoulos ...
• Adam: Hello everyone. Good evening...
• Manos: ...and Vangelis Kalaitzis...
• Vangelis: Good evening...
• Manos: Together we'll talk about Darkfall Unholy Wars, the new Greek MMORPG which will launch in November 20 and is the next saga of Darkfall, a game that was released on February 2009 and is the bestselling Greek video game.
• First of all, tell us about your work. Adam, you are the creative manager. How many years do you work with Aventurine?
• Adam: My name is Adam, I'm the creative manager and I work with AV for more than 4 years. As a creative manager I'm responsible for the creative look, the feeling of the game. I'm responsible for all the creative work, from the art style and GUI to the gameplay. I collaborate with many departments -including designers of course, like Vangelis sitting next to me. We are in contact on a daily basis about the game, although everyone has his own department. Together we must have cohesion to produce a good result.
• Manos: So in simple words, you are responsible for the game graphics? Do you guide the graphics engineers?
• Adam: Part of my job is graphics, for sure. But that extends further. Even the sound must ideally blend with graphics, which means that I also work with the audio department. I'm also providing some gameplay ideas for the game...
• Vangelis: And lore as well... the creative manager is involved in almost all aspects of the game...
• Manos: Vangelis, you are a game designer, but you were once working for customer support...
• Vangelis: Yes, I've started from the GM position. I'm almost 4 years at AV and now work on the game design.
• Manos: Cool, so what do you do on a daily basis?
• Vangelis: Well, lots of excel sheets, mostly to calculate numbers, possibilities... For example, mob drops (loot), game mechanics which are important...
• Manos: That's a good pass for my first question. You mentioned mob drops. Are you going to increase the loot in Darkfall Unholy Wars? In Darkfall Online newbies were killing goblins just to get a few gold.
• Vangelis: We have redesigned all mob drops. I won't say the loot has been reduced when you kill easy mobs, but we have re-arranged many things. Larger mobs surely drop more loot now. And that's because we need to have more activity in those areas...
• Adam: It's the "Risk VS Reward" system, which has to do with almost everything, like loot, resources... the more dangerous the place is, the greater the reward you get...
• Manos: Any chances of seeing some easy mobs not dropping any loot?
• Vangelis: No, all of them drop loot. This was an issue that confused some of our players and made them think that it was a bug.
• Manos: Now that we're talking about new players. What are you planning to do to protect new players? In Darkfall new players started the game, took their first quest and went, for example, to hunt goblins or trolls. In the meantime, a "red" player who belonged to an enemy race cut them to pieces and looted all their items!
• Vangelis: Not only players from enemy races, but even their own race!
• Manos: So, since Darkfall is a real-time and full PvP game, what are you planning to do with Darkfall Unholy Wars to help new players improve?
• Vangelis: We have already done many things and this was something we always wanted to fix. We had lots of new players coming in, the environment was "unfriendly" in the initial stages and some played for a while and then quit. We wanted to change that so that the game is more entertaining. The point is not to start playing and commit... suicide!
• Adam: Darkfall is a difficult and hard game. Not all players are the same though. Each one of us has a different pace on how he adapts to Darkfall, on how he understands the philosophy of the game and sticks with it. So we wanted all those mainstream players -that devote much of their time to play- to discover how the game is played and find their role in it, so that they can go to harder places and fight. For this purpose we created Safe Zones, which means that spawn points around NPC cities will be totally safe, so you can safely explore the game, fight easy monsters and learn the control scheme.
• Manos: So you have created safe zones outside NPC city limits?
• Vangelis: Yes, not only the NPC cities are safe, but the areas around them too.
• Manos: How many spawn points are going to be safe? Like one spawn point around an NPC city?
• Vangelis: This has to do with how the map is structured, but that's something that we can see, not the players...
• Adam: It's not only one spawn point, as in this case everyone would go there. There will be a fair amount of safe spawn points around NPC cities. As a player you will discover where it's safe and where it's not, and you will be able to learn the game that way.
• Manos: Ok, let's go to our first listener for tonight. Let's talk to Grigoris. Good evening.
• Grigoris (Listener): Good evening. I'm a fan of Darkfall since 2006.
• Manos: What's your player name?
• Grigoris: My player name is Galadurn.
• Manos: Were you a member of any well-known Clans?
• Grigoris: I was with Greek Lords.
• Vangelis: That name is a bit known.
• Grigoris: I have some questions, because there is a lot of hype going on at the forums about this. We don't have much information on this matter... so, first of all, is there going to be a crafting penalty on safe zones?
• Vangelis: This question was addressed since we first talked about safe zones. We are thinking about it. But there is a point to what's being said. You can't exclude players who don’t belong to a clan from being able to craft high-end items. We need to think more about it. We have seen many player suggestions in the forums, so there's got to be a demand for this. We recognize that this might be an issue, because it's against the game's philosophy to be able to do everything in a safe zone without being in danger, but on the other hand we have to balance it with the fact that many players might not want this or -at least at the beginning- they might not be members of Clans.
• Grigoris: Ok, now a question that has to do with the answer to the previous one. Are we going to have Chaos cities?
• Vangelis: No. There is no reason for them to exist anymore.
• Grigoris: So, you will only have capitals and three starting locations.
• Adam: Yes.
• Vangelis: The rest of the world is the classic PvP area.
• Grigoris: What about DirectX 10?
• Vangelis: To be honest, I don't have this information yet. It has to do with the game's engine and we can only talk about the design. So I can't answer that, I'm not totally sure where we are on that.
• Grigoris: Ok and the classic question: What about beta? You said that the game will be launched on the 20th of November.
• Vangelis: There is no official announcement yet so we can't comment on it. We don't have this information yet.
• Manos: Thank you Grigoris. Before we go to Ilias who is waiting on the line, just a quick question: You said that you're not going to have chaos cities. Where are the red players going to go? Because if someone kills someone else from the same race, this guy will lose alignment and become evil.
• Vangelis: Becoming Red doesn't mean that you won't be able to enter starting areas anymore. This has changed; there are no towers in NPC cities, so anyone can normally come in. The fact that a player might be red is a piece of information that anyone can use the way he wants. Players can hunt him (not inside the city limits of course), refuse to trade with him, anything...
• Manos: You said there are no towers. Can a player hit someone else inside the city?
• Vangelis: No.
• Manos: This is an important piece of information.
• Adam: That's why we said that cities are totally safe. It's an area where you can get in and enjoy some privacy.
• Manos: That's nice, because I remember you had issues when one player was killing someone else; a friendly character could provide healing behind him and steal his items.
• Vangelis: There were various things happening.
• Adam: You were at the bank and you were even afraid to look at your items...
• Vangelis: Listen. We don't want to change the game's philosophy but there are various issues. Darkfall doesn't have a tab targeting system to help you "lock" your enemy, hit him and be done with him. In Darkfall you can swing your weapon against 3 or more people. But there were various things going on. Someone was trying to hit a monster; someone else got in the way... so we had some issues.
• Manos: Ok, we already have two friends on their lines. Let's go to Ilias from Thessaloniki. Good evening.
• Ilias (listener): Good evening to all of you. I'm Ilias Plaka mekaneis.
• Manos: Ahh, that's a nice nickname.
• Vangelis: Also well-known!
• Ilias: I'd like to talk about the launch. About the 20th of November. I want to have more information about it. Last time I bought the game there was a lot of "fog" about launch. I want to know more, if you are certain about it this time.
• Vangelis: The 20th of November is what it's valid at the moment. It's the information we have and the development is fully dedicated according to that schedule. We don't have any other information.
• Ilias: I'm asking this because my second question is whether there's going to be a boxed edition of the game? In which shops? And are you going to sell a boxed edition online, so that we can avoid Darkfall Online's issues? I was personally trying to buy the game for 2 weeks.
• Vangelis: You’re talking about the early beginning. It had to do with the tool that was used for buying the accounts, which was changed years ago. This applies to the online edition. As for the boxed edition, from what we know we're going to have one in Greece, but we don't know yet if it's going to be sold at the same time with the digital one or later.
• Ilias: Are you going to have a special pre-order edition or just a boxed copy of the game?
• Vangelis: No, only the boxed copy of the game. We had various meetings about making a Collector's edition but to be honest I'm not totally sure if anything came out of these discussions.
• Ilias: Understood. And something else, are you going to host the game on one or two servers?
• Vangelis: Two. The ones that we have now, EU and US, and they exist exactly in the same locations as they used to.
• Ilias: Thank you.
• Manos: Vangelis, at some point there was an announcement for a co-operation with an Asian company (M-Game) . I don't know if there's going to be an Asian server as well.
• Vangelis: Yes, we have a Korean partnership, we can't comment on that yet, but the partnership exists and we co-operate with them on a daily basis. But the result will take some time to come out.
• Manos: Thank you Ilias! Ok, let's talk now with Theofilos. Good evening.
• Theofilos (Listener): Good evening guys. Congrats again. I'm Lord Valkyrion, I'm a long-time (fan) before release, since beta.
• Vangelis: It seems that we have talked with 3 players that are very well-known!
• Theofilos: Yes, I was in Bad Boys, Alfar of Naghast etc... what I would like to ask about launch, mostly about queue, is if we're going to have queues and a larger server capacity.
• Vangelis: From what I know, we're going to have 10.000 concurrent players and that won't change for now. Considering queues, I hope people won't get exhausted by this... although it would be nice to have queues in the beginning, like we had with the original Darkfall.
• Theofilos: My questions are mostly performance-wise, about the multi-core support that you announced. Have you made any test sieges to see how it works? We had many issues with that in-game.
• Vangelis: We made some tests, but we don't have a clear picture yet because people that test it on the server are few compared to a live situation. It's going to be tested as time goes on. What I know is that we did many optimizations, due to the new GUI which had some performance issues. Any issues experienced are very few right now. We don't have any major problems right now.
• Theofilos: Two more questions. I heard that you won't have chaos cities and that there will be less water mash. That's what I read in the forums.
• Manos: What about this?
• Vangelis: The sea will be smaller; we removed some water tiles.
• Theofilos: Are we going to have more hamlets and holdings or are they about the same?
• Vangelis: About the same. We will have more villages and we’re also going to add more houses to those that exist already. (Actually, there are much less hamlets and a few less cities)
• Theofilos: And a question which lately is a bit unclear. With the exception of the Dwarves that changed their name, how have the other races changed?
• Vangelis: We're going to have aesthetic changes in races, mostly for gameplay reasons.
• Theofilos: I just hope we won't have any more Ginger Magicians!
• Adam: You can be a Ginger if you want.
• Manos: You can't be a Ginger. You are only born Ginger!
• Adam: Nobody can stick to a specific race due to its size. What you choose has to do with the look of it and only that. In the past, some players wanted to play Alfars because they were small in size. Racial anatomy is about the same.
• Manos: Alfars are going to get taller?
• Adam: Yes, they got taller. Everyone has about the same size and is equal on the battlefield.
• Manos: With different attributes I guess.
• Vangelis: What do you mean?
• Manos: Will each race have different attributes from the start? I'm not talking about one race having vitality and one that doesn't. I mean having plus or minus 5-10 points to each attribute.
• Vangelis: No, we won't have that.
• Theofilos: It doesn't matter.
• Manos: It matters to me.
• Adam: The difference is only aesthetic. Anyone can choose any race and they're going to have no differences.
• Theofilos: Since we talk about races, about racial alignment, are you going to have 3 racial factions like in the past or not?
• Vangelis: Ok, we must comment on that.
• Adam: This has to do with lore... it has to do with what happened between the original Darkfall and the new one. Races have a truce with each other. They had to do it, and it is explained in the story. That's why the game is called "Unholy Wars". Races have declared war against the Gods. This means that anyone can go wherever he wants.
• Theofilos: So can I go to a racial capital of another race?
• Adam: Yes, you can take an Ork and go to a Mirdain city. Then you can take a Mirdain and go to an Alfar city if you want.
• Vangelis: And by killing any player of any race, you get the appropriate repercussions. Ok, we know that racial alignment isn't the same as it was, but you can become red.
• Manos: Thank you. And now a quick question. If you go outside an NPC city, can you battle another player between the city limits?
• Vangelis: That's possible, yes.
• Manos: So anyone might "play" in and out of limits!
• Vangelis: No, we've explained this today. There was a question we replied to in the forums. There's going to be a timer. When you get in and out you won't instantly get protected or lose your protection. So you can't do any tricks with the city limits (with the safe zones). There's going to be a small cooldown.
• Manos: We have Markos from Marousi. Good evening.
• Markos (listener): Nice to meet you. Aselding Ventus is my nickname. I was in Argonauts and now Yerma Willdo. I'd like to ask two questions. My first question is about support. Is it going to be more user-friendly? We had some issues with the original Darkfall. We sent messages and got no replies or were asked to provide too much information...
• Vangelis: That was the department I used to work with, but now I don't belong there. Anyway, I know that some things will be handled differently. So I believe you will see an improvement. This also has to do with the support staff tools that exist. Development is focused on the game more than 1.000%, and we'll implement the best we can for the support.
• Markos: Ok, I'm happy about that. Another question I want to ask is: what are you going to do about hackers? In the original Darkfall, there were people who hacked or used macros for skill gain, inside or even underneath the cities. Are you going to do something about them?
• Vangelis : I don't have a clear picture about hacking detection. We will surely detect hackers like we did in the first game, but I'm not sure if there's going to be any improvement because I haven't heard anything specific. About macroing, we replied in the forums that due to the changes in character improvement, macroing won't be that much efficient. It will be fast to reach a viable state, faster than it was with the first game, so you won't need to macro. Also, some traditional macro skills like Running and Swimming won't level up anymore and won't feed attributes or other passive skills... what else?
• Adam: Macroing won't exist inside NPC cities also, because you won't be able to hit anyone.
• Vangelis: Yes, you won't be able to do that. You will be able to do that in all other cities. Theoretically someone will be able to do it, but it won't matter for various reasons. There is a new "currency" with which you develop your character, unlock new skills etc. which you won't be able to gain by macroing. You might be able to gain some skills but this would also happen in normal gameplay time.
• Markos: I'm just asking because some might go AFK or leave their PC working.
• Manos: Thanks. So let's speed up. Let's talk about graphics, sounds and animations. Are we going to see improvements?
• Vangelis: The animations are new, as well as the whole animation system. Which means better immersion etc. We hope that this is also shown in our videos.
• Manos: We're going to have dynamic lighting as well? Especially at night, which was always very dark? People were complaining about limited light at nights.
• Vangelis: In cities that's for sure. Well... outside as well.
• Manos: Any soundtrack or background music? The original game had some weird background music.
• Adam: Yes, there are lots of new music tracks.
• Vangelis: Environmental audio, new sound effects...
• Manos: And the most important thing: what about the user interface? That's what people want to hear about.
• Vangelis: That's entirely new and the feedback we have so far is very positive. And we're happy for it because we have put so much effort to create it.
• Manos: Any tutorials for the noobs?
• Vangelis: Yes, there will be a complete tutorial with an advisor that guides you in your first steps so that you can learn how to move...
• Manos: Nice. And as we saw in gameplay videos it covers less space on screen.
• Vangelis: Yes, it's slim; you can open and close various things. But when you want to close it entirely and go for battle it does its job well.
• Manos: Is it going to be more "light" than the first one?
• Vangelis: Yes, of course, it has nothing to do with the initial one.
• Manos: Ok, that was it. Do you want to add anything?
• Vangelis: No. We'd like to thank you for your calls...
• Vangelis: Thank you.
