Turbine Nation
Anecdotes and Design Notes from Turbine Nation
This info article is going to be a bit less purposeful than
the others. We'll do our best to get inside the heads of the
devs, focusing on some of the things they keep in mind when
designing new content and some commentary on little things that
have taken place in the past, so that you can feel you know them
better.
Lets start with an anecdote:
At one point the Server Dev (Gator) was trying to fix some
allegiance bugs. He grabbed a copy of the Frostfell database for
his test server, found a character that was officer in a large
allegiance while parsing through the code and copied the allegiance
data from that character to his new one.
He logged in his test character and the chat text popped up:
Welcome to Hell. He was mildly disturbed and felt a need to go
talk to a few other devs, telling them "My test server says I'm in
Hell! I don't know what to do about it..."
He figured out that he was a high ranking officer in Hell Inc and
the size of our allegiance made it a perfect test base. So he publicly
thanked Hell Inc. at Turbine Nation for solving some bugs in allegiance code.
This little story tells us a few things, one of them being that I'm not
shy about talking up my allegiance. Another, that the Devs have a sense
of humor. However, the most important thing to come out of it is the
focus and dedication the team has. Gator pulled that data out to fix a
single bug that crashed the server when two large allegiances were combined.
He didn't leave the code behind without looking for, finding and fixing a
handful of other bugs, some probably unreported at the time.
One of the most important things to take out of Turbine Nation is that the
entire Live Team cares about the game. On Friday night, I was speaking
to a pair of Envoys. (While I didn't get their names then, I believe they
were Arcadia and Ceres.) Not only were both of THEM excited about their work,
but they were just amazed at the dedication of the live team members. So is
Rockton...he's fairly new to Turbine after 14 years in the gaming industry and
says this is the most dedicated team he has ever been with.
Every single member of the Live Team goes over their scheduled 40 hour weeks
on a regular basis. They spend an undue amount of time in the office working
hard to entertain us. Keth al-Sheth made an offhand comment that he likes
working on specs because "it is easy to keep working on them after I get home".
These are not people who are out to destroy the game, your favorite class or
anything else. These are, however, people who have to try to keep in mind the
good of the game overall, not just the corner of the world occupied by you and
I. It is our job to ask for the things that'll make our lives better...and
their job to decide if that is what is needed to improve the game for everyone,
or if it'll hurt things in the long run.
Oops. I seem to have jumped back up on my soapbox again. Time for me to bullet
point a few of the design decisions made for the game, things that guide the
creation of future content and some interesting new use of tech...keep your
eyes peeled, because there will be some hints at August content buried in the mix.
Stacking Items - Items with variable statistics cannot be stacked. Whenever
possible, items will be able to be stacked, but certain items (like Bloodstone
Elixirs) will have their power balanced by being unstackable or only stackable
in a limited way.
The team (mostly Avon, I believe) will be trying to add at least a few new
and interesting effects to treasure each month. Barring technical limitations,
all of these will be extractable.
Keth is evil.
There will never be flying mounts...free flight would do bad things to the server.
Keth and Rhadamanthus enjoy "perverting" current tech. They seem to take it as
a challenge to find new ways to use established tech or to use tech that has never been used before.
One example of Keth's perversion of tech is that he found an unused piece of
code that could change an effect depending on what time of the in-game day it was
used. He has twisted that to help create a puzzle in some of the August content he has written.
The most difficult content will always be group oriented. The most effective
way to earn xp will always be group oriented. However, they are committed to making
spaces in the game where soloers and small groups can advance at a reasonable pace,
if not to the extreme that large powerhunting groups can. Keth stated that his new
content for August is targetted at a 4-6 player group that doesn't have to include
all the "uber" specializations.
Content will always try to be re-used. In the past, some one-shot quests wound
up being removed from the game without replacement. Now, how to reshape the quests
for continued use once their storyline is complete is part of the plan for any storyline
quest. For example, look at "The Search for Isin Dule", "The Search for Isin Dule II"
and "Black Ferah".
More Lore is coming. Keth has a backlog of books he is ready to share. However,
everything must be translated for the foreign versions and there is a limited budget
for this. Give them time, they're going to start slipping it in as they go.
The Live Team loves Live Events. There is nothing quite as much fun as going into
game and interacting with the players. However, such things are a huge drain on time
and resources for an event that CANNOT be repeated and only interacts with a portion
of the playerbase. That said, expect more live events soon!!!
Huge quests like "Destroy the Chaos Eidolon" were going to be limited to single
fellowships in order to reduce the crowding. However, the players complained and made
many valid points and this decision was overturned. While the Live Team is sometimes
forced to make unpopular decisions, they ALWAYS listen to the player feedback and do
their best to please us.
Another example of this: Players at Turbine Nation pointed out a few confusing
points introduced to the new player experience by the craft changes. The devs made
note of the issues and will be looking to see if they can make things clearer for
new players.
I think that is enough to keep you busy thinking for now. I, for one, am really
looking forward to August and the new content coming. Three cheers for the warping
of the expected by our friends the Live Team. May they never grow tired of meeting
and exceeding our expectations!
