LotD Q&A with the Fury Dev Team

LotD has been granted the first developer interview on a guild site, and we decided to put their motto (listed above) to the test. Unlike fansites who just want fluff for an article, LotD wanted to ask the hard questions. Adam answered nearly all of them, and we were very pleased. For those questions that he couldn't answer due to design concepts not being finalized, he promised to get back with us later in the fall with those answers.

We plan to submit PVP guild related questions to the dev team every few months, so feel free to submit questions you'd like to see us ask.

Question 1

Since this game is being labeled a CORPG, it automatically gets put in the same class as Guild Wars. Guild Wars spent a lot of time advertising to the PVP community as "Skill Over Time Spent", and when that turned out not to be true it was a big turn off to the FPS and MMORPG PVP guilds that were lured to the game. Why is Fury different than Guild Wars in terms of "Skill Over Time Spent"?

Answer

In Fury, player skill comes at many levels, and includes both pre-combat planning and also in war zone decisions. Areas of skill the elite players will want to master include:

Incarnation construction – Create the best incarnation before you go into battle
Situational awareness – Maintain control of your environment at all times by knowing where your enemies are and what they are doing
Reaction time – Even though the game isn't twitch, it is very fast paced and your mental reaction time is critical to making the best decision
Game Knowledge –Players who know and understand the game will excel
Charge Management – Understanding charge creation and consumption, and when you need to sustain charges versus when you can consume them.
Teamwork – Solid teamwork and coordination are critical, especially in the largest game types

Fury's power curve for abilities and equipment is very flat. Fury is not like games such as World of Warcraft and DAoC where the max level of an ability is over 15X as powerful as the min level. The primary benefit that comes from time played is diversity

Question 2

We know it's early in the game's development cycle, but what sort of Guild Management Features are you considering to make running and managing a guild easier?

Answer

As many as we can…

I know that's kind of a lame statement, but it's the truth. As a founder and former leader of a Tier 1 guild, I appreciate how critical good management tools are. The better the tools are the stronger guilds will be. The stronger guilds are, the better a game is.

At this point, I don't want to commit any of our specific features to writing. I do hope that when Fury is released, guild leaders and officers will be quite pleased with the management tools available to them.

Question 3

We are aware that Fury intends to have stats and ladders. This is a wonderful feature that will show us the various leaders across the 4 types of war zones. Are there going to be any ladders and stats for direct head to head challenges as well?

Answer

Ladders are great. Fury is going to support a large number of ladders ranking individuals, guilds and realms. One of the design team's goals is to ensure we have ladders that recognize both skill and volume. This ensures that both small roll group type guilds and very large uber guilds are both recognized for their achievements.

We've considered having ladders for challenge matches, but at the current time we've decided against them. In order for ladders to be meaningful, players need to feel like the data is fair. When you can pick your opponent, the exploit potential is too high.

What we are adding is a mechanism that saves all post fight results to a local text file. The results will include the battle's outcome, who received what, rewards, etc. This will make it very easy for guilds and fan sites to compile records of fights as well as host their own unofficial tournaments and ladders.

Question 4

One thing that is critical to a direct challenge type ladder is a guild's ability to practice before fighting a ladder match. Will there be some sort of scrimmage feature so that a guild can practice against itself, and will they be able to do that by selecting actual zone/battle maps that are used in the live matches?

Answer

Fury's challenge system lets players, groups or teams challenge each other. The challenger picks the game type and map and then sends the challenge to his opponent to accept.

The challenge system can be used to test out incarnations against a friend, practice with your guild's team, and compete against another guild on your realm. The only restriction on challenges are that you cannot advance and do not receive any rewards while playing them.

Question 5

We know that people who play on a server will compete against people on other servers. What happens when a guild wants to fight a direct match against a guild from another server?

Answer

We're currently evaluating how best to implement a cross realm challenge system. We want a system whereby team leaders can easily arrange a challenge, yet avoid letting them only pick matches they know they will win and prevent high ranked players getting griefed by repeated spam challenges

Question 6

How long do you anticipate it will take to take to unlock all 200 skills available to an AT? Also do you have to unlock the same skills for every new avatar you create, or are the unlocks good for the entire account?

Answer

In total Fury will have about 400 different abilities. The abilities are divided amongst the eight disciplines giving each one about 50 abilities. As each account only has one avatar, you never have to worry about repeating the same task for each new character. Once you've completed a trial and unlocked an ability you can use it on any incarnation you create.

Abilities are unlocked via Trials, with each Trial unlocking between two to five abilities. Abilities themselves have ten tiers each. The low tiers (1-4) will be completed very quickly. Medium tiers (5-7) will take a moderate amount of time while the high tiers (8-10) can take a good amount of time.

An important part of Fury's advancement/character development/combat is that the increase in power from higher tier abilities isn't monumental like in other games. There should never be a case where players feel like they have to get tier 5 fireball in order to be competitive. Higher tiers are intended let players create more diverse or more specialized incarnations, based on the player's goals.

Question 7

In order to promote guilds in Fury, what sorts of rewards or incentives will there be?

Answer

Guild incentives and rewards will include weekly, monthly and seasonal rewards from ladders; special vendors that provide guild exclusive items or abilities; and a lot more J

We're in the brainstorming stage for specialized guild rewards so I can't commit too many features to writing now. In the coming months we'll be able to provide you with a lot more information.

Question 8

When looking at the various archetypes, we always have to look at the "Healer". PVP guilds always have trouble with this because people hate playing "Heal and Buff Bitch" (pardon my French). The healer is also the first character targeted a majority of the time, and their life expectancy is short. What can you do to make playing a healer more exciting, and change PVP targeting priority so that the healer has time to actually enjoy the match?

Answer

Healers in Fury benefit from the healer not being a defensive only role that the developers dictate. The role of “healer” is whatever a player decides. The actual healer archetype simply indicates that the majority of an avatar's abilities are from the spiritual side of the School of Life and that still leaves plenty of room for the player to add other abilities that can be offensive, defensive, or what ever.

The tendency of players to target Healers first is something we're definitely aware of. To this end, and supported by Fury's classless system, we've created a strong encouragement for healers to use a specific type of armor without creating a rigid requirement. All armor in the game grants percentile bonuses to a specific school and/or discipline. This creates a realistic expectation on the part of players that someone wearing scale armor is from the School of Life, while someone wearing leather armor is from the School of Growth. However, there is nothing requiring players to wear that armor. Thus a healer who is tired of being attacked first has the option of decreasing their healing efficiency by dressing themselves in another style of armor.

Of course, there are always the benefits of a defensive stance. I'll get into them at some other time

Question 9

Considering that the PVP community is very word of mouth oriented can you give a brief summary of why a competitive PVP guild would want to consider Fury as a possible future game instead of other titles that currently exist or are planned to be released in 2007?

Answer

With Fury we're not trying to create a virtual world, we're making a competitive game that's a bit like a sport. At the casual and amateur levels, Fury is pure fun. Jut like you and your mates can get together for a game of basketball or hockey, you can drop into Fury and play a few matches, advance your character, get some loot, and gain some prestige. At the high end, just like with professional sports, Fury is a game about serious competition between serious teams. Whether you're a small, medium or large guild, one of the game types will be ideal for your numbers and play style.

Fury gives players brutal, in your face combat where real skill matters. This isn't twitch skill, it's mental knowledge and responsiveness. To compete seriously in the end game you'll want to:

Construct the best individual incarnations
Coordinate to construct the best group/team incarnations
Be able to recognize your opponent's strategies and work together to stop them
Learn the maps and then work as a team to ensure all the critical points are controlled by your team, not theirs.
In combat, you'll need to manage your charges effectively and be able to shift quickly between sustained DPS/healing and burst DPS/healing

Ultimately serious PVP guilds will want to make a decision about what they want. The options that I see for them are:

1.
Standard PVE MMO that has occasional PVP elements

2.
Persistent world PVP MMO where the emphasis is on grinding levels as fast as possible so that your clan will dominate before all the casuals get driven from the server/game.

3.
Fury with its focus on serious competition against well matched opponents.

Option number 1 isn't of interest to serious PVPr's. Under option 2, you have to hope your server has at least 3-5 powerhouse guilds that refuse to ally. If it doesn't, then one group will dominate and the lion's share of players will quit within 2-3 months.

Fury, with its unique server architecture and game design, is different. Fury is a game about challenging combat. It's a game where you can take real pride in defeating an equally skilled opponent. Above all, Fury is a game about fun at all levels, regardless of whether you are playing at the pickup, casual, or professional levels