QotW#49: Beta Feedback, Starter Towns, Storage, Gear & Titles

The QotW feature was a bit late today, but for a good cause, as the Fallen Earth team tested their PvP systems, which didn't turn out as the developers hoped for. Amongst the matter-of-fact bugs and development hell, Lee Hammock still managed to answer several fan questions and we have the full entry below:

The Question of the Week this week is a bit late because we were trying to have our big PvP test today, and it didn't go quite as planned. Hopefully we'll get the bugs ironed out soon and have some feedback on it, but for now there were too many things acting oddly to really take any meaningful lessons from the process. There was lots of shooting and killing, so on a basic level it was a success, but sadly the bells and whistles were not what they should have been.

We're wrapping up our two week projects today and we'll be starting new projects in the next few days. Most likely it will involve some more towns, item balancing, some work on the tutorial, and work on mutations.

1. When some form of beta is released (not asking for a release date here, please don't skip the rest), I'm curious as to the type of feedback that you'll be looking for and how much you are willing to act on it at that time. To give a concrete example, let us say that as a playerbase there is large resentment towards how feature X is implemented. How open and willing would you be to work with that type of feedback and make changes?

It depends on the change. For example, if everyone hated the turn rate on the reticle or that crafting takes time we'd look at it and see if we could change things without disrupting the rest of the game. However, there are things that we just can't change. For example we don't have real physics on all of our bullets and instead rely on a mixture of line-of-sight calculations and pixel picking. We can't do the thousands of calculations needed to do physics for each bullet and keep the server from choking, so that can't change. We couldn't change everything to instanced content even if the players requested it; we've gone too far down one road to start going down another. So yes, we'll be looking at feedback but some changes are just too big to make.

2. On the map from GenCon '07 it showed a number of towns circled in green to designate them as "starter towns". Will we be able to choose which town we start in/near or will our starting location be randomly determined by the game?

Players will be able to select their starter town from a list. Each town will have a short description including the types of activities that are featured there (Crafting, Combat, PvP, etc).

3. Will cars or pets (like a mule, if in the game) have storage capabilities when we are using them?

For vehicles, yes. For horses, maybe. Still working on it.

4. The cloning pods are pretty high tech pieces of technology, so will there be any armor or weapons that are futuristic?

Some, but that's primarily expansion material.

5. Will we be able to give others access to our storage? Either our alts, or to other players? Or will this most likely be dependent on clans/guilds and/or housing?

Bank vaults will only be accessible to the character that owns them. Clan vaults will likely be accessible on a different tab of the same vault window.

6. Will titles be available from the factions that will appear before a character's name? Example Techs: Doctor, Professor or Enforcers: Private, Captain, etc?

Yes, each faction will have its own set of unique titles players can earn as they advance through the faction ranks.

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