Interview with J.C. Smith, lead developer of The Repopulation
Gamesource.it had the opportunity to talk with the guys of Above and Beyond Technologies, the development team working on the anticipated sci-fi sandbox MMO The Repopulation. While we are waiting for new information about the forecoming Alpha 3, we offer you a list of questions answered exhaustively by the lead developer J.C. Smith.
The Repopulation is one of the most anticipated sandbox games of this whole generation. Could you please introduce your game and the development team itself? Since you are part of an indie studio, how many developers are currently working on the project?
A: My name is J.C. Smith and I am a lead developer of the project. We generally have about 20-25 people on staff, though many of those are volunteers working in their spare time either for work experience. We generally have around 10 people who are regular staff, along with a number of others who contribute when they can.
You recently released a new in game alpha footage in which you show the new tamable mount. From a technical point of view, should we consider what we have seen in the entire video the final graphic rendering or we might expect further improvements before the Beta test and the official release?
A: We’re constantly improving the game and graphics are a part of that. You won’t see any dramatic changes in the visuals of the game, but you will see refinement of what is there. Additional details, and most importantly many new animations.
The current user interface feels a bit outdated, and might not be user friendly and visually polished for the current MMO standards. Are you going to improve it? Is it going to be any different from what we have seen until now?
A: A User Interface revamp was one of the stretch goals we completed during the Kickstarter campaign and is already underway. The new interface takes up less screen space and feature customizable XML. The bulk of its changes will be available for Alpha 3 next month with the XML changes coming later.
We have read on your website that part of the player housing in the “softcore” server is going to be instanced, but this is not going to happen in the “hardcore” one. Therefore, will the world of The Repopulation be seamless and completely open? If that’s not the case, how are you going to manage the transaction between each area of the map?
A: On both servers the world is seamless and open. The only instances in the game are the instanced housing, the training grounds tutorial areas, and a few mission-specific areas. The rest of the world is completely seamless and open world.
Talking about combat mechanics, we are not very convinced by the hybrid system which let the players choose between a more traditional target based combat and the FPS and TPS like. At first sight, it appears that the target base aim might be a better choice than the action combat style. Why anyone should pick the FPS style than the classic RPG combat? Are you going to use a canonical “rock, paper and scissors” mechanic? If not, how is the combat going to be managed?
A: The problem with choosing one or the other is that the MMO player base is pretty much evenly split between the two. Every action MMO that comes out you see a slew of negative comments about another shallow combat system. Every RPG style MMO that comes out you see a slew of negatives about boring old school combat. In every poll I’ve ever seen on the subject it’s about evenly split with the RPG style combat generally having a slight edge from MMO fans. From a developer’s perspective RPG style combat is preferable because it is easier on the servers, and less prone to lag. From a personal standpoint I prefer action oriented combat. But the truth is why force players into one or the other if you don’t have to?
I generally play the game in Action Mode, though I switch to RPG mode for things like entertaining or healing. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. There is aim assistance in Action Mode, so you won’t just miss all the time. It also remembers your last target so if you want to use an action key to use one of your hotbar abilities it fires it at the last target you shot at. This allows you to maintain fine control over what you want to do without if you need it. Both modes require line of sight, you can’t fire through other players or NPCs. RPG Mode gives you a bit easier fine control over your abilities, where Action Mode makes it easier to fire on the move. But in the end it really comes down to preference. By default the middle mouse button switches between the modes instantly.
Some weapon types will definitely be better suited against others but it is also situation based. For example a sniper is a melee types worst nightmare if the sniper gets a bead on them from long range. If someone with a mace gets in close to a sniper though, it’s game over. Not only will they be able to stun them and knock them down to prevent them from escaping, but while the sniper is lying prone or kneeling they are also extremely vulnerable to melee attacks. Each weapon has it’s own role and strengths, and you’ll need to work within those to maximize your effectiveness.
Looking at the hardcore server rule set, a lot of PvP lovers, still looking for a solid game, will probably find their perfect sandbox MMO (and we really hope you’ll consider a full loot system for it!). By the way, this type of hardcore community might lead the game into a big massive arena. How are you going to prevent the huge amount of griefers and PKs? Do you think your alignment system will be able to contain it?
A: We have a two server set up. The standard rule set allows for nation based combat in contested areas, so much of the world is PvP free unless you set a flag on your character to go into active military duty. There aren’t any significant penalties for dying in PvP, it’s an activity that is designed for fun without loss and geared towards the Dark Age of Camelot type audience. It’s team based PvP which is optional and can be completely avoided if you wish.
The hardcore server is much more of a Free For All and more akin to most of the other sandbox titles out there. It does feature looting of corpses, and employs a security system which enforces penalties for committing crimes in higher security areas. There will certainly be griefers, which is pretty much expected on those types of servers. The proposed rules for this server are documented in this feature: https://therepopulation.com/index.php/news/153-hardcore-server-rules
Another interesting aspect of the game is the possibility to micromanage your city. Particularly, we have noticed in your website that the major will be able to see the level of happiness of the citizens. Could you please describe us what the players will actually be able to do? How deep will a player control his own territory?
A: I’m not the best person to answer this question as I haven’t worked on that portion of the game in a while, and some of its features are still a work in progress. But I’ll do the best from my knowledge of the system. Happiness is something you can gain by creating and placing certain structures in your city. It is necessary for growth of the city. As your happiness raises you will receive city points which the mayor can use to spend to certain areas. When you spend points on those areas it gives your city a bonus for certain activities. That might be a bonus to crafting certain types of items, for example. It will also allow you to expand your city by adding underground levels to it.
Oculus Rift. Are you really thinking of developing something for it?
A: We’d love to. The Rift has great potential, and we feel it would be a great addition. It’s still up in the air on if we can get that into launch or not. We did have a stretch goal for it which wasn’t met during the Kickstarter Campaign, but it’s still something in our plans.
Among with the Oculus Rift development, the last goal of the recent KickStarter campaign referred to a big expansion with space flight. Certainly your game is very ambitious, but someone might think that you are aiming a bit too high, since we have seen a lot of other indie company failing because of the huge amount of undeveloped ideas and false promises. If you are considering something this big when you are still developing an alpha, I must think that your current game is in a very good shape and has a solid structure. Although the goal has not been reached, are you still considering the development of this long term content?
A: Space Flight and the Lesoo playable species were both marked as Ramp Up Goals. What that means is they have always been part of our long-term plans. Space flight is something we viewed as a three year project post-launch. It’s an important part of our expansion plans and always has been. But it’s also a long-term plan because we don’t have anything other than a basic outline of what the system will be at this point. It’s obviously way too big of a project to try to squeeze into launch. What those two ramp up goals would have done would be to allot a team to start working on them in tandem with the rest of development. Those two final stretch goals were things that we couldn’t get into launch, but what we could do by starting early on them is push forward the time frame as to where they appear post-launch by laying the ground work for them beforehand. But we never really expected to hit them during the campaign. We have learned from past experience though that crowd funding is unpredictable and we wanted to ensure we had enough stretch goals just in case things far exceed expectations. We’ll see most of those features from Kickstarter appearing at some point post-launch. Space Flight is a huge addition though and will likely be introduced in stages.
I don’t think we worry too much about being overly ambitious. We know what we are capable of doing and never put anything out there that is a pie in the sky idea. But at the same time I think a lot of developers go into MMO creation too easily write off things as impossible. Most features are possible, it’s just a matter of whether or not they are financially viable. You don’t do certain things because of the cost, bandwidth, or performance implications. But what we tried to do with Repop was to first come up with a list of things we wanted to do, without putting limitations on ourselves based on what was easy or what was standard. Once we had that wish list, we then through it feature by feature and asked ourselves how can we make this viable? Sometimes it involves compromise and often it involves some internal simplifications to fake things in the best way you can to maintain efficiency. But I am pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish from a technical standpoint so far.
One of the most peculiar aspect of The Repopulation is the free-to-play model. Since your game is likely going to be the first F2P sandbox ever made (with player driven economy), how will you contain gold sellers and cheaters?
A: I think there’s some misconceptions there based on a lot of earlier free to play titles. Gold sellers were a major problem at that same time in subscription games, as well. From email spam to people spamming chat or cities with sites. Having worked n the media side of the industry for many years, I know the gold selling market pretty well as they own a majority of the MMO media. Having accounts banned is just not a big deal for them. They will gladly pay that so long as it remains profitable. Being F2P makes it feasibly more profitable but it can also drive down the prices that things are sold at.
The spam aspect of that is less of a problem these days. We haven’t implemented anti-spam protection yet as it’s been unnecessary at this stage of testing, but it’s more or less a requirement these days, and a very big part of the reason that spam isn’t nearly the issue that it was five years ago. There are auto-detection and prevention mechanisms that can prevent the messages from ever reaching other players, while making it appear to the sender that they actually went out and allowing you to flag their account. We’ll certainly implement one such system as we get closer to launch.
The bigger concern is generally the inability to ban players without making them pay a subscription to get back in, and I’d like to address that issue as it pertains to both problem players and bots. While those players may not need to pay a box price or subscription to get back into the game, they do pay a cost in time. If you play a game for several months or more and have built up a decent character the financial cost of buying a new subscription or account is probably a lot less significant than the time you lost in building up your character. Nobody likes to start from scratch. In order to obtain the most credits or the best items or resources you will need to spend some time building your character. Being banned is still a deterrent because players have lost all the time that they put into reaching that point and resets them back to ground zero. They key is to identify those players ad ban them before they ever reach those upper echelons and they will quickly lose interest.
One last consideration. With the amount of contents and features displayed in The Repopulation you have the unique opportunity to recreate a breathing and living world. Some years ago, games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies were not only a mere representation of the standard videogame, but they were also a vehicle to create a deep and strong community, which lead to a virtual society and to a promising sort of meta gaming. But time has passed, and things have changed. Do you think that The Repopulation will still be eligible to become a new virtual society such as the iconic classics enlisted above?
A: We hold those two titles in very high regard, and our goal would be that we can get our economy and social aspects to that level. They gave players a much higher level of freedom and encouraged socialization in a way that has been lost on most modern MMOs. Our goal is to provide those same levels of freedom and interaction. If we can reach that goal we’ll have created a very special game indeed, and we’ll be doing everything in our power to make it happen.
