Author Topic: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA  (Read 27135 times)

Chance-VO

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Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« on: August 23, 2014, 03:02:44 PM »
Hey all. My name is Nathan V, AKA "Chance" and I'm the Design Director for Valiance Online. We've been making a lot of progress this year and come September there will be many of you who will have the chance to see this progress first hand. We're all very excited about the coming few months and what we've got planned.

Today, however, I thought I'd take a little time to talk to you all and host an Ask Me Anything.

I'll get the easy stuff out of the way first. I'm 31 (32 next month). I work nights as a club DJ and I'm a writer by hobby. I was initially brought on to Valiance as a writer, then started helping out in other areas, getting things more organized and got promoted to Design Director. I've been writing, designing, building, playing and breaking down games and systems for the last 15-20 years. I'm an avid roleplayer and RP enthusiast. In City of Heroes I spent most of my time playing on Guardian, Freedom and Virtue, though I took occasional side trips to Infinity and Champion.

If you haven't had the chance yet, have a listen to the team's interview on Namesake Radio  http://www.namesakeradio.com/#!forums/ca55

So, at long last I'll stop rambling here and open the floor for you all. Feel free to, as the thread says, Ask Me Anything.  8)

plutocracy

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #1 on: August 23, 2014, 03:09:53 PM »
Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2014, 03:11:13 PM »
Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

Bring on the horse-sized duck!  ;D

plutocracy

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #3 on: August 23, 2014, 03:17:31 PM »
Bring on the horse-sized duck!  ;D

Respect for your bravery, I wouldn't have the guts.

On a serious note though, I played in some of the early alpha tests, when the menus and character creation looked like a D&D game, and I've checked in every now and then since. How satisfied are you at this point with the progress you and the team have made since then? Changing horses in midstream has both pros (existing engine/client/server development) and cons (re-adapting mechanics/assets), do you feel you've been making acceptable headway in leveraging the advantages while minimizing the disadvantages in the time since VO was announced?

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2014, 03:25:57 PM »
Quote from: plutocracy
How satisfied are you at this point with the progress you and the team have made since then? Changing horses in midstream has both pros (existing engine/client/server development) and cons (re-adapting mechanics/assets), do you feel you've been making acceptable headway in leveraging the advantages while minimizing the disadvantages in the time since VO was announced?

Actually our progress has been better than I expected. 4 months ago, I was rather worried by the amount of stuff that hadn't been nailed down, so that was my first task was to make sure we got concepts and ideas locked down. It's easy enough to sit back and daydream about the perfect game or perfect system but dreams aren't something players can interact with (at least not until science can manage brain interlinking, but that's a different subject ;) ). In this time, we've gotten a handle on the various systems, wrangled them into a workable state, and have been improving our internal pipelines enough to make real, tangible progress. It hasn't been the easiest thing, jumping in in the middle like I have but I'm proud of the work the team has done and we've had very little in the way of difficulty since.

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #5 on: August 23, 2014, 04:11:46 PM »
Don't be shy y'all. I don't bite that hard  ;)

Black Gold

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2014, 04:20:43 PM »
What do you feel will be the biggest differences and similarities between VO and CoX in terms of gameplay mechanics?

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2014, 04:30:59 PM »
What do you feel will be the biggest differences and similarities between VO and CoX in terms of gameplay mechanics?

The biggest similarities are going to be the 'feel' of the game. I know that's a very elusive and difficult thing to nail down, but that's one of our big goals. It's not just the customization or the numbers or the animations, it's something of a perfect storm between all of them that can either make your character feel like just another mook or like the one that could go toe-to-toe with those GMs and AVs. We're fortunate in that we've got not only an example of what works, but what doesn't, and we can look at these and figure out 'why'.

There are going to be plenty of differences though because some of the things that CoH did either won't work for our world and would break the consistency of it, or because we feel that CoH didn't go quite far enough with them. Without going into too much detail on things we haven't released yet, we want our players to be important to the world, for them being there and the decisions they make to actually matter.

Stormie

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2014, 04:32:15 PM »
Will there be radiation powers?  If I wanted to rebuild my rad/rad corruptor could I?

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #9 on: August 23, 2014, 04:36:11 PM »
Will there be radiation powers?  If I wanted to rebuild my rad/rad corruptor could I?

Yes to the first question. As for the second, that's possible although it will not be exact because of variations in our system from what CoX had.  :D

plutocracy

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #10 on: August 23, 2014, 04:44:06 PM »
What one thing that CoX did do you want to implement or expound upon?

Also, what one thing would you not do at all?

Dannii

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #11 on: August 23, 2014, 04:48:33 PM »
How can someone get in on the alpha testing?

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #12 on: August 23, 2014, 05:03:06 PM »
What one thing that CoX did do you want to implement or expound upon?

Also, what one thing would you not do at all?

CoX's customization was amazing. Seriously amazing. To this day it's one of the ones we all still talk about, from costumes to powers and everything else. It is, to me, still the final word on being able to make what you want how you want short of a 'virtual world' like Second Life or the like.

One thing we want to avoid at all costs is creating NPCs that out-strip and out-shine our players entirely. If they are designed well (and they are) their stories alone should be interesting without resorting to "Oh, X character is godlike" (*coughStatesmancough*)  8)

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #13 on: August 23, 2014, 05:07:34 PM »
How can someone get in on the alpha testing?

Have patience :) Seriously, that's all it takes. As we announced in the interview, we're launching the next pre-alpha build on Sept 12th to give our current investors a chance to look around and poke things. Shortly after that we've got a list of play testers to come in and do their best to find broken things. Then we're going to start opening the floodgates to everyone. The more of you we have, the more we know what our current architecture can handle.

That having been said, allow me to temper expectations somewhat. This game is still pre-Alpha because we don't have all the systems we'd like in place, nor all the art (including animations), and so on. Things will start to change rapidly though because once it is in your hands, we're not going to have much time to breathe, let alone sit back on our collective laurels. :)

Blackout

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #14 on: August 23, 2014, 05:16:39 PM »
I'll be honest I only recently found out that Valiance online was a thing because I had been mostly concentrating on City of Titans, but after checking out your site it looks like its going to be awesome!
I do have a couple of questions in regards to NPC's though, as whilst City of Heroes had unparalleled customization there were a lot of NPC costume pieces that were off limits to the player; the original Circle of thorns, 5th column, and sky raiders come to mind. Do you think this will also be a thing in Valiance Online as well? Or will most of the humanoid enemy groups costume pieces be accessible in some way?

Thanks for doing this AMA and good luck with the development of the game :)

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #15 on: August 23, 2014, 05:27:10 PM »
I do have a couple of questions in regards to NPC's though, as whilst City of Heroes had unparalleled customization there were a lot of NPC costume pieces that were off limits to the player; the original Circle of thorns, 5th column, and sky raiders come to mind. Do you think this will also be a thing in Valiance Online as well? Or will most of the humanoid enemy groups costume pieces be accessible in some way?

Thank you for such a good question :D
NPC's should have a unique look to them. They should stand out and have something 'special'. That being said, denying the 'special' to our players is a bit like the Devs saying "Lookie what I got! NO! You cannot haz! Mine!" Now, that's very unfair I realize and it makes it sound far more childish than the actuality.

On the other hand! I don't think special pieces should just be given out willy nilly either. If they're just given away, then they have no real meaning nor value other than "Oh, that looks cool" and really, that doesn't separate it from any other costume piece.

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #16 on: August 23, 2014, 05:28:46 PM »
Will you be able to retcon/respec your character? And if so, will you have COX's "All or Nothing" approach or something like Champion Online's "One power at a time" option?


Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #17 on: August 23, 2014, 05:32:52 PM »
Will you be able to retcon/respec your character? And if so, will you have COX's "All or Nothing" approach or something like Champion Online's "One power at a time" option?

Yes. And it will be more along the lines of CoX's full respec because of some interesting new mechanics that we...haven't announced yet ;)

Chance-VO

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2014, 07:12:40 PM »
Keep firing away with those questions :D I've got plenty of time and "Generic Energy Drink"  8)

Dr. Bad Guy

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Re: Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA
« Reply #19 on: August 23, 2014, 07:24:16 PM »
at least not until science can manage brain interlinking
Direct neural interface technology is not as far away as people think.