Didn't see a post by VK, so here are my abridged notes after watching the recording. I kinda half transcribed stuff and cut out a lot of tangents so, be forgiving XD
First, Zwillinger reveals the non-secret he is not running off a script
He also tarnishes his soul pitching some marketing schtick, then admits he likes torturing his guests by ambushing them.
he mentions exciting news, a new assistant community manager is coming on board. He'll be introduced soon.
Spring Fling goes from Feb 8 to 27 as announced. Feb 27 is Zwill's tot's b-day. Both sons will be 5 years old this year.
Tangent about the ridiculous process to get his kids enrolled into the Cali. school system.
Game stuff! Fan art battle going on. They won't promote it as the FArt battle. Nor as the F-Art battle. But he was impressed with the first round of submissions and encourages other artists to check it out.
Freedom player Summit coming up on April 28th. It's very likely to be at the same venue as last year, the Dyna Garden Hotel. Ticket sales will go up soon, just not yet. You should be able to book a room for the event though. There will be a large room for the panels, and there will be a single panel trac this time. Everybody will see all the panels, it'll all be uStreamed. This year it will be a more interactive format. Beaststyle will be in front of the camera this time. Building upon the build-a-costume-set workshop, they're going to have more audience participation panels. There may not be an activity the night before, it will be a single day but the panel track will be longer and they'll bring back the karaoke. Zwill's feminine side might be a soulful black woman. Positron will be singing Neil Diamond.
Bacon Roses. Blueberry pancake cupcake, with maple frosting and crumbled bacon bits.
I22 beta stuff. Drowning in Blood Trial. Main thing, they wanted to make a whole trial that was a follow up to the sewer trial. They consider the sewer trial a success for its high frequency and fun (a high adoption rate). DiB functions as a continuation, helping folks level, etc. Easy to get burnt out on the sewer trial. Zwill plays about up to 15. Others play it up to 22, where you can get SOs.
Raise the influence cap: brought up before, it's being looked at, but there's other repercussions such as affecting the economy (soft cap on what can be charged, for ex.) jokes about the economy.
Back to drowning in blood. People are riding sewer to 50 and they want to add something else on. DiB deals with the Shivans as a precursor to the Coming Storm and involves both the old shivans and new shivans. Set out to avoid the clash with a situation like old/new klingons. Star Trek tangent. They wanted to explain the influence of the coming storm on the shivans and their history and current nature, as a bit of a send off to the blood bay shivans. Happiest with there actually being a separate trial and different options. Objections are largely the same but heroes/villains have different sides. So much content hinges on story, trials are meant to be fast, fun and simplistic, didn't want to get crazy with stories like cut scenes, etc. But for players that want to slow down, you can talk to different people and experience it differently. Goal for drowning in blood was to provide both a lot and as little story. Stuff you can kill through dialogue trees. Villainside you can ally or go against arachnos, some murdering (DEFEATING). Easter eggs: there's a lot of references to Aliens, some Smurfs (making fun of the old shivans color) Creepy body snatcher with a funny name. The beta feedback on the trial has been sparse.
Dark Astoria updates. Really closely watching the rewards and pace of rewards. Taking in a lot of feedback, encouraging folks to test and leave feedback.
Questions!
Guest is Cort Carney - Think Tank, dev involved with world design. He doesn't do mission content, mostly the city zone stuff, spawns, atmosphere, etc. If it went into the Dark Astoria main city section, he worked on it.
Q: when will some of the old hazard zones get some love? Ex. revamping boomtown, perez park.
There's an interesting grab bag, but he can't say much about too many plans for the future. Think Tank spends time playing the game on a nightly basis, has some concerns about some of the low level content stuff, ex. the Hollows. Each designer has their own stuff they want to see revamped, improved, streamlined, etc but that has to be balanced with new content and higher level play. As far as old hazard zones, they have new tech to implement in places, new things to experiment with.
The devs have the freedom to walk in at the start of the day and be irritated from something the night before, wanting to fix it, and folks will find time to take a look at it. With the old hazard zones, he's not sure what the scale they'd be looking for, for instance how many Atlas park revamps will be seen vs Dark Astora style revamps. There are definite quality of life changes to be made to areas, like the Hollows. The zone doesn't sit right in terms of when you get sent there, it's an awkward place to transition to. A lot of old content can be seen as the 'low hanging fruit' of the game. One of the factoids someone brought up, the game has in the neighborhood of just 10 zones for a 20 level range.
Q: Any ideas for DA that couldn't make it in?
If you've played it, there are the safe areas illuminated by the dream doctor beacons, they look cool, but originally their visual intention was different. They were big domes of glowing light & something similar to the Shadowed Paths in First Ward. The idea isn't lost, something similar might crop up in the future.
Q: Do you know if the Shivans in the new trial count toward the man/woman in black badge?
Dunno
Q: Mayhem/Safeguard missions in trial form?
It's a tricky question. They fall into the crazy tech from yesteryear, temperamental to implement. They would make for an excellent format for trials. Sean was looking into reverse engineering how they were done, because the original designers are not with the company. Similar ideas crop up in brainstorming for future issues, because a lot of designers like the mayhem/safeguard missions. They may not get to add to the core set of them, but similar style content and objectives could show up moving forward.
Q: Is the Maze in Perez Park/Eden as annoying to devs as to players?
YES. Still lost in Perez Park. Alleviated with alternate travel forms. Perez Park kept Zwill from rolling alts when he started playing. At launch you had to street sweep, Zwill couldn't stand doing the mission that sends you into the Perez Maze (Fortuneteller). It was a hallmark of the older MMOs, the sense that you made through something once but were not sure how you did it.
Something looked at in older MMOs, things like grouping and what builds community. Thinking about stuff you had to do in EQ you had to do just to get something accomplished, it had a high bar of inconvenience.
Q: Are you looking at a city design approach similar to what happened to Praetoria's main city?
Praetoria was designed before Think Tank came on board. The design process & pipeline that was created for First Ward has become the template for how ideas are organized and documents, but it's 'non player facing' stuff. The scale of Praetoria is massive for the work they've done, the choices moving forward are more for doing things quickly and efficiently, it's hard to do things that take months and months. It will be a long time before another something the sheer size of First Ward comes along. That is not to say there aren't 'large real estate chunks' coming in. First ward was a long time in development.
Praetoria felt more like a city than the actual city zones. It was a culmination of a lot of lessons learned when it came to lay out the city. The things Think Tank likes about Praetoria is its attention to signature points of interest, things you see to give you a sense of location. Old zones have a lot of mirrored stuff where you just have canyons of the same building. But Praetoria may be overly unique, too much work to put so much detail in when everything just becomes so much background.
Zwill played another MMO for a while and looked at the actual environments, the vistas were impressive, but it blends into the background after so long. The game doesn't give you much reason to look at the vistas. Sight gets drawn primarily to combat spaces and then there are periods of dead space where it's boring. There were certain areas where they created gorgeous buildings but it was only at the edge of the zone and out of the way, so you only saw it from one vantage.
Think Tank loves the Magisterium building. Making landmarks is good for making distinction, using core details to really stand out, while filling in things around them with homogenous stuff. It ties space together in an important way.
World design having a land mark that ties the zone together sets the tone for a zone. Brickstown is homogenous, but has the ziggurat dominating and omnipresent and you can see it from multiple points in the zone. In all talk of Praetoria, you get a lot of clean lines, no gross back alley sections like you have in the other older sections (Except Neutropolis). The Devs like contrasting those 2 styles together.
Blueberry pancake bacon cupcakes. <3
So it distresses me to know that they're so funkily implemented and so poorly documented that you're afraid to touch them.
