Theryon Wars: Community Q&A: One Week

Forgot the rules again?

I choose to answer... Minimum amounts are set by both, MindArk and us. It's MindArk's platform, they know best what a good starting point is. Theryon is our IP, we know what we need to bring it to you and we can organize it in incremental deliverable updates...

 

Let's distinguish between "free events" and "free activities". Organized by players or by GMs, events with free tickets or without a fee to enter often rely on players bringing their own equipment, with notable exceptions such as the races in New Switzerland. Note: there are others too; Promoters, please don't feel bad if I didn't use "your events" as an example.
We agree these help maintaining and developing an active community and as a Planet Partner I thank and appreciate the efforts of all nice and dedicated Promoters all over EU.

The pool table... I don't really see this example as a priority for us, and I'd include bowling, chess, darts and other similar add-ons. Would be nice-to-have, granted, but I shall keep them in the background until we have fully developed other, higher-priority things. If I had to guess, I'd say I wouldn't increase this "social minigames" importance before 2014... but it's just a guess!

Other free stuff... like missions. There must be different ways for new players to enjoy T:W and get the right taste of it before they decide depositing or even if they decide not to deposit but keep playing. We have our own ideas on this matter and free quests and cooperative endeavors are at the core of them. There are tutorials now where players receive guns and ammo: we should develop on this concept, not breaking the economy and improving the overall "gaming experience" for newcomers and veterans alike. And this includes veterans coming to our planet, both on vacation or planning to stay.

On the periodicity of activities (free as in beer or as in freedom) we are aiming for PvE at first; we need several hundred active players to start kicking some in a similar way in PvP. And yes, we've already planned limited free PvP drills including disposable equipment, but this precise type of "entertainment" is still on the design table

 

I really wish I could answer "this and this degrees over such years"; my first approach to the physical definition of our planet was pretty close to this but I was told to be beyond insane for such an attempt. Since then, no-one tried what you have here...

I've had to look up English terms to answer you. By "tilt" I was referring to a combination of axial precession (with a period of some 26,000 years in Earth's case) and nutation. I knew the desired result and its impact in gameplay, including something similar to Milankovitch cycles (hey, it's a persistent MMO), but Earth-like values didn't fit; if one size fits all, it's not Earth's size. So, I took (axial) precession, altered it and kept an Earth-like nutation. Wrong results. Earth-like precession wouldn't do from the start, and I guess you already know Mars obliquity ranges from 11º to 49º... so, taking Earth and Mars as reference cases/values, considering several theories on the causes of axial tilt/obliquity (the one by Miles Mathis is pretty attractive for sci-fi settings) and trying to figure out how would Mars behave without the heavy influence of the other planets... I came up with something similar to a spirograph simple and cyclic pattern. Math would do the trick but the gravity wells involved could be hard to believe "as is". Instead of going "toss in a neuromultiscoobypositronic device and that's it" (geez, sounds like Janeway!) I realized three things:
1.- Using values "snapped to a grid" made math deviations more beliveable, so to say.
2.- I was indeed reaching unknown depths of voluntary sanity deprivation.
3.- Sadly or not, the chances for anyone to ever wonder or try the math I was involved with for this "no need to explain how it works, it just works" feature were infinitesimal.

Now who's gonna call me a freak for being prepared to answer when the day came?! WHO?!
Thanks for the question, George.
Didn't give you the numbers, granted, but you're healthy, sane... and you were never supposed to get them. Please, don't get mad at me; take ε = A + B sin(C (T+D) ) with A = 23.496932° ± 0.001200°, B = − 0.860° ± 0.005°, C = 0.01532 ± 0.0009 radians/Julian century for a slight correction of the numbers you posted and you might start your own trip to those depths I mentioned...

 

How the story unfolds, how quickly it does, which areas and resources are available to players and "what missing info is important" will be influenced by actual PvP and PvE activity by players on both sides.

This includes decission-making dynamics that gather the opinions of the highest-ranked players of each faction. Don't expect this feature for lauch date (you'll need rep!) and take into account it goes beyond in-game, coded features. I was reserving this for a different thread focused on it, but I'll give you some details for I believe it really sets us apart:

1.- Players do sign up for one faction or the other; those remaining neutral are not considered for this particular mechanics; from now on, "Players" goes for "Faction Players".
2.- Players' actions (PvP and PvE) impact Factions. Success and failure in quests, ore extraction, successful and quality crafting... Killing enemy players, conquering resource-generating facilities, destroying and defending own and enemy supply lines... These can increase and decrease your "Faction Reputation", both with your Faction and the enemy one.
3.- This player impact on Factions can be ranked, and several ways to evaluate it are available or could be developed.
4.- The most active players who most successfully defend the interests of their Factions will be at the top of the ranking, and the ranking can be updated and reviewed periodically (daily, weekly, monthly...).
5.- Players who are "the most valuable for their Factions" (highest-ranked, more than one per Faction) will be asked what they believe their Faction's next moves should be. Intelligence information will be provided in limited amounts to help making the best possible decissions.
6.- From the feedback taken from these players, High Commands will develop short-term strategies and will issue orders to support these strategies: Missions will be made available, deployments will be readied and so on.

This is it, in short. Can you help me saying it... shorter?

Note: Perhaps the comment above ("what missing info is important") doesn't make sense for some of you. If so, you can check the interview for more clues...

 

You might have guessed from other answers: There shall be other activities in T:W requiring no depositing for a start and the involvement of players in the War Effort of their Factions won't be dictated by the weight of their PED Cards.

 

Really glad you liked it! So it was George and you making theories... anyone else out there?

Also, be aware of this combo: A mission you can make today but not tomorrow and for which you have a countdown timer to get it done before 3, 2, 1... OUCH! Now wait an unknown amount of days and see if it becomes available again... or become Highest Ranked and try to push your Faction's strategies the way that mission went

 

In all good faith, I was not there so I couldn't really tell... and I wouldn't really tell

Life is full of "win" and "fail" situations; we can't expect someone to keep succeeding consistently without encountering issues and problems along the road and, why not, failing occasionally. I guess it happens to us all. For me it's more a matter of understanding that of forgiving. I can get there but, of course, your mileage may vary...

 

It's 7:12 here, when I get to the studio I'll drop here the specs of our "smallest" test machine

Generally speaking, from the design table we check on paper, then on paper with calculators, then (whenever we can) inside prototyping environments/simulations (not using the EU platform). Apart from this, we intensely playtest ourselves before asking for additional playtesting from outside of our studio. Then, "externals" come and playtest in person (NDAs involved), we have forms and questions, coders and artists talk directly with players who have test-driven our "prelaunch versions". Then we change, improve, re-balance... and go through it all again until the amount of changes is minimal.

Then we let people beta-test from their homes.
I'm not 100% sure how we'll do this for T:W, but we've plenty of time ahead to find the best way

 

Six.
Taking into account previous posts in this arc, I shall add a "glimpse of the intended final mechanics on seasons":

 

Misao, our "smallest" test machine runs Windows 7 with an Intel Core2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz (it's a laptop).
It has 4 GB of RAM and the graphics card is an integrated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400, 256MB of dedicated memory plus 1791MB of shared system RAM. I know it's a bit above the "medium settings" recommended machine for the platform but I must add we'll look into optimization when we're closer to launch date and... this "small specs" machine will look smaller one year from now.

Coming back with this info took me more than I expected, sorry; I hope you weren't holding there for this reply...

 

Remember when I told you about adjusting values to a grid? This is a good example. If we increase grid size in one axis, we must increase any other present axis accordingly (X-Y, X-Y-Z, X-Y-Z-T, X-Y-Z-[m·a]...). Being an online game, a 1:1 proportion is not pretty attractive, I think there's no need to elaborate on that. Same goes for longer days in-game than 24 real hours. Increasing the "day ratio" (Earth:Theryon) from 1:1.2 to 1:3.5 the grid behaved poorly, like an aliased image. Then I went the other way around, from 1:7 to 1:3.5. In this case I checked the proportions for "half initial values" as corrected by formulas after applying grid correction. Surprisingly, I found the 1:5 values to be double the 1:2 values, making true the statement "two plus two equals five (for extremely big values of two)".

Hence, I'd love to keep the one to five ratio and it looks we'll be able to, but adjustments can be made.
What do you think of it?

EDIT: George, we've missed it. You got two consecutive questions and I didn't realize because I went back to Misao in between...
I do apologize for not having noticed. George, you'd better come up with some sort of "disciplinary action" for yourself and myself before someone else suggests something...

 

Hi Shadowsong,
I see no off-topic here, maybe no question but a good comment.
When we first asked ourselves this kind of questions someone here proposed "Maintenance Assignments". I've searched a bit and here's that concept:

"Basically you talk to a Maintenance Officer (NPC) and get one random quest from a "Maintenance Quests Pool", which includes quest items. You use the items to craft "maintenance stuff" to give the NPC, or to find "maintenance ore" for the same use. Either succeeding or failing, provided items and crafted or mined stuff vanish when completing the quest or when running out of provided resources."

Just translated it from the "older notes pile", still needs revisiting.
Moved to the top of that pile and bookmark added here, thanks