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Darkfall: New Dawn: Ub3rgames interviews

KotsolisKotsolis Member UncommonPosts: 5
Interviews so far
1)MMORPG.com
2)MMORPG Italia (Italian)
3)MMOZG (Russian)
4)GameWorld.gr (Greek)

Translation for the greek interview:

1)First of all congratulations for deciding to begin this startup. How and when did was Ub3rganes founded?

Thank you. Ub3rgames was planned to exist in one form or another for many years and we were just waiting for the good time. We’ve decided to go through with it last summer in May when we saw the petition about Darkfall’s revival. We’ve always thought that Darkfall had a lot of untaped potential so seeing that there was at least some attention for it still, we looked at how much it would cost and worked on a business plan. When we saw it could be sustainable for us to relaunch the game, we sprung into action.

2)How many developers are working for Ub3rgames at the moment and what positions do you plan covering in the future?

For now we are 10 developers, with a few full time and the rest at various levels of time commitments.We are mostly programmers with some business/marketing staff, so when we’ll have the budget, we’ll expand to incorporate some artistic and content creation personel. Until then it wouldn’t make financial sense.

3)Do you plan to hire some ex-Aventurine employees or you are just cautious about some of them?

 

For now, all positions available are taken, and when we’ll be able to grow, we’ll hire people that are here in France and with whom we can work physically.
From working I nthe past on opensource projects or with outsourcing, we value proximity a lot, especially at such a crucial time of a company.

 

4)In your opinion, what where the reasons that Darkfall Online didn't attract adequate subscribers?

The original Darkfall was a diamond in the rough.
It had a lot of great ideas but also some big flaws that pushed players away. The main ones being the big power gap and the perception of grind, the lack of consequences for negative actions and generally not enough activities outside of PvP.

 

5)One of Darkfall's biggest problem was grinding. What are your plans to reduce it? Smaller map? Crafting with less items? Any other ideas?

We agree, and a lot of our changes will be based around reducing the grind.
Our first step will be reducing the power gap by implementing diminishing returns on stats and skills. We will also have a soft specialization system where players can chose to focus on only a small part of their character and not have to level everything.

We call it the title system.

Finally, we’ll implement spawn scaling. The more players are engaged in the fight against a specific spawn, the harder it will become, but also the more rewards it will give. This will not be the only skill up modifier, more dangerous and harder spawns will also give more xp
Our overall goal for us it to let players decide what they want to raise themselves, and have more fun while doing so.


6)About the subscription mode, what is the price you are aiming to?

We are aiming for an initial price of 10€ per month. Once most of our features fixing the game are implemented, we will then increase the price to industry standards.

 

"Play-to-pay model is a very good concept and we’ll implement it. Having players be able to exchange subscription time for in game value is a great way to cut off most of the issues with gold sellers".



7)Do you consider adding trial (at least 24h trial in real-time or total time) to the game, thus attracting more players?

Later down the line, yes. But at first we want to fix the game more before letting players that don’t already know the game try it. You can only have one first impression and we want it to be good.

 

That said, we will have a public stress test period which will be free for all in order to test the game. So it will give an opportunity to play for those that want to see the game before our changes.


.............

Comments

  • KotsolisKotsolis Member UncommonPosts: 5

    8)With most MMORPGs being free-to-play, have you ever thought of implementing a free-to-play system with microtransactions? Not necessarily pay-to-win, you can add ex. microtransactions in cosmetics or for basic quests from capital cities that give extra +2 - +6 for Strength, Vitaly Dexterity, Wisdom or Intelligence. This won't affect gameplay pretty much. It will allow those that don't have enough time to just save their first hours and build a decent character (it wouldn't affect endgame).

     

    It would not work well for Darkfall in our opinion. The game is a lot about exploration and personal achievement, any form of cash store would undermine these aspects. Anything we could sell in it is a lost opportunity to create a cool gameplay mechanic.

     

    We also want to develop a good game. When you get paid by keeping players having fun, then your job is to make a better game. If you are paid by selling things on a store, then your  job is to make a game that encourages using the store.

     

    "We’ll improve all the peaceful activities, like PvE and Industry. We want Darkfall to be the Empire building game it has the potential to be, and it won’t work without a balanced population. Empires need civilians too".


    9)What's your point of view about Play-to-pay model? Do you find this feasible?

    We feel this is a very good concept and we’ll implement it. Having players be able to exchange subscription time for in game value is a great way to cut off most of the issues with gold sellers and lets less wealthy players enjoy the game too.
    It will also provide more budget for us to improve the game.


    10)Darkfall was purely a sandbox game. What's the best map structure for you? Are you prepared to show all the needed information within the map, including clan cities/hamlets and mob locations so that players won't needed to search in external websites?

    We want to improve the in game map system a lot and even add a “codex” of information in it. Players will also be able to make more types of annotations on their maps and share their informations between each other, either as a gift or for in game gold.
    Knowledge is power, and always alt tabbing is annoying.

     

    11)Another issue for the original Darkfall was the user interface. What are your thoughts about this?

    We like the idea of the interface, being fully customizable and placing items in the bags the way you want, but it definitely needs some improvement. We’ll keep the same concepts, but polish the details.

     

    12)Do you plan to improve Darkfall in terms of graphics and sounds? Are you aiming to convert the current old engine mechanics to an entirely new game engine?

    Not immediately, we have a lot of things to do first, but eventually we will improve the graphics and sounds for the game. We do not plan on changing the engine, but instead we’ll expand it.

     

    13)Can you give us a hint of the areas of the game that you are going to improve, beside those already mentioned?

    We want to improve the racial warfare aspects of the game, with big war fronts and ways to raise a character exclusively through PvP.
    We also want to expand the territory control mechanics by letting clans and alliances claim territory with freely placed structures called “watchtowers” and fight over lucrative locations to tax.
    And finally, we’ll improve all the peaceful activities, like PvE and Industry. We want Darkfall to be the Empire building game it has the potential to be, and it won’t work without a balanced population. Empires need civilians too.

     

    14) How do you see Darkfall: Rise of Agon so far? Is Aventurine allowing anyone interested to negotiate for a Darkfall contact or you have the exclusivity under certain conditions?

    As far as we know, there is nothing preventing them from existing.
    We don’t see them as competition, our goals are so far appart that we are working on two different games in the end. We wish them best of luck in their endeavors.


    15)Finally, is it possible that DFND is going to be released in 2016? Or at least have an early access on Steam?

    Yes, definitely possible. We expect to open a vanilla server of Darkfall in a couple months.
    But for all of our planned changes, we’ll need well over a year to complete everything, so New Dawn will only truly exist then. Players can already be part of the adventure by following us every week and see how we’ll improve the game towards our end goals.

  • kdchankdchan Member UncommonPosts: 79
    Nice summary, thanks.
    The nextgen sandbox
    Crowfall - LiF: MMO - Darkfall: New Dawn
  • SomethingUnusualSomethingUnusual Member UncommonPosts: 546
    Thanks for the read!

    While I never played the original Darkfall, I love and enjoy Unholy Wars, I can't wait to see the differences and what others have hyped about the original. I also can't wait for all these spinoff contracts to be over with so Adventurine can get back to patching Unholy Wars, it needs some love right now and a small team distracted is an obvious small team distracted.
  • A1learjetA1learjet Member UncommonPosts: 258
     Yes, thanks for the translation look forward to seeing more and more as they progress 

    image
  • Naoson12Naoson12 Member UncommonPosts: 5
    I wonder when they gonna activate the forum section for Darkfall New Dawn over here. http://forums.mmorpg.com/categories/darkfall-new-dawn still leads to an error page.

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