Face of Mankind Fall of the Dominion interview

It’s been a while since we treated you with a new interview, and just as the noise from E3 starts dwindling, here’s a new exclusive - our Face of Mankind Fall of the Dominion interview with Marko Dieckmann and Christopher Allford of Nexeon Technologies. The game just had a successful Kickstarter campaign aimed at a reboot, but you can still support the developers through Paypal. Face of Mankind is a sci-fi sandbox MMORPG with third person shooter mechanics, and Nexeon has many additions and changes in store for Fall of the Dominion that will hopefully revitalize the interest in the game, which is pretty unique.

Let’s hear from them directly, anyway.

First of all, thanks for being with us and please, introduce yourself and the game to the readers.
Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion is a PvP oriented sandbox game, but I’m interested to understand some of your plans regarding PvE. Is there any at all and if so, are there any dynamic elements like dynamic events, invasions etc.?

Marko Dieckmann: Face of Mankind is a game all about the interactions of the players, where everything you do in the game has a direct impact on the world and has true consequences.

Our focus currently is on PvP only. We need to focus our limited resources on the core gameplay, which is the conflict between the player created factions, territory control, the player-run economy and more. We have some PvE elements in the game with Aliens on certain planets (Necars Field), which you can hunt down to gain some rare resources. We might expand on this in the future, but we don’t have very specific plans yet.

 

You’ve said that there is no grinding involved in the game and that skill system advances based on time. Does that mean the skills will continue to advance even when players are offline, albeit at a slower rate, like in EVE Online?

Christopher Allford: Yes, users are able to configure their skill queue and log off. We feel this is necessary to make it as non-grindy as possible, since players should be rewarded for simply being part of our universe. They will of course have to log in to queue up their skills, and they won’t really do much if they don’t play to get the money necessary to fully realize their potential.

 

Regarding skills, you also mentioned that if playing long enough, it is theoretically possible to get every skill in the game. However, this proved to be an issue in other sandbox MMORPGs, like Darkfall Online for instance, which in the end decided for role specializations as characters ended up being all hybrids with close to no group interaction and dependency, harming the fun. Aren’t you worried about this, and do you plan any specialization system at all? Also, do you plan to implement skill decay over time if a skill is not used for long?

Christopher Allford:  Ultimately any game has a theoretical “meta” that exists, which most players will follow to achieve what they think is the optimal strategy. Which in some games this is the case, great effort is being put into the game to ensure that a fully fleshed out team provides the best opportunities. Due to the low number of skills that directly influence combat as well, most of the players time and thought will be invested into secondary and tertiary skill roles, with the primary emphasis on combat being their ability to aim and dodge.

With our skills we don’t see a need to have them decay because of the role money plays in the game. Players who do not invest time into their craft will not be as productive as those who do, which creates a natural motivation to be really really good at something and branch out from there. It’s also important for each individual “role” to be fun and interesting, so that players feed rewarded and excited for whatever they choose to do in the game. While we will get some that choose to hybrid, they will not be anywhere near as useful nor effective; at least not for quite some time.

 

A similar topic was raised by Archeage community when XL Games announced that item decay wouldn’t have been featured in the game. Will you have item decay in Face of Mankind?

Christopher Allford: Item decay is an important aspect of the economy as it prevents the same garbage items from floating around. There needs to be a constant demand in the game universe for things, since all of the items are crafted by other players. This constant demand will ensure a constant supply of new fresh blood to create and sell items, which in turn feeds other parts of the game. The economy has a really symbiotic relationship with the rest of the game.

 

Speaking of combat, I couldn’t but notice that you described Face of Mankind as “first person/third person shooter”. Usually players see this as an issue, since third person gives a lot more awareness to what’s going on the sides and even behind the character, which translates in a significant advantage - unless first person has some other built-in perk. What’s your stance on this?

Christopher Allford: While it’s true that most players use third person for the obvious advantages, we have always seen a small number of players who opt to use first person rather than third person, because they want to really enjoy the immersive qualities of the game as the character, rather than the observer. We feel offering a first person alternative is a comfort that should be part of the game.

 

I’ve read your explanation of Apartments & Theft and it really sounds exciting, with players who got robbed that are able to track the robbers down in a number of ways. You’ve said that the “trace evidence” will have to be scanned “by the proper individual” - does this mean that there will be a specific skill to scan evidence, effectively making those characters who invest in it detectives of some kind? Also, I wonder if the hacking thing works for colonial territories as well.

Christopher Allford: Yes it does! Everything in the game will be tied into the skill system in some way, as we view it as a sort of specialization system. In the past the roles of the game were very vague and intrinsic, meaning there was little to no reason to actually do anything. The skill system and new features aim to create more defined roles and paths, albeit with a significant amount of freedom. As I’m sure you read in one of our latest updates, one could theoretically use the detective role as a mask to sell goods that were just stolen back to the owners without gaining the notoriety one typically would as a thief. We have these roles to give players direction and reward them for all sorts of different gameplay styles, but there are many productive ways to bend the game, shaping it as you see fit.

 

Another interesting feature is surely the prison system. I understand that players belonging to a faction that owns a prison are able to arrest them, but why wouldn’t those players simply kill them and take their goods, that are otherwise returned to them? Also, how does the arresting process works - just by defeating the criminals in combat?

Christopher Allford: Arresting yields a monetary reward to the faction that owns the territory. While bounties normally yield a reward, if you are in the police faction they do not, as to encourage arresting for those factions. The main point then is to collectively arrest people as a faction to generate a large amount of income from the bounties. There’s more to it than this of course, but it’s the simplest explanation I could think of. Arresting uses a special type of weapon which “stuns” your opponent. Once they are stunned they may be arrested, so yes, it just involves defeating them in combat.

 

Clearly your biggest stretch goal and project is the engine change. It seems like you won’t reach that amount for now, but I believe that it is a necessary improvement to attract many more players in the long run - will you go ahead with it nonetheless and if so, when do you think it could be introduced in the game?

Marko Dieckmann: In the long run, a new engine is unavoidable and very necessary. It’s not just about some newer fancy rendering features or utilizing the graphic card hardware to a better degree. It’s also the creative process that is very limited with our current engine. The level editor just isn’t very user friendly and couldn’t be called modern by any standard. :-) Editing a world is very time consuming, and becomes more of a technical process than a creative one.

So, yes, we will work towards this goal nonetheless. The only question is when that will be. We will be using the game’s income and invest into the future of the game.

 

Thanks for your time.