Not all stories on Kickstarter have a happy ending. It’s unfortunately the case of Gloria Victis, the first game by Polish developer Black Eye Games; however, their resolve is strong and they are still developing the game, although at a slower pace, and you can follow progress on their official website.
Actually, just yesterday a new pre-alpha trailer was posted, and you can see it below. After the video, enjoy our interview with Jan Grochowski!
First of all, welcome to our network and please, explain to our readers what kind of the game you set to produce with Gloria Victis.
Thanks for the warm welcome! Gloria Victis is a dark medieval MMORPG with a huge focus on the roleplay element.
The MMORPG market is certainly crowded and thriving with different takes on innovation. However, we have not seen a proper medieval MMORPG yet, and it seems like you’re indeed blending some of the classic cRPG elements in Gloria Victis. For example, quoting you about the combat system on Kickstarter: “Quests in the game will resemble those you see in the classical cRPGs. They’re multi-pathed and sometimes picking one of the paths will significantly influence the gameplay. Following a chosen path wll bring moral and ethical dilemmas as well as change the NPC attitude”.
This sounds exciting, but how will you plug this into the massively multiplayer part? Will multiple people be able to tackle the same quest, and how will a path be chosen then? Also, will there be any dynamic or zone events that will involve all players in a certain area?
That’s a great question. Currently there are three different types of quest.
There’s the ‘basic’ type which will allow multiple players do the same quest together, however each player will receive a different award and will open/close their next quests depending on how they act.
The second type is the ‘dynamic’ quests, which will activate when something changes in the nearby enviroment, e.g. If the guards from a town decide to go and attack a local bandit hideout.
The third type of quests are ‘instanced’. They are designed to be played singleplayer or with a party or guild. We are quite fond of these as they give us a chance to make heavily scripted, epic stories.
Some skills will only be obtainable by making certain choices at different stages throughout your story. For example, magic can be learned by completing a long chain of quests for monks.
About the combat system, you cited Mount & Blade as reference, adding that “players will have to aim and attack in the right direction and from the right distance. The missiles will follow the laws of physic and will not be homing”. The big questions, then, are if, like in M&B and similar games, hitting certain parts of the body (the head, for example) will be more damaging to our enemies; also, I’d love to know if there is friendly fire enabled all the time, as it would seem fit in such a game.
Friendly melee damage is deactivated inside of parties and between guild members as we feel it would be too frustrating to be killed by friends while fighting the same target. However we decided to keep friendly fire on for projectiles.
As for hitting different body parts, I’m not too sure if we will be able to implement it as checking the collision server side would dramatically increase the overhead. It works well for Mount & Blade up to 100 or so players, but we are counting for thousands.
Another major difference seems to be that magic is very rare in your world. You claim that “it will be an elite skill that only few will possess. It will be mostly based on illusion, alchemy and occultism”. However, I’m wondering exactly what that means for players.
It means that the player will have to choose a different path, blocking them from learning other skills that are only obtainable through the storyline.
The experienced alchemist will be able to make some explosive petards, but don’t expect to see fireballs.
Speaking of PvP, some elements mentioned, like “Open PvP, guild system uniting players, battles and sieges that will give one of the sides control over given locations”, would indicate that it is going to be a sandbox experience in which players freely create guilds and then wage war upon each other to control the land. However, in the FAQ you also state that “players will be able to choose between four nations”. This casts some doubts on whether PvP territory controll will be related to those nations instead of player guilds, but it could also simply mean that players will choose one of the four nations as starting zone for their character. Can you clarify this?
There will be four nations and two sides of conflict.
Every nation will have their own territory which will be controllable by guilds through sieges.
There will be open war territory where the four nations, split in to two sides, will meet and fight for castles, temples and of course resources.
We also have plans for structured group and solo PvP
Player housing has been forsaken for many years from the MMO genre, but now it’s making a huge come back - some of the older games are finally implementing it, and many more that are in development already plan to have it. What about Gloria Victis?
We focus a great deal on advanced level design so unfortunately we are unable to let every player have his own house on the main map. The housing system we have is based on instances in which player could buy crafting equipment, grow seeds etc.
Lastly, the Kickstarter campaign has not been the success you were hoping for. How does that change your plans for Gloria Victis?
We are fully dedicated to the project and even after failing to meet our Kickstarter target we continued to work our hardest to release a great game.
Unfortunately Kickstarter UK doesn’t accept Amazon or Paypal payments and we have had problems with some credit card transactions which is why we will be transferring the fundraising campaign to our website after the Kickstarter one has finished, (in an attempt to open up more payment options for our supporters.)
Our long term goals won’t change depending on the funding we get, but we could reach them a lot faster with more staff.
Thanks for your time, and best of luck with your project!
