As you very well know by now, we are constantly on the lookout for new, interesting games to show you. Today we’re pleased to bring you an interview with Illfonic Creative Director Kedhrin Gonzalez about their MMORPG called Revival. The game is currently scheduled for a beta release in the second half of 2014, but Gonzalez has been willing to talk on many of the game’s features.
We know that with Revival, you intend to put a focus on story and player immersion. Can you give us a brief summary of the general backstory of the world at the time when players start their adventures? Other than being inspired by Lovecraft, I couldn’t find much else.
We’re still working a lot of the specifics out, but essentially this falls in line with the next question, what we want to showcase is a world void of the troubles that lie within a darker experience. There is the world troubled with natural creatures and even some of the supernatural by evil magic that causes conflict. While players get used to this and the NPCs evolving conflicts with each other, we throw in the extra element that will completely start changing the world over time. The goal of the ‘story’ isn’t to be like reading a book, the world is the story and the story is constantly evolving based on the decisions of the GMs and the players.
Your “Live Storytelling” feature certainly sounds ambitious and interesting. However, it seems like every GM group for every server should have the ability to change/modify/add content on their own, since each servers would have players interacting in a different way - isn’t that a huge undertaking (and a huge reason of why GMs are not directly interacting in the game world anymore in recent MMORPGs)? Could you give us an example of a GM-run event and the possible ramifications due to players’ actions?
Yes it is true, each server will literally be its own experience. On one server, you may have a city that is flourishing and booming. On the other server, it could be nothing but an abandoned ruined city, now overrun by monsters. However, they are tied together by an overall, pre-planned ‘major’ story arc that will happen regardless of players actions. This isn’t like, say a story you have to follow, it is just a series of events that happen you have to experience. That’s a hard thing to stomach, so let’s break it down like this… Traditionally, a story is linear, even if it branches and allows player decisions, it goes from A to B (even in almost all major MMOs). We say story because it’s more common for people to understand but what we really make is an event. We throw the event out there, and let chaos and the world do with it what it will. If I was to write a story about a bird being born and living it’s life, you would sit down and listen to my story. In the case of an event, I would make the story build up, like the bird being born, being a baby, getting old enough to fly – then I’d push it out of its nest. Whatever happens after that is out of our hands.
This is a revolutionary way of thinking and doing story telling in a live game. Each server will have its own team of GMs that run things with guidance from our core Lead Designers (Chris Holtorf and Adam Maxwell). It’s not as big of an undertaking as you might think. The biggest challenge for us is to make an ‘in-game’ editor for the GMs where they can do all sorts of stuff in a live environment. Because we are using CryENGINE, everything is real time and very powerful. GMs are situated in tiers, higher GMs handle the large events that could happen every 2 weeks or monthly, while the lower GMs handle the random hourly events that branch out into singular player interactions. The concept of what a GM does is different for Revival. Our GMs do not police players or interact with players in a non-fictional way. They are writers and actors. They are more like Dungeon Masters in a D&D experience. We have GP (Game Police) that handle player interactions that would normally be handled by the standard GM. We still have smaller ‘quests’, that are traditional stories laid across the land that give player something to sink their teeth into. We don’t believe in a world that is just waiting for the GMs next big move. If that happened, the world would be completely static and left to trolls spamming the chat room to make it come to life. There has to be pre-made NPC quests alongside the live storytelling or the game would get very stale, repetitive, and lifeless very fast.
Let’s say that in the game’s story, a certain NPC Lord is a tyrant who rules with the iron fist over his own feud, while his son is known to be defiant to the ways of the father. Is it viable for players to kill him in order to let the benevolent son ascend to power in his stead?
If a quest is planned in that area, certainly. This means a normal sub-quest with an objective that could only be accessible by a player with a certain karma and reputation level. These types of quests are very difficult, as they can alter the game world. Usually the Lord would be extremely powerful and very well protected. Players will alter the way the world changes all the time through NPC interactions. This includes the ability to kill major NPC characters. Some players may not even get the quest to kill the lord and just decide to go on a murderous rampage. We are carefully analyzing and balancing how this can happen. If we feel that a character is important enough to the quests of the game, they would either be extremely difficult to kill but allow players to change the world or be ‘immortal in their lineage’.
What that means is, you may kill a guy, but his son will take his place. Characters like this will be referred to by their title and not by specific names in order to keep the voice acting. In the instance, for example, their city is destroyed, they will move locations. There aren’t too many characters like this, as we want to keep the world a constantly changing place. Sometimes though, it is important for us to give that person you can always count on. This would apply to someone like a leader of a guild that teaches swordsmanship or other primary story arc character.
One interesting aspect is that thievery will be allowed on both PCs and NPCs. However, will there be any kind of active way for players to notice if they’re about to be robbed and retaliate, or is it just a passive stat check?
Unfortunately, due to how fast a pick pocket would need to take place, there isn’t much time for a minigame interface other than a passive stat check in the skills around this. We’re not 100% set on this, and may change our mind, but it’s pretty cut and dry. One critical thing players and NPCs can do is ‘sense’ danger, which is a skill in itself which helps notice players/NPCs doing suspicious behavior. This system is a bit prejudice. If you are player that thieves a lot, you have a karma check in that area and players who have high sense can tell you’re no good. Because of this, the player that would normally be thieving has a higher rate of failing. Both players and NPCs will be able to guard themselves in different ways from all levels of thievery though. This also includes looking at a target. If you’re being stared at, your chances of stealing are extremely low, so players will need to be aware and alert if they decide to steal. We are making sure stealing in Revival is no easy task and would require very skillful and patient players.
In the original preview by Massively, it is stated that players could be “sent to jail”. Can you explain us how does this system work? Is there any analogy to the system we know from Archeage?
Jail is a system that punishes players if they commit a crime that does not warrant death. Jail in Revival is not based on a jury system or anything like that. It’s pretty cut and dry and revolves around gameplay vs real world time. It is possible to break players out of jail, as well break out of jail yourself through different methods. We want the experience of going to jail to be special, but not rewarding. We also don’t want to put too much power in the players hands of what happens with this system. This system is in place to discourage trolling and harassment style of gameplay. Those that do bad need to know there is serious punishments for doing so. At the same time, we don’t want to discourage players who live on that thin line. Revival mimics a lot of things you would expect with crime and other elements you experience in the real world, but not necessarily the stuff that would extend the experience from happening faster.
Will you have a bounty system, so that wronged players may hire killers to get their own “justice”?
Absolutely, there are both bounties and hits. They aren’t just for murdering players either. They are for PVP, PVE, and even tie into merchant and economic sabotage.
Revival is described as a sandbox MMO. Will it be possible for Guilds to claim territory/keeps like in other sandbox titles (EVE, Darkfall, Mortal, Archeage come to mind)? Are you planning any kind of diplomacy/alliance mechanics?
Guilds can claim cities through a behind the scenes style of democracy. What that means is, a guild can make its headquarters in a city by buying a guild hall and get reputation in the city by how active they are in that city, number of members, assistance to NPCs (or even strong arming them). Alliances and all sorts of higher level metagame diplomacy can be done with players or NPCs, across all factions good and bad (including elder god). Just always know the more powerful the faction is, the more difficult things will be.
Partially related to the previous question is the topic of player housing. Will players be able to create houses in the persistent world and if so, will there be fixed slots (Darkfall) or free placement (Archeage)? Also, provided that there is indeed a conquest-like mechanics, will player houses factor into it (for example, house taxes going to the Guild ruling over a certain region)?
Houses will grow and open depending on the city’s economy status. The cites grow as the level designers and artists make updates to the cities on the servers using an extremely intuitive modular system. They won’t be free placement, as systems like that create an unbelievable, lifeless, and chaotic world. Maintaining the immersion is absolutely the #1 priority for Revival, and a system like that completely breaks it. Our housing goes into a full system that even includes realty as a skill and is encouraged by players playing as merchants. This is a system unlike anything ever seen before.
You’ve already said that the game’s RPG system is skill based, and there are no levels or classes. Will you have a skillcap, so that no player can ever gain all skills (or at least have them active at the same time)? Also, will the karma system influence the usable skills as well (for example, a “blue” character behaving righteously cannot use Necromancy spells)?
Yes there is a skill cap, our skill system and how it is measured is very similar to Ultima Online. There are absolutely karma hits to a skill, but not systems blocking a user from using certain skills. In other words, if you were a blue player and using a dark arts skill, you would lose karma quickly and the skill wouldn’t have as much of a punch until your Karma is fully negative in that area.
You’ve confirmed that there will be player looting, although there are ways to prevent it - for example, by using certain “blessings”. I’ve read in Massively’s article that they are supposed to be “cheap and accessible”, but if it truly is so, what’s stopping a player to gather dozens of blessings effectively becoming “immune” to PvP, thievery etc.?
You can be immune to it with the right combination. The reality of the situation is, not everyone likes PvP, and we have to cater to that. The good news is, it’s all within the fiction of the world, so it is not game breaking. I’m sure some PvP die hards will hate that, but that’s just the way it is. There will be enough PvP players to have fun in that area all by themselves. The big thing to remember is, that every time they take on these types of blessings, they get penalties in other areas, they also cannot access certain parts of the game. Depending on your play, can also restrict you from getting certain blessings. Karma is a bitch, as they say.
With that in mind, how would it be fair for a player that kills and loots players non-stop to then get a blessing protecting them 100% from all harm so they could explore a dungeon on their down time? At the same time, it is not fair for a player that is a blessing junkie to then take most of them off and try to PVP for a day. The Gods frown upon such things, but there is ways to work through it. It really is designed to tune the game to your liking, but give you penalties if you go too far in either direction. The thing with freedom is, it cannot exist, it is a theory. One man’s freedom is another man’s loss of freedom.
How large and seamless is the world of Revival? Also, will you have boats, sailing and possibily ship-to-ship (and ship-to-land) fights?
Because of the graphical intensity of Revival, the world is definitely broken up into graphics areas. The vegetation is insanely thick, the detail is extremely high, almost all objects in the game are destructible, have physics and can be interacted with, live story telling spawns new NPCs, objects, modifies terrain, changes water, gravity and more. No other MMO has this level of interactivity across the board. We have to make sure we keep that under control, and are really investigating a seamless world, but it may not be possible. Right now our plan is to have major areas, that are about 2×2 miles in diameter, and those areas are cram packed with content. Whenever you think about size, we like to do content within a smaller area vs. giant open lands of nothing that all you do is press auto-run and forget. To me, that’s not a living world.
This type of development gives the players a living, breathing, world… not lots of rolling terrain that has absolutely nothing but the occasional tree and monster mob (that’s not saying it’s a desert, of course). We certainly will have Sailing, boarding and ship to ship combat which has the easier potential for seamless world to dock areas and smaller islands. There will definitely be the ability for ships to attack fortifications on lands in the ocean areas. This is still an area we are prototyping to try to balance the sacrifice necessary to do completely seamless vs. a world where you encounter nothing but rich experiences every minute you explore.
The game, running on CryEngine 3, looks great - at least judging from the released screenshots. Do you expect to be able to have massive battles in the game and if so, what numbers are we talking about?
Yes, especially to handle the Live Storytelling… as far as the numbers, as high as we can possibly push it. We are still researching that!
Thanks for your time!
