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Fallen Earth devs answer radioactive questions in Stratics chat
It's always nice when developers let their hair down, shaking out their majestic manes in slow-motion glory while their eyes sparkle with a thousand points of... I'm sorry, where was I? Anyway, part of the powerhouse Fallen Earth team recently sat down with Stratics' House of Commons to answer community questions about the game in a free-form chat, which was recorded and posted on Globaltech ATLAS. Icarus devs present were Tiggs (Community Director), Chris Deavellar (Art Director), Cory Farris (Senior Environment Artist) and Wes Platt (Director of Content Development). Topics included new Blood Sports maps, the day/night cycle, supercross, pop culture references and questions about the art and graphics of the game. One of the questions wondered why they couldn't add more body types into the game, which earned a revealing answer: "If we do implement new chracter [sic] types, it will require new rigging, new animation (about 1000 of them), and new boltons just for one new toon. You'll notice that games like Gears of War and Halo only have men? That's because they couldn't even afford to spend time doing a female toon. It's a LOT, LOT, LOT of work." Globaltech ATLAS has the full transcript, so feel free to pour over the entire conversation, including a few "after hours" questions!
The Daily Grind: Naming and shaming?
Yesterday, a bit of a kerfuffle broke out on the Fallen Earth forums. One of the largest fan sites, Globaltech Atlas, was asking the community about whether or not they should consider adding in a "Honorary Douche-bag of the Week" award, which would allow members of the community to "name and shame" enabling players to nominate other Fallen Earth players who were "cheaters, scammers, liars and thieves and [deserving of] the oh so important 'poor sportsmanship' awards." Now ultimately, they decided to drop the idea, instead opting to warn the community about any scams going around without naming people. However, two forum threads had already started, hotly debating the various pros and cons.One side felt that by doing this on a single-shard game (much like EVE Online in this aspect) they could potentially stop people from being flaming jerks because the community would immediately be aware of what they were doing. Others pointed out that since there are members of the community who thrive on being jerks, there was a certain element that would likely step up their griefing just to get an award like this - considering it a mark of honor to actually get named. Some pointed out that screenshots and chat logs could be faked easily; others pointed out that anyone actually being a big enough jerk would be essentially blacklisted simply because enough people had it happen to them. This morning we thought we'd put it to you - what do you think of "naming and shaming" people who are rude/scam/etc? Do you think that this is a good idea and can be a useful tool to dissuade players from being jerks? Or do you think this is a poorly-advised idea, offering little beyond a chance for drama llamas to compete for fame - or should we say infamy?
