development-blog
Latest
The Elder Scrolls Online explores the creation of its music
Music plays a major role in setting the mood of any game. Sure, it might not be what makes or breaks The Elder Scrolls Online, but it would be difficult to get into the feel of epic adventure if the game's soundtrack were played entirely on harmonicas and vuvuzuelas. The latest development blog on the official site explains how the game's music was developed, how it was recorded, and what you can expect from the experience. Brad Derrick and Rik Schaffer handled the composition of the in-game score, experimenting with a variety of different methods for delivering the songs. At one point the game featured a system that changed the soundtrack measure by measure based on context cues, but that proved unworkable in the long run; instead, the music shifts to a variety of pieces depending on gameplay, weather, and the like, with unifying themes in each environment. Click on past the break for a sample of the orchestral recording, as well as one of the bardic songs performed by the singer Malukah.
Star Wars: The Old Republic highlights the strengths of strike fighters
With all of the other ship classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic's latest addition, you can be forgiven for thinking that Galactic Starfighter kind of gives the eponymous fighters short shrift. After all, gunships can snipe with railguns, scouts are darting and disabling beasts, and bombers are tanks with wings. What can the strike fighter do that all of its contemporaries can't? Oh, right. It can eat other ships alive by blowing past shields and ripping enemy hulls apart. The new development blog highlighting the strike fighter discusses how strike fighters are generally the targets of all the other defensive mechanisms -- sure, a gunship can snipe things, but if it gets caught within weapons range of a strike fighter, it's in big trouble. The strike fighter might not have the speed of the scout or the armor of gunships and bombers, but it's maneuverable, nimble, and built for dogfighting. Check out the full development blog for more details on the lynchpin of the fighter squadrons.
Star Wars: The Old Republic takes you to the gun(ship) show
Space is not the final frontier in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Frankly, space is pretty mundane. There's plenty of it, and both the Republic and the Empire have spent a lot of time flying around in it with machines meant to blow the snot out of other machines. The Gunship is the target of the latest development blog, and it's not just designed to blow up other space machines (or "starfighters," if you will) -- it's designed to do so from long range and with extreme prejudice. Gunships all possess a Railgun of some kind, characterized as a long-range sniping weapon with an emphasis on charge time and careful aim. They also feature engines that allow pilots to close distance with a target quickly and others that allow gunships to dart away whilst crippling enemy thrusters. Take a look at the development blog for more details, and if you missed it yesterday, check out the the trailer for Galactic Starfighter just past the cut.
Star Wars: The Old Republic highlights bomb(er) ships
Bombers are not the sort of ships that dart hither and yon in Star Wars: The Old Republic. They don't skitter about in elaborate dogfights. No, they are the ships that approach their targets, use heavy shields to weather some incoming fire, and then watch as a field of mines explodes around all those ships with the darting and the skittering. The latest development blog on the official site discusses more about how bombers play in Galactic Starfighter. Various mines are available to bombers, ranging from straightforward damage mines to shield-and-power draining Ion Mines to seek-and-destroy Seeker Mines. Bombers can also field stationary Drones for both offensive and defensive purposes, with Sentry Drones taking shots at enemy ships and Repair Drones fixing up the hull of allied craft. Take a look at the full entry for more details, especially if you think you're the sort of player who might want to drop a bomb on someone.
Lord of the Rings Online explains Hunter changes in Helm's Deep
Ranged classes can be hard to handle from a design standpoint. Lord of the Rings Online had exactly that problem with Hunters; players felt that one of the class trait lines was the "main" line and the others were just supplementary. The latest development blog explains how that issue has been corrected: the developers have given the Bowmaster, Huntsman, and Trapper of Foes lines unique roles and specialties on the battlefield. The Bowmaster is a stationary high-DPS ranged specialization that requires a steady spot for consistent damage. The Huntsman, meanwhile, emphasizes mid-range mobility and rapid output of weaker attacks. Trapper of Foes fills out the roster by focusing on crowd control and AoE, trading in some damage for more group offerings. Players can start enjoying these changes when the expansion goes live in November. On an unrelated but important note, players impacted by the game's outage issues earlier in the month have now been compensated via time extensions for subscribers and free Turbine Points for lifetime members. It's not a class revision, but it's certainly a welcome bit of recompense.
Guild Wars 2 mixes up its WvW matchups
There's a problem in the Guild Wars 2 World vs. World matching system, and it's a subtle one that's almost invisible until you look closer. Because of the way ratings are calculated and how the matchups happen, the net result for each server is always being matched up against the same servers. No matter how well you perform, you wind up locked into a certain tier without any hope of changes. It's a problem that the development team is both aware of and is moving to address. The short version of how things will work is that servers will be matched up semi-randomly, with ratings taken into account to assure that the spread between opponents isn't too severe. More math beneath the surface takes into account both the current rating of a given world and its overall deviation, producing a "real" rating that will facilitate fair matches. Take a look at the official blog for all the hard details.
TUG hopes to make guilds more meaningful by not having them
Guilds are pretty much ubiquitous in MMOs -- they serve as a way to bind players together into a group. But the team behind TUG thinks that all too often guilds come about mostly so you can have a name and a chat channel all to yourself. Which is why the latest design post about the game explains that the designers want to remove that sense of artificially created communities. To strengthen that sense of forming player groups, guilds have to go. As the post explains, too often guilds become things formed for the purpose of having a guild, placing an artificial limitation on what groups players belong to. Instead, the goal is to get players to form societies and groups organically, creating more freedom by removing arbitrary restrictions. It's an idea with a lot of promise, and as the game's Kickstarter continues you can decide if that promise is something you feel like supporting.
Pathfinder Online discusses the creed of assassination
Not everything in Pathfinder Online is meant to be sweetness and light. Your player-run settlement might have all of the people it needs to be built into a great city, but all it takes is an assassin accosting one of those people and suddenly everything can fall apart. And that's not just conjecture -- the latest development blog shows how the assassination system is meant to facilitate precisely that sort of outcome under the right circumstances. Assassination is a system allowing players to put out contracts on other players, whether for long-term gain or just spite. Successful assassins will slowly become better and better at stealth and can prevent targets from resurrecting nearby. They also get access to Disguises, special outfits that change your display name and hide your actual abilities from other players. If you're looking to be the blade in the night that puts down your target, take a look at the official blog for all the details.
EVE Online shining up its starbases for Odyssey
In theory, player-owned starbases are a major component of EVE Online's gameplay. In practice, the acronym for these structures is seen as being unintentionally appropriate. But if you're an owner of a POS and hoping for some love from the development team, you can take heart that Odyssey is aiming to incorporate several new features to make these bases more desirable and worthwhile. Even if not all of these features are certain inclusions just yet, they're still enticing additions. Among the major changes coming to starbases are the inclusion of private hangars, repackaging modules within starbase arrays, and the removal of sovereignty requirements from capital ship maintenance arrays. The UI will also be tweaked and improved, and players will be able to swap Strategic Cruiser subsystems from a starbase while accessing any of the starbase's arrays from within the facility's shield. For full details on the hard work being done to improve these structures, check out the full development blog.
Pathfinder Online shows off early development art
You might have been looking forward to Pathfinder Online for a while, but it's been hard to really look at the game. That's starting to change with the latest blog entry on the official site in which art director Mike Hines discusses the process of making art for Pathfinder Online and shows off some early renders that should demonstrate what the game will look like once players finally get to enjoy it. Hines discusses the fact that the game has the advantage of drawing upon a great deal of established artwork for the Pathfinder tabletop game, but it also has the challenge of adapting those visuals to the online space. He also shows off several early concept renders and sketches, stressing with each that these are still works in progress that might change before the final release. If you're anxious to look at the game instead of just forward to it, look through the full blog entry on the official site. [Thanks to matixuzn for the tip!]
Final Fantasy XIV shows off early Shiva renders
The Primals of Final Fantasy XIV are kind of a big deal. In the original game, players had a chance to fight two of them, both of whom made for a rough fight, but the relaunch will include wandering versions of these pseudo-deities for players to hunt down and harness. And while astute fans have known for some time that Shiva will be among the Primals in the new version, she's finally strutting her stuff in the latest development blog post. The post contains several early renders of the completed model as well as the ice queen's concept art, all of which should look familiar to veterans of the Final Fantasy series. While Shiva is known to have worshippers much like her fellow Primals Ifrit and Garuda, it's not yet clear if her appearance means a new beastman tribe will be entering the already crowded Eorzea. The full set of pictures won't answer that question, but it will give players eagerly awaiting the beta something new to gawk at.
Star Wars: The Old Republic launches update 1.4 and takes aim at faster patches
The fourth major update for Star Wars: The Old Republic is live right now, but some players may find patch 1.4 a bit lighter than previous updates. According to a new development blog, this isn't by accident but by design. Creative director James Ohlen explains that the development team's previous strategy of launching a single big update every few months did result in big patches but at the cost of long stretches without anything new for players. Starting with 1.4 and moving onward, the team is moving to prioritize more frequent updates. Ohlen places a rough estimate of every six weeks but notes that it's only an estimate and a target rather than a firm schedule. He goes on to state that the team is planning on three more patches by the end of the year in addition to the free-to-play conversion, with more large-scale improvements and updates due in 2013. If you're mostly just interested in cutting through 1.4's new raid mode, of course, most of this is immaterial, but you can still check out the trailer for the patch just after the break.
Everything you wanted to know about Neverwinter's Foundry but haven't asked
Neverwinter has some pretty big shoes to fill. More accurately, it has some pretty elaborate shoe-making tools that it needs to allow players to fill. After all, it's part of a franchise that's legendary for its player-created content. The Foundry system is aimed at giving players all of the user-generated content they could ask for, all of the tools necessary to make great missions, and all of the possible options to get players into player-made content quickly. How will all of this happen? Why, it's outlined in this new development blog! Players will be able to incorporate missions into the overall game world seamlessly or place them in instanced areas depending on the creator's intent. The system will also give players several means of getting into these missions, both from a UI feature showing off popular player-made missions and NPCs highlighting player-made content in any given area. Creators, meanwhile, will receive all the necessary tools to create new maps and new missions even with a minimum of experience. Time will tell how successful the system is in implementation, but it's certainly aiming in the right direction.
Fallen Earth previews its next big update
The past month has been a quiet one for Fallen Earth on the update front. As the latest development blog entry explains, this was largely due to the team working on clearing out some persistent bugs and improving the overall quality of life for players. But there are new updates in the works, and the blog entry explains that the game's next major update is right around the corner, complete with powerful new weapons for players to assemble. Of course, you can't expect for these new weapons to just drop into your lap. So it probably comes as no real surprise that the components needed for the powerful G.O.R.E. weapons can be found in an old GlobalTech dump site that now hosts a creeper den guarded by the massive Crabbahoak. Or that the Cult of the Dead has sprung up again to use the G.O.R.E. technology to further its own ends. In other words, it's going to be quite a struggle to get these new weapons -- and that's the way that most Fallen Earth players would prefer it to be.
Fallen Earth receives a State of the Game update
For Fallen Earth players, May was all about the Global Territory Control update. But now it's June, and the game's developers have been rather quiet since then. The team is rectifying that in the newest State of the Game letter, letting fans know that it's just been a quiet month of balancing and addressing bugs from the patch. Now that those issues are addressed, the team can look toward the future again. Among the promised future additions are farms, meant to be the PvE equivalent of harvesters. The team wants to ensure that harvesters are providing enough of a reward for player effort to be worthwhile, so some more balancing is necessary, but the core idea is that the higher-risk actions of harvesters yield greater rewards than farms. There's also a promise of the development team trying to be more active with responses to players, something that should be a welcome start after a fairly quiet month.
Firefall video blog says farewell to levels, hello to skill
The team at Red 5 Studios has been working hard on making Firefall the best game it can be, and as it turns out, that happens to be a game without traditional levels. A new video blog featuring lead designer Scott Youngblood and development VP James Macauley drops the news that the level system is being discarded and replaced with a much more organic system for player growth. Under the new system, players still earn EXP. That EXP will be spent on specific upgrades at a player's discretion rather than marking off specific levels, allowing you to unlock the upgrades that feel relevant in the order you want them. It also places less emphasis on levels in head-to-head matchups, something Macauley stresses is important to the team. There's more than just the removal of levels at work, however; the development team is also overhauling crafting to be more complex and rewarding as well as developing a new system of equipment tiers to keep players advancing. The full diary just past the break only gives brief glimpses of several new systems, but Firefall fans should be quite happy with what's over the horizon.
Pathfinder Online goes diving into dungeons
For those of you unfamiliar with the Pathfinder game system, what you need to know is that it's based on the core rules of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. Needless to say, dungeons feature pretty heavily in the tabletop game. So Pathfinder Online has presented itself with a bit of a conundrum: How can it combine the traditionally instanced format of MMO dungeons with the open-world approach of the game? As detailed in the latest development blog, the team is aiming at something between the normal instancing methodology and more sandbox-style open regions. In short, while dungeons themselves won't be instanced, the entrances will be hidden in various locations. When a dungeon is generated, a player who finds the entrance will have that dungeon locked to him or her until the dungeon is cleared, at which point it will despawn and be replaced by another dungeon. It's an interesting idea, and it's well worth reading the full blog for a look at how this system might work in practice.
Learn about the Warrior in the newest Lime Odyssey development blog
Friday saw the reveal of information on Lime Odyssey's Warrior class, which specializes more or less in what you would expect from the description. (That does not include carpentry or specialized dance moves, if you're not sure.) Today, we've got a bit of a developer diary to follow up the reveal, with a bit more detail on how the class is meant to play and what prospective Warriors can expect in terms of equipment and so forth. For those looking forward to the game, there's still no news on when the closed beta will begin, although development is continuing apace despite the game's trouble in its nation of origin. You can still sign up for the beta, however, and all signs point to a testing phase on the near horizon. If you just want to learn about playing a Warrior, just skip on down to see how to unleash maximum destruction with massive weapons.
Guild Wars 2 and the evolving narrative of a personal story
Guild Wars 2 has promised players a personal narrative from very early in development, but with all of the beta testing and class previews, it's a feature that hasn't seen as much description. So as the game draws ever closer to release, it's a good thing that the most recent development blog is all about the development of a player's personal narrative over the course of gameplay. According to the blog, the choices players make start during character creation and continue from there, resulting in 30 potential story paths just through the starter region alone. Of course, branches alone aren't worth much of anything if they don't lead to some interesting gameplay in the process. The design blog discusses how this works in the Asura starting area, whose designers began with a design document stating that the player needed to investigate two genius golemancers to determine which one was culpable in a crisis. Rather than forcing the player to simply run to two separate locations and have a chat, the staff realized that the two geniuses would be more likely to be interacting at an event -- say, a competition of golems. The refinement goes on from there, with each step refining the narrative and investing the players further to make something more memorable than a simple questioning session.
Pathfinder Online promises to let players stumble into adventure
Pathfinder Online is still too early in the development process to do much more than talk about principles, but said principles are certainly of interest to fans. The most recent development blog about the project discusses that game's PvE arm, which is meant to be an important part of the game without being the sole driving force. Instead of the game being driven by players going, gathering quests, and then going out to kill monsters, the development team hopes to create an environment where players go out to do something and then find themselves in the midst of a quest. Four basic types of interconnection are outlined, ranging from wandering monsters to potential beasts attracted by overharvesting an area. (Cut down too much wood in an area and wood-dwelling creatures my start attacking lumberjacks... or some nasty flying monsters might decide the cleared area would make for an excellent nest.) It's certainly an interesting set of principles going into design, making the entry well worth a read for sandbox enthusiasts.
