WarhammerAlliance.com has
completed a recent Interview with Jeff Skalski and Gabe Amatangelo on Land of the
Dead, Post-Release! The questions cover the recent 1.3 patch and the new
content released with the Land of the Dead expansion!
Here's the Land
of the Dead Interview from WarhammerAlliance.com:
Warhammer Alliance managed to catch up with Producer Jeff Skalski and
Encounters Strike Team Lead Gabe Amatangelo, two of the minds behind WAR's new
Land of the Dead, to hear about their thoughts on the new zone, dungeon, and RvR
mechanics, just days after it's gone live. It's been a veritable whirlwind -
dare we say, sandstorm - of activity following its release, and we greatly
appreciated Gabe and Jeff taking time out to answer the detailed questions we
were looking for! Enjoy!
Interview with Jeff Skalski and Gabe Amatangelo on
Land of the Dead, Post-Release
We've heard about some of the traps in Land of the
Dead. If you had some general tips for adventurers to avoid the various repeated
deaths that will happen when navigating them, what would they be and why?
Jeff. Be careful what you click on. 
Some of my favorite traps lie in the Tomb of the Vulture Lord. My one point of
advice is don’t rush through them. Stop and watch. Once you find the patterns
you’ll be by-passing those traps in no time, that is until your enemies
reactivate them while you're traversing down a quiet hall.
Many players or potential returners to the game are no
doubt watching what 1.3 will bring to the WAR world. We've heard about the brand
new content, with its action RPG elements, 6v6 invasion mechanic, and dynamic
boss encounters. We've heard about fixes to existing systems like wards,
lockouts, and loot rolls. At its core, how or why do you think these things will
make people want to play WAR, keep their sub, or want to re-sub?
Jeff. The fixes we’ve done to opening up our
ward system by unshackling it from armors, easing up on our lockout requirements
and now allowing loot rolls to be passed on are some of the features our
community has been crying out for quite some time. And we have many other
enhancements and improvements in the work today. This is our way of letting the
players know we are not just focused on new content, but making sure the core
mechanics in our game today are even better. Our Executive Producer, Jeff
Hickman has recently been posting his letters about the game and I highly
recommend reading them. We have a lot of exciting things in the works right now
directly targeting the top concerns of our players such as our RvR endgame in
the cities and fortress assaults to name just two. If only I could show you
what’s on my whiteboard.
At the time of this interview, we will have seen, for a
few days, the fruits of your labor as 1.3 goes live. There is sure to be a slew
of feedback that is currently streaming into your inboxes, threatening to
overflow and bury you in a sea of text, printouts, and sometimes even ranting.
Tell us what are the major things you have learned about already just from the
first few days of this patch going live.
Jeff. You never can be over prepared and ready.
=P The realm wide events we do in our game and the dynamic way our RvR campaign
moves back and forth is some of the most complex systems we’ve worked on to
date. Anytime you add or modify these systems it can be rather challenging and
with the Land of the Dead we had no fear. With the great support we got on PTS
and with our patient core testers we were able to address and resolve a lot of
issues early on. Now we are watching the forums, playing with our players,
listening and reacting as needed.
The community has talked about how the main RvR
campaign might possibly be negatively impacted by the massive interest in Land
of the Dead. Let's be honest - a Live release is the only real way to see if
this is true, so what are the things you are anticipating or observing about
Land of the Dead's affect on the main game to make adjustments?
Jeff. One thing we are anticipating to happen is
for the underdog realm to get breathing room and able to quickly capture the
pairings and crack open their enemies city while their opposition is enjoying
the Land of the Dead. We also expect to see a lot of excitement around purging
your enemies as soon as you gain access to the land. One item we’ll be closely
monitoring is the pace at which control of the Land of the Dead flips. We
don’t want more than a day to span across any server, but we also don’t want
it flipping every hour. At the same time we’ll be listening to our players and
making adjustments as needed.
Tell us a little bit about the design philosophy for
Land of the Dead. Why depart a little from the traditional MMO formula for
encounters and dungeons, and craft something that is more "action"
based? What drove this direction, and how concerned are you that it may deviate
a little too much from what players are used to in WAR?
Gabe. Well, I don’t feel that we departed from
the traditional. We enhanced it. All of the parts players know and love about
the MMO dungeon crawl experience are present in the Land of the Dead. Group
cooperative play, challenging encounters, rewards, etc. We just added several
elements we gamers are guilty of daydreaming about when participating in other
MMO dungeon crawls. I speak of the wishes tucked away in our id born from
vicarious imaginings. Moments of glory, suspense, action, etc. seen in movies,
read about in books or imagined in table top games. That was the design
philosophy. Dig deep, channel it, sort out the systems to make it a reality,
then temper it with scope and mass appeal. It resulted in traps, action packed
boss fights, open flow dungeon crawl (glyph system) and the option to invade
enemy instances.
The four new Lairs in Land of the Dead require special
Glyphs, earned by completing specific PQs. These Glyphs are expended when a
player slays the associated "Boss" of the Lair. Are Glyphs also
associated with the Tomb of the Vulture Lord? Will players need to repeat PQs
for Glyphs over and over again each time they want to regain access to the Tomb
of the Vulture Lord?
Gabe. No. The acquisition of glyphs are
essentially the sub bosses before the final boss fights (Lair bosses) in the
open flow dungeon crawl system that is the Necropolis of Zandri. The Tomb of the
Vulture Lord is a separate linear flow dungeon crawl with its own unique
elements.
During one of the podcasts, you mentioned lockouts in
the Tomb of the Vulture Lord, so we have an example. Suppose an instance is
purged by the attackers and the original group is wiped out after they have
killed some, but not all bosses. The attackers then proceed to kill the rest of
the mobs and bosses in the instance. Will the original group later get a chance
to continue the instance ID at the point where they were killed, or will the
bosses killed by the attacking group count towards the original group's ID,
rendering them unable to kill these bosses during their lockout timer?
Gabe. The attackers, or invaders, of an instance
do not ‘own’ that instance. Kills made by players that do not own an
instance will not save to that instance. Those monsters will respawn.
Additionally, invaders will not receive loot or lockouts for those kills. The
next time the ‘original group’ zones into the Tomb of the Vulture Lord,
their instance will pick back up right after the last boss monster they killed
and received loot for, regardless of what the invaders might have done during a
purge or in the few minutes they have before getting kicked after a purge is
complete.
During testing for Land of the Dead, you no doubt
uncovered many things that required you to take second looks or in some cases,
like the expedition resource adjustment, make changes. Give us a couple of
interesting, specific examples where your Core Testers or Public Testers
revealed things your internal testing did not, and how you decided that feedback
was worthy of a change in your content for 1.3.
Gabe. There were several. All of the Core and
Public testing was extremely helpful, and an integral part in the iterative
process. Here are a few specific examples:
- The Quay of Seftu boss fight originally involved a sort of undead pirate
captain. Everyone commented on how they enjoyed the Screaming Skull Ballista
aspect of stage 2 and requested that it become part of the boss fight. So we
changed the boss to a large, overpowered Tomb Scorpion that would require
use of the screaming skull ballista for six players to manage.
- The Assault of Nekh Akeht and Amsu PQs originally advanced all the way to
the player camps where they engaged in perpetual combat. After mass testing
the camp purging we decided to move those roaming PQs end points to another
area in order to better facilitate the RvR experience at the camp.
- There were originally guards throughout Usirian’s Vault treasury that
you had to deal with when attempting to pillage the room before the boss
came to life. After seeing player reactions, I felt that they detracted from
the ‘avaricious treasure collecting frenzy’ experience, not to mention
tanks usually got shafted as they would have to round up all the mobs and
wouldn’t be able to loot. So I had them removed and altered the stage a
bit.
You've stated that tome unlocks and elite titles await
those who achieve the RvR-themed goals of Land of the Dead. Now, we've seen in
the RvR system proper that sometimes, some players will take the path of least
resistance rather than engage in RvR, avoiding the core concept of your design.
What do you think about concerns that this will happen in Land of the Dead, that
faced with the choice of "phat PvE lewtz" or engaging players in a
dynamic RvR encounter of traps and bosses, that most will choose the former
because it is may appear more rewarding?
Gabe. Sometimes? You are too kind.
Most players are going to participate in PvE here. There is no doubt about that.
The core design of the Land of the Dead is a fun, engaging PvE experience
bolstered by the threat of RvR. Sure, when dungeon control flips there might be
floods of players clashing at the expedition camps or a PQ, but after a bit
since only one realm has respawn rights, the dungeon and all of its parts will
only have pocket RvR experiences. As such, many of the PvE elements found
throughout the dungeon were designed with that in mind – to enhance that
pocket RvR experience (i.e. 6v6 instance purging, bragging rights tome unlocks
you mentioned, etc.). That being said, successful purging is the path of least
resistance for earning tokens which are used to purchase pieces of sets you
cannot get from boss drops, crafting items, wholly unique items, etc.
Give us three great adjectives to describe Land of the
Dead.
Gabe. Haha. I seem to remember this question
being asked of me at a convention some time ago. Was that you? Thrilling,
Engaging and Unique.
