[Prime] The Webcast Q&A

Today was the first of the Q&A sessions with Pitch Black Games.  It was a pretty open format, pretty simple.  Some videos, then some Q&A.  They read questions directly from the chat and nothing felt scripted.

Char Creation

So, here’s some info about character creation.  I typed this as they talked, so pardon the paraphrasing   My personal observations are purple.

They just created the character creation video this morning.

First up was the Rodon with spikes.  Background looked pretty sweet.

Showed Salent models, but didn’t have armor on, since it was not in yet.  Armor will float above the body for Salent.

Showed Spy class human.  Very dark looking.

Then showed a heavily armored tank class (Commando I think).

And there’s a naked guy.  He had nice green boxers.  I think I have those too.

Char creation screen loaded in less than 20 seconds.  Not bad.

Salent armor is getting created now.  You can change color of the body, color of the armor, color of energy bands.

Female character are being worked on.  No boob slider.

Taking some time to look at the backgrounds, and the models.  It looks clean.

There are thousands of items in the game as far as armor goes.  They start of similar, but you trick them out pretty quick.

Human starting area is the moon base pictured in character creation.

There is no post-creation customization aside from armor colors.  No barber shop per-se.

Rodon looks pretty beastly.  Reminded me of a Wolfman.  Still doing texture touch-ups.

Rodons start the game naked, but get a skin suit quickly.

Testing Timeline

Professions will be updated and fleshed out going forward.

Testing starts next week (don’t hold us to it).

They will start inviting players into the beta in groups.

Combat will be one of the first things to test.  Been working on combat.  Should be unique feeling.

They’re working on integrating a new patcher/installer from Solid State Networks.  Want to have that available when testing starts.  If they can get it done in the next couple days, testing should start next week.

Likely won’t have all the special abilities, just the basics.

Rodon Video

Butt naked to start.

There was a huge inventory 63 slots on the first screen, but expandable going forward.

Each faction has colors.  Jetpacks reflect this.  UI does not reflect faction colors.

He points where you target.  They track the target.  Shoots where you aim.

Harvesting

Harvesting is pretty neat.  You scan for what you’re looking for.  It detects them and you need to find them and rescan.

Not a typical node system. Whenever you are, it will show what resources lie under the ground around you.  Resources that show up red are further away.  Yellow semi far, green being close. Similar to Archaeology in WoW.

Throw harvester on the ground, it deploys and drills into the ground.  You can leave it there up to 24 hours and it’ll harvest for you.  You have to pick the harvester up when it’s done.  You can’t pick up one of someone else’s.  The amount of harvesters increases with skill.

There are different grades of elements.

Drills will be craft-able.  Each will have a harvest rate, and quantity it can hold.

Each toon can do all the professions, but can only max out one.

Crafted materials/items are some of the best if not the best.  It’s not just a “warm-fuzzy” thing.  There’s more to it than just money.

Harvesters are tracked on map and inventory.

No weight limit on inventory.

A lot of crafted items are openly trade-able.  Secondary market for them.

Some are going to decay.

Items are repairable.

Guild/Grouping

There are alliances for grouping guilds together.

There is a profession that will augment stats and items will do the same.

Targeting

There is a last-attacker system which picks up who attacked you last if you don’t have a target.

Don’t lose target with LOS changes.  Just can’t hit them.

They’re looking at a dual target system, no promises or commitment.

There are speed-boosting abilities. (including sprint)

Healing

Healing will be active.

Healers will spend time being involved, not just watching bars.

Resurrecting mechanic: Allows people to bring em back on the battlefield.  Can do it in-combat.

Will depend on allocation of skillpoints.

Biofuse – Insta usable ability (heal) Can use to help heal other people.

Burden of healing is not always going to be on one class.

Flying

Very viable in combat.

Death from above should be fun.  Still a range factor.

Should require some dexterity to fly and fire off abilities.  Is totally doable though.

Can’t jet-pack around forever.

Death System

Come back as a clone.

Come back to a cloning center or a forward cloning center.

Skill System

Not your typical skill-system.

More akin to a traditional leveling system.

Not going to be a train as you use it.

More than one way to get skill in the game.

Can see their skill level by clicking on people.

Leveling

Less than a month, more than a day to reach 1000.

Can start doing PvP when you’re about 600 to 650.  No need to wait til 900 or 1000.

Emphasis on exploring.  Find stuff out on your own.

Enormous amount of content.

PvE

Want the PvE to be the choice of the player.

You can be solo or do some of the lair type encounters which requires more than one person.

Built to encourage exploration.

Don’t want predefined paths.  No A to B to C.

Do not need to get into a Raid Group to get a specific piece of gear to compete.  Items will be available for purchase from other players and general commerce.

Arenas

Not in the first test.

Instanced, you can fight in it now.  Want to be able to bet on matches.

They are not integral to the game or the story.

Last Man Standing type of scenario.

PvP

Zones in each world open for PvP.  Everyone can go there.

Can all go to Dominus

You set how you want to play your class.

Mines of Dominus sounds a bit like Darkness Falls.  All factions compete for largest prime deposits in the universe.

Do not want canned PvP.  End game is to get the Prime.  Get it from the planet, get it from dead people.

UI/Add-Ons

Add-ons are not in the game right now.

UI is not really mod-able.

Can move all windows around.

Set was open and dynamic. They let the users drive it.

PDA

Can buy items from the PDA.  Need to pick them up still.

Messaging integrated.

Offline messaging (mail)

Grouping

Friends list

Stealth

Pure Invisible

Must be out of combat to enter

Instant

Jet-pack not available while stealthed.

Summary

What an abnormally informative Q&A.  They answered a hell of a lot of questions from the group.  I think we capped out at at around 100 people in there.  Above is what I got out of it while trying to type.  If you were there, feel free to correct/add to it in the comments section below.  Next week there will be another at the same time, at the same URL.  Hope to see everyone there!

-Rancid

PS: They managed to record this one.  Check it out here.

[Prime] Classes and Geography

I can appreciate what Pitch Black (PB) is doing with their information.  While on the surface, it may seem a bit scary to release an announcement that you have a game, and then provide very little information on that game, it certainly does keep people somewhat hooking awaiting that next tid-bit of info.

Over the past couple of weeks, Prime has released two very important chunks of info.  They’re calling them InfoDumps.  That sounds… filthy.  I like it.  Onto the info!

Classes

I’m not shocked about anything here.  That’s a good thing.  There’s a tried-and-true formula out there.  The Trinity.  People blow stuff up.  People stop friends from getting blown up.  When friends get blown up, people un-blow them up.  Get it?  Got it?  Good.  Seems PB is keeping that.  Reading over the basic class descriptions, you get a sense there’s some tanks, some healers and some DPS.  There’s some basic ability info, but as with any pre-beta, you’re not getting too much info, as it’s likely to change.  Head over to the classes section for more details, but I can tell you this:  I’m excited about the Construct. Being able to shape-change on the battle field really caters to my playstyle. I like to get into the thick of it, suck up some heals and just mow stuff over.  I expect to roll this at launch and start complaining about lack of heals about 20 minutes later.

After that, I’m probably going to be looking at the Primalist. It sounds like what I wished my Shaman could be.  With ranged attacks and regenerative abilities, it might be the perfect solo class, or double as a healer.  Time will tell on this.

Worlds

I hate to compare Prime to DAoC, but you just can’t help it.  It seems that PB took a page from the old Darkness Falls of Camelot.  I loved this concept.  Fight for control of the entrance and then the world is yours to plunder…as well as any of the other poor saps to happen to be in there when control swaps.  Hopefully they’ll keep the ability to log off and keep in the zone.  That was somewhat cheeseball in Dark Age, but really kept people on your toes. If you’re going to PvE in a PvP zone, expect to get ass-jammed.  Keep yourself at near-full health and don’t blink.

The bases setup on the surface sound a lot like the Keep System from WAR and DAoC as well.  I’m hoping they tie into the entrance to the mines, or something like that.  This could be the meaningful open-world PvP we’ve been waiting for.  Again, time will tell.

This has me super excited!

You can read up more on the worlds information by heading over to the site: http://www.primeonline.com/universe/worlds/dominus/

[Prime] Something Familiar this Way Comes

I’m about as skeptical as they come when dealing with new MMOs.  I’ve been burned in the past…frequently.

WoW – You sucked up some time, but then I realized you were sucking up the wrong time.  Instead of trying to make me love PvP, you showed me just how tedious you could make PvE.  More stick, less $3 carrots.

WAR – You started off strong.  Then the player base leveled.  Things went all ape-shiat crazy and then you had people getting one-shotted left and right.  Oh and there were DoKs.  Yeah f that.

Aion – I’m not Korean, so I utterly hated this game.  Flying was neat.  Flying poo is neat too, but it’s still flying poo.

Rift – Man, I tried so damn hard to love this game.  I even played an overpowered Rogue.  The soul system was hot.  The graphics were… well ok.  The mechanics were decent enough.  And while the game didn’t tout itself as being full-on open PvP, you had this sorta…. gut feeling that it might just get there.  Instances would always be around, sure.  But the majority of PvP would actually happen out in the world.  Well.  No.  Sorry chap.  I willed myself into playing this game for a couple of months, but after the honeymoon phase wore off, the PvE grind set in.  It went downhill after that.

So that leaves me sitting home with a thumb in my bung just dawdling around.  What now?

Well, I’ve been following Sanya around, reading her blog entries on Metaverse Mod Squad. (You know, it’s like a handbook on how to not be completely inept when it comes to your community management)  She tweeted the other day that she had taken on a real gig (instead of just consulting).  I was somewhat surprised.  Most people don’t go from Contractor to Full-Time unless they have some serious interest in the company.

Imagine my surprise when said company is actually making a three-faction MMO.  Yes. Not two, but three.  Not Horde/Alliance.  Not Order/Destruction.  Not even Defiant/Guardian (which shouldn’t really at war with each other, but f it, who cares).

Prime: Battle for Dominus is all about the PvP.  This doesn’t seem like your jumbo-sized PvE grind fest.  No hours upon hours of getting your bleep bleeped by the bleeping Random Number Generator.  We’re talking PvP from the ground up.

Prime in a Nutshell:

You pick from one of the three basic races: Rodon, Salent and *drumroll* Human.  The story is simple.  “The Salent created the Rodon, and then had to elevate humanity to help the Salent deal with the result. Now they’re all more or less even, and it’s every faction for themselves.” [GamerRiot.com] You fight for control of a central planet.  I’ll call it… oh The Frontiers.  You want access to a mineral called Prime.  It’s used for crafting and a slew of other things.  Sounds a lot like StarCraft.  I don’t mind a little RTS lore in my MMO.  I’ve been known to get a little freaky deaky when the mood is just right.  That’s an important point though.  The IP is their own.  They control it.  They create their own story, they create their own events.  Oh and there will be GM-led events.  Sounds good so far, right?  How about no cross-server queues?  Oh, let’s make that no-instanced battlegrounds period.  We’re talking battlegrounds more along the lines of DAoC.  Call them…training grounds for the real deal.

Beta testing starts soon, and there are supposed to be weekly announcements of information about the game.  The first is slated for this Wednesday or Thursday.  They’re looking at a late 2011 release, which may sound aggressive, but apparently dev work has been going on for over two years now…

So let’s sum this all up:

• Three-faction PvP
• Controls their own IP
• Based on the Hero Engine
• GM-led events
• No Scenarios/Instanced Battlegrounds

Oh, and there are jetpacks.  That’s all you had to say.