Monday 4 May 2015

Armored Warfare: Q&A 3

The third developer Q&A of Armored Warfare is now available, so feast your eyes:

Question: Is there going to be replay system?
Answer: Replays will definitely be a future feature of Armored Warfare but they will not be included in the initial launch. We will go into details about them when the feature is closer to release.

Question: Will there be daily missions?
Answer: Yes, we are working on an objective-based system for PvE Mode, where the players will receive special objectives in each PvE mission. Regarding the PvP objectives however, we do not players to break down the PvP team play by chasing after their individual objectives.

Question: Would it be possible to allow the players to pick the battle that they want to use the double daily reputation bonus in?
Answer: We are considering a system where a player would be able to purchase premium time retroactively - for example buying premium account time after an excellent battle where the premium bonus would be applied to the battle that has just passed. This same mechanism could be in such a case used for daily double bonus purposes as well. Certain base upgrades could also improve the match rewards. Stay tuned for more information.

Question: Will buildings collapse realistically, for example with the use of third party engine such as the “Havok”?
Answer: Yes, we are planning to add realistic object destruction after the release of the game. The reason for the decision to introduce this feature only later on is the complicated implementation that would otherwise delay the release of the game.

Question: What about realistic vehicle classes? I saw in the video that heavy tanks are treated as main battle tanks and the tank support vehicles (like the Terminator) as AFV’s, that doesn’t sound very realistic?
Answer: In order not to complicate the gameplay with many sub-classes, some vehicle classes (such as the heavy tanks) are incorporated into wider categories (in this case, main battle tanks). The historical designation of tank classes is quite complicated (for example some vehicles counted as main battle tanks are actually medium tanks in their original designation). In Armored Warfare, a vehicle's class has to do more with what special Class Features it will have access to. As such, we often evaluate what class features would work well with the real-world configuration of the vehicle. When a vehicle has an absolute designation that should be respected, such as a Main Battle Tank, we will. But many of the non-tank vehicles featured in the game did not have official designations or were classified differently depending on the source, so we often had to pick a final class for the vehicle based on how we expected it to be used in a match. On the other hand, some choices (like the mentioned Terminator tank support vehicle) do deserve a second look. We plan to eventually introduce more classes to the game, such as the self-propelled mortars (an artillery sub-class) - but that depends on the overall artillery solution.


Question: Will there be premium vehicles? If so, how do the developers decide whether a vehicle should be a premium or a regular one?
Answer: Yes, we are planning to have premium vehicles in Armored Warfare. Generally speaking, they will be weaker than their regular counterparts since we do not want to have “pay to win” elements in Armored Warfare. As for the selection itself – we have an extremely wide choice of post-war vehicles at our disposal and considering there is no need to force ourselves to implement the vehicles of certain nations; we do not have to utilize really obscure prototypes or even blueprint or fake tanks in our game. Premium vehicles in Armored Warfare will be based on machines actually built in metal. There is no rule that a premium vehicle has to be a prototype though; it is possible for us to utilize even mass-produced tanks as premium vehicles. The reason for this decision is to keep the amount of prototypes in the game to a minimum and to focus on vehicles with overall good traits instead of various failed “one trick ponies”. You will find that both the premium and regular vehicles in Armored Warfare are comfortable to play, we do not want to force our players to drive uncomfortable vehicles to earn credits – and by “uncomfortable”, we mean for example vehicles with bad gun depression angles, with very low speed or with heavy armor compensated by very poor guns.

Question: Will there be historical tank battles?
Answer: No. Armored Warfare will have its own storyline from the near future, such battles would not fit. Another issue we want to avoid is the one of political sensitivity – we are not interested in having players playing - for example - the Ukraine conflict re-enactment.

Question: Will there be historical emblems and inscriptions?
Answer: It is possible that we will introduce such historical decals (with the exception of the decals belonging to criminal organizations that are banned in multiple countries, such as the Waffen SS).

Question: What about garage updates, will there be any?
Answer: We are planning to have the players running their own mercenary bases with various bonuses. As part of this system, players will be able to obtain larger, fancier garages that come with various perks. More on that will be disclosed later since the system is still in development.

Question: Will there be mixed gender crews?
Answer: Absolutely, in Armored Warfare, women and men are completely equal. Women will also have a woman voiceover.

Question: How big of a priority does the PvE development have when compared to PvP?
Answer: Roughly equal. We plan to introduce the PvE gameplay as soon as it is ready.

Question: Will there be a platoon finder mechanism or a status where you show you your friends and other players that you would like to play in platoons?
Answer: Yes, we are planning to implement these features.

Question: Do you plan to avoid monsters with very large guns, such as the FV215b project with its 183mm cannon?
Answer: Yes. We have no interest in implementing inherently imbalanced vehicles into the game – vehicles that have one extremely strong element (such as the massive gun in your case) while being poor in everything else. We also do not plan to add large gun tank destroyers with automatic guns.

Question: Will camouflages be kept realistic?
Answer: Armored Warfare is a game about mercenaries - some of them are known as very colorful and creative personalities :) Therefore, it is completely possible for “unorthodox” camouflage schemes to appear along with the standard ones.

Question: Have you considered not putting SPG's in the game?
Answer: The recent Alpha test was the first look at our attempts to innovate on the possibilities of making artillery a fun feature in the game rather than something that incites endless anger from all sides. We have made a number of tuning adjustments based on data collected from the tests and player feedback and would like to continue iterating on the current mechanics to see if we can get the class to a fun place as a whole. Ultimately, it is not our goal to force something into the game that just doesn't fit. The cost of the art creation and time spent working on the features do not justify keeping it in if it doesn't work out. All we ask is for the chance to try and for our testers to keep an open mind about the possibilities and continue to provide us with feedback about where we're at with it.

Source.

No comments:

Post a Comment