Interview with Maxim (adm.) transcript, April 18, 2016
Mirii: Hi Maxim (adm.)!
Maxim (adm): Hello, greetings to all players and all listeners! Glad to be on the air again with you. Ask away!
So what kinds of alternative classes should we expect for each faction? Which factions will be first to get an alt class?
I think most players are aware that we’re getting ready to roll out an alt class for Dark Elves. Making the new ability work as intended – I’m talking about ‘Invisibility’ – was the biggest challenge. It’s already designed, developed and tested now. However, we have yet to decide on the unique racial ability for this alt class. Once we’re done with that, the alt class will be ready for rollout. Either Dwarves or Tribals will be next to get an alt class. And again, the trickiest thing is coming up with a new racial ability. It has to be unique and interesting for players to use, and it has to bring diversity into the game.
After these three alt classes are ready, what’s up next? Will you introduce a brand new faction? Something like Elementals or Swamp Dwellers maybe?
Something like that will probably appear in the game at some point or another, but right now we’re focusing on alt classes for DEs, Dwarves and Tribals. A new faction might come next.
Can you share your ideas of a unique racial ability for the Dark Elf’s alt class? What can the players expect?
There’s nothing certain that I can share right now, nope.
How do you envision the new DE alt class? Will they be oriented toward magic or might, or maybe focus on Nature or Holy spells?
Honestly speaking, we’re not keen on making another ‘zap-zap’ spell-caster, seeing how that doesn’t make for tactical combat. So I don’t think this alt class is going to be built around Chaos.
Switching to tournaments, will there be some kind of tournament schedule? What can our PvP fans expect?
We don’t have a set tournament schedule. That would make it difficult to roll out special events or updates while a tournament is in progress. In fact, the reason we waited so long to start the Paired Tournament that’s going on right now is that we expected to release a new Campaign. Unfortunately, it’s taking longer than we anticipated. It’s almost ready, but not quite a 100%. It was tentatively planned for rollout about three weeks ago, but there were just too many new features that needed to be tested thoroughly. So we ran the Paired Tournament.
How about faction skills and combat levels, will you be raising those maximums? Some time ago you said FSL 13 is not going to happen. How do you feel about it now?
Indeed, several players have already leveled up all of their factions to FSL 12. If we don’t end up introducing a new faction in the near future, we’ll consider making FSL 13 possible. The game has got to make progress, one way or another.
How do you envision that? Will FSL 13 grant Attack, Defense and Initiative bonuses? Will it be different from FSL 12? Perhaps grant a Luck or Morale bonus at last?
I see it the opposite way, in other words, FSL 13 should grant relatively small stat bonuses. Its mere presence would already be an advantage. FSL and passive faction skills should be quite enough.
Any updates to the Rangers’ Guild planned?
Truth be told, it’s due for rebalancing, just like the Thieves’ Guild. We want to minimize faction disparity, when it’s too easy to level up in a guild with one faction but too difficult with others. For example, Dwarves are a very easy faction to level up in the Thieves’ Guild, whereas all factions should offer the same difficulty. We don’t just want to pile things all together, but average them out, to make it easier for Knights and some other factions while raising the difficulty for Dwarves. That’s what we’re set on doing.
Will Rangers get higher-level artifacts? Right now they’re limited in level, like the Thieves’ Guild artifacts used to be. First there was only the Thief Set, and then we got a set for the higher levels. Are you considering doing something similar for Rangers?
As far as I remember, Ranger artifacts aren’t that bad at all. The fact they’re available on lower levels doesn’t make them any worse. If you compare them with thieves’ artifacts, they’re on par with the Plunderer Set. So I don’t see any need to introduce new artifacts for Rangers.
Will you make more official ‘shop’ artifacts?
Theoretically, yes, there will eventually be alternative shop artifacts to the ones players have now. Unfortunately, we’ve had too much on our plate lately to design and introduce new shop artifacts for high-level players.
What kinds of alternative artifacts would these be, in your view?
Mostly they would have slightly different stats, a lower cost, but the same AP.
So it seems we have a continuous event going on, doesn’t it? What with the Bow, Dagger and Sword... Anything else you’re considering as an alternative to shop artifacts?
That’s not the alternative artifacts I meant. Perhaps they would be better called ‘additional’ or ‘supplementary’ artifacts. It’s likely that such artifacts will be introduced, but we will try to make them analogous to the current shop artifacts in terms of stats – not superior. They might be more useful in hunts or maybe in other specific types of combat, but won’t supersede existing shop artifacts altogether.
Do you plan to modify the Gamblers’ Guild in any way?
Some bugs need fixing, but other than that I’m not aware of any possible development ideas for Gamblers’ Guild. If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to hear and discuss them.
There has been a lot of talk about castle buildings. Will we get any new buildings that might raise the army count for high-level players, or perhaps diversify the game for lower-level players?
We will definitely not be introducing more buildings to increase army numbers, as that would imbalance clan wars even further. High-level players already have a big advantage, and more bonuses would make them even more difficult to deal with. As for diversity-increasing military buildings, those would imbalance the Watchers’ Guild, Campaigns and so forth, so we’re not planning anything like that either.
How do you see the future of PvP? What are you planning to add in that area?
We’re thinking about running a PvP tournament that would divide the whole Empire into two voluntary-participation camps. There are some concerns though about making sure that matches are found for all challengers. If some players join one side, enough others should join the other side so that all the matches do take place. We want to avoid the kind of situation that tends to happen in Mixed Tournaments: you enlist and wait for a match, but then none takes place. We must somehow provide for all these possible situations. If no suitable match is found, perhaps an AI opponent will step in instead.
So will this be like a PvP war?
Not exactly a PvP war – more of a PvP tournament with two opposing sides.
When is the next war coming? Have you changed your mind about wars? Why are there lots of events but no wars at all?
A war is a kind of event too, only more drawn out. The issue is that the longer an event lasts, the fewer players can get adequate value for their participation and effort. Look at how things ended up in all the previous wars. People join the war and fight for two weeks, or 10 to 14 days anyway. They do as many battles as they can, going all out in hope for some kind of reward. Then the award ceremony takes place, and most players are unhappy – because they didn’t win those rare artifacts. But that’s the point of rare artifacts. They cannot be given out to everyone as they would not be rare anymore. 3% of all players or so get those valuable trophies, while thousands of others are pissed off. They say, "Hey, I fought so many battles, ground down so many artifacts, and I didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt?” Well, other players also fought a lot, they used stronger artifacts, and they ended up winning better rewards. That’s what happened in all the wars we’ve had so far. So we’re now doing events where there’s a more level playing field, where players don’t have to waste precious artifacts, or enchanted artifacts, and the battles go quicker too. We even allow an extra couple of days to use up all battle attempts so that more people can find time in their busy schedules for the event.
But didn’t those valuable artifacts make a good incentive for players, something to strive for? The recent events, on the other hand, don’t seem worth investing in. Will these mechanics change to make events more worthwhile financially? For example, the Survilurg event gave us the Survilurg set which was totally worth it. Why was that particular event different from the others, which aren’t worthwhile?
It’s never our intention to make an event ‘not worthwhile’ financially for players. First, we provide a reward for each victory – creature armaments, better skill points and others – which is something not all players take into account. Considering all these goodies, we don’t design events to pay for themselves purely in gold terms. And in the end, about 60% to 70% of event participants receive trophy artifacts. Artifact values are derived from this rather large number, so they usually turn out to be quite modest. If we were to reward only the Top 100 participants, an event would definitely be worthwhile for those 100 players, but not for all others. Would that be better for players overall? Do players really need a system where a select few get huge rewards while all other get humble medals?
Well, the Survilurg event was worthwhile financially. What happened there that didn’t with other events?
We didn’t know beforehand whether the event would be worthwhile financially. In creating the Survilurg set, we implemented an interesting idea that would foster gold accumulation on the market and entice players to plan ahead and save up for one or more artifacts. We focused on the process itself and how to make it interesting, not about whether it would make a good investment for players.
You introduced that set and now people are asking, “Are you going to revisit and maybe revise the stats of those sets and their bonuses, considering the new rules for using no-limit enchanted artifacts and how this affects the overall playability?” Many sets have been created, the Survilurg set first of all, then Unruly Barbarian and Amphibian, as well as many different ways to put pieces of those sets together. The Tribal set is not complete. So you introduce a new set that’s got very powerful stats, for an event. Why don’t you make more sets like that for other events? Even old ones?
It just happened by chance that the Survilurg set ended up so powerful. We didn’t expect players would perform so well and accumulate so many resources, which translated into high-durability artifacts.
So you miscalculated?
I wouldn’t say we miscalculated, but we expected fewer high-durability artifacts to enter the game.
Looking at the past sets that have been introduced, do you plan to revise the old sets and their bonuses? Or will we continue to have only two or three playable new sets which are more powerful than the old ones?
No, we’re not going to revise their bonuses. I don’t think it would be fair for players who are holding on to them. One moment your old set is just collecting dust, and next moment — poof, the bonuses are modified and the set is now worth ten times what it was. Why should it go up in price? The game lives on and progresses, new artifacts appear from time to time, so older ones should not be hoarded. You should equip them and fight in them, use them to level yourself up, complete missions, fight in clan wars — not hold on to them.
As for Clan wars, what can we expect? Are any mechanics going to change?
We try not to put too much pressure on players. That’s what the latest changes were aimed at. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to devote as much time to clan wars as we’d like. We typically collect a lot of feedback, a lot of opinions and think about how to combine them all together. We modify the clan war engine and see what comes out. Right now we’re monitoring the current system, drawing some conclusions and devising some ways to improve it. I know there are problems with spies infiltrating clans. Players have put forth different suggestions, for example masked challenges that hide the challenger’s identity, but making this work is more complicated than it might seem. We know about the issues players are experiencing and we’re putting thought into resolving them.
Is anything going to change about clans?
What do you mean?
Any changes planned for clans at all? Maybe new clan buildings, anything that would interest clan players? Anything new that you’re planning to bring in?
Nothing new is planned for now. We have a few hypothetical ideas, like a castle combat engine, which could be potentially implemented. But how to make it interesting for all parties involved – not just one clan that would attack and bully others around or whatever? That is the question.
How about play-testing it on Survilurgs?
What exactly? Do you mean Survilurgs storming your castle and you defending inside it? There’s a problem with that. As the first castle event demonstrated, most battles turned out to be very defense-oriented. That’s the main issue. Many players storming castles chose defensive builds, even though they were supposed to attack all out. Lots of defensive battles are long and tedious. So if you sit inside a castle and defend against Survilurgs, that’s going to be a defensive battle again. Yes, we can implement it and run it, but the fights will go on forever and just bore everyone.
Our next question is about the player numbers. There aren’t as many people online as there used to be. Are you seeing this too? Are you taking steps to attract new players and keep existing players in the game?
Yes, we are expanding our promotional activities to attract new players. We’ve also developed a new user interface to be deployed both for the web and mobile devices. However, it turned out more complicated and took more effort than we anticipated – half a year of work total. When to roll it out is a good question. For new players it would of course work very well, seeing more vibrant graphics from the very start and all. At the same time, we want to keep the old interface available for old players, just in case they don’t find the new one user-friendly and have a difficult time adjusting to it. Because it’s going to be completely different.
How about the Enchanters’ Guild, any changes planned in that department?
If we introduce 13% enchanting, this will only make fights costlier. The price of elements will go up and everyone will be ordering 13% or 14% enchantments. I don’t see any sense in raising the current maximum.
And the Smiths’ Guild?
Players have suggested ideas on how to simplify the transfer of artifacts for repair. We’ve heard them, and now all we need to do is implement this suggestion. Right now, a smith needs to accept an item into their inventory to repair it and then give it back. The suggestion is to create a ‘Repair’ button to be able to repair an item without taking hold of it. I agree that this would be much easier and a useful improvement for players.
Some are saying the game is moving towards ‘kill the mob’ and away from PvP action. There are many events now where you fight AI opponents, but no PvP events to speak of.
The events you’re talking about were mainly designed to collect statistics for the Watchers’ Guild, new mob-killing campaigns and single-player events. As far as PvP and PvE in general, more players actually go for PvE. Most PvE players, who like quick short fights so to speak, then go fight some PvP whenever they feel like it. This doesn’t mean everything has to be about PvP. If we make a PvP event where you actually fight against other players – not two players on the same side of the battle and AI on the other – this will mean 50% winning rate on average. And when players don’t win as many fights, it doesn’t make them happy. Compare that with fighting neutral armies. Our strength-balancing mechanism for neutral armies is working very well. We are able to give a player a 100% winning rate against neutrals and still make the battles interesting and challenging, so that you cannot just win them ‘on autopilot.’ Right now you can choose battles based on your level where you have to think and devise a winning strategy – and that’s the kind of turn-based combat players like.
So does that mean we will not be having PvP events?
What is a PvP event? Same as a tournament, except we divide the Empire into two halves. I’m not against PvP events, but they won’t be happening as often as PvE events.
Will we see peaceful guilds?
By peaceful guilds do you mean guilds in which you level up without fighting?
Well, we’re interested to know about any and all guilds, both peaceful and other kinds. If you plan to introduce new guilds, what would they be about?
We don’t have any peaceful guilds planned for now. The only idea we’ve entertained is an Alchemists’ Guild where you’d craft potions or something like that. But what kinds of potions could you make in a game? There are lots of games that offer stat-increasing potions, and players aren’t too thrilled about someone drinking lots of potions and overpowering everyone else. In the end, that would lead to potions becoming a de facto must for certain kinds of battles. So we’ve abandoned this guild idea.
Well, potions don’t have to give stat bonuses. They could give faction skill points or something else. You could limit the impact of potions, for example by making them drinkable once a month at most.
If potions gave faction skill points, there would be players just drinking potions and leveling up their factions without fighting at all. That’s not good either.
OK, how about combat guilds?
There will be a guild based on Campaigns. We expect to set it up about the same time as we roll out the second Campaign. It will be different from other combat guilds in that not every campaign battle will grant guild points. You’ll get guild points based on the total performance points you’ve earned in all campaigns. We’ll also revise the performance point system with this new guild in mind.
Will this guild grant stat increases? What bonuses?
Yes, most likely stat increases.
Speaking of campaigns, we win estate certificates in those. When someone collects 100 certificates, what do they do, just click and get an estate? Or will there be some additional costs?
No additional costs. There’ll be a ‘Build Estate’ button; you click it, you lose 100 certificates, and you get an estate.
With zero stars, in that particular sector?
Yep, zero stars. We’ve never sold built-up estates in the Empire.
Question about pets. We’ve had Squashmen for so long, but still no pets.
It’s not really clear on what to do with a pet. If we introduced pets, how would they be used? If you were to bring your pet to battle, soon enough fighting battles would stop being interesting. And how would this affect the Watchers’ Guild? We thought about creating a special category of battles where pets would be allowed to fight and level up over time. But again, what battles could you use your pet in so it wouldn’t break anything? The pet would keep leveling up and eventually grow so strong, like Squashman, that you couldn’t use it in any combat without spoiling it for all players. Well, not spoil, but make them too easy, which isn’t right.
OK, and here goes our usual question about the Commanders Guild. Do you plan to ever bring back same-level group battles like we had in the old CG? Maybe give us the possibility to do that once a week, or once a month, so people of the same CL could fight 2 on 2, 3 on 3? And maybe allow shop enchantments or no-limit enchantments?
Yes, we could bring it back, but as you may remember the problem was that some challenges were going unmatched. The same problem remains. If we do bring such battles back, they should definitely occupy a certain time window. We’ll need to determine what time during the day is convenient for players to engage in such battles so they don’t coincide with Quick Tournaments or anything else. We’ll need to make sure that matches are found for all challengers.
Do you want to find this out by monitoring things, or maybe run a poll on the server?
We’ll look at what times Quick Tournaments begin, what other activities are going on at what times, and find a time window for those battles.
So you do plan to bring back same-level CG battles, don’t you?
Why not? As long as the issue of challenges going unmatched is resolved, as long players are joining those battles – it should work.
Are you planning to run a thief event?
Thief events have interesting mechanics, but we need to make sure it’s not lopsided. Right now there are many more thieves than rangers or players who aren’t in either guild. Most of these are high-level players, 90% of whom are thieves. If we run an event like that, then we’d need to team up rangers with AI opponents against thieves. I’m not sure how well this could be balanced. We can’t have battles whose outcome is clear from the start, even before any action starts. Making these battles interesting is the main challenge.
Let’s talk about Survival Tournaments. Are you planning to reform them? Because lately they’ve had too few players. Are you planning to add anything to the tournament, maybe enhance it somehow?
We don’t have any concrete ideas about this. Survival tournaments are at a stage where inexperienced players have a difficult time competing with old-timers, so novices gradually drop out. We’d like to make this type of competition exciting for all players, new and experienced alike, but at the moment we have no clue how to do that. We could give out random rewards or maybe something else, I’m not sure – we’d have to think hard about the rewards so they could go not only to the top players. But it makes no sense to reward someone who took last place, just because they participated, you know.
Will you be running checks to identify market bots? How do you plan to deter the use of bots? The players who enroll at facilities, buy out artifacts and get enterprises working often complain about the game being full of bots.
We do fight bots from time to time, but not as often as we’d like because it’s pretty time-consuming. It takes a few days: first we set everything up, then we double-check everything, and after several months we check everything again. It’s not all done in an instant. We have mechanisms that monitor bots and log their activity. Then we look at them, decide which ones to check, investigate and block those characters.
OK, then we move on to work enroll bots and the Flash captcha. You changed the captcha recently but then switched back to the old one. Do you plan to make any changes to how players enroll for work?
We’ve had different thoughts about that captcha. Yes, we want to change something about it, because the way it’s done now, when you just enter that code from the image, is very primitive and it kind of robotizes you. There’s nothing exciting about going to that page to enroll just to earn some gold. We want to make it less boring. Maybe like we did for Aprils Fools’ Day, that ‘find the cat’ thing, only more LWM-themed, like ‘find the farmer’ or ‘find the skeleton.’ Not to make it difficult for players, but for bots.
Are you going to run tournaments on a regular basis?
As I’ve already mentioned, having a set schedule for tournaments makes it problematic to find time for events. A constant tournament, for example a Minor Tournament every month, would become less and less exciting. What we need is probably something regular but not too frequent.
Will there be a market for creature armaments? How do you envision the development of creature armaments?
There won’t be a market, I can tell you that. Creature armaments were conceived as items that cannot be sold, that you can only collect in combat. We have yet to see a player collect all armaments for all their factions – not even all those granting +2 stat points, but even +1. There is still something to collect. When players emerge who have amassed every possible armament for their faction, then we’ll start thinking about updating things.
Regarding shop artifact economics, will anything change in how facilities produce artifacts? We’ve had a recent shortage of mithril ore – do you know what caused it? Did you notice this and did you respond in any way?
We will make it possible to produce artifacts that are currently available in the shop but not yet produced in facilities. As for mithril ore, this is not an area I work on so I did not notice the shortage. I guess there was some omission or oversight.
Will these be some brand new artifacts that you plan to introduce in the shop?
Those too, but I mean shop artifacts that currently cannot be produced.
What level limitation will the new shop artifacts have?
I’m not sure about the exact level. We’ll have to see which levels are missing a choice of artifacts. If I remember correctly, it’s high levels, 17 and above, that are missing alternatives. Lower levels could do with better assortment too.
It looks like we’ve asked most of the questions we had for you. Let me ask the most general question: What should players expect? What major reforms or updates are you rolling out in the short term?
Right now we’re working hard on campaigns and cool campaign features. We want to create a new small world for players to enjoy and have fun with. There will be different mechanics, like multiple paths to getting creatures to join your party. That’s what we’re focusing on. As soon as the engine is ready, we’ll get things rolling. Since we created the first campaign, red-ant has been devoting a lot of time to the structure, using the current engine and populating it. Someone else will be able to join in and start making campaigns – it’s not such a difficult task for someone who’s used to the engine.
So, we get campaigns and a new guild based on those. Anything else? What are you planning to work on next and to roll out next?
An alternative Dark Elf class will follow. Then Magic Guilds level 5, then clan war mechanics, then PvP components in events, and then some progress with tournaments.
When you say ‘progress tournaments,’ are you referring to splitting the Empire into two sides or something else?
We need to bring back Blindfold Tournaments, or Team Blindfold tournaments to be more specific. The problem was that we needed to update and tune the AI for this specific tournament format. It needs to perform better in the tournament, and the armies have to be revised and updated.
Regarding future plans, can players expect anything new this year?
Absolutely. We’ll definitely have new events.
Will these events feature new mechanics, something totally different?
You mean not Portals of Time again? Of course we want to do something new, we’re tossing around different ideas and we’ll definitely bring some of them to life.
How about new event creatures? Portals of Time have had the same creatures for a while now. Necropolis isn’t finished, and neither are Dark Elves. Have you put this on hold or will you continue to work on it?
We’re going to finish Necropolis for sure, but we haven’t even started with Dark Elves. We thought of doing an event where you build up and defend a castle, but we ran into the same problem of all battles being too defensive. We plan to make this event so that you start in some castle, build it up, fortify it, and face stronger and stronger enemies. That will make it interesting.
Going back to those three alt classes, many players are concerned they might break the balance of factions. You said earlier you don’t see the alt DE class as a direct-damage spell-caster, and you’ve shared no vision for alt Tribal and Dwarf classes. The latest trend seems to be hybrid classes who are neither spell-casters nor pure attackers. Will this trend continue with the other factions?
Most likely it will, because builds that are a good mix between might and magic make for more tactical combat, forcing you to buff stacks and employ other little tactics at certain points in a battle. Chaos casters end up taking a defensive stance or running away, which makes combat less interesting. Attackers always try to strike as quick as possible without exposing themselves to danger. That’s why we’re keen on creating a new character, one that isn’t a pure might character or a pure chaos caster. So, yes, that’s how hybrids come about.
So the new DE alt class will be hybrid, attacker or direct-damage spell-caster?
Well, DEs are already ample attackers and they can also be played as a chaos caster. So we’ll need to come up with something new for them.
What magic guild will they have?
We haven’t decided that yet.
But they will have some magic guild, won’t they? Usually the second or third tier magic guild is allowed. Do you have one of them in mind?
Probably Darkness magic will stay. I mean, they’re Dark Elves after all.
So we’ll see them specializing in Darkness magic? I remember you said in an earlier interview that they would use Holy magic, or maybe even Nature magic.
The new DE alt class could use Nature. ‘Holy Dark Elf’ just doesn’t sound right.
When hybrids are introduced, they seem to do poorly against mobs. Do you take this into account?
Sure, a hybrid may not be as good in hunts or Mercenaries’ Guild battles – it could perform worse than the original class of the same faction. Nothing can be done about that. But at the same time it can have an advantage in other types of battles. And since players are now free to change their class or even faction at any time, you can easily switch to another class that’s good in hunts just for a hunt. I don’t see this as a problem at all. There’s no need to beef up a class for hunts specifically.
You mentioned that Dwarves are having an easier time in the Thieves’ Guild and perhaps that should be somehow rebalanced. But Dwarves are actually underperforming in hunts, Mercenaries’ Guild battles and maybe some others. Other factions have alternative classes to switch to for certain types of battles. So if you rebalance Dwarves, who have no alt class to go to, what choice will they be left with? There are quite of them in the Empire.
Dwarves are overperforming in TG because their TG coefficient is low. When we changed TG mechanics, the Dwarf faction was still very new. We had no ready-made solutions for them at that time, so we applied a lower difficulty coefficient. It’s still in effect today. You could say this is an oversight of ours that Dwarves are so good at TG. The reason for their numerous victories is not that the Dwarf faction is too strong, but that their coefficient is low, because it was set without being based on real statistical data.
We have another question about guilds. Look, some people want to play PvP, but they don’t want to grind to level up. There have been many concerns that successful PvP is impossible without constantly leveling up your character. Some people cannot really level up their guilds because they’re afraid of spoiling their faction skill level. Will anything change in this respect?
Suppose we introduced a potion, a ‘Guild Potion’ if you will, that would temporarily up a player’s guild levels to almost the same levels as their opponent’s, maybe the same level minus one. Then all the players who are leveling up their guilds – and we have lots of those – will be very frustrated. They put in so much effort in gaining some sort of advantage, and bam, someone just drinks a potion and is practically on par with them.
Can you recall anything else you’re planning to introduce or work on this year?
We should first finish up what’s already in progress. It’s not all done in a day, if you think about it.
Thank you, Maxim (adm.)! I believe that’s all the questions we have for today. I look forward to more interviews with Maxim and hopefully we’ll speak again not in two or three years but later this year. We’ll make sure to collect a new long list of questions for you! Is there anything you’d like to wish our players in closing?
I wish you fun and productive gaming, and I hope you stay with us. We’re going to create new interesting game experiences for you, and I’ll try to come by more often. I know we’ll have something to talk about.