First let me say that you have a talented writer filling out the back story. I must say its already got me hooked and if you can even bring half of that feel to the in game experience your planet should be quite popular. The number one fail in my opinion on all the other planets thus far is failure to properly plan/develop/continue/finish a storyline. The biggest hurtle to any planet partner currently in my opinion is a simplistic profession platform. Hunting is just click click click, mining is largely the same, crafting is just click and walk away. Ive largely given up on MA moving any faster then they are, so anything more interesting wont come anytime soon if ever... The only tool a planet partner has to overcome that limitation is storyline, and to a lesser extent a detailed immersive environment. Ambiance helps a lot, but it wont cut it on its own. I'm assuming that the storyline will be primarily mission driven. As there isn't really any other platform system that can help other then that... Calypso is failing big time here, they take WAY too long between mission updates. Besides that they are almost always lacking in story, you don't care about the people in the missions you are suppose to be helping, you don't care about the goal. (im not even going to elaborate on the cluster that rocktopia and next island have been, such a joke....) Bit of a ramble, so on to my question.... With the above in mind: How often do you plan to release new missions? Really anything more then monthly is far too long, ideally twice a month seems about right. Dont need 100 missions twice a month, but need to keep driving the plot forward, never let off. Detail....are we going to get calypso detail? Lots of glitz but no substance? Or are you striving for more? Let me give you an example of what i mean. Are we going to have a fort with a turret just sitting there firing only when something happens to run into range...ie what we have on calypso. Or are we going to have an area under attack with real ambiance, npcs spawning and charging the fort, sounds of explosions and other war type sounds in the background, flying debris, burning trees, mabye some ground shake(but its very easy to over do it), ETC. Something that draws you in and makes it feel like a battle rather the just a object stuck in the landscape. How often do you plan to release new area/server/whatever? Monthly? Quarterly? One area/server being defined as a 8x8km square on the map. IE medusas head was 1 area, treasure island was 1 area, etc. How many servers/areas will the initial release contain? (im guessing 4-16) Edit: fixed formatting, the board was removing all new lines over and over for some reason, now its working heh.
For now... not that I can answer truely what will happen... I would say wanting a relese every other week would be impossible. The arkadian team may have all materials ready to go but MA cant keep up with the needs for 3 planets so far. ND is already blaming MA for holding or taking too long to get the content they have created into a relese. How much of that is true...too many variables to place blame acurately in that case. Id just sya take things as they come for the first 6 months at least after initial release. By then we should have an accurate idea of what is realisticly possible from all apsects of creation.
Very good post I think that maybe some missions every month would be reasonable, even if it isn't that many. I think that I saw a post from one of the Arkadia Studios staff saying that they will expand their area when there are enough people on the planet. Therefore they wouldn't be able to set a a time frame as you can't guess how many people will join the planet and at what times. This is an extrapolation from the information that we were given though, so official confirmation would be cool Very good point you bring up here. MA could impede the progress of Planet Arkadia. Arkadia Studios may have to anticipate this obstruction and plan ahead to get content out when they want.
Good questions Atraie. I can't reveal all at this stage. Regarding the number of servers, yes it's within the range you suggest The story will definitely keep driving forward, although we won't be adding missions bi-weekly. There are many ways to keep the story moving and missions are just one tool at our disposal. The Frontline News will continue, there will be major and minor story driven events, there will be changes in the environment that reflect story development, and when it's useful we will add new missions. Regarding your question about the fort, I think you make a good point, however we need to work with the tools available. You can expect the game to improve a lot with that type of thing in the future though and we are building to allow that to be integrated seamlessly. I think you'll like the firebase design which Cyrus might share soon.
Excellent thread. One important point is if Arkadia do implement a seige like op suggests and npc's are spawned and kill mobs then issues of npc's kill stealing could have quite a negative impact. This could easily be solved really first people to shoot a mob becomes locked to them and any other person/npc shooting at that same mob do no damage to it and after a few seconds if the mob is not hit it reverts back to normal state i.e. is unlocked (this is to avoid people mob training). MA have never implemented this simple feature and I doubt they ever will... Apart from that I like the idea of Arkadia having a story driven planet. That's the main failing of Calypso.
