LOOOONG Summary of the 2nd David Dobson Interview.

Okay David looked it through and said it was good - apart from some spelling.
So here it is.. the loooooooong Summary of the interview.

Clothing blueprints – expecting them in the January update. Boots, sunglasses, pants, tops and maybe more by January. Clothing will be unlimited.

Missions on Tuesday – 12 IFN missions + existing Oro mission. Rewards will be big especially for final stages. Will be a mix of skills, attributes and items. Trophy Heads to show off – put on the wall. Blueprints as rewards too. January update will have a lot of “new player” missions.
Oro rewards has been changed – added something extra. Those who has already completed this mission will be given this something automatically.
Oratan more involved on a story level. Mission later will include killing Oratan anyways. Not going to double up on missions for those with IFN mission.

Treasure Hunting: Date in his mind is June 2012. Overall theme for the planet. Finding RL treasure (Alienware items) in loot. Backstory part of it.
The mining part – premium choice. Materials/stackables AND Items – using “SOOTO” to find Ancient Arkadian items like Swords and Armors. Miners will enjoy this part of treasure hunting. Will be possible to loot high MU items from mining. 200-400 new blueprints going in using those materials.

Alienware mice in mining – none looted yet. Not enough miners. Mining got the best odds of getting a mouse atm. Already talking to AW about more products to come in, so eager to get these mice looted. – GO MINING! Any mining finder can find a mouse. Mice have 0 impact on loot. It’s an added bonus. – Silent HOF.

Underground: AFTER treasure hunting. Late next year. Need bigger player base. Wasn’t supposed to be in at release. Area under 8 coins. Heavily focused towards TH and mining. Will be able to drive/fly around in there.

Caraboks are hunted a lot – 2 mice dropped from them. – we need more Carabok spawns – maybe January. Maybe increase of Quarry on Tuesday. Can’t slip something in before Tuesday. Maybe when IFN comes, demand for Carabok spawns will fall.

More caves will come, and they will be used in future missions. Ongoing development at 8 coins. New player mission will have a long explore mission later.

Quarry overhaul Tuesday. Area flattened. Landing pad and command post gone. Outside terminals and shop booths. More going in in January. Constantly improving the Quarry. Outside Terminals a request from players.

Focus not on earning money now – focus on making Ark the premium place to be –Want to make EU world class.
Drop rates on blueprints and generic loot – 2 separate issues since launch.
Muscle oil will drop from more mobs on Tuesday. Can be taken to read other generic loots will come too – not sure though. He wants feedback on forum after update about what drops what.
Blueprints: Arkadian and Shared BP – random probability 50/50. Lots of shared blueprints will make Ark ones not drop as often as the system will have more shared to pick from. Don’t want to use shared mobs.
MA agreed to make new code that will give local blueprints higher probability to drop. Will affect all planets. Maybe a 70/30 chance for Ark BP’s over Shared ones. Around a total of 800 Ark blueprints available now.

Long range guns: Laser and BLP around range 110-120 – still finalizing stats and availability. Maybe January. Part of Ark and Law series. Matching the Ark-10,20 and so on. Will have a new name like the Deserts/Arctic/Jungle.
Swords: this Tuesday – 40 new swords going in. all looted.
Clubs and Power fists not in development as of now. Likely coming along with Treasure Hunting.

Unlimited Weapon Amps/smuggler versions? Tied to player growth – maybe march.

New series of FAPs very soon. Waiting for them to go in. Cross fingers for Tuesday.

Arkadia’s first vehicle: single seater, hover pod, run on oil, working on new player version. Aim is to put in a number of versions. Aiming to have them in in the January update, but fine tuning is missing. Picture in the newsletter.

Attachments for vehicles. The pod is compact. Has attachment points on it. Attachments used for bling. Customizing the look – not what it does. A little like a spoiler on a car IRL.

Looking for more in game investment options than just land areas and estates. Something between LA’s and Estates in price. 1000-5000 USD range. Nothing worked on atm. Probably not until 2013.

PVP-areas not coming right now. Not high on the agenda. Want to do more than just deeming an area PVP.

Rookie mining gear will come in January. It will be a full set of rookie items. FAP, Vehicle, Finder, Gun. Part of the new player experience.

Event system someday. No set date yet. Want feedback on forum on what type of event area we want.

Generic mind force chips is coming in on Tuesday.

Anymore thoughts towards alternative use for sweat? Nothing at this stage. Will follow the work on the new player experience.

Paints and things like that to make e.g. Camo Textures? On the list, but not being developed as of yet. After Treasure Hunting.

Players helping Arch Soc uncovering the truth about the ancient Arkadians. Related to treasure hunting. Ancient Ruins will be rebuilt with help from players. Not sure if by events or missions yet. Due mid next year for the start of it. 3 main ruin sites. Will end up being fully functioning cities. Dig sites will be transformed by the help of the players into whatever it used to be.

Real life merchandise will come when player base is big enough. Else cost and pricing will be too high. Not looking at it for profit. Looking at players buying at close to cost price + shipping.

The new creature coming this update will be good for midlevel players and teams. Scoria (spelling?). Will be at 8 coins. Northern Parts of 8 coins, with Teladons at the south.

Weapon sounds being fixed soon. Found issue this week. Aiming for January.

DNA parts in the future. Just not near future. Model of the DNA sample is done. Need private land areas first. New mobs LA only like e.g. Treasure Island and their Furors and mobs like that.

Up to January 90% of resources going into mission and storyline development. Especially for new players.

Robots will come, but no ETA. The mob that might be in development might be a robot.

New weapon will come that people will find interesting. Will be put in alongside Combat FAPs. Very close.

Mixed spawns will come. It’s a matter of mixing mobs with similar stats/level. Don’t want to put Yuka and Osteloks together. Has to make sense.

No plans for Arkadian space vehicles. Space controlled by MA not Arkadia.

No current plans for Arkadian specific mind force. May be looked at next year. Wants to create MF chips useful for team environments and instances.

Decided against Halloween gifts because Singapore doesn’t really know about that. Maybe Chinese new year’s gifts. Looking at gifts, but needs to make sense for Arkadia Studios (Asia).

Sea based fort events for playing with boats. MAYBE 2nd half of next year. Already discussed a water based area like that.

lootable mission items will come. Maybe as some form of key to enter an instance.

Hopefully they will make motorbikes, but they require development on the way players sit/act when on a motorbike. Hover pods will act as a futuristic version of motorbikes. Maybe even a hoverboard (requested by Cyrus).

David believes in separate Auction history/Markup for each planet. He is punking MA.

Read the background story!!

 

I like to add that David made a reference to a hovercraft, hinting that the pod will go on both water and land!

Really interested to see how this is gonna turn out

I want an Oro statue !!!

Were those in the backstory or are they something else than mobs??

Combat FAP's maybe for this update, so new weapon as well??

I don't mind very small mobs combined with bigger mobs, as long as it is not the other way around.

agreed, whats this halloween about anyway

forts are not my thing, but more stuff in/on the water should be cool !

Think this is what has been talked about earlier and are called 'conditions' and could bring a very different type of gameplay to the game for sure !

As long as they don't make it a motorbike literally, but make something futuristic of it, like the hoverpod. There is no need for wheels on Arkadia, the tech. is there to make everything hover !

The sooner the better

Done !

 

Ok, I play the bad role for first.

Too many "will", "future" and lousy "plan". And a lot of general procastinations. IMVVVHO, slow.

Another 2 months just for fixing the weapons sound... is... you name it

 

Well if you do an interview about things that are coming, you will off course get a lot of "will", "future" and "plan". Personally i'm not interested in a interview about what happened last year.

As for 2 months with weapon sounds, that is 12x as fast as another planet partner.

 

Besides... He said they just figured out the problem last week -- AFTER the VU deadline. That's why it's 2 months from now (ie next update). Gotta pay attention to the reasoning, Bass.

 

+Rep.


Arkadia is making crazy progress if you ask me. This planet is the newest planet and sofar it has the strongest economy of all the new planets so they must be doing something right. Heck were even getting a new vehicle soon and its not just renamed and have a diffrent paintjob (BP totally bugged BTW) its a complete new vehicle.

My personal favourate thing is the amount of detail they put into their work on stuff like item descriptions, It's refreshing to see something not just created for the sake of creation.

 

How long has it been broken? But, as long as you're ok with it, I'm ok with too.

 

Bass, he said in the interview that it was a very tricky bug to locate..

And you seem to not understand that the Arkadian Dev Team is much smaller than Caly/MA dev teams.. They got ALOT going at the same time.. They cant fix everything at once.. And face it.. A sound bug is not the most critical thing to fix/make.. Yes it may be an annoyance, but it does not affect your gameplay..

 

Zume, you're too clever not to understand that that was a bare example... I'm a miner, I dont even hunt...

My questions were different, and all the replies that came were foggy and full of too many "maybe" and Qx 2012. In pre-Kim FPC style, let's face it.

That said, I am probably the *only one* player who came here on day 1 from calypso and since that day has spent every PEC on this planet, and never left, so...

 

Well bass I agree there are a lot of maybe's in there, but what do you expect of a planet that's just about 6 months old and has a very small team? Everything mentioned will be in before Q3 (well the most things) and that is a lot better then the years and years and years we are used to waiting for stuff when there was just one planet. As long as they make the maybe's happen around the time Dave mentioned I'm very happy and if not I am pretty sure David is man enough to say "Well we screwed up and I was wrong about the time, we'll get it in in Q3"

 

I'd expect *native* BPs to pop in at every VU. Native piece of armors/items in high end mobs like requested by big hunters. That's the engine for the game, not the re-designing of Quarry.

What Ark has been slow with - IMO - is implementing native playable content (BPs for one, decent native mining amps - and finders - for another, just to name two) that can create a loyal and continuative Customer base.

Implementing just a bunch 5-10 shops just to create a movement and increment hipe (just a random hint), sorry, but cannot that showstopper for the devs.

Then again, I still think this is the most playable planet for my playing style, but this does not mean everything is sparkling and shining

 

It's a tricky issue to choose what to priorities in the development. Arkadia and other smaller developers like Rocktropia and New Island will have a hard time to compete againts Calypso, Cyrene and the other planets yet to come that i think have more resources for the develompent. But i think cloth and shops are good things to launch as fast as they can. But not to have a pvp i believe is a misstake, some people wants them and it would be a good thing to at least have a small pvp area on Arkadia.

 

Players also seem to forget that a developing something isnt simply just a click here and a mouse weel scroll there. Things like this take time and because there is basically 2 development teams (planet partner & MA) coding will not always be compatible with each other and may need to be redone or patched up to match in. Put 5 programers in a room and ask them to create the same application and you will get 6 different versions all doing the same thing but programed differently.

For those that seem to think creating content is simple and just a few clicks go buy yourselfs a 3D modeling application and try creating some weapons and stuff. I'm not talking about the simple monkey can do drag and drop modeling apps, I'm talking production quality applications like Maya and 3d studio max.

Modeling is merely the beginning of the process then you have to texture, animate and likely program how the item operate, then everything goes to another team that program in their own way to see if they can implement it in a really complex game that have to work as bug free as possible for thousands of simultaneity connected players.

This is basically the same for every game out there (except now for the MMO part) and if someone thinks that a game studio creates a fully functional game just like that they really have no clue.

 

Great work zume. Sorry I can't plus rep u.

 

Well the one thing that this discussion leads to is for the A-team to know what we think, so that at least is good.

The thing with BP's is addressed by David in the interview and that is an issue on MA's side. The fact that there are not more BP's added every VU well, as mentioned it is a lot of work to make a BP and get it to fit the economy and with treasure hunting there will be another 200 (was it 200?) new BP's. True we might think it is not going fast enough, but I think that looking at the development of the other planets (including Calypso) stuff is going pretty fast. And for Calypso just think of new content, not the new systems MA made (kinda hard to keep those 2 apart right now, but I hope you get what I mean).

Anyway I like the planet and am wondering where we will be in lets say 6 to 8 months.

 

Building a solid foundation for further development is better and there is no better place to start then with the new players. Arkadia is aiming to buildup its own player base and not trying to steal another planet partners. Remember that you always contribute some part of your spent PED to your starting planet.


You cant just start at the middle or highend and try and balance everything suddenly for a low end, it will simply slow things down even further.


edit: Just incase its a bit unclear the A-team know how they want the economy and know what needs to be done to reach their goal, this is self evident when you compare all the new planets total auction pages.

 

I am always impressed with the work the Arkadia dev team accomplishes. it is a tough job, and they push out content like no tomorrow... If you don't feel things are comming fast enough, just look at NI <enough said there>.

The native Bp's do drop, there is a high MU on Ark Ore's and En's, they sell just fine on the Au...

Ark could use a buyer or three though... someone to buy the small's from the newer miners <without getting heckled for profiteering>

The mobs here have a good balance, sometimes the loot can use some work..... but thats MA controlled not Ark... Native items drop, maybe not at the rate we would wish... but then they would be normal.... and not the special items they are...

All in all I say good job Dev team 8) Thanks for a great planet!

 

That would be me. We need more though—I can't be around all the time. We also need buyers of small hunting loot.

 

It's less time we've had to wait on the other two new planets, as well.. RT is still waiting for a few things... To my knowledge they've never gotten out clothing.. A few armor plates, sure.. but not clothing.. NI hasn't been much better.. Next Island has.. 1 blueprint? 3? I think Dobson said Arkadia has like 800 already.

Dobson also explained about the preference for shared bps over native bps... That there are a lot more shared bps and so the probability of getting a shared bp is higher. This is being addressed, but MA (not Arkadia) had to come up with, program, test, and implement an entirely new system to add preference to native bps. These are things that take time.

 

Man, I'm a many-years-on-market software developer myself, so dont come to me with these considerations

I've talked about priorities, and that is not a matter of coding, but a matter of decisions. No key press is needed for that. If people agree (and at least 2 in Ark agree on that ) that crafting is what really makes the wheel turn, we gotta hurry up on that.

I dont agree about the fact that Ark should mainly concentrate on new players, especially when we have TONS of ready players on other planets, ready to jump and come in one minute (hour?). MA/FPC have built their player base in YEARS and YEARS, but also under very different conditions (no L items, different skills scaling etc), so comparing the growth of the two is useless.

Ok, advertising and promoting is needed for sure, but what really needs to be addressed is the number of those who may come and stay here, with their luggage of PEDS, knowledge and skills.

As I mentioned before, 5/6 'preview' shops and 5/6 'preview' flats (both sold on auction, even if not finished) would have been to me a great way to promote Ark, for example.