Community Q&A: January 9

 Happy New Year, ark hunters! You’ve asked, we’re answering. We’re back with another action packed Defiance Dev Q&A, and our first of 2015!

1. What changes or features are coming next in Defiance?

   We are fully focused on bringing the Alcatraz update to maximum awesome! Alcatraz will include the new hub on Alcatraz Island, our semi-procedural Expedition maps, high powered “Ark” weapons and mods, and, finally, a whole new form of progression in Cyber Rigs. It’s a heck of an update, and we’ve focused a lot of attention at making it a fulfilling experience.

2. What are the priorities for the Defiance team for 2015?

   We’re dedicating resources to new enemies and environments for our Expedition content and using that a funnel for a bevy of new advancement options. Our initial release of Cyber Rigs will only scratch the surface of their potential, and we’re going to be expanding that functionality as we move forward. This also gives us an opportunity to take the Defiance game story to areas outside of the immediate environments of the San Francisco Bay. Since Expeditions challenge ark hunters to visit areas which are ambiguously beyond the bay area, ark hunters can learn about world developments in Defiance through events which play out there. It is in Expeditions that the ark hunters will discover much of the aftermath of the destruction of New York and the escalation of aggression from the Votanis Collective. Also, during this season, we are going to reveal the rise of yet another nation-state actor on the New Frontier stage.

3. When can we expect the next major update?

   The Alcatraz update is an enormous undertaking, and we want it to release at the highest quality. As such, we are holding on to it so it can spend more time on the public test server. We’ll be releasing details on that deployment shortly as well as special rewards for players who choose to participate in playtesting.

4. When can we expect a fix for Defiant Few II?

   It should be in our next patch. We’re going to retroactively alter players who are in the bad state.

5. What are some crazy Dev ideas that you thought of and would have liked to see in the game but were just not able to make final cut or were just to outrageous to be implemented into the game?

   Shooting from vehicles in the open world - particularly from the Raptor and from the Runners – is something we’ve wanted for a while. There are some relatively minor issues with animations and so forth if we were to implement it, but there are far greater issues from a content standpoint. There is only one event where players may drive a shooting vehicle against non-player enemies, and that is in a controlled environment in Explosions 101. The enemies have been greatly increased in number in that area (both times you get the vehicle), and they are entirely optional. If we were to add vehicle combat to the open world more globally, we’d need to take a few steps.
   

   A. We’d want to update the itemization of vehicles. We’d want to give them resistances and have some built for combat and some not. We’d add a greater chase and variety so players would have significant decisions in their vehicle progression.
   B. We’d need to update enemies to better handle player vehicles. They’d need some special anti-vehicle attacks and some special behaviors to make them run to cover to avoid vehicles. This would take a significant amount of time to implement on all enemies.
   C. AND THIS IS THE HARDEST TASK (Probably) – We’d need enemy vehicles. This was actually attempted a couple of times with varying success. However it was never handled in an efficient enough fashion to run with all the players we could have active at once. (With our huge player and enemy population, we have to be very careful about efficiency.)

   As it stands, we’ve put player combat vehicles on hold indefinitely. I’ve personally really wanted it for some time, but it is not a good investment for the Defiance team right now. After Season 3, we’ll evaluate the feature again. Until then, it’s just a beautiful dream.

6. What new store content can we expect for the new year?

   We’re adding store content to correlate with the Cyber Rig and Expedition Content as well as releasing a fan favorite outfit and lockbox: “Special Delivery” featuring The APS Courier. That last one will be coming later in the season, however.

7. When you guys (Trion) did the math did you exclude "In the Inner Circle", "In the Inner Circle II", "Echelon Contractor" and "Echelon Contractor II" or just the pursuits under the Competitive Multiplayer tab?

   When discussing reaching Max EGO withoutandCompetitivemultiplayer, we did remove those pursuits from our calculation. However, we didincludetheDLC pursuits, since that was not part of the previous questions as they were conveyed to the development team. So, to be clear:

   1. A player who has never paid for a DLC may reach the Max EGO level, but they will have to participate in PvP.
   2. A player who has purchased DLC may reach the Max EGO level without participating in PvP.

   Over time, as we add more pursuits for episodic content, the PvP requirement will slip even from non-DLC owners. For now, however, you must do one or the other.

8. Can you take us through a typical work day at Trion? What's your usual first dealings? Do you guys have meetings and spitball, or discuss what we post here and mull over them?

   We actually try to keep formal meetings to a minimum. We have task lists that we’ve agreed upon based on our upcoming feature sets. We have a small number of meetings each week which last under 30 minutes. One full team meeting every Tuesday to go over our status towards our next patch and any other business that affects the full team. We also have two smaller meetings for engineers and for designers. In addition to that, Rashere, Phantasie, and I (Trick) meet as needed any time an issue comes up where we need to reprioritize work or change estimates.
   Aside from that, everyone’s typical work day varies quite a bit. I, personally, come in early every morning and look over our engagement numbers on each platform before trying to get the bulk of my management and communication tasks completed before lunch. Then I prefer to spend the rest of the day creating content in some form or fashion. I try to dedicate some time each week to going on a massive hunt for reported bugs that I can squash or for organizing a playtest of new or old features to check for their completeness and for clarity in communication.
   
   Many nights, when I go home, I end up reading communications from our partners at Syfy or writing scripts for the game itself.

9. Will we ever get an outfit piece similar to Ara Shondu's?

   We may do one similar. Ara has a very limited movement set, and her outfit was built to support that. Since players make much broader movements, we’d need to adjust the outfit to match. (Tightening certain joints, etc.) We had one planned ages ago for the Castithan Charge pack that just did not make the cut. We’ll probably revisit a player version of her outfit when we next feature her more in our story.

10. Any update on private instances/Mass invite option?

    It’s coming in with the Alcatraz update, but we may split its implementation across multiple updates. Currently, it’s nearing feature complete for Arkbreaks and for Expeditions. We may delay implementing it for Co-op maps and for Arenas. (Implementation for arenas would be delayed until we can better balance arena rewards. That’s a feature update we’ve wished to make for a long time.)

11. Can we have multiple waypoint navigation implemented to the maps? Pretty please?

    We’d like to add seeing the waypoints of other group members, but we’re not considering a multiple waypoints for an individual player at this time.

12. Any word on a time frame for the next time the EGO cap will be raised?

    It will be raised with the Alcatraz update along with some adjustments to the high-level player power curve. (This would behave much like our previous update to the 4500-5000 EGO range. We’ll have the details on that adjustment later, but it will be retroactive.)

13. Are there any planned upcoming livestreams?

    Yes! We’re doing one next Friday! I’m hoping to demonstrate Expeditions, but we may have to restrict ourselves to showing off some other content. Hard to say. I REALLY REALLY want to show off Expeditions.

14. When are we likely to see the weapons tuning pass, and can we have a sneak peak for the BMG changes?

    Currently, we’re working on updating weapon rarity bonuses. That’s nearly done and should be going to PTS soon. Watch for a more detailed forum post explaining those changes.
    
    For BMGs, we’re just starting to look at potential changes there. Obvious candidates include work to tone down the particle effects, possibly reducing the rate of fire to limit the impact on the servers, and looking at the tuning of the healing effects.
    
    Oh, we also buffed Blast Rifles. That change will hit PTS with the next update.

15. Will the holiday arkfalls return in 2015? Will there be additional changes to these events for this year?

    Indeed they will. We’re already preparing for a special mid-February holiday. It’s that special time of year when Matrons and Monarchs show their love for one another. Which is bad for basically all of Earthkind. Like... really bad.