The Chronicles of Spellborn Q&A

Here are some questions and answers with the Devs from The Chronicles of Spellborn. There is talk about the limited 2 playable races, player crafted items, and PVP. They also talk about how all the shards are persistent world areas containing persistent dungeons.

 

Q: You mention that PvP needs to have a reason. Why should I PvP in TCoS?

 

A: There are multiple opportunities in TcoS to engage in PvP carnage. The most complex and ultimately most rewarding will be Shard Conquest. Shard Conquests allows entire Houses to compete against each other to gain control over an entire Shard. Imagine fields filled with players from different Houses fighting over critical capture points slowly progressing towards the final conquest goal. In the meantime they have to keep the many dangerous creatures that inhabit the Shard at bay putting the players in situations filled with PvP and PvE challenges.

Another cool PvP feature is the Quarterstone Arena where players and even entire guilds can compete against each other in tournaments. Guilds will be competing for temporary shop control which gives them an economical advantage, while individual players can either fight for honour or a life-like statue of their character on QuarterstoneÂ’s Ring of Legends.

Another example is that we designed certain quests that offer conflicting objectives depending on the playerÂ’s House affiliation. This may or may not lead to PvP situations, but that is up to the players and how they want to resolve the situation.
Other meaningful integrations of PvP are already in testing, so we are sure to have some exciting announcements ahead for people that love PvP gameplay as much as we do.

 

Click below for the full read.

Here are some questions and answers with the Devs from The Chronicles of Spellborn. There is talk about the limited 2 playable races, player crafted items, and PVP. They also talk about how all the shards are persistent world areas containing persistent dungeons. Click below for the full read.

Q: I’ve noticed that TCoS only has two playable races, human and daevi. Many players will see this as possibly too restrictive, are there any plans to add more races later on?

A: The Chronicles of Spellborn is based on extensive lore and history. It makes perfect sense to initially release the game with the two playable races from a lore point of view.

While two races may seem restrictive we made sure that we offer players extensive variety since offering unique looking characters is one of the focal points of the game. From the start each race features several body types on top of the large selection of armour and equipment. During the playerÂ’s adventuring the availability of unique looking armour and weapons will broaden the diversion even more.

The lore offers more then enough room to introduce the number of playable races in the future. Most likely these will be more of the monster then of the human kind.

Q: Do you plan to have built-in support for the Xbox 360 USB controller?

A: We have been discussing this and we think that the TCoS combat system would function equally well with a controller replacing the traditional mouse and keyboard. That being said, we currently are not focusing on controller support at this moment.

Q: Are there any types of player crafted items, or is this a loot only game system?

A: There are a lot of crafted items, although not player crafted in the sense that players need to learn a profession to craft them. We never believed in a system in which players are forced to craft useless items that they can not sell with a profit, just to increase their crafting skills. Instead, players need to gather the right materials and bring them to a NPC crafter who can craft the item of choice. Some of the recipes and materials will be rare to ensure a healthy economy and again offer diversion and uniqueness to the characters.

Q: Looking at how the shard system is designed, I am led to think that a majority of this game will be instanced. Is this the case?

A: No, on the contrary, all the shards are persistent world areas containing persistent dungeons. Additionally the game offers different varieties of instances. These can be dungeons or even parts of the Ancestor World that exist only in the past, “Ancestral Quests”.. Some of the instances will be opened only upon accepting a certain quest. Groups of up to eight players can adventure in these instances to attempt the quest.

Q: You mention that PvP needs to have a reason. Why should I PvP in TCoS?

A: There are multiple opportunities in TcoS to engage in PvP carnage. The most complex and ultimately most rewarding will be Shard Conquest. Shard Conquests allows entire Houses to compete against each other to gain control over an entire Shard. Imagine fields filled with players from different Houses fighting over critical capture points slowly progressing towards the final conquest goal. In the meantime they have to keep the many dangerous creatures that inhabit the Shard at bay putting the players in situations filled with PvP and PvE challenges.

Another cool PvP feature is the Quarterstone Arena where players and even entire guilds can compete against each other in tournaments. Guilds will be competing for temporary shop control which gives them an economical advantage, while individual players can either fight for honour or a life-like statue of their character on QuarterstoneÂ’s Ring of Legends.

Another example is that we designed certain quests that offer conflicting objectives depending on the playerÂ’s House affiliation. This may or may not lead to PvP situations, but that is up to the players and how they want to resolve the situation.
Other meaningful integrations of PvP are already in testing, so we are sure to have some exciting announcements ahead for people that love PvP gameplay as much as we do.

Q: What kind of player guild support will there be, if any?

A: Guilds will have their regular guild chat channel, guild logo and guild name they can set upon creation of a guild. On top of that they will have access to a guild hall which features a large guild bank for easy item distribution within the guild.

With armour and weapons having no direct impact on the players statistics a guild can even go as far as to design a whole set of guild armor. To complement their guild armour guild members can wear their guild logo on their armour set. A guild named ‘The Silver Raiders’ can actually make quite an entrance wearing silver sets of armour. To make this easier, all armour available during character creation can also be bought from shops.

As a guild, players can try to overcome difficult challenges, like killing large monsters and winning specific tournaments, and earn trophies. Trophies, if placed in the guild hall, provide a bonus to all members of the guild. Note that these trophies can be obtained with 8 player groups which makes it possible to keep your guild small while still being able to compete with others on the same level. The same goes for Tournaments and such, we are not forcing people to create large guilds out of need but rather out of choice.

Q: In the FAQ it states “Some classes will inherently be able to solo more effectively than others.” From my experience, these are also the classes that will be overpowered in PvP. How do you plan to balance this problem?

A: Balancing PvP affects the balance of PvE and vice versa, weÂ’re approaching the problem with the solution that we think will give us the best initial result. After that we will constantly listen to our player base in order to address all the issues that might surface after release, and provide a constant flow of improvements.

Q: Moving on to the skill and combat system, you say this: “we think that too many games use a combat system that is too dependent on damage outcome using formulas and percentages that sort of take away player control, and can take away the joy of victory”. That’s all well and good, but your players will soon create their own formulas within your skill deck system. They will soon learn that Attacks a+b+c+d = x damage. Constant values, since you don’t believe in randomization from critical hits or luck. Would it be fair to say that you are not trying to create a game, but rather a sport?

A: Players will indeed figure out what a skill deck can do in terms of damage in PvE content. This will be part of the PvE experience where you figure what works best against specific opponents in specific circumstances. NPC opponents can react in different ways which require different tactics so making a balanced skill deck which can handle most of the possibilities is important in the PvE part of the game. It is about adapting your strategies to the task at hand.

Player opponents however adapt to your tactics too. While your skill deck might be effective against one player, the other is likely to hold a counter strategy and give you a much more difficult time. This does not only differ from player to player but can also switch mid fight, if your opponent starts to use different skills to counter yours.

In a way you could say that we try to take away the ‘luck element’ and put as much skill in as possible, both strategic and timing skills. I don’t know if that would make it more of a sport, but if it does it sure is a fun sport.

Please also keep in mind that a playerÂ’s skill deck is only as good as his targeting skills since there is no target lock and auto target.

Q: How will the Z-axis be used in TCoS? Will it be possible to gain an advantage by jumping around like a circle-strafing, bunny-hopping sugar junkie?

A: No, bunny hopping will not give any advantage during combat. It would more likely be a penalty then a bonus. Currently we are testing with a system that lowers a characterÂ’s physique when jumping. Also bunny-hopping would make aiming harder, so players would already be penalizing themselves with it.

Q: How is the game development progressing? How close is the Open Beta?

A: The project is growing as we expected and we are very happy about the fact that all of the features we wanted to implement are finding technical solutions, and in most cases even exceeding our initial expectations. We are still a few months away from open beta, but closed beta is progressing very well. The beta feedback so far confirms our design goals of developing a game that will provide a fun, challenging and rewarding experience for our players. We are eager to show players more of what we have planned, so keep an eye on the website as the project progresses.

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