Eyejinx est le "creative manager" de TQ.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Just to clear up a couple of things, monsters will not fight other monsters to get their equipment. Nor will monsters pick up items off of the ground dynamically. Those two points were a misunderstanding between the reporter and the person they were talking to. Otherwise, great compilation of info.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
I don't believe that the copy protection that will be used with the game has been announced yet. It is premature, and likely unnecessary, to be concerned that it will use Starforce.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
There have been a lot of different terms used in development, which is why there's been some slippage. Let me see if I can clarify.
There are 8 skill masteries in the game. A skill mastery is essentially a group of related skills. You will get to choose two over the course of the game. Once you choose a mastery, you can unlock and then put points into skills in that mastery. The two masteries you choose define your "class" in the usual sense of the word. There are 28 combinations (8 * 7 / 2) of masteries possible; the order in which you select them has no significant difference. There will be terms that are associated with the 28 possible combinations; I think the "professions" reference is pointing towards this. I do not believe that "Ranger" is one of them, but you could certainly make a character that is similar to a Ranger from other games.
Skill masteries have thematic and functional themes, which makes them sort of like "mini-classes". For example, one mastery focuses on offensive skills of the sort we typically associate with warriors/fighters. Another focuses on defensive skills that are generally associated with tanks (either fighter or priest/cleric based). In this sense, each mastery is sort of like a mini-class that enables you to combine aspects of different traditional classes. This is informal terminology, not used in the game.
Within each skill mastery, there are "skill families"; this is another informal term for skill groups within a mastery where some skills modify the base skill, as for example, when you can add fragmentation effects to a fire projectile. I'm not sure what the final number of skills is going to be or what the numbers of skill families will be, as these need to be balanced for each mastery.
Hopefully that is more clarifying than confusing.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Just to follow up on the MP discussions, we are looking at both Gamespy and Xfire for matchmaking. The former is more useful if you don't know other people and want to play MP, the latter is more useful if you have an existing clan/group you like to play with.
On the cheating/security thing, as I've said elsewhere, no matter how hard you try, you can't stop people from cheating. In this game, because co-op is the multiplayer mode, the only damage from cheating is that you make the game too easy. This is in your hands. If you don't want to play with cheaters, find other people to play with. If you don't want to make the game too easy, don't cheat. It's as simple as that.
The other thing about MP is that you can bring in your custom maps (or your buddy's, or whoever's that you download off the internet) and play those maps as well. So, on the side of "MP is what keeps the game interesting over time", not only is it a great place to explore the campaign content and the insane variety of character builds and team dynamics, but it's also a way to experience new fan-created content.
For some of the more detailed questions:
-if there is one char to play SP and MP with, you cannot go back in the storyline to where you were when playing in SP right?
If you advance the story while playing MP, when you go back to SP, the story will have advanced. You can still access the story (via the quest log), but you can't re-do quests you did in MP. Once a quest is done, it's done. You can, however, re-visit the same areas and kill the same monsters, you just won't get the quest rewards a second time because this would be unbalancing.
-and how will this be done with different lvl players? if i am ahead in the campaign, but my friend who started the game is a bit lagging behind, will i have to do those quests i've done already over and over again in that way?
The game inherits the quest state of whoever is hosting. If you jump into a game with a friend who is behind you, you can help them get through quests you've already done, but you won't get the quest rewards a second time. If they come into your game session, those quests won't be available to them, but when they go back to SP (or join an MP session of someone who hasn't completed those quests), the quests will still be there for them to complete.
-will any of the rewards be given to me when i've already completed a quest, but when questing with a lower lvl i had to do those again?
Nope. All quest rewards can only be received one time by a character. You still get experience, loot, etc., but like I said above, multiple quest rewards would be unbalancing.
I understand that people have particular visions for what they want in MP, and this won't be everyone's ideal version, but don't write it off just yet. We've been doing a lot of MP testing recently, and in my experience, it's a whole new take on the experience. Don't underestimate the impact that the different approach to character building has on how the game works when you get a group of people together.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
There are no plans for PvP in the release version of Titan Quest. The short version of "why" is that there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into supporting PvP, and you have to make concessions to balance for it. If you need the more in-depth version, let me know, and one of these days, I'll try to find the time.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Some quick answers for the weekend.
1) No dynamic weather in the game. We looked at it, and it ended up making the world look worse, so we decided to skip it. There are some scripted weather effects like fog to give extra ambience for certain scenes.
2) After you finish the campaign on normal, you unlock epic difficulty, but you can always go back and play on normal.
3) Windows XP 64 will be supported.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
On the server side option, I think the question is whether we will have online character storage. The answer to that is no. All multiplayer games are hosted, and all data is kept locally.
On the playthrough time, it's difficult to say. Those of us who've been working on the game and have developed character strategies and learned all the ins and outs, we tend to play pretty fast. A new player, checking it all out for the first time is probably going to go a lot slower. What the actual playtime ends up being, I just don't know.
The target we set was 25-30 hours for one character from beginning to end of the campaign on the base difficulty. I think that's about right for a new player, so it may not be as long as what you're looking for. Of course, once you start playing multiple characters, higher difficulties, multiplayer, etc., there's plenty of additional play time there.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
We're really focused on getting the game out the door in great shape, so we're not thinking about patching beyond the fact that we do plan to support the game and the mod community post-release. Can we release patches with additional content? Sure, absolutely. But I wouldn't want to make promises about that until we get done with what we're doing and start to make plans for what comes after. Our approach with the game has always been to under-promise and over-deliver, and since nothing's set in stone (beyond a substantial budget we have earmarked for post-release), it's too early to say definitively.
As for the camera, it's not going to have rotation enabled at release. We may look at unlocking it through a cheat code, or something similar, as we have the functionality, but the scenes are optimized for a particular camera angle, so rotating the camera could cause performance problems, issues with transparency, and getting into positions from which you can't comfortably play the game. Basically, we looked at leaving it enabled, and we decided that we could make the world look better (i.e., we don't need distance-fogging like a lot of 3D games use) and the controls easier for casual players to handle if we left out pan and tilt from release.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Things are incredibly busy as we get to the final stages of finishing the game, so bear with us if we miss a few questions or there are long gaps between answers.
On the gore question, we get that some people like it, but it also makes life difficult in terms of getting into certain markets, and one of the tenets of the vision from the very beginning that Brian Sullivan set for the game was that we wanted to make something that parents could play with their kids. So, no gore; no dismemberment; no gibs. Instead, we've got lots of physics effects, cool death animations, and lots of skill effects, so you still get the satisfaction of whomping a monster in visually spectacular ways, but without the gore. Trust me, when you kill a Carrion Crow in full flight and it explodes into a cloud of feathers that scatter and fall to the ground, you won't miss a red particle effect.
On balancing, we've had a full QA group devoted to balancing since last fall. That's on top of developer testing, tests with casual and hardcore gamers, friends and family testing, and even a closed beta. Where we're at now, the tech and content is pretty much all done and the entire team is focused on bug-fixes, polishing, and balancing. The game is in good shape. It's fun to play with all kinds of character builds, and there are definitely reasons to play all the different masteries. And we're still devoting a huge amount of additional time and effort to refining the balance even more.
On inventory storage, everything is character-based, so if you want to move things between characters, you'll have to get a friend to help you out (or use a second machine). You start with a fairly large inventory, and you'll get additional storage space as you progress through the campaign. We felt this was better than having a static stash, as you don't need to run (or teleport) back to town to change equipment. If you're a mad grabber of stuff, it also allows you to pick up more stuff before going back to town to sell. The amount of inventory space you eventually end up with is plenty for multiple sets of items and collectables, and it's easy to organize because the additional storage has multiple "tabs".
The geometry of the world is fixed, but the content is randomized. This has been covered in a variety of interviews if you want more details.
There are differentiations in resistances to different types of elemental damage for different monsters. There are effects involved in elemental attacks; for example, there is a fire effect that attaches to monsters who are taking burning damage, and I believe I saw an arrow sticking into an object last night, but I'm not entirely sure on that one.
MP will support custom campaigns as well as the one the game ships with. We're looking forward to seeing what you guys will build with the editor.
Monsters do have a variety of AI routines, including ambushes. Many of the monsters, particularly champions, heroes, and bosses have sophisticated behaviors and will take skill to defeat.
There are several different melee animations, and new melee skills often come with new animations as well, so there's a lot of variety. I think there are even differences between the male and female character animations, but again, not 100% sure on that.
I'm not sure that I understand the next point, but there is a lot of realism to the characters and environments and a lot of fantasy to the creatures, skills, and effects, so hopefully it has a mix that people will like.
As for whether it's fun or not, well, I've been working on the game for over a year now, and I still get sucked in and find myself playing for longer than I meant to. But, you can see for yourself when the demo comes out. I can't give you a specific date yet (definitely not April 24th, though), but it will be out before the game, so you don't just have to take my word for it.
I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff from earlier in the thread, but if anyone has things they're just dying to know, feel free to re-post and I'll try and check in again over the weekend.
For now, I have to get back to "testing". Thanks for all your enthusiasm.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Okay, here's another round.
Camera can be zoomed in/out (which also adjusts the tilt slightly), but not rotated. I think there are other posts in the forum about why.
We can't include gore effects on the disk, even in a locked form, and still ship to all the markets we want to hit. ESRB, PEGI, and similar supervisory boards have really tightened up after the "Hot Coffee" scandal. But, as I said, just because there isn't gore (blood spurts, dismemberment, gibs, splatters on environment, etc.) doesn't mean that there aren't cool reactions/effects. For example, one of the team's key design philosophies was to let you kill monsters and take the equipment they were using. Combine this with ragdoll and object physics, and you can literally knock people out of their armor. When you get a high strength character scoring a critical hit on a light monster, you get a major sense of impact from things like this. It may not be entirely realistic, but it is a lot of fun, and it connects your actions (selecting attacks and targets) to the world behaviors, so I think it closes the feedback loop that you're on about. If you absolutely, positively need to have gore, your best bet is to get together a modding group and put it in yourself. Gotta love games on the PC.
And we do have some really cool custom death animations as well.
There is a death penalty; you take an experience hit. It scales up over time so that it's negligible in the early stages of the game but significant later. It's capped on the bottom side so you can never lose a level. You don't have to recover your corpse. When you die, you keep all of your items with you. Mostly it's a time penalty, and since we think you'll have a good time playing the game, that's not a terrible thing.
There is a level cap. I'm not sure if the final number has been set (we're still doing some balancing work on the high end of the game), but you should stop going up levels before you reach the end of Legendary difficulty. This is by design, as the designers wanted the completion of the game to be a true skill challenge.
I don't think there are any capes, although we have a massive variety of equipment in the game, so I haven't seen all of it. Some of the armor is definitely robe-like but we don't want it to obscure the other things you're wearing (leg-armor and arm-armor, for example), so it doesn't fully cover the character. There are cloth physics in the game, but for the reasons above, I can't tell you with certainty whether that will be noticeable on the player character.
There is no jumping in Titan Quest. Seriously, it doesn't make sense for the control system we're using.
There are powerful epic/legendary items tailored to the look of each region and things that are more likely to drop in each region.
There is a separate section of the quest log for side quests.
I'm not sure how much control you'll have over proxy settings. I don't actually put levels together or get into things at the data level. If one of the designers stops by, they may be able to clarify.
No emotes. We looked at it, but decided it was better to spend the animation time on monsters and skills.
Not sure on surround sound. I don't think that we support surround effects because of the camera location (things would be really loud when you zoomed in), but really I don't know. Maybe one of the programmers will chime in.
There is a limit to the number of characters you can have, but it's ridiculously high. We need to have a limit for technical reasons, but I think it's something like 50 characters.
I don't think we'll have a collector's edition. There will be pre-order incentives at different retailers that will have similar types of things to what you normally find in collector's editions.
Phew. Sorry if some of the answers are brief, but I've got to get back to "testing". Yes, I know you feel awful for me.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Okay, last round for this weekend. No promises about being able to make it by during the week, but I'll try to do some more of these next weekend.
On the emotes, those aren't player-triggered; they're idles, so if you stand in one spot long enough, the player character will do some animations, sort of a virtual twiddling of thumbs.
MP is definitely a hoot. With a mix of different masteries, particularly, there are skill effects going off all over the place, all kinds of interesting skill interactions, and a lot of bodies flying.
I don't know about the IP address issue. We're using GameSpy and Xfire for matchmaking, so if those generally work for you, then you should be fine, but honestly, I don't have the answer.
Getting the merchants to stock interesting items that are priced appropriately and not unbalancing is one of the big, final pushes that we're working on. In general, the merchants should allow you to push your stats a little faster (higher armor, bigger stat bonuses on magic items, etc.) but the really cool effects and combinations will be things you find in the world. Set items, for example, you'll need to kill monsters and loot chests to find, but the merchants will hopefully be useful for replacing that one piece of armor that's lagged behind, or getting that ring you need the stat bonus from to be able to equip the cool weapon you found, etc. Re-speccing your character also costs money (and more money the more you do it), so even in the end-game, there should be things to spend money on.
Like I said in a previous post, not sure on the Surround Sound.
Loot is a free-for-all, I think. There was a gold split function at one point, but I haven't checked to see if it's made the cut. Competing with your buddies (or in my case, my co-workers) for loot is actually kind of fun. The loot drops are based on the proxy level, but keep in mind that the proxy settings have both low-end and high-end limits, so if you want to find higher-level loot, you can go to higher-level areas with your lower-level buddy.
Quest rewards are fixed for level, but in some cases randomized. It can be anti-climactic to go back once you're level 10 and do a level 2 quest, but then again, a number of the quests give you things that you want at any level (extra attribute or skill points, boosts to key stats, etc.). So, it really depends on how much of a completist you want to be. If you missed the quest in Normal difficulty because you jumped ahead in MP, you can always hit it in Epic (and the rewards will scale accordingly). Also, when you're in a group, you can complete any quests that activate for the group, so you can complete more-advanced quests in MP and you don't need to go back and do them again in SP. You don't have to do them all in order.
If I didn't answer something, it's because someone else beat me to it. If you don't think your question has been answered, feel free to re-post it.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
We have a hosting deal with FilePlanet, so they'll have it first, but it's not an exclusive deal, so anyone who wants to host it after that is free to.
Also, I think you can only get to level 6 in the demo.
Best,
Eyejinx.
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Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Wow, is it Friday again, already? Okay, then, time to round up some more questions in need of answers.
I don't think the avatars change model-wise (i.e. looking more buff if you put points in strength). You definitely do look meaner wearing lots of heavy equipment, though.
You can rotate the view of your character, both in the menu screen and in the character/inventory screen. You can't rotate the camera in-game, but you can change your character's facing simply by moving in different directions.
I don't think we're planning to ship a map of the game world with the game. You could really just pick up an atlas, I suppose, since the game world looks a lot like Greece, Egypt, and Asia. There are maps available in the game.
Side quests don't have time limits; in fact, no quests have time limits. You can't fail a quest in the sense that you never have an opportunity to finish it later. The only way that quests can get blocked out is in certain, hopefully rare, situations in multiplayer. You can always finish these quests, though, in single-player or in a different multiplayer session.
We do not have auto-follow for multiplayer. You can, however, always teleport to the location of another member of your party, so as long as you leave her character in a safe location, the two of you can catch up in just a few seconds.
As for why the official site hasn't been updated, it's just a question of time and priorities. Since we have a limited amount of the former, we have to pay attention to the latter. The German office doesn't have to manage development, just marketing, and that only for their territory, whereas we have to feed everyone, so they've got more bandwidth than we do. Don't worry. There will be new stuff soon.
There are lots of chests in the game, but no static "stash". You do get more storage space on your character as you go through the campaign, so you'll have plenty of room to store stuff.
We have two classes of items that can be applied to equipment: Relics and Charms. You find these as shards, or pieces, and you can combine pieces of the same Relic or Charm type to make completed Relics and Charms that get additional bonuses. Each Relic or Charm type has restrictions about what types of equipment you can apply it to, you can only apply one Relic or Charm to a piece of equipment, and you cannot remove a Relic or Charm once applied. There should be Q&A's up soon on Shacknews and GameBanshee where we talk about these in some more detail.
The mouseover info for items does not include a history, I don't think. I think we've been writing those specifically for the Vault site.
The pack-in for the game is the disks, the manual, and a foldout diagram of all the masteries and skills. I don't think there's anything else, although this may vary by territory.
The player should be able to set where bosses appear (or not) in custom content with all of the options that the designers have, so you could set one to appear only on Legendary if you like.
I don't think there are any filters on in-game chat. As the ESRB warning says, rating may change on-line.
There is a de facto limit on the number of points you can put into a mastery, because the mastery itself has an upper limit as well as each skill having an upper limit.
You don't have to pick a second mastery. Technically, this means we actually have 36 classes rather than 28. You could say we have 37, since you could decide not to choose a first mastery, but that would be quite challenging.
Your primary attributes are: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Health, and Energy. You can invest points in these directly when you level up and indirectly through investing in a mastery, using skills, and selecting equipment with bonuses. There are a variety of secondary attributes, including energy and health regeneration rates, movement, attack, and casting speed, resistance to various kinds of damage and secondary effects. These mostly come from skills and equipment.
Staffs and Bows are considered two-handed weapons (meaning you can't equip a shield with them). I think everything else is one-handed.
The control system is "point and click on a location and your character will go there", so jumping doesn't make sense in this context. I guess we could have put in ledges that you click on to jump up onto, but then people would have just gotten confused about why you can jump over some things but not others. Besides, have you ever tried to jump while wearing a full suit of armor? With the overhead view, jumping just doesn't make for compelling gameplay. If it were more of a 3rd-person action camera or 1st person, it might have been worth looking at.
There are no minimum character level requirements for advancement.
Yes, items can be dropped on the ground.
There can be multiple parties in one MP session. Neither quests nor monsters respawn.
I'm not sure on the party leader. I think there is and the only difference is that the party leader can kick people out of the party. The host of a session can kick/ban anyone in the session.
I believe that enchantments of the same type do not stack. The most powerful is the one that is applied. Not 100% sure, though.
I'm not sure if it's in the editor or in some other file, but you can edit all of the characteristics of a proxy, including making a specific item be equipped by a monster.
You can set a mod to be a certain difficulty level, but I don't think you can set a character level limit. You can set minimum and maximum character limits for multiplayer sessions if you are the host.
The closest thing we have to crafting is the Relic/Charm system (see above).
There were a number of cuts and additions made during the story development process. Detailing all of them would be exceedingly tedious and not particularly interesting. We may revisit some of those things at a later date.
Teamspeak is a 3rd party utility, so there's neither support nor lack of support for it.
I play TQ on 4:3 CRT's, so I can't speak to whether the widescreen resolutions are addictive. I suspect it's mostly a personal preference thing.
And the demo release date is now officially 5/10. As I said in the other thread, it will be available first on FilePlanet but likely soon thereafter on the usual suspects. It will also be available as a pre-order incentive at some retail outlets for those of you who don't like to download large files (the demo clocks in at something like 500MB).
I'll try to stop by again tomorrow, so feel free to ask (or re-ask) if I've missed something.
Best,
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx a écrit:Greetings:
Here we go again. I have no idea how close I came to hitting the forum post-length limit. As long as I don't hit it, I'm happy.
I can't get into future plans for TQ in any detail; there are business reasons, but also, a lot of it is up in the air, and I try not to make any promises that we can't deliver on. I'd rather have you guys be mad at me for not talking about things than mad at the team for not delivering something that I had run off at the mouth about.
On the storage issue, because you get significantly more space over time, it doesn't really matter that you're carrying it with you rather than storing it in town; personally, I find it much more convenient the way we've done it.
The number of disks will be determined on a territory by territory basis, as I said in an earlier post. I think we'll have 5 disks in the CD version and 1 in the DVD. Regardless, the editor gets installed to your hard drive, and you don't need a disk in the drive to use the editor.
As for hosts being able to kick/ban, well, the biggest threat to the online experience is people intentionally being nuisances, so we needed to give players this capability. Voting systems break down in all sorts of ways, and /ignore systems take a lot of overhead and won't protect you against anything other than offensive chat. If you don't want to get kicked out of a session, you can always host.
Once you've selected a mastery, it's permanent.
I haven't done the math, but I believe that by the time you max out your character you will have enough skill points to max out every skill in one mastery, but not enough to max out all the skills in two.
I'm not sure if all the skills have linear progressions, exponential ones, logarithmic ones, or some combination, so I'm not sure if investing in skills gives diminishing returns. I suppose that getting the skill at all is probably the biggest jump you get, so in that sense, yes.
There are no two-handed swords, axes, or spears.
There are no ammo-based items. Ranged attacks are effectively infinite.
The spear is a jabbing weapon. There are some projectile-attack skills (Throwing Knives, is one, I think, in the Rogue mastery), but basically, bows and staffs are the only ranged weapons.
You can equip two rings and one necklace. We treat bracelets as arm-armor, so you can go for mage-boost or fighter-boost items in that slot.
Both the number and quality of items dropped goes up in MP based on the number of players and their levels.
Experience is shared in MP, so you don't actually have to score the kill to get XP. You do have to be within a certain range to share experience with your party, so you can't just leave someone in town and power-level them. We don't adjust experience grants based on a level difference between character and monster. However, there's an organic trend where low-level monsters produce less rewards and high-level monsters produce higher ones, so if you want to go up levels quickly, you want to be at the top end of what you can handle. Most quests do have experience rewards
I'm not sure what you mean by adding two mods together. You can join level files, so if you want to work with a team to make a large mod and divvy up who works on what, you can do that. Data is more complex; I'm not sure that you could just add two data sets together. But, then again, I haven't been hands-on with this stuff, and I'm not sure I'm getting the question, so I may be wrong.
I don't think we have character titles for what difficulty levels they've completed. Again, I may be wrong on that.
The limit on pets is set on a skill-by-skill basis, so it will be different based on what masteries and skills you choose. The biggest number I can think of off the top of my head is 6. Pets have health/energy displays on your UI. Most pets are summoned until dismissed or kiilled; there are a few that are time-limited, I believe. There are no material requirements for skills, so none for pets. There is no equipping pets with items.
In the demo, you can only see the three available masteries. It would have been too confusing to be able to see the others but not select them.
You always run. There is no fatigue meter.
There are small loading times (less than 5 seconds) when you teleport or take a boat from one region to another. Otherwise, all loading is seamlessly done in the background.
You can get to most places you can see. One of the things we did with the 3D engine was to create some great vistas and previews, like crossing a bridge over a ravine and seeing monsters down below, then coming back through the ravine and fighting those monsters, or traveling along the Great Wall and seeing it stretch out ahead of you. There are some places where you can see areas that you can't actually get to, but these are unpopulated, so you wouldn't want to go there anyway.
All of the dialogue is voiced in English. For the other languages, only the text is translated.
I'll try and stop back by tomorrow, to see if anyone has more.
Best,
Eyejinx.
