bean19
06-17-2006, 08:20 AM
Recently, Perpetual Entertainment accepted my request for an interview with Stieg Hedlund, the design director of their upcoming MMORPG, Gods & Heroes (http://www.godsandheroes.com). The most awarded MMORPG from E3 2006, Gods & Heroes is getting a great deal of attention for it's innovative new minion system, visceral combat animations, tremendous graphics, and Roman mythology theming. For those interested, Gods & Heroes is nearing beta-testing and you can apply for beta (http://community.godsandheroes.com/2006/06/get_registered_for_beta.html#more) by joining their community forums.
Bean: What is your title at Perpetual Entertainment? What are some of the other games you have designed?
Stieg Hedlund: I’m the design director of Gods and Heroes. I’m probably best known for my work at Blizzard on the Diablo series and Starcraft, but I started working in games way back in the late ‘80s: when I worked at Koei, I designed Liberty or Death and Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye as well as contributing to various games originating in Japan. At SEGA, I worked on Die Hard Arcade and The Ooze, among various other things. I also worked at Ubisoft on various games in the Tom Clancy franchise.
Of the games you have designed, what are your top two favorites? Why are they your favorites?
Well I’m particularly happy with Diablo II. We all worked really hard on it, and it measured up well to the goals we set out with—almost any game has compromises, but there were relatively few on D2, so it’s kind of “pure” to me. Additionally, I’m extremely pleased that the design and execution were as well received as they were by the audience, which is what really matters.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Liberty or Death, a game from back when I worked at Koei in the early ‘90s. It was the first game where I was fully responsible for the design—in fact I did almost everything on the game with the exception of the sound and programming. I had some very tight constraints to work within, but I really tried to maximize the design within those constraints. Koei was never exactly a household name in the North American market, so the game wasn’t much of a success commercially, but people I’ve heard from who played it enjoyed it a lot.
There is some disinformation circulating about Gods & Heroes' publishing agreement. What is the official word? Who will be publishing Gods & Heroes and what is the extent of their involvement with the game?
SOE is co-publishing GnH through their Platform Publishing division. SOE mainly is a marketing and distribution partner that Perpetual is working with for GnH. Perpetual is still very much the creative power at work on GnH, and we can only benefit from the experience SOE has in MMOs.
At E3, you showed a very strong demo, but there were pieces of the puzzle that remained in development. You've had nearly a month since then, so is the game done yet?
Absolutely, we’ve all been on vacation for a couple weeks…
Seriously though, how is the game coming along? Is there something in particular that you enjoy?
All the systems are in place and now we are fine tuning them and then ultimately making them all work together. We’re perfectionists, so we’re really working hard to get it into a shape that we’re happy with. Overall, I'd have to say that things have been going very well, and it’s exciting to see things coming together.
In previous interviews, you revealed that there will be three types of quests in Gods & Heroes: Quests performed for the good of Rome, quests mandated to you by the gods, and epic quests that tell a more personal story-line and that are tied to character class. We have also been told that success in the god quests can result in increasing favor with your chosen god and/or gaining new god powers. Will the epic/class-based quests and the Roman philanthropist quests be rewarded more traditionally with XP, loot, and denarii? Will players acquire status by helping Rome? Also, is there any room in the Rome quest system for misanthropes, or are they purely "white hats" only?
There are those traditional rewards, of course, but we’ve certainly tried to mix it up and give some things that are more interesting as well—like minions! There are some minions who are only available as quest rewards.
There are also different levels of status that you can achieve through quests; early on you are a libertus, or freedman, and you have to complete quests to climb to further rungs of status, all the way to exemplar.
We do explore some of the dark side of being a hero of Rome, since we feel the political machinations and other “underbelly of the Republic” stuff is interesting and has great Roman flavor.
The visceral combat animations were what originally got me interested in Gods & Heroes. After seeing it in action, it seems so obviously superior to what we are used to seeing in MMOs. Why hadn't someone done this before? Is there a trade-off from using incredible animations?
The combat system and the resulting animations are one of the most complicated systems in our game. Creating a combat system like the one we have took a lot of work but we wanted to bring something to MMOs that had never been successfully done before, and I think the results speak for themselves.
We wanted to make sure that there was as little trade off as possible. The system isn’t at all hard to understand or clumsy from the user’s point of view, and that’s something we focused a lot of our attention and resources on.
MMO veterans are becoming increasingly sophisticated and thus often focus on the post max-level content of MMORPGs at least as much as they focus on the rest of the game. We know that Gods & Heroes is planning an intricate arena system to be released post-launch, as well as eventual Nation vs. Nation combat when new civilizations are opened through expansions. That PvP content sounds extremely exciting, but it is all post-launch. Will there be things for people to do after reaching max level in Gods & Heroes while waiting for new content?
So the plan is to have a live team constantly delivering content to the players in the time between launch and expansion. This team will continually assess the balance of the game and how players are interacting with the world in order to provide content and enhancements between expansions. Also, we are fairly certain that the way we have built the game that the majority of players will be reaching the maximum level around the same time the first expansion ships.
At E3, you described how Gods & Heroes will be able to create the feeling of huge 40-man raids by having instances that allow high-level players to bring in as many as 8 minions each. With only 5 players, that is a 45 "man" raid group. That is a very exciting feature for everyone I've discussed it with. There are a lot of people who have left other MMOs because the very large raids (20-40 people) were too much of a bother. Is this system designed to make raiding accessible and fun for less hardcore players while also providing a huge conflict for people who enjoy the large encounters in large-scale raids?
With raids we created several types to accommodate various styles of play. There are definitely raids where 5-10 people can get together and just have at it with their minions in tow, and then there are the epic raids that in theory you could do with 5-10 players and their minions, but you would really stand a better chance with a larger percentage of your group being real players.
The thing we really want to avoid is having players walk through our content and by building all the raids to accommodate a 5 man party with 8 minions each, that really doesn't feel epic nor does it present the players with any amount of challenge. By the same token, we don't feel like every player should be forced to experience the 40-man raid every day of the week.
Recently, IClavinus posted a very early pic of a player's camp (God & Heroes' version of player-housing). Either you guys are committed to super high-quality fluff, or camps are going to be used for more than just the standard decorating and collecting features that people associate with player-housing. Care to spill the beans? Or reveal that there are beans to be spilt?
Camps are a feature of the game that we expect to continue to expand on, especially after we have gone live and are able to see how players use the camp features that we have provided. You can expect to hear more about camps in the future.
Finally, my favorite NPC in the game so far is the Dactylus. I also think he is the most likely to be turned into a forum avatar (which I will promptly steal from the industrious person who makes it). Do you have a favorite NPC?
I really like the Dactylus as well, but I’d have to say that the Volta is my favorite NPC. These are creatures from the mythos, and are the source of the modern idea of the werewolf. The way our character and animation team brought these guys to life was awesome.
Bean: What is your title at Perpetual Entertainment? What are some of the other games you have designed?
Stieg Hedlund: I’m the design director of Gods and Heroes. I’m probably best known for my work at Blizzard on the Diablo series and Starcraft, but I started working in games way back in the late ‘80s: when I worked at Koei, I designed Liberty or Death and Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye as well as contributing to various games originating in Japan. At SEGA, I worked on Die Hard Arcade and The Ooze, among various other things. I also worked at Ubisoft on various games in the Tom Clancy franchise.
Of the games you have designed, what are your top two favorites? Why are they your favorites?
Well I’m particularly happy with Diablo II. We all worked really hard on it, and it measured up well to the goals we set out with—almost any game has compromises, but there were relatively few on D2, so it’s kind of “pure” to me. Additionally, I’m extremely pleased that the design and execution were as well received as they were by the audience, which is what really matters.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Liberty or Death, a game from back when I worked at Koei in the early ‘90s. It was the first game where I was fully responsible for the design—in fact I did almost everything on the game with the exception of the sound and programming. I had some very tight constraints to work within, but I really tried to maximize the design within those constraints. Koei was never exactly a household name in the North American market, so the game wasn’t much of a success commercially, but people I’ve heard from who played it enjoyed it a lot.
There is some disinformation circulating about Gods & Heroes' publishing agreement. What is the official word? Who will be publishing Gods & Heroes and what is the extent of their involvement with the game?
SOE is co-publishing GnH through their Platform Publishing division. SOE mainly is a marketing and distribution partner that Perpetual is working with for GnH. Perpetual is still very much the creative power at work on GnH, and we can only benefit from the experience SOE has in MMOs.
At E3, you showed a very strong demo, but there were pieces of the puzzle that remained in development. You've had nearly a month since then, so is the game done yet?
Absolutely, we’ve all been on vacation for a couple weeks…
Seriously though, how is the game coming along? Is there something in particular that you enjoy?
All the systems are in place and now we are fine tuning them and then ultimately making them all work together. We’re perfectionists, so we’re really working hard to get it into a shape that we’re happy with. Overall, I'd have to say that things have been going very well, and it’s exciting to see things coming together.
In previous interviews, you revealed that there will be three types of quests in Gods & Heroes: Quests performed for the good of Rome, quests mandated to you by the gods, and epic quests that tell a more personal story-line and that are tied to character class. We have also been told that success in the god quests can result in increasing favor with your chosen god and/or gaining new god powers. Will the epic/class-based quests and the Roman philanthropist quests be rewarded more traditionally with XP, loot, and denarii? Will players acquire status by helping Rome? Also, is there any room in the Rome quest system for misanthropes, or are they purely "white hats" only?
There are those traditional rewards, of course, but we’ve certainly tried to mix it up and give some things that are more interesting as well—like minions! There are some minions who are only available as quest rewards.
There are also different levels of status that you can achieve through quests; early on you are a libertus, or freedman, and you have to complete quests to climb to further rungs of status, all the way to exemplar.
We do explore some of the dark side of being a hero of Rome, since we feel the political machinations and other “underbelly of the Republic” stuff is interesting and has great Roman flavor.
The visceral combat animations were what originally got me interested in Gods & Heroes. After seeing it in action, it seems so obviously superior to what we are used to seeing in MMOs. Why hadn't someone done this before? Is there a trade-off from using incredible animations?
The combat system and the resulting animations are one of the most complicated systems in our game. Creating a combat system like the one we have took a lot of work but we wanted to bring something to MMOs that had never been successfully done before, and I think the results speak for themselves.
We wanted to make sure that there was as little trade off as possible. The system isn’t at all hard to understand or clumsy from the user’s point of view, and that’s something we focused a lot of our attention and resources on.
MMO veterans are becoming increasingly sophisticated and thus often focus on the post max-level content of MMORPGs at least as much as they focus on the rest of the game. We know that Gods & Heroes is planning an intricate arena system to be released post-launch, as well as eventual Nation vs. Nation combat when new civilizations are opened through expansions. That PvP content sounds extremely exciting, but it is all post-launch. Will there be things for people to do after reaching max level in Gods & Heroes while waiting for new content?
So the plan is to have a live team constantly delivering content to the players in the time between launch and expansion. This team will continually assess the balance of the game and how players are interacting with the world in order to provide content and enhancements between expansions. Also, we are fairly certain that the way we have built the game that the majority of players will be reaching the maximum level around the same time the first expansion ships.
At E3, you described how Gods & Heroes will be able to create the feeling of huge 40-man raids by having instances that allow high-level players to bring in as many as 8 minions each. With only 5 players, that is a 45 "man" raid group. That is a very exciting feature for everyone I've discussed it with. There are a lot of people who have left other MMOs because the very large raids (20-40 people) were too much of a bother. Is this system designed to make raiding accessible and fun for less hardcore players while also providing a huge conflict for people who enjoy the large encounters in large-scale raids?
With raids we created several types to accommodate various styles of play. There are definitely raids where 5-10 people can get together and just have at it with their minions in tow, and then there are the epic raids that in theory you could do with 5-10 players and their minions, but you would really stand a better chance with a larger percentage of your group being real players.
The thing we really want to avoid is having players walk through our content and by building all the raids to accommodate a 5 man party with 8 minions each, that really doesn't feel epic nor does it present the players with any amount of challenge. By the same token, we don't feel like every player should be forced to experience the 40-man raid every day of the week.
Recently, IClavinus posted a very early pic of a player's camp (God & Heroes' version of player-housing). Either you guys are committed to super high-quality fluff, or camps are going to be used for more than just the standard decorating and collecting features that people associate with player-housing. Care to spill the beans? Or reveal that there are beans to be spilt?
Camps are a feature of the game that we expect to continue to expand on, especially after we have gone live and are able to see how players use the camp features that we have provided. You can expect to hear more about camps in the future.
Finally, my favorite NPC in the game so far is the Dactylus. I also think he is the most likely to be turned into a forum avatar (which I will promptly steal from the industrious person who makes it). Do you have a favorite NPC?
I really like the Dactylus as well, but I’d have to say that the Volta is my favorite NPC. These are creatures from the mythos, and are the source of the modern idea of the werewolf. The way our character and animation team brought these guys to life was awesome.