Scott Hartsman Interview

[Mangala]

We sat down for a chat with Trion Worlds’ Scott Hartsman, the Executive Producer on RIFT: Planes of Telara, and asked the questions that you put to us last week in our community interview callout. Here’s what he had to say:

games.on.net: FooIsm asks: “When everybody has higher level characters, and nobody is around to stop the rifts in the lower areas, will they become so overrun that nobody will be able to save them?”

Scott: Not really, no. If there is truly nobody around, that will not happen. The system does have some amount of self-censoring going in so in the background, it’ll try to never end up creating a situation where it’s absolutely impossible to beat, with all of your might thrown at it.

games.on.net: So does it ever get to the point where a player would be unable to do their quests in the area completely, and does that ever happen for so long that you’re worried people will just ragequit and make a new character?

Scott: Yes it does. But I think it’s more about giving players lots of different tools to get themselves out of that situation. When you’re wandering around the world, you’re more than just you. What I mean by that is you’ve got all of the people in the area to draw from - and let’s say they don’t even want to help, we’ve got something called “Ascended Powers” in the game, powers and abilities that are all about this land-control game between you and the NPC’s, where you can for instance, buff your wardstones to make them stronger. You can buff them to summon turrets around them so they can protect themselves. You can summon NPC’s to come in and support you in trying to retake the land. So for us it’s really not about creating a thing that a single player can or can’t do, it’s about letting the world create these emergent situations and then making sure that players have sufficient ways available to them to turn the tide.

games.on.net: When you watch people in game, do you see lots of low-level people teaming up together to drop turrets and such, and do they work well on their own or is it mostly a case of waiting until a high-level character happens to come along?

Scott: No, we were seeing it in the first zones. It’s something that people are picking up on pretty early. We continue to get a lot of questions about that stuff though, so we actually just went and re-did the interface to make it even more approachable. It’s a system that once people understood, they thought it was awesome - the problem was getting people to the point where they did understand it. So that’s where our recent UI work has been, and actually people saw that for the first time in the last beta. Our figures showed more people were using it after that, so it’s definitely doing its job.

games.on.net: Giblet1 would like to know if Trion has plans to allow use of tunneling services such as Lowerping, or Internode's Gateway for people outside the US?

Scott: One of the good things about our game, at last in the way it’s architected, is that we were demoing this game from mainland China in network conditions that are far, far worse than the vast majority of Australia, usually by a factor of two, and the game remains playable just fine, which is good. On our side of things, we do use network appliances that are pinging you back to make sure that we’re aware of what your latency is like also, and then trying to find you optimal routes to us. As for stuff to do on top of that we haven’t really talked about it, but we do have a pretty big and healthy Australian community, at least based on our GeoIP map. So far we haven’t been drowning in complaints, which is good! But if there are things we can do to make it better, we’d be very interested in hearing about it. Weirdly enough our Lead Systems Designer is from Australia, so I’m surprised he hasn’t brought this up sooner!

games.on.net: “Will there be a random dungeon system, or a LFG utility of sorts?” asks Spooler.

Scott: I have an interesting perspective on those, because I’ve personally launched LFG systems in two major MMO’s already - original EverQuest, and EverQuest 2. If you look at the spectrum of group-finding utilities, on one end you have “just use chat channels” and on the other end of the spectrum you have the fully automated “form a group for you” thing. In between those two extremes you end up with what are really just different kinds of search helpers. And the thing with those search helpers is that nobody really uses them after the first week or two, actually (laughs). So we would like to get better group-forming into the game, but not until we can do the full, souped-up Ferrari version of it. We don’t want do it half-assed.


games.on.net: So it’s either a really good tool, or not at all?

Scott: Yeah. You do it really well, and you wait until you CAN do it really well. It’s one of our highest priority items for post-launch.

games.on.net: Denzil would like to know if there’s “any possibility of buffing up character stats for Warfronts? When you reach level 10 it's quite hard to be useful for your team, and it's a bit pointless PVP'ing against level 19's.”

Scott: How about this - are you ready? You ready for this answer?

games.on.net: Sure am.

Scott: Done. Yep. We put that in the game last beta actually. The way it works is that it doesn’t fully buff your character such that there is no incentive to continue levelling up, but it does make it so you are contributing much more and surviving much longer. You are in fact boosted a pretty significant amount. That said, it’s still going to slightly more advantageous to level up. I am not a big fan of the systems that do the “one hundred percent everybody is set to level nineteen and everybody has the exact same everything and okay go”. That is not a big help. But at the same time, you don’t want level tens getting one-shotted by level nineteens on their first day. So we were going for the middle ground that gave you a significant boost, such that it was more fun, without removing all the incentive for levelling up.

games.on.net: Forum member kennett comments that it seems like mobs that spawn from rifts don't appear to have a resistance to elemental damage from their plane (for example, fire rift mobs don't have fire resistance). Is this deliberate?

Scott: It is very deliberate, and it’s largely because after having worked on games in the past that had, shall we say, very visually consistent resistance types, that it’s actually not a whole lot of fun. That’s actually not a fun dynamic. At the end of the day we didn’t want to say “Oh, it’s a fire person! Okay Pyromancers, you guys go home, you’re no good here.” You’ll find that most successful games have abandoned that mechanic. We’re not trying to make realism here, we’re trying to make fun.

games.on.net: Plonker asks: “Elemental invasions from the opening of rifts is a huge part of the game; to the extent the title of the game is called RIFT. Do you think this idea has the longevity to sustain players' interest long term?”

Scott: I think it does, yes, because the system itself lets us create new types of content that nobody else has in their game. Our initial plans were to take it as far as doing zone-wide events, and then that was going to be our launch content. Then we realised we could do colossus events, which are smaller than a whole zone events, as well as adding ancient wardstones, and there’s even another couple of dynamic content that we’re making right now. So don’t think of it as “is a rift going to keep people happy forever”, think of it as “is the concept of entirely new kinds of content going to keep people interested?” To me that’s really cool. Lots of people look at an MMO and they go “Oh! There is overland. That is where the exclamation mark farms are. Oh! That is a dungeon. That is where the groups go.” And that right there is very binary. We’re trying to mix it up on purpose and see what new kinds of experiences we can make in this system.


games.on.net: He continues with: “There's not much information out there in regards to raid content currently and it's something that is not currently accessible within the beta. There's no doubting that raiding is a huge attraction to one particularly successful MMO on the market currently. Do you see RIFT’s end-game being strongly raid focused?”

Scott: At the high end, they will definitely be able to do expert and hard mode raids. We definitely see high-end people enjoying the “on-demand” raid content that we have. How this works is that we have our expert rifts, which are rifts where you can craft a lure and lure out a particular encounter, and suddenly you’re taking part in an extended expert mode encounter in the overland for cash and prizes. And then also there’s raid rifts, where again you craft out the lure, and summon yourself down a raid to play. So for us it’s really about trying to find new, cool ways to make a raid system.

games.on.net: Do you have plans for any other endgame content alongside raids?

Scott: Yeah, definitely! We have the tens and the twenties and the experts, but even prior to the raids, for every dungeon in the game there’s an “expert mode”, and those are broken down into “tier one experts” and “tier two experts”, and the cool thing about that is that a lot of the time, they unlock new areas in the dungeon. So if you play one that only has four bosses, the next tier might have six bosses, and an entirely new area to explore that just doesn’t exist at all in their earlier tier. On the PVP side our prestige system unlocks at level 50 where you are now able to earn “prestige levels” which unlock the ability to spend points in PVP-specific souls, for people who wish to be PVP-hardcore.

And then also at the high end our fourth Warfront, the Battle for Port Scion, unlocks, which is a 20-on-20 PVE/PVP Warfront instance. So for us we’ve been focused on making sure there’s as much of an endgame, as there is to do while you’re levelling up. It’s so hard to get an MMO that’s fun and of the right quality, and so many people get to that point and go “Phew! Now we’ve got to build content to level 50!” and then they realise “Oh crap! We now have to meter how very carefully how long it takes to get level 50 because - dun dun dun - there’s nothing to do afterwards.” And we’ve been focused for the last year or so on adding content JUST for the endgame. We have an endgame content rollout plan that extends through the life of the game also.

games.on.net: “Guilds are a great way of building community and bringing players together to work towards a common goal. What features does Rift offer in regards to guilds? Are we going to have ways to progress guilds to open up rewards and benefits to members?” asks Plonker.

Scott: The guild levelling system has been in since before alpha testing, where guilds do have their own level, guilds can do quests together to level up, and we have the concept of a quest that a guild officer can go pick up and attach to your guild, so now all of your individual guild members can go contribute to the advancement of that quest. So your guild can get experience, which earns levels, which unlocks perks for you and your guild. We have perks that are everything from convenience items to combat effectiveness banners and so on. All of that is very important to us.

games.on.net: Plonker also asks: “What are the plans for content releases for Rift? What type of schedule are Trion aiming at in regards to minor/major updates and what type of content can we expect?”

Scott: The philosophy behind it is this: “as quickly as we can put out high quality stuff”. Now as to how that turns out - hell, ask me closer to launch! We already to have post-launch content in internal testing, which is nice. We do want to make sure that there’s always something to look forward to, and the next chapter of the story, and that you want to stick around to see where it’s going next. It is broken down into telling important chapters of the launch story. This book that we’re on is all about Regulos and the Blood Storm, the history of the dragons and their place in the world, and so we do have chapters all mapped out for how this story progresses, and we’ll be making content releases to go along with that.

games.on.net: So do you plan to change the story at all in response to player actions in the world, or is it set in stone?

Scott: It’s not set in stone, definitely not. You’ll hear this question come up a lot in developer interviews: “We can tell you the story for the next five years of our game!” Really? You sure you can? You’re sure you know what your customers will want five, even... hell, two years from now? I’m pretty sure you don’t. So you have to be adaptive to both what players are doing, as well as what they find fun.

games.on.net: Our last, but by no means least question also comes from Plonker, who says: “Most of the staples for gathering have been covered within Rift in one form or another, with the exception of fishing! My significant other will be outraged by such an abhorrent omission; could you please kindly explain to her why that beautifully rendered water cannot wet a line?”

Scott: (laughs) That is the best question EVER. We definitely do want to add more flavour to the world over time, yes. But we didn’t want to focus on stuff that you can do in other games. If you want to talk about flavour, every zone has its own little hidden achievements, every zone has its own puzzles to work out and its own rewards. We want people to say “This is neat! This is very RIFT”. Definitely interested in looking to fill out more common flavour stuff and give them a RIFT spin later though, that’s for sure.

games.on.net: So you’re fishing and then, what, a rift opens up in the water and tentacles start attacking your face?

Scott: (laughs) Yes! Wouldn’t that be awesome if that happened? That sounds awesome to me.

games.on.net: You’ll pay me royalties for that right, when that happens?

Scott: Probably not, no.

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