Lost Continents Interview

Logan interviewed Travis, the community manager for Lost Continents about their upcoming MMORPG. Lost Continents is a Massively Multiplayer Online Action Adventure in a fictional Pulp history setting. Players will begin their adventure in the wilds of Africa and the deserts of Egypt as they seek treasure, complete expeditions, defeat mighty beasts of myth and legend, overcome traps and puzzles—and try to save the world from ancient evils. This is a reprint of an interview originally published at Logan's site Reckon! news - more of these excellent interviews will be reprinted here at RPGDot in the coming days...

Q: What things are being done to help the newbie? Tutorial like they have in EQ, etc?

One of our tasks when designing Lost Continents was to make it as accessible as possible to a first time player, while still being deep enough to keep the experience players coming back. That idea permeates Lost Continents. You can even see it in the setting we chose, which is familiar to nearly everyone. Character creation was designed with simplicity in mind. You choose between 3 archetypes, choose a specialty within the archetype, choose your character's physical look, and you're done. Your initial choices determine your starting skills and talents. As you advance throughout the game, you will be offered more choices periodically so you can continue to diversify and make your character unique. In the higher levels, two characters that started the same could now be completely different (an explorer who took the skills to give him stealth and the ability to control animals vs. an explorer who followed the path of theft and magic, for instance). It's easy to get into, but has lots of depth.

And, indeed, we do have a tutorial. A narrative tutorial, as we call it. The tutorial starts after character creation and will encompass the entire first level of experience for the player. The tutorial is done in our normal storytelling fashion as the player embarks on their first expedition, which is customized to the type of character they chose. During the expedition, the player learns the basics of the game and how to use the skills the character has to begin with. At the conclusion of the tutorial, the character will reach second level and the tutorial will walk them through character advancement. In this way, all "newbies" will actually start the full game of Lost Continents at second level.

Q: How many face models are there for each race (not counting the hair)?

The characters within Lost Continents are all humans of different races. There will be six different races you can choose from and, of course, you can be male or female. Each race/sex combination will have at least 6 different face variations to choose from. So, there will be at least twelve different faces per race or 72 different faces total.

Q: What is being done to move us from the widely perceived "leveling treadmill" that most games (AO, AC, EQ, DAOC) embrace?

It's important to note that Lost Continents is using level-based advancement. This is simply because levels are an easy-to-understand method of character advancement. As you gain experience, you gain levels and grow stronger and more diversified. It's a model familiar to most gamers.

Our goal is to provide a most interesting leveling experience than simply camp-kill-level-repeat by focusing on expeditions and exploration. There are many ways for characters to gain experience besides fighting, including solving puzzles and completing expeditions. As an example, an explorer specialized in stealth could sneak into a temple, overcome the many traps, avoid the temple guards, and make off with the temples treasures. He'd gain as much experience as the warrior who went in guns blazing, tripped every trap, and killed every guard.

Q: How smart are the mobs (ie. Mobile Objects - aka NPC's)? I mean, if I keep showing up at their daycare center, luring single young monsters away to a nasty death, can I do this forever, or do they eventually take action? Is the mobs behavior static, or is there some pseudo random component? By this I mean, if I shoot a mob with an arrow, A) It always chases directly at me, back to the waiting hoards for slaughter, or B) 70% give chase, 20% attempt to use an evasive maneuver, and 10% run for help!

Mob behavior is generally the same amongst the same type of creature, so you can have a good idea of what to expect when fighting a certain type of creature, but behavior can vary greatly between creature types. On top of the typical "charge in and fight" behavior we're used to, creatures have a number of other AI choices they can be assigned to use. Creatures can be designated as guards and will run for help at the first sign of a PC. Creatures with ranged weapons can be set to maintain range, fire from range until the PC closes, or perform hit-and-run tactics. Creatures can be set to flee when they reach a certain percentage of health or energy and those fleeing creatures can either run away in a random direction, run back to their home, or run to get help from the nearest friendly creature. Likewise, creatures have different methods of pursuit. Some particularly nasty ones carry a grudge and will follow you throughout the entire zone. Others won't follow you beyond a certain distance set by the designer. Still others will follow you unless you get a certain distance away from them, in which case they give up.

By using combinations of the above as well as setting custom triggers on mobs, we have the ability to provide a lot of diversity in the behavior of our NPCs.

Q: Many games have attempted to slow their rate of level advancement by introducing downtime. Players are very concerned about it. In EQ, downtime was severe - up to 20 minutes. In DAOC and AO, it is under 1 minute. I view this as an excellent trend. If I was the most powerful fighter possible in your game and wanted to rest after a nasty combat in which I was nearly killed, how long would it take me to get back my full hit points? Mana?

The actual numbers won't be locked down until the beta period, but our goal is to provide a method whereby there is little downtime, but still a sense of danger if you push yourself too hard. This is being done by dividing s character's hit points into health and energy. When a character takes damage, they lose it from their energy first. This is shown as the character dodging incoming blows. Once the energy is depleted, subsequent damage comes off their health as the character starts to actually get hit.

Energy comes back very rapidly, so a quick rest after a fight and energy will be back to full. Health, on the other hand, comes back more slowly. So, if you burn through all of your energy and take a few hits, your energy will be back rapidly, but your health will remain low for a while. In this way, you can get back into the fray quickly, but if you're not careful, you'll eventually wear down your health.

Other activities also use energy, such as casting spells (there is no mana) and firing heavy weapons, so the player will have to choose between taking these actions or conserving energy to dodge any incoming hits.

Q: In AO, we were introduced to vehicles. These were not independent things that could be parked, stolen, sat upon, etc - they were very lame morphings of the character into the vehicle (ie man becomes car). In SOL (EQ) this will be repeated. In DAOC, their vehicles amount to buy tickets and sit on horse til it gets to the destination (whereupon it disappears) or jump off enroute. Will 'Lost Continents' have vehicles? Will the character models 'morph' into the vehicle, be forced to only go along vehicle routes or will the vehicles be completely separate from the character.

We spent a while thinking about the possibility of personal vehicles, be they car or horse, but ended up setting the idea aside because of all the questions about using a vehicle as a weapon (can I run over that mummy with my jeep?) and the potential disruption of zone flow. So, players will explore Africa on foot.

That being said, dramatic fights on a moving vehicle are a staple of pulp adventure, so you'll definitely find yourself battling evil in a zeppelin far over the lands below and we're working with the idea of combat on a moving train. Also, we do have vehicles like biplanes in the game, but these are methods you use to get from one zone to another. Each zone is it's own contained area of the world. You won't be walking through a tunnel and find yourself entering a new zone. Instead, you'll board a plane or boat or hop into a jeep and watch your travels across the map of Africa as the red-dotted line makes its progress. Such travel is done near instantly as we want you exploring and adventuring, not sitting on a plane waiting for it to arrive.

Q: Name three things which intrigue YOU about the gameplay.

1: Storytelling. This is an easy one. I absolutely love that there's more to do than simply kill. I'm a big fan of story in games and in the current crop of MMORPGs I do every quest available. So, Lost Continent's ability to not only provide story, but also customize that story to your character and make you actually feel like the hero is wonderful for me.

2: The setting. Pulp history is such a wonderful, exciting setting to pull from and is immediately familiar to most everyone. It's a world where mummies roam the sands of Egypt, abominable snowmen hunt in the frigid north, and jack-booted thugs hatch evil plots with mad scientists. It's a completely romanticized era filled with action and adventure.

3: Character advancement. The Lost Continents character advancement system is one of the most flexible that I've seen. As a character levels, they gain new skills or talents and allocate points to the skills they already have. The number of choices at each level is relatively small, so you aren't overwhelmed and the choices you are offered are customized to your character based on your previous choices. So, if you're following a path of stealth, you'll end up with more stealthy choices than someone following a path of magic. In this way, a character can be slowly customized by the player to create a character that is truly unique.

Q: Will there be static spawns? Static loot?

There will be both static and dynamic spawns and loot. Both have their uses. You'll see more static spawns in Private Zones™ than you will in a public zone since when you are in a Private Zone, it's a zone created specifically for you and your group. You don't have to worry about camping an area until the big nasty you want spawns…he'll be waiting for you when you arrive. Of course, after you kill him, he's dead and won't be returning in most cases.

Q: What is your favorite aspect of 'Lost Continents'?

It's definitely the Private Zone technology. This is the piece that allows us to take massive multiplayer gaming to the next level. Being able to spawn a zone specifically for an individual or a single group and customize the zone based on the past achievements of the player is the core to our ability to provide each player with their own storyline where they are the hero.

Q: Aside from the fact that the game is not yet out, what is your least favorite aspect of 'Lost Continents'?

Ahh, this is one of those tricky question that you're supposed to answer with something like "My least favorite aspect is that we're all obsessive-compulsive over-workers who aren't happy with anything less than outright perfection". Heh.

Seriously, though, my least favorite aspect has to be the limitations that have to be imposed in order to produce an actual title (as opposed to vaporware). In order to produce a product as complex as a MMORPG, you have to have a LOT of focus and there are lots of things you'd like to do that would eat up development resources that are needed to complete the core game. As an example, we are starting in Africa…a rather natural place to begin a pulp adventure game. But, I'm an impatient man. I can't wait until we are able to expand out into other areas of the world…areas that we simply can't include in the initial release and still finish the game. I look forward to exploring haunted castles in Europe, hunting Yeti in the frozen tundra of Russia, stalking through the jungles of South America, and having a shootout in the wild west of America.

Q: From the FAQ: "If you manage to reach the maximum value for heroism, you will receive a tag that will indicate this to other players, so your courage and skill will be recognized by those around you." - what kind of tag? A title? A bullseye? A nifty fedora, whip and pistol? Your name in red?

The actual tag hasn't been decided on yet. It may be a title you can display or it may be something as simply as a change in the color of your name. The idea is to have something that will tell other players at a glance that you have achieved and maintained this rather difficult goal.

Q: In AO we were introduced to a 'partially customizable' keyboard which featured 'fixed keys' that the user could not reprogram to suit their preferences. Will "Lost Continents" include any 'fixed keys'?

We plan to allow full customization of the keyboard so players can setup their keys as they like. After all, we hope you'll be playing this game for a long time and want to ensure that you're using an interface that you're comfortable with, not twisting your hands to try to fit an interface that we decided everyone should use.

Q: After reading through the FAQ, the biggest problem I can foresee with this game is in order to function (past the free month if they have it) is it will need a lot of content. 2001 has a bad year for releasing games with actual content (AO, WW2OL, DAOC) - what can you say to reassure the nervous masses?

We're doing a lot to provide a ton of content at the start as well as frequent updates post launch. After the game releases, the Lost Continents team will be divided into two separate teams. One team will continue working on Africa, frequently adding new storylines, new equipment, new creatures, and new episodes to current zones as well as entirely new areas. The second team will be working on a new part of the world that will be released as a full-blown expansion.

During development, we've done a lot to ensure that creating new content is very easy for us. Our engine, Tesla, allows us to update zones dynamically so you can create a zone and be walking through it while you make changes. Also, through the use of Private Zones, we can reuse the same basic zone geography and add new features and creatures for a new episode of the zone.

We're also working to eliminate content waste. In most current games, a zone is good for a certain level range, and then you leave it and never hunt there again. In Lost Continents, we are making multiple versions of public zones. Different versions fit different level ranges and you can choose which one you enter. So, the area you fought in as a youth can be returned to when you're a seasoned veteran and you can still find a challenge there.

This philosophy carries through to the private zones as well. If you exhaust the content of some private zones, they can be made to remain as a private hunting ground for you. It's kind of it's own reward for finishing the story of that zone. You now have a private hunting ground where you can take your friends. As an example, in a lost world setting, if you go through all of the episodes and successfully fight back the SKULL incursion, they may eventually give up entirely and you'll have a lost world zone full of dinosaurs and man-eating plants you can hunt. Such a zone would customize the inhabitants for the level of your character/group, so a level 30 character and a level 50 character would both find a challenge in the zone.

Finally, and probably most importantly, we've spent a lot of time designing systems to make content creation fast and simple so the post-launch teams can churn out new content quickly. Everything is data-driven and based on a series of locks and keys, so we don't need to make code changes to add or change content.

Q: Have many characters will we get per account?

This is something that won't be finalized until beta, but we're looking in the range of four to six characters per world server per account.

Q: How big will 'Africa' be in the initial release only?

This is a surprisingly tricky question. Each zone in Lost Continents can have many iterations, so giving an exact number of zones doesn't work very well. To explain, each zone starts out as a base zone, which is basically just the geography of the area. The size of the base zones range anywhere from a one-room house to expansive lands. We then take that base zone and add features. Features can be anything from a tree or rock to an entire village. By using the same base geography and just adding different features and inhabitants, we can quickly create multiple versions of the same zone and give them a different story.

You will see this used most extensively in private zones, where there can be many different variations of the same zone, each with their own story that is customized to your character's achievements. In keeping with the pulp tradition, each version of a private zone is known as an episode. The base zone is the same, but the inhabitants and features of the zone change. I'll give you a quick example of how we re-use a zone.

Let's say you come across a lost city full of apes. You explore the city and find it in disrepair, as though a civilization had built it and was then destroyed by war. Later, you return and find a way to travel back in time to when the civilization was in full bloom. You find the city in its original glory…and inhabited by intelligent apes! Through your interaction with the apes, you set them on a course that eventually leads them to fraction and start to war amongst themselves, finally destroying their great city and ending their civilization. In each instance, it's the same base zone, but the inhabitants and features change. In the original version you come across, the buildings are run down and the place is full of normal apes. In the past version, the buildings are in their original splendor and intelligent apes walk around conversing with each other. As you move closer to the present, you see the effects of the war on the city through the use of different features and changing attitudes of the inhabitants.

For a basic rundown of what Africa is like in the initial release, Africa is divided into three general areas: West Africa, East Africa, and Egypt. West Africa includes areas and creatures taken from traditional African mythology. East Africa has more of a straight pulp feel, with fewer ties to existing mythology. Egypt is just what you'd expect. It's full of pyramids and tombs, traps and treasures, and, of course, the occasional mummy.

Logan's comments on the interview: What can I say? It looks like a nice game. I didn't get the exact time pined down on 'energy regen' or 'explorable world' but the answers he gave make the game look pretty darned interesting to me. Shocking as it may seem to long time readers of Recon!, he has left me with no negative impressions or nagging doubts. Hopefully I can get into the beta on this and let the readers know if I think it is a good game or no. Proof, as they say, is always in the pudding. Why people stick it into the pudding is beyond me but there it is.