General Discussion

The guys from NetDevil stopped by to talk to MMORPG.com user about their upcoming sci-fi MMORPG, Jumpgate Evolution.

MMORPG_Taera: Greetings and welcome to MMORPG.com's Live Chat on irc.forthegamers.org! I'm your host, MMORPG.com's community manager Laura "Taera" Genender. Joining us today is the NetDevil Jumpgate:Evolution team!

MMORPG_Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to two questions at a time, and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.

MMORPG_Taera: Now it's time for introductions! Feel free to start sending your questions to DevBot while our guests introduce themselves!

ND_Draker: Hi All. My name is Hermann and I'm the producer on Jumpgate Evolution.

ND_Draker: It's a fun project :).

ND_Awen: I'm Awen the Jumpgate Evolution Community Manager

ND_Binkies: I'm Binkies the Business Development Mgr

ND_Istvan: Good evening. I'm Istvan and I'm a programmer on JGE. I've been working on Jumpgate since 2002.

Read it all here.

I'm looking forward to trying this game!

The cockpit view sounds good.

Cockpit view was essentially all we had in Jumpgate Classic.  The external, playable 3rd person or ship view is new for Evolution.  We simply haven't shown cockpit view in any released screenshots because the user interface (HUD) is actively changing weekly and we know it's not yet in its final form.   Several of us on the dev team fly in 1st person/cockpit view (with joysticks) by preference.

Since I never played "jumpgate classic", could someone summarize for me how pvp is "motivated" in the game currently? (i.e. is it about capturing places, loot, "griefing", soft rewards such as medals or ranks?). What's the general direction of changes to this for jumpgate evolution?

Also (probably a futile question), is there an eta for the "proper" website?

Originally posted by IstvanND

Cockpit view was essentially all we had in Jumpgate Classic.  The external, playable 3rd person or ship view is new for Evolution.  We simply haven't shown cockpit view in any released screenshots because the user interface (HUD) is actively changing weekly and we know it's not yet in its final form.   Several of us on the dev team fly in 1st person/cockpit view (with joysticks) by preference.

However, many people prefer piloting the most powerful ships, which tend to be huge. I think these are best in the 3rd person view because they tend to require turrets. One presumes you have a crew or computer that can move them in the right direction! The large ships also include 'flag ships' which require the commanding tactical overview.

Originally posted by Doutrande

Since I never played "jumpgate classic", could someone summarize for me how pvp is "motivated" in the game currently? (i.e. is it about capturing places, loot, "griefing", soft rewards such as medals or ranks?). What's the general direction of changes to this for jumpgate evolution?

Also (probably a futile question), is there an eta for the "proper" website?

ETA on the website should be a few weeks or less.  I haven't heard what the actual holdup is at the moment, but in our relatively small company, it's probably lack of manpower somewhere along the line.

PvP in JGC began as largely a bragging-rights and squad (guild) conflict based system, with simple stats being the first motivator.  Last year, a factional military system was added to try to focus PvP in two ways:  directly rewarding people for engaging in PvP against similarly-inclined players (instead of just not penalizing them), and tying that PvP into the missions system.  There were plans for full-on territory conflicts as an enhancement to the military system, but they have been largely superseded by the Jumpgate Evolution development effort.

Jumpgate Evolution will take ideas from the previously-existing systems in JGC, as well as from other products, but I'm still not sure yet what the ultimate forms of PvP motivation will take.  I suspect there will be some kind of territory control conflicts in what we call "unregulated space" (JG equivalent of 0.0 sec in EVE), but I cannot be certain yet if it will be guild-level or faction/nation level.  We are still focusing our design on early gameplay to ensure that is fun, before we spend time developing how that extends into what we call the "elder game", which high-rank pilots will mostly participate in.