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Fallen Earth Interviews: Colin Dwan, Project Manager
An interview with Fallen Earth's Project Manager brings us up to date on the progress of the Icarus MMO since launch.
By Garrett Fuller on November 30, 2009
Colin Dwan is the Project Manager for Fallen Earth. The game launched on September 22nd, and today we circle back to get a full state of affairs from Colin as the game enters its third month of operation.
| MMORPG.com: | Fallen Earth is going into 2010 on a strong run, what can we expect from the game in the coming months? |
| Colin Dwan: | Players can expect to see a lot in store for Fallen Earth in 2010. We’re always thinking of ways to expand and improve upon the game and there are several areas of focus for the new year, such as PvP and higher level content. Who knows, maybe we’ll open up some new territory… |
| MMORPG.com: | Are there plans to add new skills to the game, will players be able to specialize in new areas? |
| Colin Dwan: | Players will find the addition of a new tradeskill in the upcoming social patch, set for release in mid-December. As we add in new content, we will expand the current tradeskills to unlock new sets of items, weapons, and armor as players rediscover lost technology and societies. |
| MMORPG.com: | The game has shown the success of the skill based system over the class based system. Can you talk about why this system does well? |
| Colin Dwan: | The skill based system plays into the scavenged or pieced together feel of the apocalypse. Players aren’t restricted to pre-defined roles, they can tell their own story as they pick up whatever skills they need to survive the wastes. |
| MMORPG.com: | Crafting remains a major feature in Fallen Earth, what is on the horizon for crafters? |
| Colin Dwan: | The construction tradeskill released in our next patch will give crafters a whole new realm to master. They will be able to craft top end modules that will be highly sought after. These structures will provide a great base camp for grouping, hunting, and PvP by providing remote access to many of the amenities players can find in towns. |
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| MMORPG.com: | How has player balance been in regards to factions? There are many factions to choose from, do you see a swing one way or another? |
| Colin Dwan: | There is obviously an initial draw to the Enforcers and the Techs as players can feel safe behind the familiar combat approaches. However, at the same time players are definitely discovering the benefits to the other factions. So far the faction wheel is playing out very close to what we expected as the players find and take advantage of each unique set of strengths. |
| MMORPG.com: | The genre of post-apocalypse is very popular right now. Can you talk about how this will help Fallen Earth in the future? |
| Colin Dwan: | We think it’s great how much attention the post-apocalypse is getting. There is a very unique set of emotions that the genre inspires and as more people latch on, they will be drawn to experience that for themselves. The apocalypse forces players to strike a unique balance between individuality or community, boldness or fear of the environment, which makes for a truly deep experience. |
| MMORPG.com: | How has the PvP been working out in the game since launch? |
| Colin Dwan: | The PvP has found its groove and provided an exciting environment for faction and clan warfare. The conflict towns have given a real concrete reason for players to engage in PvP with more than just a fleeting reward. Conquering and upgrading these towns is a task that requires teamwork and determination. At the same time we recognize the player’s attraction to different aspects of PvP and are taking those into consideration as we work on patches next year. |
| MMORPG.com: | Is there a trend with Fallen Earth that you have found among players that you did not expect to see? |
| Colin Dwan: | The players’ flow through early content significantly changed from Beta to the Live environment. As we prepared for server load and general player progress, we were surprised to see how players changed their goals. We’ve noticed much more interaction between players at a wider range of levels than we had originally anticipated. As a game developer, you just have to determine the areas you have to stay rigid on and what you can be flexible with the community on. We feel confident that the game has flexed well with the players and is providing them a great place to play. |
;)
For more on Fallen Earth, check out their website.
Good interview, with solid answers from Colin imo.
Found it to be an enjoyable addition to my morning reading. Thanks for posting Dana.
nothing on vehicles physics then? bah
don't get me wrong i did kinda enjoy beta but i was seriously miffed on the vehicles acting like mini trains that travel at 1mph.
Hmm... I'm pretty certain that a saw something in a patchnote.
Great game so far. I've tested out the pvp in one of the conflict towns and it's a lot of fun when you can find some combat. I'm level 24 now, headed back to S1 from S2 and making my first motorcycle as we speak. Should be ready sometime tomorrow or the next day :)
I'd love to see a few things in game like a dressing room, vanity clothing that allows you to wear graphic of clothes while retaining stats of chosen armor, and hide helmet. Also it would be cool if they replaced some of the butt ugly faces and added in image designer for crafters. My character is cute though :) But I only like one of the female and male faces :(
Hmm... I'm pretty certain that a saw something in a patchnote.
The patchnote says something to effect that vehicles can now get airborne when going over bumps. I haven't experienced it myself as I'm a horseman. Horses in FE have always been able to jump.
Pretty good stuff except for the Conflict Town thing. They are mostly just lame and should have been reworked. PvP needs real objectives, not grinding PvE missions.
Vehicle physics are in. Vehicles leave the ground as you'd expect now; actually sometimes they feel a bit lighter than they should. Good stuff though.
I'm going to have to agree with you here. I was addicted in pre-launch playing 12hrs a day everyday, something I haven't done in any MMO since UO. I was loving Fallen Earth and enjoying my leveling, something again I haven't done since UO.
But then, I got into my first few PVP altercations. I was so insanely let down at how they went (we won) that I quickly fizzled out of the game and I haven't been back since. This was the last 2 days of Pre-Launch mind you, so it's been quite a while. I knew that PVP didn't have corpse looting, I was ok with that, I knew pretty much everything to expect from PVP before I got into it.... but when I actually saw it I was just let down. It was the worst part of the game and in a post-apoc World, PVP should be the BEST part of the game. I am a big PVP fan and a hardcore one at that. I'm sorry, but it just turned into basically a pod camp every time and if it had corpse looting in some fashion, not nessisarily full loot but just one piece of gear or something, then it would really change the game drastically. Icarus has been headstrong about not putting this in and I just couldn't do it anymore.
I have been planning on coming back, but I just haven't been able to. Even though I knew what to expect, I didn't expect to be let down so much by the PVP experience. How can you have a post-apoc game without an amazing PVP system? Conflict towns are a joke.
Fallen Earth is a great game, so much that I haven't canceled my subscription yet. Even though I haven't played since pre-launch and I haven't even installed FE since I upgraded to windows 7 over a month ago.
I'm feeling the lack of solid PvP too. I came out in S1 for an Escapist sponsored fight and I didn't really enjoy myself at all. I hear it's better with factions churning out teams to fight with, but I still think PvP is the big thing they need to work on.
It's a shame the interviewer didn't push a bit more towards the complete lack of endgame content and the broken PVP system and when they are planning addressing this.
Colin Dwan gave a nice PR spin to his answers, about Faction imbalance (wich really are completely out of wack. The amount of Enforcers and Tech players is ridiculous) and that PVP is a success (wich it clearly isn't as it's one of the main debated hot topics on the official forums).
So called endgame is severely lacking to the point that there is simply NOTHING to do, except a horrible faction grind (wich isn't worth it, as normal crafted gear is just as good not even better then the faction gear) or PVP (wich is broken).
It's a great game nonetheless. As long as you don't reach the cap and not interested in PVP.
Cheers
Bollocks to PVP! - COMPLETE waste of time IMO and divides/destroys any player community.
As for corpse looting? COMPLETELY disagree its bad enough being ganked by some social leper without having your gear stolen as well!
No worries to that. They will never introduce Full Loot Open PVP. Game isn't designed for that. And I myself I am happy for that.
Many players (include me) stayed in S1 not because of socializing but because of around 100 AP you need to get from quests there. Should be no surprise for them.
They will get everything fixed guys, to me they have listened to players and interacted more with players than any other game ive played. Im sure this next patch will be good. Sit tight.
No worries to that. They will never introduce Full Loot Open PVP. Game isn't designed for that. And I myself I am happy for that.
Yeah, full open world PVP is junk. But the later endgame sectors should be MUCH more open than they are. Full loot, would work in FE, but I wouldn't like it and I don't think most people would either. I wish there was some sort of player looting though, I tried it on their forums and it seemed to be infested with nothing but carebears. Who goes into a Post-Apoc game and wants to be a carebear? I mean, I even had a thread one time that suggest a new type of system where nobody really lost anything but durability, that durability was turned into tangible objects and it was 5 pages of people saying they didn't want player looting..... even by people who were advocates of durability loss on items. (Canyon Trader to name one!) Not that they didn't like my idea, they just saw something about player looting and instantly thought NO. If that's not an uber carebear idk what is and I really don't think it is a good representation of the kind of players that are actually in the game. All the ones I interacted with were not carebears, even before I made it to PVP.
Even backpack looting would be a pretty heavy penalty for death in FE. Ammo is gold!
I mean, c'mon. It's Post-Apoc. Show me one single Post-Apoc movie or story where the people who inhabited the world didn't feed on each other in some way. Just one! All I want is one. Even in the book "I Am Legend" the vampires hunted the brainless ones! It was short, so it didn't really go into depth, but they still said they hunted them. (Movie doesn't count. The vampires were all brainless and the main character was alone)
To anyone who hasn't played:
Don't take what I say here and what discussions I'm trying to start as meaning the game is bad. It needs a little work and a few ideas rethought, IMHO. But it's still a great game and one of the best I've played in years.
"The PvP has found its groove and provided an exciting environment for faction and clan warfare. The conflict towns have given a real concrete reason for players to engage in PvP with more than just a fleeting reward."
Maybe Colin should take a look at the PVP threads on his own Fallen Earth Forums.
The PVP hasn't found it's groove, unless the groove is supposed to be "it sucks".
Most dedicated PVP folks are finding the game's PVP incredibly boring - not exciting, because PVP in general is hard to find, unbalanced, unrewarding, and not worth paying for, if you bought the game for PVP.
Did I get forget to mention people logging off if they're losing a pvp fight. FE doesn't even have a logoff timer to prevent it.
These guys are PVP newbs and they have a long way to go before they can say they have an exciting PVP environment.
I'm not optimistic when a developer says their PVP is great but their playerbase is telling them how much it sucks.
These comments are why I never sub-d after Beta testing. Great concept, worst impelmentation ever. Why no full loot? or xp loss on death? Something, c'mon folks. make it real.
This interview sucks and is devoid of any real content. Did the developer say anything other than meaningless PR crap? None of the existing issues were addressed or even a hint of improvements or tweaks to come. All I got out of this interview is, our game rocks, we own, and everything is perfect in FE.
What a load of BS.
FE is a great game. best game ive played yet. imo, PvP really needs a rework. :)