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Black Prophecy Interviews: Update Interview
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently spoke with Timo Krahl, Creative Director, Reakktor Media Gmbh, the company makign the sci-fi MMORPG, Black Prophecy.
By Garrett Fuller on May 27, 2010
| MMORPG.com: | Can you give us some insight into how the game's development is going? What stage are you at now? |
| Timo Krahl: | Most of the game mechanics are finished - now it's mostly about polishing, balancing, and thinking about improvements. That's what the first closed beta test is for. We are very pleased, though, about the overall progress right now, especially since we had several obstacles along the way in the past, like the bankruptcy of our previous mother company, which slowed down the game's development. |
| MMORPG.com: | As developers, what is your favorite part about space combat games? |
| Timo Krahl: | I guess the combat itself - that´s why we are making such a combat-heavy game right now. But it depends on the sub-genre I think - some people prefer the exploration aspect, but a game like that has to offer a lot in order to stay interesting. But if the combat in your space game is crappy, the other features won´t help. |
| MMORPG.com: | Are there any lessons you have learned in the closed beta testing you are doing? |
| Timo Krahl: | Well, it's not the first MMOG we've made, so we basically know what to expect. It's also still too early to come to any conclusions. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Talk about the ships players will have access too. What type of customization will be available? |
| Timo Krahl: | Nearly everything. Cockpits, shields, engines, wings, the amount and type of weapons, optional missile launchers with different missile types, etc. You will also be able to customize the colors of the ship and we are thinking about enabling putting your clan logo on your ship. The player is free to decide what type of ship he wants to have with all these single parts - like having a big gunship or a fast fighter ship. Also the level of the ship's parts is shown on the ship - so it will look bigger or more mean as you level up. All ship parts can also be customized with MODs that alter the values of the part. |
| MMORPG.com: | Do you think there is still more room for more complexity in the sci-fi genre of MMOGs? |
| Timo Krahl: | Absolutely - just look at the fantasy-based games. The variety is nearly endless with a special game for every interest. The sci-fi genre as we know it is varied (cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, space opera, classic sci-fi) but there are just not that many games to choose from. So I think that there is still plenty of room. It´s pretty risky to make a big budget game in a smaller special-interest niche so we won´t see that many in the near future. |
| MMORPG.com: | For someone who has not seen the game, tell us a little about the back history of the lore. |
| Timo Krahl: | Black Prophecy is set in the distant future where humans are somewhat "outdated" because the two superhuman species hold all relevant positions. These are the Tyi and the Genides - one is technologically enhanced and the other one genetically. The two are mired in a permanent conflict and fight for resources and inhabitable planets. There is also a human terrorist group called the Jadd Baran which is constantly fighting everything that is "non-human" or superhuman. The player starts out as a normal human on a new planet that is about to be settled - a perfect planet - too good to be true. On this planet, the Sapiens, Tyi and Genides will face an ancient power that changes everything. The player will live through these events and then has to decide if he wants to become a Tyi or a Genide in this new universe. |
| MMORPG.com: | From a development perspective, what was your biggest challenge with the game? |
| Timo Krahl: | There are many challenges and it's not over yet :) - I think the biggest ones were to design a game that has never been done before in this form and adapt the things everyone would expect from a single-player space combat game into an MMOG. The other big challenge is the whole technical and network side since there is a lot more going on in a real-time action game than in your average semi-turn-based MMOG. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Give players an overall glimpse into Black Prophecy. What can we expect? |
| Timo Krahl: | You can expect the first ever real-time space combat MMOG that is free-to-play and very accessible with a lot of things veterans of the genre will be glad to see and plenty of new ideas to keep things fresh and exciting. |
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I hope they give EVE some real competition. Looks promising though
sweet
Can't wait for this game, Looks very good,
lemme in already!
It's nice to see games coming out looking to compete directly with EVE. It's good for everybody involved. We need more sci fi mmo's, so I'm pretty excited about this one. Especially the twitch based combat.
Even though I usually turn away from F2P games and never look back; there isn't much out there for space sims and such, so I'm gonna have to check this one out.
Will you be able to pilot both Fighter-class vessels, as well as capitol ships, should you so desire?
When I see my ideal space combat game, I think of the large battle at the end of Return of the Jedi...tons of capital ships going head to head and close range with fighters and bombers zipping about between them....I this scenario, I'd like for all vessels present to be controlled by actual players.
For me to look at this as a real competitor to EVE, it must have this degree of flexibility, as well as a robust economy system in place, and go ahead and add real exploration...If all you were able to do was dog-fight...that will get old fast, no matter how cool it is.
I am hopeful, but cautious in my anticipation of this game, and admittedly very ignorant of its expected features.
...If you could control capital ships, then everyone would want to, thus making them look like regular ships.
"When everyone is super, nobody is."
lol if everyone wants to pilot a capital ship, then why make a fighter the only ship you can fly?
It's simply not true, man. Capital ships do not make you super, you just have a different role. After all, fighters and bombers decimated our fleet at Pear Harbor...the capital ships never even came close enough to the island to see it.
Some capital ships serve anti fighter roles, others try to destroy those anti-fighter boats, others try to kill the capital ships attacking the anti-fighter boats. Bombers are trying to kill all enemy capital ships, fighters are defending the bombers...this is how naval combat works...which is what all space combat seems to be based on.
That said, again, are players limited to fighter combat?
I have some serious doubts about that F2P model.
without money how can they upgrade the game in a future ?
slowly, or not at all.
In my optiimal game there would be capital ships and fighters etc, except the capital ships would have a hard time hitting the fighters because of their speed like how it works in EVE. Also I would really like to see a game where it takes a whole crew of players to fly a capital ship, like a player to man certain turrets and such, and players would have to be on board the capital ship so that they could launch in a fighter and battle. Pretty much the space battle from Battlestar Galactica need to be done by someone, they are very reminiscent of naval battles and seem to be very strategic.
I just hope its a real 3d style space combat. No spiralling around to get to enemies above or below you. I'm not an EvE player so I dont know how their combat works, but Star Trek Online was so disapointing. It has made me a little leary of all space battle MMO's in the future.
We could use these threads to make a new MMORPG.com drinking game. For every time EvE is mentioned in a BP or JG:E thread, drink a shot. I imagine, after the first page of replies, the posts will get a bit incomprehensible.. :P
All kidding aside, it's good to see news on this title and, being f2p, gives me one less excuse to not give it a go. Yay for more options.
Actually this is not that much in direct competition to EvE. This is twitch based combat as far as i know, so its more in direct competition to JG:E than EvE. Twitch based comabt usually appeals to another segment than the point'n'click combat of EvE.
And f2p gives me the shivers, tbh. The only f2p game that have worked for me is DDO, and that is be course it has a model that supports p2p as well as f2p, thus giving it completely different dynamics than other f2p games.
Such a shame about the f2p bit, was looking forward to seeing how this turned out after the delays of JG:E, now I just have to wait for it no matter how long it may take. What a dissappointment.
I wish it was P2P tho.. =D
Well, it certainly looks interesting and the online gaming community could welcome anthor space simulation game. I can't help but wonder if this is an EvE clone?
To players of Neocron Reakktor is known as company that created rather nice and original game (at that time) and promissed tons of features + fixes after the launch. Features rarely arrived, promisses were repeatadly broken. Because of incompetence and understuffing fixes, improvements and expanding were not happening fast enough to keep the population healthy and servers were bleeding players.
Bugs you learn to live with, but neverending lies and promisses leave ugly taste in your mouth.
As long it will be F2P it will never be a competition for EvE online. Never!
It will be like all previos f2p. The players with money got the win button by paying cash and that turns a lot of players off.
ROM works this way even DDO is slowly going aswell this way. Sad but true.
Xianthos... You may not know this but EvE has a win button by paying cash also... Its called Time Codes....
Nice try though you troll.
To say this isn't competition due to combat mechanics almost implies that you need an EvE clone to truely be direct competition :P
It is not direct competition in mechanics, and likely won't have many of the features EvE has, but it is competition in the sense that Star Trek is/was competition. That being the fact it is a sci-fi space based MMO and that may be more of a draw then combat differences. But like I said, being f2p, those people who don't want to pay for more subs can play both so that's pretty cool in my book :)
All the time codes in the world won't cause your skills to train any faster so how are GTC a "win button"? If you need GTC to fund the ships you lost, then you likely aren't winning....
But is it going to be sectors of space (read instances) with lots of load times or more free-flowing?
Even the great EvE annoys me because each system is its own little instance, you can't stop in between systems or fly directly from system to system, it's all jumps and jump gates... guarantees gate camping and choke points + lag.
Thankfully they don't have load times but...
I dunno, guess the technology doesn't exist for a truly open galaxy to fly around in.
If this goes well it will probably cut Eves subscriber base in half as, imo, many people playing Eve does that because there are no other good space-ship MMORPGs out there.
Two words: Character bazaar.
Not long ago I bought a 23 mil SP character there for 4 billion. 1 timecode = 300 mil = €17 so 10 of those babies will get you a character with pretty good skills.
Yeah, you know that's always been out of site out of mind for me. I've known about it, but never used it so I don't generally think about it. I still think there are strong arguments to be made that the person buying the character isn't buying a win since they need to know how to actually play to avoid substantial losses. Additionally, that high SP character was in the game the whole time it was training up to high sp, so there is no new "win" introduced as opposed to an item shop that basically manufactures items on demand. But, I can certainly chalk this up to a difference of perspective on it and good point bringing it up.
As far as your previous comment about cutting EvE's subs in half, I'd would honestly be extremely surprised if that happens. I mean I imagine many people are in my position (or maybe I am a unique and special snow flake), where they will try out BP since it is f2p, but still maintain their EvE sub(s). This would be fine for both games really. That said, I am certainly glad to see EvE getting some competition as that is one sure way to motivate the developers :)
People wil not be able to control capital ships in this game.U can control capitals only in missions but only their cannons not the whole ship.And for f2p model they already said they have plenty of money for this game in present and future.As for beta i think it wil be in 6 months or soo idk >.<
No money? Hardly. F2P usually means a larger community and often a larger revenue stream than P2P. The larger revenue stream is because of the much larger community.
And you're not dealing with a boring, empty world, because the low barrier to entry means a lot of people are trying the game. F2P is a good deal for us players because it costs us nothing at all to decide if the game is what we want to play.
Take a look at DDO sometime. It went from dying to successful on the basis of changing from P2P to F2P, and that's just one of many examples of games using the F2P model to bring quality to the players.
True, until you hit the endgame and have to spend 5k of real money to be elite, on most f2p games thats what happens. But perhads they could make it right and sell items that arent overpowered, i hope the game have balance when ill try it.
What is "makign"? Please spellcheck your blurb/link to this article....please.
read the interview, got pretty excited, thought to myself:
"damn this sounds neat!"
then in the last sentence he says "free2play"...
ok cya, bring another.
Free 2 play is very bad news.
Also please do not think that this is Eve with FPS combat is this game has much much less depth to it. It is an instanced space combat simulator nothing more so don't get too excited guys. unless an instanced space combat simulator is what your looking for.
thats very, very, very superficial. And it proves you don't know ANYTHING about Black Prophecy.
Everyone is in a panic because it's F2P, but I think it'll be alright, they gonna use a nice balanced cash shop (time vs money, you cant get anything in cs you wouldn't get ingame without paying).
just an instanced space simulator huh? What about the huge storyline a pro german Sci-Fi writer wrote for them? What about the fully customizable ships ? What about PvEvP ? And there might be open PvP too, they never said the game will be FULLY instanced. There will be clan station fights too, within specified periods.
1 conclusion: do some research
oh there are always enough people with money burning holes in their pockets,willing to pay real cash for a "special" outfit or other asthetic items, a cash shop could run most games these days simply off the revenue from that ,that is the main reason i always say once a game starts to slow down change it over to F2P and support it with a cash shop to keep it running as long as they can if they want to squeeze a little bit more money out of it. (they could have done that with Tabula Rasa, yes im still bitter about its cancellation)
Yeah your right there is tons of none combat related stuff in this game isn't there? Like crafting a full economy, etc.... er no there isn't, there is basically instanced combat zones and that is it.I have done my research, I have read the site and that is what the developers themselves are saying.
So my point stands this is a very combat heavy instanced MMO, stay away if your looking for the depth of Eve. But it might be a good combat game.
Buy a character in the character bazaar maybe? I love how certain EVE players laugh at this game, and bring up the whole cash shop argument. EVE is a cash shop, multi-boxing, hurry up and wait, shoot red boxes, excel online, be semi-AFK 90% of the time and still do well type of game and nothing more. And at the topic of EVE, by the looks of it, the only thing these two games have in common (thankfully) is the sci-fi theme. The two simply shouldn't be compared. I'm looking forward to BP, it may be a "dumbed down" shoot-em-up space game but if it's fun, it's fun. I know EVE isn't IMO.
Feel free to read the whole thread where Yamota already corrected me about the character bazaar and I responded. I can give you the short version though: Character Bazaar is not an "I WIN" button. Beyond that, there are plenty of discussions that have taken place regarding whether EvE is or is not a cash shop. To sum it up, my opinion is that it is not, at least in the traditional sense, since nothing is created on demand. You keep rocking your opinions though as everyone is certainly entitled to their own.
Otherwise, I'm not seeing a whole lot of EvE players bashing BP. If anything, I've seen BP fans bring up how this is going to be serious competition for EvE, EvE subs will take a huge hit, etc etc. I guess there are two sides to every coin eh? Really though, it seems more people are concerned about the F2P approach then anything. At any rate, as an EvE player, I'm looking forward to this one as well and like the idea that there will be some competition, and options for the players, even if it turns out to only be competiting on the "internet spaceships" level.
F2P = fail
Yes it does look promising, but it won't give Eve much competition as it is a MMOFPS rather than an RPG. So it will doubtfully attract few who play Eve, more likely the FPS crowd will be attracted to it. It is also a item shop game, which turns off a lot of MMO players. Not to say that it won't be successful if it is a good game, just that it will have it's own niche rather than being in Eve's niche.
Personally I am not into twitch combat myself, I would buy an Xbox or PS3 instead if I wanted that type of combat.
Luckily you don't have these problems with Eve.
The game looks nice to say the least I'll definitely be giving this one a try especially with a F2P model.
And yet, not everyone with the ability in EVE is flying a capital ship, why is that? I think your argument just broke.
Dear Editor,
You mispelled the word "Making" .
Thanks,
Earth
*sigh* EVE is not a FPS... your talking about apples and oranges, the only real common thing these games share are space setting and ships only avatars.
*sigh* No, it is not "apples to oranges".
Are you telling me that capital ships in Black Prophecy are going to be just as maneuverable and fast as fighters? Are you telling me capital ships in BP are not going to be extremely expensive, thus making it unfeasible for everyone and their brother to own one, much less use one to fight everytime?
If not, then it is exactly like EVE and my point stands, there will be no issue.
However, if you say yes to those things, then either hopefully you are wrong, or Reakktor are still as stupid as they were with Neocron 1 and 2 and the game won't last long.
Go to OOO in the forum and find a BP/JG/Infinity QfE thread, and you'll see some responses that follow my first paragraph. Does EVE have a 100% pure cash shop? Not really, but it's a semi-cash shop in disguise where if joe blo doesn't feel like grinding 8-10 hours of missioning for a single vagabond (possibly without mods, it's been awhile), then they can simply buy a PLEX or two and be done with it.
As far as the F2P model goes, I hope it follows in the successful footsteps of DDO, going F2P actually boosted that games potential. Of course this is the exception, not the rule, from what I've seen BP looks impressive. It could also have a "VIP" sub where if you want some more depth you can sub like a regular game, but still have that F2P option. I guess only time will tell.
I would contend that there is nothing "in disguise" about what EvE does. Your example about buying a specific ship neglects the idea that you need to train to use that specific ship. You also need to train to use specific mods. As a result, the character still needs to have trained for "x" amount of time and there is no "potion of skip levels" that a player can buy on demand to shortcut the training mechanic. Therefore, while Joe Blo might not grind the ISK for however many hours, he still needs to have trained for however many hours so there was no "win button" as was previously described. I mean, if you want to consider this a "win button" then being a member of a certain corp can be a "win button" as they might provide ships free, or drastically discounted.
And yeah, I guess I understand why some people are skeptical of the F2P model. I mean, there seems to be an instant association with lack of quality when someone says F2P. I think DDO is a good example of how it can be done successfully and hopefully this game can be another success story.
I reall hate that word balance. If you try to balance a game so that all the players are on an even playing feild. All you end up doing is screwing it up. Look at WOW. People complained about the Death Knight being too powerful. Blizzard rectified that issue. What happened? The class almost became completely worthless in PVE. PVP it was fine. But in PVE I pretty much came within death's reach of dying or I did die. One the dev all need to do is KEEP PVP stats seperate from PVE stats. When you go from PVE to PVP the stats change so the playing feild is even and when you leave they go back to PVE. Nuff said.
"Reakktor"
That's all that needs to be said.
Neocon was a good game, horrible company.
This game might be pretty good, it just won't be advertised, or sold well, or deveopled for, and be bug ridden, etc etc etc