EQ2_Bloggers
04-05-2011, 09:03 PM
Letter from the Dungeon Overlord Producerhttp://stationblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/do_img.png?w=128&h=128
It’s been a busy first few months since we launched the Dungeon Overlord beta, but we wanted to take a little time to communicate what we’ve been working on and what’s coming down the road. I do want to state that things will change as we get more feedback about the game and as we respond to any unforeseen problems that may crop up. Because of that, we won’t be announcing any specific dates, but we are committed to bringing these features to the public as fast as we can.
The Immediate Future
Every week, it is our goal to deliver a minor update, that will include several little things such as interface improvements, bug fixes, new store items, tweaking AI, and other tasks that a few developers can implement in a relatively short time frame. This includes performance improvements and optimizations. Performance improvements are such a high priority for us, if we get one finished outside our normal update cycle, we will deploy it to the servers early. Furthermore, this also includes adding special abilities to the undead and planar creatures, revamping the prison, and implementing several balance changes we have uncovered through the beta program.
Shortly Thereafter
We cannot remain in beta forever, and we will have to grow the game. In order to scale the game up to the number of users we need to support the service, we will be deploying additional worlds. Players will be allowed to play on as many worlds as they desire, and it is quite possible that the play experience will be different on each one. We are currently testing supporting a multitude of worlds on our internal development servers.
Our First Content Path: Lord of the Mountain
A few team members are hard at work on our first major feature patch codenamed: Lord of the Mountain. This represents bringing much needed social components and end-strategy-game components to Dungeon Overlord. Here is an overview of what we have planned:
Alliances:
Dungeon Overlord is a social game. Despite no in-game mechanics to support it, people have already been forming their own alliances for trade, protection, and war. We figured that it was time to get alliances implemented. The design of what exactly will be featured in alliances is still ongoing, but here are some of the basics which we are considering:
Alliance Tags (your alliance affiliation is visible by all)
Means to easily locate fellow members on the Overworld
Group mailing / messaging
Permission ranks* (assign officer, leadership roles)
Alliance activity reports (see battle reports /* important activities of member)
Diplomacy (declare war, form non-aggression pacts with other alliances)
Mountain King:
Building up your dungeon and raiding your neighbors is fun. But we want to establish an overall purpose to expanding your control and battling others. The first step in this direction is the Mountain King.
As you may have already noticed, the center of the mountain has been left suspiciously open. This is reserved for the King. With sufficient technology, you can battle for control of this spot.
Why is it good to be the King? First off, the King can collect resource taxes from those dungeons who have declared their loyalty. Why would you declare loyalty? Every mountain is seeded with random bonuses (ranging from common to rare) which can be upgraded.Only those loyal to the King can receive them.
Let’s talk about the upgrades. A mountain can have from one to several potential upgrades. The exact list of potential upgrades is still up for design but they range from bonuses to resource production, to extra creatures, to extra movement speed. Like dungeon resource spawns, some mountains will be nothing special, while others will be quite powerful.
Upgrades cost resources and the King is in control of buying them (hopefully using the taxes for this). Upgrading the mountain helps solidify the King’s position since anytime the Kingship changes hands, some of the upgrades are lost (which could be quite expensive at higher levels).
There are more details to discuss about the King Game (such as what do those different dungeon shapes mean), but we’ll get more into that later.
Transferring / Reinforcing:
With the added emphasis on combat that the King Game will bring, we felt we needed to make it easier to get creatures where you need them. That comes with the new features of transferring and reinforcing.
Transferring is changing your creature’s home dungeon to another that you control. You trained up your Level 50 Orc in one dungeon and want to move him closer to your enemy? That’s what transferring is for. The new dungeon must still meet any bed requirements (you’ll need that level 4 Den in dungeon #2 to transfer your Ogre there) as well as population limits.
Reinforcing is temporarily moving creatures to another dungeon for the purpose of defense. The benefits are that the dungeon being reinforced can exceed normal population limits and do not require beds (bed requirements and population limits still come from the originating dungeon). Also, the reinforcing creatures do not have to be your own. This way your friends and alliance mates can send you defenders to help stop an enemy. The disadvantage is that you have no control over reinforcing creatures besides sending them back home.
Chris Meyer
And the Dungeon Overlord Team
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Author:
Visit This Blog Page... (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/letter-from-the-dungeon-overlord-producer/)
Visit StationBlog (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/)
It’s been a busy first few months since we launched the Dungeon Overlord beta, but we wanted to take a little time to communicate what we’ve been working on and what’s coming down the road. I do want to state that things will change as we get more feedback about the game and as we respond to any unforeseen problems that may crop up. Because of that, we won’t be announcing any specific dates, but we are committed to bringing these features to the public as fast as we can.
The Immediate Future
Every week, it is our goal to deliver a minor update, that will include several little things such as interface improvements, bug fixes, new store items, tweaking AI, and other tasks that a few developers can implement in a relatively short time frame. This includes performance improvements and optimizations. Performance improvements are such a high priority for us, if we get one finished outside our normal update cycle, we will deploy it to the servers early. Furthermore, this also includes adding special abilities to the undead and planar creatures, revamping the prison, and implementing several balance changes we have uncovered through the beta program.
Shortly Thereafter
We cannot remain in beta forever, and we will have to grow the game. In order to scale the game up to the number of users we need to support the service, we will be deploying additional worlds. Players will be allowed to play on as many worlds as they desire, and it is quite possible that the play experience will be different on each one. We are currently testing supporting a multitude of worlds on our internal development servers.
Our First Content Path: Lord of the Mountain
A few team members are hard at work on our first major feature patch codenamed: Lord of the Mountain. This represents bringing much needed social components and end-strategy-game components to Dungeon Overlord. Here is an overview of what we have planned:
Alliances:
Dungeon Overlord is a social game. Despite no in-game mechanics to support it, people have already been forming their own alliances for trade, protection, and war. We figured that it was time to get alliances implemented. The design of what exactly will be featured in alliances is still ongoing, but here are some of the basics which we are considering:
Alliance Tags (your alliance affiliation is visible by all)
Means to easily locate fellow members on the Overworld
Group mailing / messaging
Permission ranks* (assign officer, leadership roles)
Alliance activity reports (see battle reports /* important activities of member)
Diplomacy (declare war, form non-aggression pacts with other alliances)
Mountain King:
Building up your dungeon and raiding your neighbors is fun. But we want to establish an overall purpose to expanding your control and battling others. The first step in this direction is the Mountain King.
As you may have already noticed, the center of the mountain has been left suspiciously open. This is reserved for the King. With sufficient technology, you can battle for control of this spot.
Why is it good to be the King? First off, the King can collect resource taxes from those dungeons who have declared their loyalty. Why would you declare loyalty? Every mountain is seeded with random bonuses (ranging from common to rare) which can be upgraded.Only those loyal to the King can receive them.
Let’s talk about the upgrades. A mountain can have from one to several potential upgrades. The exact list of potential upgrades is still up for design but they range from bonuses to resource production, to extra creatures, to extra movement speed. Like dungeon resource spawns, some mountains will be nothing special, while others will be quite powerful.
Upgrades cost resources and the King is in control of buying them (hopefully using the taxes for this). Upgrading the mountain helps solidify the King’s position since anytime the Kingship changes hands, some of the upgrades are lost (which could be quite expensive at higher levels).
There are more details to discuss about the King Game (such as what do those different dungeon shapes mean), but we’ll get more into that later.
Transferring / Reinforcing:
With the added emphasis on combat that the King Game will bring, we felt we needed to make it easier to get creatures where you need them. That comes with the new features of transferring and reinforcing.
Transferring is changing your creature’s home dungeon to another that you control. You trained up your Level 50 Orc in one dungeon and want to move him closer to your enemy? That’s what transferring is for. The new dungeon must still meet any bed requirements (you’ll need that level 4 Den in dungeon #2 to transfer your Ogre there) as well as population limits.
Reinforcing is temporarily moving creatures to another dungeon for the purpose of defense. The benefits are that the dungeon being reinforced can exceed normal population limits and do not require beds (bed requirements and population limits still come from the originating dungeon). Also, the reinforcing creatures do not have to be your own. This way your friends and alliance mates can send you defenders to help stop an enemy. The disadvantage is that you have no control over reinforcing creatures besides sending them back home.
Chris Meyer
And the Dungeon Overlord Team
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Author:
Visit This Blog Page... (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/letter-from-the-dungeon-overlord-producer/)
Visit StationBlog (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/)