Interview: Fallen Earth Writer / Designer Wes Platt Talks Factions, Advancement, and Pacifism

By Nate James | March 6, 2009 | | Filed under: Features, Interviews | Tags: Fallen Earth, Fallen Earth LLC, Interview, post-apocalyptic, Wes Platt

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Wes Platt: Clans are expensive to form – currently, they run 10,000 chips. You need 10 members to get out of double-secret probationary status. Clans have their own vaults. Further functionality, such as clan leveling and other abilities, are something we may look at after release, but they’re not anything I’d expect on the immediate horizon.

The MMO Gamer: The character improvements featured on your site have come a long way. Can we expect any more graphical improvements to push those further?

Wes Platt: Our art department is constantly striving to improve the visual impact of the game. So, yep, it’s safe to say you can expect more improvements.

The MMO Gamer: My next question has to deal with the combat. Since Fallen Earth uses a first person shooter style combat – is there any technology in place to compensate for lag?

Wes Platt: Basically we’re using the watchwords of the Icarus Tools Suite, trust but verify. We do put a lot of effort into trying to keep positioning information flowing quickly and to do this there are some aspects of FPS combat you won’t see here. For example, if an NPC fires a bunch of bullets at you he doesn’t run a huge number of calculations to determine the physics of those bullets. Instead he runs a number of hit checks based on a number of variables (range, movement, character skills, etc). This makes things much simpler with a change that most people won’t really notice.

The MMO Gamer: In your previous interview with us, it was mentioned that PvP is by zone rather than by faction. Initially I think this is a brilliant idea, but what measures are in place for the eventual player hazing?

Wes Platt: Fear of this battle station will keep the local systems in…wait, sorry, that wasn’t the answer you were looking for. Punitive hits to your faction rating. If you’re killing people of your own faction, your rating suffers with your faction and their allies. Also, if you’re griefing people of enemy factions who are too low a level compared to you, it doesn’t give any benefits. Players who kill other players more than ten levels below them suffer a debuff that worsens and sticks around longer with each kill, so you can kill that player who keeps annoying you or is attacking your friends, but if you go into a low level town and pick a fight you’ll find yourself in trouble pretty quick.

The MMO Gamer: There hasn’t been very much information on crafting as of yet, other than things we can make. Would you be able to shed some light on the crafting system as to the extent of what the names are and what they do? Is there faction-specific crafting?

Wes Platt: We’ve got several crafting trees that fall under our major trade skills, such as Cooking, Armorcraft, Weaponry, Ballistics, Science, Medicine and Nature. Within each tree, we’ve got tiers of knowledges that allow access to recipes that players can make if they’ve got the proper components. The lowest tiers consist of items that could probably also be found on NPC merchants in some of our towns. But determined and experienced crafters will get access to higher-tier recipes that only they can make. Our crafted goods include everything from improvised weapons and swords to special optics gear to vehicles.

As for faction-specific crafting, we don’t have full-blown trees of crafting dedicated to each faction, but we do offer several faction-specific recipes that can only be acquired by earning enough faction points.

The MMO Gamer: We know that your world is quite vast. Is there any type of quick transportation mode?

Wes Platt: No WoW-style flight paths. No handy-dandy teleporters. All we offer currently are horses and vehicles as a faster means of travel, but even they require time and the expense of feed or fuel.

The MMO Gamer: One of the greatest features for lack of a better term, “fashion whores,” is that you’ll be able to wear items exactly the way you want to. Can you elaborate more on this for our readers? What was the inspiration for this and how difficult was it to implement?

Wes Platt: In addition to have access to a huge number of items, you can change the way some items are worn, such as turning baseball caps around or zipping up jackets. We had to eliminate tucking in shirts recently due to it causing a variety of technical issues, but there are still lots of other options.

The MMO Gamer: One of the more surprising things is that Fallen Earth doesn’t have a class system. How will players specialize? After specializing, will they be able to undo it? Will specializations emerge that borderline on what we view as class archetypes such as the damage/warrior class, etc?

Wes Platt: Players will specialize by spending Advancement Points (AP) in the stats and skills that they feel suit their character and play style the most. I don’t doubt that players will experiment until they find certain AP builds that do more to boost DPS, maximize healing, or provide better tanking stats. However, it’s not going to be very practical for players to re-spec because of how integral the expense of AP is in the acquisition of knowledges, abilities, and mutations. We are currently exploring a number of possibilities regarding re-specing.

The MMO Gamer: In an interview with RPGVault, Mr. Hammock mentioned that it’s possible to advance in the game without fighting. I admire that. How would I go about advancing in this pacifist method?

Wes Platt: It is possible to gain experience points and AP by scavenging, harvesting, and crafting. It may be a bit slower, but that’s a risk/reward type situation. It’s lower risk, so your experience reward is a bit lower.

The MMO Gamer: Without an overarching story to tie the game together, how will the story avoid the run-on feeling that some MMOs develop with their content?

Wes Platt: Well, we actually do have an overarching story that ties the game together. Several major storylines, in fact. Overarching stories aren’t necessarily a help or a hindrance in preventing that run-on feeling. A good spread of quest hubs with a variety of stories to tell helps keep Fallen Earth fresh when it comes to replayability. In WoW, you’ve got a few starter zones to choose from when you start the game. Every alt you make has to start in one of those zones and nothing ever changes. In Fallen Earth, we’ve got a nine starter towns (with plans to add more after release), each with its own flavor and feel, and players get to choose where they start. After they finish one starter town, maybe they’ll move on to another or just head over to the closest central town and begin their climb toward the northern reaches of the Plateau and the content that waits there and beyond. You don’t start running into potentially repetitive storyline content until the faction towns in the second sector, but that only gets repetitive if you level up a character intended for the same faction over and over again.

Wes Platt: I’m very curious about the Shiva plague. We know that it originated in Pakistan. Will we get more history about it as the game progresses or will it always remain a mystery?

Wes Platt: Actually, it is supposed to have originated near the border of India and Pakistan – we’re intentionally vague on the specifics. However, our storylines do explore the background of clones in the Province, how GlobalTech came to power, and what horrible things the mega-corporation did in the name of scientific advancement and political expedience.

The MMO Gamer: One last question: Is there still gambling in Las Vegas?

Wes Platt: You’re rolling the dice every time you walk into town. The odds get worse if you’re not packing a good weapon or bringing friends to back you up – or provide a handy distraction while you beat tracks to get away.

But once we get to Las Vegas we’re hoping to keep the flavor of the city alive.

The MMO Gamer: Thank you for giving us the chance to interview you.