EarthriseEarthrise is a post apocalyptic science fiction MMORPG set in the distant future. Featuring a unique skill-based advancement system and player-driven economy, as well as extensive, meaningful player-vs.-player combat, Earthrise gives you innumerable choices to forge your destiny. Whether you're a noble soldier in the raging conflict between the Utopia and the rebellion, a criminal hiding from the law or a world-renowned engineer whose power extends into intricate trade and politics, your actions will echo throughout the game world.
ERHQ.de: Which one of your planned features are you looking forward to the most to see implemented into the game?
Masthead Studios: It is the territory conquest that we are looking forward to test. This feature will be a very important part of the gameplay and we would like to have as much time as possible to test and implement everything that we have planned for it.
ERHQ.de: From what we know the PvP part of the game is very important, but what will be the catch about the PvE part of the game and how will it influence a player's progression through character development?
Masthead Studios: The battle skills advancement will not be possible without PvE interaction, which means that players who want to fight in Earthrise will have to go through NPC opponents.
ERHQ.de: To what extent will it be possible to individualize your character?
Masthead Studios: Players can customize their characters to a great extent. It will not be just the gear that will differentiate the players. When raising their skills, players will learn new abilities and tactics. Those tactics will open a lot of possibilities for ability customizations. For example when a player has the ability to heal another player, he can add some additional mechanics to these abilities – for example a faster heal or reload time or a heal with some buff. The possibility to add tactics to the abilities will be limited of course, so players should think strategically what is the best template for them.
Players should keep in mind that character customization will be reversible and they can easily make changes to their choices.
ERHQ.de: Due to the fact that there are no classes in Earthrise, how will groups look like? Will you emphasize the 'Holy Trinity' concept of Tank-DPS-Healer?
Masthead Studios: It depends on the templates that players will chose. Although players can learn all skills in the game, the skill usage will be limited to the gear they currently wear. For example a player who wants to heal will have his hands occupied with healing devices and he cannot heal and shoot at the same time. Same thing with the armor – armors will open and respectively limit the usage of skills in the game. When forming a group, players will have to organize in a way to get the most benefit from each other. They should discuss what are everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, what gear they have and what is their preferred style of play and then set the roles in the group.
ERHQ.de: What are your ideas about smuggling? Will there be different levels of hiding/revealing smuggled items for players? //
Masthead Studios: Items manufactured with technology designs exclusive to Continoma or Noir will be placed under a restrictive regime which disallows free trade and even free use in certain locations of the island. It is understandable that Noir would not accept the use of Continoma weaponry near its base of operation, while the same can be said for Noir’s destructive choice of weaponry close to the shining towers of Sal Vitas. The only way that both sides can use the weapons and weaponry technology of the enemy is through smuggling. Players will be able to learn abilities that let them hide or disguise their weapons or inventory from the prying eyes of the guards and carry dangerous tasks in the heart of the enemy, or make invisible exchanges of goods without resorting to leaving the secure areas where they could easily become victim of player robbers.
ERHQ.de: How is the bounty system going to work? Who can place bounties, what are the restrictions and have you considered ways of abusing the system and done something about it?
Masthead Studios: When a player is killed by another player, when the victim is resurrected he receives a death report, evidence extracted from the last few seconds of its previous life. The victim can bring the death report to a bounty terminal and place a bounty on the head of its killer. Anyone (except the killer who has a bounty on his head) can accept the bounty and work towards completing it, hunting the killer of the victim. Bounty hunters will be able to accept limited bounties at once, and the people who have bounties on their head will appear to them in a special way, plus they will have ways to calculate the estimated vicinity of their bounties as well. If any of the bounty hunters kills the target, the bounty is complete. Bounty hunters will have to act quickly otherwise they might not get much out of the deal.
ERHQ.de: Will there be an automatic aiming system?
Masthead Studios: Players will have to aim themselves, although not like the third person shooters. The aiming cursor will assist the player and will lock onto the nearest target next to the cursor. It will be a solution that will provide challenge and require player skill in targeting but choice of proper weaponry can simplify targeting.
ERHQ.de: To what degree will movement/jumping influence your chances to hit a target?
Masthead Studios: Each player in combat can make it difficult for his opponent to score a successful attack by moving or jumping (however bunny-hopping is made difficult with the expense of stamina). Also players who move will have lowered chance to score a successful attack on any opponent, even if they remain stationary. If players remain in place, they will score successful hits all the time, given the players are skilled enough to target properly. But when both opponents move, jump, use special movement abilities and such, they will lower their attack success rate and the combat will become more dynamic and challenging.
ERHQ.de: Will there be hitboxes and will there be any possible effects bound to them? (i.e. a player hit in a leg will move slower for a specific duration)
Masthead Studios: There will be no modifiers for attacks at specific body parts. This is intentionally done not to turn the game into a frag fest that favors the FPS gurus over the players who are not able to target specific body parts with ease. We had to draw a line before player skill becomes imperative for success. Instead players will be able to customize their abilities and weapons and use cleverly built combinations to achieve similar success.
ERHQ.de: Will it be possible to construct guild bases in a protected area?
Masthead Studios: For balance purposes, Guild bases can only be built in areas that are open for a conquest. Although players will be able to access their guild administration in various places on the island of Enterra, such buildings can be built only in contested territories, so Guilds will have to stay always alert that their base might be taken over by an enemy.
ERHQ.de: Are guild headquarters in conquerable territories instanced or will there be Open-World PVP around those areas?
Masthead Studios: One thing we don’t like is instancing and we are designing Earthrise with the idea of an open-world non-instanced gameplay. The territory conquest will be an important part in Earthrise and it will be based on our visions for an open world PvP conflict.
ERHQ.de: What would happen if one fraction took over the game, in worst-case scenario, where that fraction would control all territories, have the best gamers and the best equipment. Will it be possible to annihilate other fractions ? la total world domination?
Masthead Studios: The multitude of territories and the specifics of the economic environment will not allow a single super guild or alliance of guilds to control the whole server supply with resources for a long time. While such goal is achievable by design, it is not sustainable in the long run due to factors we implement under the hood of the system. It’s still early to talk about them, however.
Staff Writer Jason Weaver recently had the opportunity to speak with Masthead Studios CEO Atanas Atanasov regarding the company’s upcoming post-apocalyptic science-fiction MMO, Earthrise.
Topics covered include the game’s core features, crafting, and its skill-based combat system.
Read on for the transcript.
The MMO Gamer:There aren’t that many sci-fi oriented MMOs on the market, but, besides the theme, what will Earthrise bring to the table to stand out amongst all of the other current MMOs?
Atanas Atanasov: Earthrise has many gameplay aspects that set it apart from the rest of the current choices of MMO games on the market.
The game is one of the few titles that will give players a sandbox experience where the political conflict and the game economy are left into the hands of the players. We strive to give players as much freedom as possible to shape the world in these two directions.
Earthrise will also provide players will a very interesting take on crafting. Instead of creating items that suit their own needs, crafters will be encouraged to provide unique items that other players have demand for, which allows them to become influential enough to shape the market.
Player vs. Player is the heart of the game; featuring personal rivalry between players with the possibility of fully looting your opponent and grand epic battles to conquest and defend territories with strategic building construction.
To sum it up, Earthrise provides small, but important innovation in many fields of the MMO genre while remaining true to the expectations of its audience.
The MMO Gamer:You don’t go into much detail on the official website about the item creation and customization, only that it will be unlike other MMOs and potentially groundbreaking.
Can you give any more detail on this aspect of the game?
Atanas Atanasov: All items in the game will be created by players - from simple ammunition to the massive buildings in the guild-owned territories.
Only the basic items, without any special qualities will be widely available from vendors to allow restocking for those who have been fully looted in PvP combat. All other items with special abilities and powerful statistics will be made by player crafters.
Depending on what players create, the inventory choice on different servers will be unique, ensuring that crafting alone will be very rewarding experience.
In many games players decide how to customize their items and crafters only provide them with the tools to do that. But in Earthrise, end users have limited customization options and crafters actually manufacture fully customized items for use in different situations.
This is a great opportunity for clever crafters who study item manufacturing and find proper design combinations to shine and make a fortune for themselves.
The MMO Gamer: Since Earthrise is skill-based, can you elaborate more on some of the skills that will be available at launch?
Atanas Atanasov: Earthrise will feature dozens of interconnected skills for players to learn and advance in. Each skill will provide a set of special abilities used either in combat, for crafting or social activities, tactics that act as enhancements that players can slot in their abilities, and passive enhancements that advance their inherent statistics.
Skills will cover standard fare, such as ranged and close combat, using emotive interacts in combat, controlling swarms of nanobots, even psionic powers; while crafting skills will provide wide variety of technologies (known as recipes in many games) for manufacturing.
Earthrise is a game where abilities are more important than the innate strengths of the characters - it’s not what you have attained but how you use it. This opens new grounds for players to show their skill rather than just play long enough to accumulate enough gear or statistics to go through the game content with ease.
The MMO Gamer: Any plans to allow players to leave Earth and partake in space combat and/or visit other planets?
Atanas Atanasov: We don’t have such a thing planned for the time being. The action will be focused on post-apocalyptic Earth. We will let the players recover what was lost on our home planet and then think for space expansion.
The MMO Gamer: When players are offline and the character is at their “day job,” will there be an option to get a better day job and bring in more income?
Atanas Atanasov: The offline progression will offer the possibility for career development. Players can study and build a strong CV and then they will be able to take better job positions.
Our plans are to make the offline gameplay a fun and rewarding part of Earthrise without taking too much time out of the online experience for the players, so it will be quite easy to find work and to educate.
The MMO Gamer: Most MMOs ship with a weak guild interface that is missing common features (ie. ability to change rank names, guild bank, etc.) and patch them in during the following months. Will you try to ship with most of the guild features?
Atanas Atanasov: Guild management is a priority in our game and we will do everything possible to launch the game with as many features as possible.
The MMO Gamer: When are you planning for release?
Atanas Atanasov: Nothing has changed since Earthrise was announced. We are planning to release the game sometime in 2009.
The MMO Gamer: Will you maintain regular content updates post release to keep player interest and will there most likely be expansions?
Atanas Atanasov: Of course, the launch of Earthrise is just the beginning. It will not be just patches and content updates that we will be working on as our plans are to work on expansions as well.
The MMO Gamer will have continuing coverage of Earthrise in the days and weeks to come. For now, you can find further information at the game’s official website, Earthrise.
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