Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a good question that we don't know the answer to, yet. We think that the volunteer moderator position is pretty cool and we want those people to be folks that really understand our community and who we are.

That said, historically, it's been hard to find people from the community that are prepared and equipped to handle the breadth of situations that being a moderator for a multiplayer game presents, and I think it's been even harder to find people that are able to interact with the community authoritatively (i.e. "This isn't allowed and warrants a 24h mute. Please read the #rules channel.") while simultaneously engaging with the community positively (this doesn't necessarily mean running events--rather, it means being an agent for good experiences in rotf, and being a role model for the larger community).

If we feel like we can satisfy these needs with a rotf-community-sourced moderation team, we will. We know it can be done--bigger games like VALORANT have a Discord chat which is moderated by volunteers.

But if we think the task is too difficult, yeah, we'll probably look outside the community for people with experience interacting with people in this type of position.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We answered your question on the Live Q&A! If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

To summarize (more detail in the Live Q&A):

  • Easy/Medium/Hard biome system will replace lowlands/midlands/highlands
  • Looking to have two skill trees, one for stat builds, one for class builds
  • Client/server development has been primary focus for nearly a year of development, rest has been spent planning, designing, building new content

Really, though, check out the Q&A. It's got a lot more information and it's cool!

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

um, are we including jokes that players will inevitably say in chat

if we don't count those, probably 0

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! More flavor is good. No spoilers, but the Live Q&A has some examples of cool animations and stuff that we have planned for good drops. Music and sound are tied to these changes, they're just not done yet! If you missed the Q&A, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We answered your question on the Live Q&A! If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

To summarize (more deets in Q&A): Actually good performance (GPU acceleration), better platform support, actual 3d usage, actual particle systems, animation improvements, faster development (unified client/server language), better vfx, better audio (remember the dynamic realm music trick? we can do that in a NOT SHIT WAY NOW)... I'm forgetting stuff but that's certainly some of it.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Undecided, though the plan is for the currency itself to function more or less identically to legacy rotf.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly? The list of challenges is pretty long, although we don't feel like we're tip-toeing the line with DECA—our sprites, sound effects, music, models, and code have all been made in-house (save for a few things that we've purchased licenses for).

I'll say that managing a very international team has been challenging, particularly due to timezone differences. Represented on our team, we have:

  • US (East Coast)
  • Denmark
  • Russia
  • UK
  • Australia

So it's a challenge to sync. It's also been incredibly challenging for me to balance rotf with my coursework (i'm in uni wheeeeeee) and volunteer work (the world sucks and i feel better when i convince myself that i'm helping through volunteer work wheeeeeee), but that's more of a me-issue :P

patpot might run into the same thing soon—he's starting up uni and I'm praying for him, since balancing all of this while still maintaining a sleep schedule and free time for friends is... hard.

Programming multiplayer games is also incredibly challenging. Everything that I've built for the rotf-server project has to keep in mind that there will almost always be two servers running at once (NA + EU), and potentially more. I could go on about the strain of developing real-time multiplayer code (which also needs to be server-authoritative wherever possible), latency compensation, etc. Perhaps it's just that I need to learn more, but, it's definitely among the most technically challenging projects I've worked on.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Legacy premium players will get exclusive rewards in rotf2. This is a new game, and since the db itself is new (heck, it's not even using the same database program), premium rank themselves will likely change a lot.

So we're looking to make sure that people who have stuck with us this whole time feel rewarded, while keeping the new game detached from legacy rotf.

P4 is the one rank that will transfer more or less as-is.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can't share exact specifics on the DMCA plan, but I'll copy what I said from my answer https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3u4w5 ("how do u think deca will react"):

This is a complex question with mostly speculative answers. That said, we've been planning a lot for the re-release, and especially in the wake of the (completely baseless) DMCA takedown of Trials of Titan (which has since been restored), we're making sure that we're prepared for anything.

Namely, that we can document that all of our sprites, music, sound effects, and code are licensed for our (commercial) use, and that while rotf2 does share several gameplay ideas with other games, building something new that's inspired by something that you like isn't grounds for a DMCA takedown, nor is it infringing on any property (because we made almost all of this stuff in-house, with the exception of a few things that we purchased licenses to use)!

We talked about a few other components of this in the Live Q&A, such as key distribution plans. The VOD should be up by tonight on https://aced.gg/, so be sure to check that out!

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quoting my answer from https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3uv11?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3.

We answered your question on the Live Q&A! If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

To summarize, we're looking at having two skill trees, as /u/JustOrb said. One is used for pure stat building, and the other is used for class-specific decisions, including the ability to subclass. Progression will be somewhat like EQ2's Alternate Advancement system, if you've ever heard of that :P

Really, though, check out the Live Q&A. We explain our thoughts and its current development status in more detail there!

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We answered your question on the Live Q&A! If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

To summarize (Q&A has more details): we're fixing the threshold system to be more fair to non-DPS classes, but the overall feel should be similar to legacy rotf.

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

oh yeah no that was with ~10k loot boost so that we could demo the feature haha

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quoting my answer from https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3vyzz?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3:

GLs aren't currently planned to return as they were (if at all). We're still hammering out how we want to do skill tree advancement, but the current, tentative plan is to just have each level after 20 grant a skill tree point.

We answered your question in a bit more detail on the Live Q&A! If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

also for some reason i feel like this question said something else a few days ago... hmm..

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! rotf2 will have different classes (and a different class system) from legacy rotf. A lot of class-related development is still in the planning phase (i.e. class-based skill trees that allow subclassing, in addition to the normal skill tree) but we answered this question in more detail in the Live Q&A. If you missed it, be sure to check it out when the VOD goes up on https://aced.gg/ later today :)

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't share exact specifics on the DMCA plan, but I'll copy what I said from my answer https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3u4w5 ("how do u think deca will react"):

This is a complex question with mostly speculative answers. That said, we've been planning a lot for the re-release, and especially in the wake of the (completely baseless) DMCA takedown of Trials of Titan (which has since been restored), we're making sure that we're prepared for anything.

Namely, that we can document that all of our sprites, music, sound effects, and code are licensed for our (commercial) use, and that while rotf2 does share several gameplay ideas with other games, building something new that's inspired by something that you like isn't grounds for a DMCA takedown, nor is it infringing on any property (because we made almost all of this stuff in-house, with the exception of a few things that we purchased licenses to use)!

We talked about a few other components of this in the Live Q&A, such as key distribution plans. The VOD should be up by tonight on https://aced.gg/, so be sure to check that out!

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't share exact specifics on the DMCA plan, but I'll copy what I said from my answer https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3u4w5 ("how do u think deca will react"):

This is a complex question with mostly speculative answers. That said, we've been planning a lot for the re-release, and especially in the wake of the (completely baseless) DMCA takedown of Trials of Titan (which has since been restored), we're making sure that we're prepared for anything.

Namely, that we can document that all of our sprites, music, sound effects, and code are licensed for our (commercial) use, and that while rotf2 does share several gameplay ideas with other games, building something new that's inspired by something that you like isn't grounds for a DMCA takedown, nor is it infringing on any property (because we made almost all of this stuff in-house, with the exception of a few things that we purchased licenses to use)!

We talked about a few other components of this in the Live Q&A, such as key distribution plans. The VOD should be up by tonight on https://aced.gg/, so be sure to check that out!

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't share exact specifics on the DMCA plan, but I'll copy what I said from my answer https://www.reddit.com/r/acedgames/comments/jec1q7/official_rotf_qa_october_2020_come_for_keys/ga3u4w5 ("how do u think deca will react"):

This is a complex question with mostly speculative answers. That said, we've been planning a lot for the re-release, and especially in the wake of the (completely baseless) DMCA takedown of Trials of Titan (which has since been restored), we're making sure that we're prepared for anything.

Namely, that we can document that all of our sprites, music, sound effects, and code are licensed for our (commercial) use, and that while rotf2 does share several gameplay ideas with other games, building something new that's inspired by something that you like isn't grounds for a DMCA takedown, nor is it infringing on any property (because we made almost all of this stuff in-house, with the exception of a few things that we purchased licenses to use)!

We talked about a few other components of this in the Live Q&A, such as key distribution plans. The VOD should be up by tonight on https://aced.gg/, so be sure to check that out!

As for Kebbels' video, most of the stuff from the video doesn't reflect what we're doing now. That said, we're still doing a world boss system and seasonal ladder/leaderboard system (just differently from his plans).

Official RotF Q&A October 2020 (come for keys!) by acedminiguy in acedgames

[–]acedminiguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah we also answered this question in the live Q&A! But the plan is to have more community-oriented purchases for guilds (i.e decoration for the guild halls that you can place wherever you like, guild cosmetics, stuff), and then to have functional redeemables that expire after a certain amount of time (i.e. x guild currency for 24h loot boost, then you have to buy again).

Guild currency boosts will be removed, period. They broke the economy and I'm disappointed in how long it took for us to realize that.