The Repopulation Interview
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Q: After seeing a few screenshots for The Repopulation I notice that the UI seems reminiscent of Star Wars Galaxies, and after reading a little bit about the game play I started seeing some other similarities. Would it be fair to say that The Repopulation is heavily influenced from Star Wars Galaxies?
J.C. Smith: We were heavily influenced by both Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online. In general we've tried to provide players with a lot of freedom to do the activities that they enjoy, which is something that both those games did very well. But at the same time we've also tried to provide plenty of activities to drive the player down certain paths. The route you take though will be up to you. We tried to take the best parts of those titles, merge them with the best parts of more recent games, and add some twists of our own.
To give an example, one of the complaints those games received was that players didn't always have a sense of direction. That's one area where theme park games do excel. You generally have a good idea of where you should be and what you should be doing in those games. Unfortunately in those titles you are generally in the same place as every other player of your race and level, the railed approach. Where in sandbox games you generally make your own path, but sometimes you aren't sure what that should be. Star Wars Galaxies and Anarchy Online you had mission generators which provided you with generated objectives to earn some credits and keep you occupied. Ultima Online didn't have a whole lot in the way of questing and it worked just fine for it. However, we feel that for players interested in combat, it's generally more fun to quest than it is to grind on monsters.
One of the ways we addressed this problem was to create an complex generated mission system. Missions provide a player with an optional sense of direction. If you aren't interested in generated missions you can simply disable them. Players who are interested in participating in this aspect of the game will receive job offers in their mail which can be accessed from anywhere in the game. They'll be given an overview of that particular job offer and they can choose to accept or deny it. What's unique about our system though is that all of these missions are custom tailored for that player, and our generated missions can be very complex. Crafters will receive work requests related to their trades, soldier types receive a higher number of combat oriented missions, etc. Completing these missions means something, and your actions during them will be remembered. NPCs will chatter about you to other players and other NPCs based on how you handled situations, and additional types of missions will become available to you based on your personality. If you act like a jerk, you'll be treated by one, but it may also open up some shadier opportunities for you. Because our NPCs have numerous internal flags and because missions can alter those flags, your actions can start a chain reaction of opportunities for yourself and other players.
The second way we addressed this issue was with the Engagement system. In Repop, engagements are generated and dynamic events. The world is split up into many hidden regions, and each of those regions can support any number of engagements. Our engagements are most similar to Public Quests or Rifts from WAR or Rift. A big part of the game revolves around them. They provide players with common problems and encourage them to work together to solve those problems. Simple combat oriented engagements might be an infestation of a certain type of species in an area, and the need to clear them out before the infestation spreads to neighboring areas. As these spread there are visual changes to areas, and spawns change. Players entering into an area with an active engagement will all be able to participate and these engagements will mutate or end based on how players respond. If you allow a local mine to be invaded by the Lesoo for example, any NPCs or missions in that mine that normally existed will now be unavailable, but new ones may take their place. The visual appearance of the mine will change, there may be bounties offered by the mining corporation to clear them out. There may also be harvesting and espionage related activities associated with it, and there will be new bosses and mini-bosses as a result. If you continue to ignore the problem, it may get worse and spread. There are PvP and nation based engagements, which will be similar to battlegrounds but in an open world environment. These types of events will come and go randomly, and will alter the world as they occur.
The end result is very much a hybrid. It is a skills based title that provides you with the freedom to craft or harvest without combat. You can build cities, structures and defenses, or besiege other cities as part of the nation vs. nation warfare system. There is a large mix of non-combat related skills ranging from taming, to diplomacy. Those features are generally associated with sandbox titles. But we also use engagements, missions, a military system, and a raid system featuring generated boss abilities, to ensure there is a never-ending stream of content for players who prefer the sense of direction that theme park oriented titles provide.
