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Andrew Krausnick - Trove AMA
Avarem
Creative Lead, TroveMember Posts: 18
Hey all,
My name is Andrew Krausnick and I am the Creative Lead on Trove - a new voxel game all about adventure, exploration, and creation.
If you're curious about the full spiel for the game, I recommend checking out this post on reddit which was made when we announced the game about a month ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/Trove/comments/1qojcx/who_are_we_why_are_we_making_this_game_and_why/
In addition we've chatted a few times with Bill here on MMORPG and those are definitely worth a read:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/984/feature/8017
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/984/feature/8082
Personally speaking my history has been all about the MMO. I started on Vanguard where my most notable contribution was leading the team behind APW, the game's first raid zone. I bounced around some after that but eventually found myself here at Trion working on Rift, where I designed the reward and contribution mechanics for Rifts as well as creating the systems for invasions and zone events.
I look forward to your questions! If you want more info or to support us (and increase your chances at getting into Alpha) after hearing about the game today, visit www.trovegame.com. You can also find us on reddit at reddit.com/r/trove, and you can find me personally on twitter at @heyandrewk.
So fire away, and AMA!
Comments
If you support at the Conqueror level you will get actual literal instant access into the game. The moment that support hits, you can download the client.
For everyone else following along, you can check out our support page at: http://www.trovegame.com/support-trove/
Progression for Trove comes in two forms, 'persistent progression' (i.e., power and things you collect that travel with you from world to world) and 'world progression' (i..e., stuff that is world specific). Right now most items are specific to the world and your Cornerstone (the place where you build your home base), unlocked crafting recipes, and class levels stay with you.
Cornerstones have been an incredible addition and I love seeing what creative constructions people have made. We'll definitely be doing a lot more with these.
Right now one thing that isn't working out is how many items are mapped to the world. Specifically any items which are placeable right now feels wrong that you don't get to keep them unless you put them down in your Cornerstone. We'll be making some changes in those areas to increase the amount of stuff that lives with the character instead of the world.
On top of this we have some new features coming in this month, like worlds cycling on a regular basis outside of patch days, that will really shake up how we're tuning the game and how we play the game, so I'm looking forward to getting that in and seeing what changes it encourages us to make next.
Hmm PVP got my attention. Playing Starbound currently (fun time waster). Can you tell us about the pvp plans and ideas that the game will employ?
Hey! Great questions, and thank you for spending your time spreading the word about the game.
1) That's all fun stuff that we might do in the future. At the end of the day being a smaller team we need to pick and choose where we focus and right now we feel like we have a strong foundation for building and are shifting our attention to the adventure and exploration aspects of the game that are a little less flushed out. Minecraft with all of its mods I think will always be able to beat us at being a diggy builder game, which isn't to say that we won't keep expanding in those areas over time, but it isn't a primary focus for us either.
2) That stuff was great in Terraria! We'll be adding more 'dynamic' elements to our maps and map generation over time as well. The first step is getting in cycling worlds and making worlds feel different from each other. Once we get that in and build out more of the adventure/explore core I think it will help us understand the right type of events to put in our worlds.
3) With regards to PvP it really comes back to the small team and focus more than anything. We might do some type of minor/gimmicky PvP in the future, but it's a long ways out still from that point. It's certainly something we could do but there are a lot of other features above it on the list.
4) Personally I believe the no NDA approach is the way of the future for everyone except the really big players in the game space. It has been great to be able to show off and talk about what we actually have. It certainly can make it harder in some ways (we can't build hype through promises, we have to build hype through legitimate features) but at the end of the day that builds a stronger community and a better game and there's no substitute for that.
5) No idea on number of classes at this point, they're something we plan on continuing to add through the life of the project as opposed to the 'average' MMO where what you launch with is largely what you stay with.
6) As part of Trion we have great support when it comes to getting the word out about the game (the website, our community team, other games like Rift) and when building some of the more 'boring' but important pieces for an online game like this (billing, data tracking). Since we're also using the open no NDA approach we actually don't have a lot of negatives for development as compared to an indie team.
7) More on world cycling and completing worlds coming very soon, keep an eye on reddit. It's something we're designing and developing now and I don't want to say something here when it very well might change tomorrow!
I suppose that also begs the bigger question of how long are these worlds going to last? An hour a day a week?
I for one would be a little upset if I spent a lot of time working towards a worlds goal only to be locked out when it's destroyed.
These are incredibly valid concerns and are some of the questions we're asking ourselves right now.
We're actually thinking about modifying somewhat how we were planning on doing world cycling to make it happen more often and on a schedule and make the 'boss beating' part of it a more separate individually rewarding component. That way you never have to worry about missing the big moment or that you can't log in to a world later.
We'll be putting the first version of all of this in the game sometime in the next month which will let us start learning and iterating over it as a system.
You ever consider making some worlds that don't ever blow up? Sort of like a home world reserved for a guild perhaps or specific groups of friends? Maybe even larger persistent worlds strictly for cornerstones and no combat? You could call them civilization worlds or city worlds!
Really enjoying Trove Alpha: Leveling experience, the biomes towers and castles. I love building also - Looking forward to how you will be including guilds and dungeons. I am perhaps most curious for the direction Trove will take for content and encouraging community. Will there be leader boards/pvp/ interactive objectives that see guilds vs guilds or shard wide? OH and most important questions for the night I am sure ...will the Pink Flamingo of Pain become a Rainbow tier 7 Item and when will we see Dragonfly pet I am curious what stat it will bring heh? Cheers Avarem
PS Slow questions because of time zone more than anything I thought it was 7pm Pacific. Great questions going on here!
Definitely feel free to keep 'em coming!
MMOs and online games in general send a ton of data all the time. When it comes to destruction that's actually a relatively cheap message (location and what happened) and even placement isn't too bad. If you think about even the most basic combat you're constantly sending messages that while not overly complex do contain a lot of data (damage, status, etc.). With Landmark they make up their entire world of simple points of data, the same way we do, theirs are just smaller and contain different types of data than we care about.
The reason for our approach is actually gameplay and mechanical more than it is technical. We think that cubes are more accessible and powerful. My favorite analogy is Lego vs. clay. Clay is great if you're a skilled artist with enough time on your hands, and it can certainly make very cool looking stuff. For the average person though Legos are just more fun to play with and take less time to build something that still looks incredibly cool.
I've been reading a lot about Trove and i find it very interesting. I was a master builder in Secondlife. I have played a lot of Rift and Defiance, as well as other big MMO's < like WoW and Swtor and STO > But i never tried Minecraft even though it looked interesting. I find i do have an interest in playing Trove, i am signed up for the testing. I have a question for you.
Is building, exploring, gathering resources, while continually developing your character endlessly , The entire game or is there more things to do that would be considered "End Game" that i have not read about yet or missed?
There doesn't have to have "End Game" , for me to play it, i am just curious how this question would be answered because in the gaming industry today it is a concern of most gamers.
Thanks Kiwi!
Our community features are definitely 'world' focused, and that's what we're looking at as an analogy to guilds. Making community more important is one of the biggest things on my mind right now. Our first step was adding the town center, and it has a few physical features which contain hints as to what the next steps might be.
Once we get the worlds feeling like they're a shared space and everyone is working together, we'll start adding ways for them to compete with each other and show off. In terms of PvP, while we aren't doing to do player vs. player conflict directly for a long time, making it so we have 'social PvP' (i.e., "I'm more uber than you are!") type features is definitely key for us.
And the flamingo is already epic! Maybe we'll bump it up once we get some of these badass community contributions in.
Our end game is focused around competition between worlds and collection. As an individual our goal is to make it so there is always some way to improve yourself or your Cornerstone. Collectively we want you and your group of friends (or random people you met on the internet) to be able to compete and compare yourself with other groups. Our broad ideas for that are similar to ladder runs in games like Diablo and PoE or the daily Spelunky runs.
Yep!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Trove/comments/1ur8zn/tier_8_complete/
YES! Rock on Trove supporters xox
Oh man, I love the hunger games mod!
It's unlikely that Trove will have anything close to that, at least for a long time, as our core game is very different from that experience.
Modding is an interesting question. Since we're an online, persistent, and hosted service it's not really something we'll have to the same extent that Minecraft does. The thing we do get from that is a much more polished and consistent experience, although obviously we do lose out on some of the creativity and unique experiences.
That said, we aren't entirely without community contribution to the game. We have just opened up weapons for community submission and we'll be expanding the areas in which the community can contribute assets in the future. Visit http://www.reddit.com/r/Trove/comments/1uby5c/see_your_work_in_game_submit_user_created_art_for/ for more details!
Thanks for the AMA.
In the future are there going to be transparent voxels? Also, will there be the ability to rotate items to be placed in your cornerstone?
There will be glass and water blocks with some transparency for sure.
We're still evaluating how we do rotation. This last patch made the facing 'more correct' (i.e., towards you instead of away) so I'm hoping that resolves most of the issues. We're keeping an eye on it in case we need a more advanced solution.
It would be a waste to do all the work for only one type of liquid...