A while back we did an AQA with our Praetorian players, who represented the community and their questions. Today we'd like to share our answers with you!
How big is the team working on ARENA in the moment?
Spoiler:
The development team working on ARENA, covering game design, programming, artists, live ops and QA, is relatively small compared to other TW dev teams, plus there is support from other departments including marketing, community management and shared resources with the engine team. Unfortunately, it’s company policy not to give exact team counts.
We are growing the team and hiring, however.
What is your end-goal for ARENA (your highest expectation)?
Spoiler:
We want ARENA to be a game that millions of people play for years to come. Always, the game will be history-based, but compared to other TW titles we'll take more liberties. Maybe one day, you can see Romans fighting Samurai? We want the game to span across factions, eras, and continents. Depending on user feedback, we might go more down into semi-mythological content (King Arthur as commander? Jason? Achilles?), if that's what our players want.
More game modes, custom battles, special events... we want to do it all. We just need to find the time (and money) to do it!
In terms of players, we'd like to see both a fun single-player experience, but definitely get people to play together, in parties or in competitions. We'd love to see an active competitive scene, and we'll support it with official tournaments. Maybe it'll even be considered an e-sport?
This is the vision... no promises. ;-)
Do you cooperation with total war warhammer Developers. ( technical/technology/idea Cooperation)
Spoiler:
Yes, we do. They’ve moved in a different direction than us, though, so we can’t always use things they do and vice versa. Their engine is now very different from ours, as it’s not geared towards F2P Multiplayer. Equally, their gameplay is of course very different.
On the other hand we are planning to integrate the GFX improvements back to our game, updating Arena’s visual look significantly in the future, while at the same time reducing hardware requirements.
Do you planing in future to change/move this forum as everyone now its far from easy to use.
Spoiler:
Yes! There’s a whole new Total War forum in the works, which will at some point also get Total War Account as login. Once you can login with Total War Account into the forums, we’ll move over to the shiny new and improved main Total War forum.
Rejoining a game after loosing connection - is this worked on , will it ever be implemented or it's impossible ?
Spoiler:
Yes, it’s being worked on, but more on a planning level at this stage. The battle code was never designed to allow for this (it was designed for a single player game back in the days), so this is one of those things where having the Total War engine actually complicates things. Implementing this is a huge task for us, but we do plan on doing it.
What are the plans for CPU situation (points given, unit control , etc.) ?
Spoiler:
I presume you mean players who’ve dropped from battle? First of all, we keep working on making less players drop from battle. Secondly, we are aware of the issues with this and we’ll touch on this with our continued work on revamping the rewards system.
Why do you have removed, information in end of match about numbers of kills ( how many units you have killed)
Spoiler:
Because that number had no meaning for the game. It didn’t influence your score or whether you win. We rather wanted to show you the numbers that have meaning in game. We may re-introduce this in the future, as we do think that getting kills is something we also want to reward.
Will you be doing a siege mode? Attack and defend so to speak
Spoiler:
Yes we will. Unfortunately it’s not something we can do quickly. It’s on our radar, there are design discussions and prototyping ongoing but first before introducing it to the public we need to make sure that we are (and the community) happy with the current game mode.
Are you working on any commanders from different ages in history?
Spoiler:
Not right now, but we will do in the future. We’re sticking to Classical and Late Antiquity for now.
when can i purchase attack dogs?
Spoiler:
When they’re working properly. At the moment, they are not behaving in game as we want them to. This is something our developers are working on fixing. I can’t give you a timeframe yet, though.
How far up in history are you gonna go?
Spoiler:
We haven’t set ourselves any limit. For the foreseeable future, we’ll stick to weaponry that doesn’t involved gunpowder, but there’s nothing preventing us from doing that in the future.
when are the "minium requirements" and " recommened requirements" comming?
Spoiler:
We’re still working on them. Very hard, in fact, trying to bring them down. A F2P game needs lower system requirements than a traditional game, so we’re doing everything we can to reduce them.
more colours, when?
Spoiler:
The next set of colours is planned for release in Soon(TM).
When we can play "Custom battles"?
Spoiler:
We haven’t got a planned delivery date for this yet. The reason why we haven’t prioritised custom battles yet is because we are prioritising matchmaking currently, and we don’t want to introduce any feature that could reduce the number of players available for matchmaking.
When we can play clan wars at Global map?
Spoiler:
Hopefully some time next year. What kind of endgame we’ll have is open, though. We don’t have to do a world map… we’ve got lots of ideas. And whether it’s clan based or not is also open.
what does targeting stability exactly mean?
Spoiler:
The speed at which artillery's targeting reticule will widen when disrupted.
how do charge bonus and charge impact work exactly and what is the difference between them?
Spoiler:
Charge bonus, this increases a unit's initial impact damage when charging
Charge impact, this increases the likelihood of a successful charge
Who is the best Arena player in CA? :D
Spoiler:
Very hard to say. We haven’t done an internal competition yet. I would guess that one of our QA team would come out on top, because they have to play the game the most, as part of their job.
What statistics are you recording right now and will we see more statistics in our profile screen (or seperate statistics page ingame)?
Spoiler:
Currently we’re just recording anonymous statistics about every battle, purchase, unlock, or any action taken in the game. We can’t connect these to player accounts, though.
We’re working on a server that would collect and calculate information in such a way that we can tie it to players profiles, and display it both in-game and maybe on a website, such as a global leaderboard
Do you have an estimate on when the full replay functionality will be implemented in the game instead of the userscript way?
Spoiler:
Some time in 2016. Unfortunately I don’t know anything more specific than that.
Do you have a way to prevent replays from being corrupted if there are major updates to the game?
Spoiler:
Currently, we haven’t got a way to prevent this. That’s one of the reasons why we can’t give any ETA for this feature. It’s related to the same issue that makes re-joining an ongoing game so very difficult.
Any plans towards making the leadership role worth having in the game?
Spoiler:
Yes, we’re planning on giving the leader actually useful things to do, such as setting goals on the map, which may or may not reward those following the goals. We’re still working on the design. The current system is really nothing more than a proof of concept.
Any plans for new tools to aid in teamwork beyond chat and drawing blue lines? eg: radial menu for messages appearing above selected unit(s) or some such thing.
Spoiler:
Yes, we’re planning on doing something along those lines. We’re calling it “contextual ping”, and it would enable you to say what you want to happen at the ping, such as “attack” or “defend” or “avoid”.
Any large changes being considered towards changing the meta? Like changing anything about base capping, map timers, the way XP is rewarded primarily by damage rather than victories, etc..
Spoiler:
Definitely. There’s a major overhaul of the top-tier units planned, making them more interesting, and possibly also adding more. We’re also going to rebalance the rewards, so that damage is no longer the primary determinant of XP and Silver.
When can we, or will we ever be able to see all of the unit stats (things like unit base speed, rate of fire etc.) in an easy way?
Spoiler:
Very good question. The number of stats on a unit is insane… a lot of these stats wouldn’t mean anything to people who aren’t super hardcore. We need to find a balance between giving people too few and too many stats. We’re still working on it.
Short answer: No, we’ll probably never show *all* stats but we are working on displaying more in some way, such as on a wiki for example.
When are we going to see proper, customizable hotkeys? I want to be able to change my ability hotkeys based on the commander I'm using, pre-battle and during battle. For example, by dragging an ability to a different ability slot.
Spoiler:
It’s planned, but I don’t know when it’ll come in yet. Dragging and dropping your hotkeys is actually quite a bit of programming work… and UI programming is currently our bottleneck.
08-03-2016, 14:05
Xeir
Wkrótce odbedzie się kolejne AQA ( Developerzy odpowiedzą na pytania ) tym razem "KAŻDY MOŻE WSIĄŚĆ UDZIAŁ" bez znaczenia jakie macie pytania czy będą ciężkie czy łatwe.
Jednak są dwa warunki
1. Posiadanie konta na Reddicie
2. Potrafienie sklejenia paru zdań po angielsku
Za jakiś czas zrobię tutaj kolejny post jak ten wyżej. Nie wiem kiedy ale kiedyś na pewno.
09-03-2016, 01:10
mackoff
Cytat:
Zamieszczone przez Xeir
Wkrótce odbedzie się kolejne AQA ( Developerzy odpowiedzą na pytania ) tym razem "KAŻDY MOŻE WSIĄŚĆ UDZIAŁ" bez znaczenia jakie macie pytania czy będą ciężkie czy łatwe.
Jednak są dwa warunki
1. Posiadanie konta na Reddicie
2. Potrafienie sklejenia paru zdań po angielsku
Za jakiś czas zrobię tutaj kolejny post jak ten wyżej. Nie wiem kiedy ale kiedyś na pewno.
Udało mi się napisać pierwszy post w tym Q&A na reddicie :)
Ciekawe czy nie wybiorą tylko wygodnych dla siebie pytań do odpowiedzi.
13-03-2016, 11:10
Memnon[pl]
Cytat:
Zamieszczone przez mackoff
Ciekawe czy nie wybiorą tylko wygodnych dla siebie pytań do odpowiedzi.
Chyba jeszcze zbyt malo znasz CA.Odp na"wszytkie" pytania na 100% beda takie same jak odp na wszytkie pytania przy pokazie kampani orkow.BARDZO starannie wyselekcjonowane pytania,odp na TYLKO wygodne pytania,takie ktore nie poruszaja najistotniejszych kwesti itp...
13-03-2016, 17:02
Xeir
@Memnon[pl]
O ile możesz mieć racje o tyle możesz jej też nie mieć gdyż nie bierzesz pod uwagę paru czynników:
1. Odpowiedzi na poprzednie pytania patrz 1 post gdzie się postarali.
2. Ów gry tworzą inne grupy Developerów którzy są odpowiedzialni za min sposób komunikacji, więc ich podejście może być trochę inne w zależności od gry. ( Ot takie generalizowanie )
Osobiście czekam na więcej interesujących odpowiedzi na ciekawsze pytania, żeby odświeżyć ten temat (jak na przykład te 28 pytań). Pozostaje więc mi czekać.
