Live AMA with Eugene Kiver, Game producer 22/02/2024

Ask Me Anything with Corepunk's game producer

Today marks the first AMA of the year with Eugene Kiver, Corepunk's Game Producer. All questions and answers will be summarized here, with this article being continuously updated as more questions and answers are received.

Q: Since the chests in PvE areas go to the party that did the most damage, what happens if 1 person who is a Tank, is competing with 1 person who is a DPS, will there be any measure being thought of to reward/help players in classes with low damage?

A: The result will be based not only on damage but also on agro points

Q: Is it possible to play every passive skill tree with every hero? So, for example, play the passive skill tree “Mage” with the Destroyer?

A: Hey, each hero can pick any combination of passive trees, no limitations here

Q: Is the playstyle of using only drugs/pain killers, by constantly buying them from NPCs, to replace the need of using food/campfires (like some people did in the last alpha test) something that you guys want to support as a possibility, or will you try to balance this so that this approach is not that convenient?

A: Hey, we'll be balancing it, it wasn't how we would want it to be on the last test.

Q: What are your current and future plans for keeping classes interesting. Do you feel there are enough abilities to keep people from getting bored of a class too quickly

A: In our view weapon mastery, passive skill trees and itemization will allow you to create a lot of unique variations of the same hero. So we'll see it in the upcoming test. We're excited to see how players will interact with all those systems.

Q: Guess ill just add the other ones i consider more relevant and hopefully it gets answered.

1) Are you able to eventually have all of the (Q,W,E,Special Skill) specialisation skilltree upgrades?

2) What are the + steps in the specialisation skill tree, do they give you anything, and do they also cost mastery points?

A: You won't be able to unlock all the talents in a specialization tree. Player will get the special resources in drop from loot in the world to upgrade specialization.This steps give a little bonus to an ability it relates to (ex. lowers cooldown, a bit better damage and so on)

Q: You have stated that you guys have a lot of content already and you just need to package it (or something to that effect). This is a bit vague could you please elaborate on how finished is this content (is it just artwork?) and what this packaging entails.

A: By packaging I meant releasing content. For example we have a lot of 3d assets, we sometimes need 10% more just to make location a bit more believable, then we need to finish location, decide which monsters we want there, work on quests and stories. So it's not like we're starting every deliverable from scratch. But to make it look as good as the rest of the game it needs some work. I've see some people speculate that we just share concept art in our updates that means we're only on concept stage. But we just share what looks better and faster to present and concept art is usually more fun to watch then the finished assets (outside of the world they were supposed to be placed into) plus we seldom share the assets we've been working a few years ago that are used in the content we're focusing on right now.

Q: Is an early access or release this year 2024 really realistic? In your opinion, what current percentage is the games process?

A: I think that EA is very realistic if the next test goes well. We're working on a big chunk of content for the test. If people will enjoy it we'll take a month to fix bugs and do a little polish and will go to EA, if they won't, we'll do another test.After EA we'll continue improving game and releasing updates of content, when we release all the pack for Elaniens, we'll go for a full release and will switch to expansion on one of the other cultures.

Q: there was a common feeling that i saw being shared that quests rewards in general were just not worth to focus on, specially the hard ones to do, versus just grinding mobs and such.Is the intention in Corepunk that quests are just fun guiding points to fill up the world or send the player in new directions and not really the intended way for people to level?

A: We'll improve it, rewards should correspond to the difficulty of the content.

Q: Please tell us everything you can about the lore of the game, what will be the motivation for us and our character in the world of Kvalat?

A: We want to show various aspects of Elaniens. Their good and dark sides. But the main story line is their combat with the valley of sins. There's bastion, a huge fortress and walls that protect Elan from monsters of the valley. And players will help them to hold the line and keep Leithana safe. We've already did the monsters, several years ago. But they are still waiting their turn.

Q: Will EA wipe or not?

A: There are pros and cons, sure we don't want people to loose progress, but from a tech standpoint it makes more sense. So we're not sure about it yet.

Q: Corepunk has been in development for over 8 years now and in that time the MMO landscape has definitely changed a lot. Players, design philosophies and so on. Have some of your concepts changed significantly because they no longer fit today's standard?

A: Hey, some things have actually changed over the years but the core gameplay idea is still the same, if you like MOBA controls but want an MMO experience in open world with fog of war, theres nothing that really scratches that itch. But sure we try to stay up to date and listen to our community, it's the most powerful input for us.

Q: Have the 3 new classes any major changes since their announcement on website?

A: yes you should expect updated design for the classes, we'll update info on them after making them available, because we iterate a lot we prioritize to make them fun and balanced, and then will update the docs.

Q: How can I share my Map Marks? Will they be displayed on my teammate's map or can they be placed at the specified coordinates?

A: You can share it to current chat

Q: Do you still think that the b2p system (which I like very much) is still suitable for the game? are you considering other approaches? thank you

A: We're still going with b2p and in-game shop with cosmetics and other non-gameplay affecting customizations like UI and so on.

Q: Can you tell us about the method for obtaining universal abilities? Will they all be available from the very beginning of the game or will be unlocked by leveling or exploring the world?

A: You'll get them from an NPC for gold starting at level 5.

Q: How many people do you plan to invite to the Test this time? You wrote earlier about 10k, is this possible?

A: 10k is probably what we'll go for this one, but we can scale much more, that was an issue on firsts tests, but not anymore. Although we still need to test that.

Q: Do you plan getting cinematic at the start of the game ? We kind of came out of nowhere and fall into the game without any intro, also if yes is that possible that we get other cinematic through the game?

A: We also believe that the good intro would add a lot, but not as much as the content we're working on right now, so it's just higher on our priorities list, but we'll get to that

Q: Will there be any changes in the stash/bank because the space is very limited?

A: We also agree that the bank is too small right now, eventually you'll be able to extend storage for gold, if we won't do it by the next test we'll just extend the storage with additional pages.

Q: Can you tell us about some of the cool mounts we can get and how we can acquire them?

A: We want to have mounts on EA, the more locations we release the more you need one, we have a lot of them done, from animals to vehicles, mech spiders and exo-skeletons