Chat with hirezapc - Part 1
Hobb: Can you tell me a little about your role with Hi-Rez?
Hirezapc: I'm the Tribes community manager as of November 1st, 2012. You can consider me the middle man between the developers and the community. I listen to the community on what they want, the bugs they find and filter ideas over to the developers in an organized fashion. When the developers have something they want me to ask to community or show the community I go ahead and do that. They also ask for my 2 cents on a lot of topics since I was part of the team that won the NASL 10k tournament. I also do testing, organise events, social media, gather the overall vibe and so on. You could say I’m the ‘go to’ guy for whatever it may be. I can help you directly.. or point you in the right direction. Everyone likes to have someone they can go to and not rely on a support ticket all the time and I feel a lot of people trust me already since I was part of the community directly and played competitively. So I'll give you the real deal. Well, as much as I can
Hobb: What can you tell me about the survey Hi-Rez sent out late last year? Do you think they’re likely to release the results?
Hirezapc: I've seen expressed interest in direct results on the poll, so I'll see what string I can pull to get those released. The overall sentiment of the survey was players enjoy the game for what it is, they just want to see new content such as skins, weapons and more maps. No dramatic changes such as a health kit system or reducing to a 3 class system.
Hobb: By 'no dramatic changes', does that include the old ones like disc+2, demo support or map making support?
Hirezapc: I mean game/physics changes such as health kits, class reduction, new base physics. Though despite that result, we still make mod-able physics for players to toy with and eventually have as a custom server preset.
Hobb: Did the North American, European and Oceana communities respond the same way or was it varied?
Hirezapc: I personally don't know. I don't have the results on my computer but would be interesting to see though.
Hobb: After this patch, what's next for tribes ascend?
Hirezapc: It's not the end. Though this patch will be packed with a lot of stuff that the community wanted from rock bouncing, to more maps, to the return of bella and more but you'll hear more as we make it public. PTS will have more stuff soon.
Hobb: There are some concerns from Oceana players about the effects the physics changes will have on the capping/chasing dynamic. Is this something Hi-Rez is aware of or trying to address?
Hirezapc: The custom physic changes? Well that’s ultimately in the communities hands to create a preset that they feel would be better over the physics we have now in T:A. We've seen a lot of players complain about the current physics being broken and even though we don’t have every physics variable available for you to tweak there’s still enough to make it a little bit better at least. Maybe not 100% to what the community wants but I feel personally it’s enough. There are a few presets I’ve seen that I’d love to see tested out with the competitive community. I'm working closely with Juzzo on his preset with hopes that all regions will appreciate it for a comp standard. I even brought it to the oceanic community one night and they all seemed to like it. There were some problems such as the heavy being too light.. and can be pushed around on stand but that can now be changed with the latest PTS build with separate impulse mass values for light, medium and heavy. The other day Juzzo said he found a preset that introduces rock bouncing for pathfinders only almost nullifies soldier capping. So I'll be having testing events with that as soon as he gets that fixed. As I mentioned in the beginning, I've played competitive since day 1 of tribes ascend (and previous tribes games) and still do to this day so I know all about the concern of soldier capping + the potential for them to rockbounce. Also, I'm looking to put together another "tribal council" type thing but more to discuss custom physics + new comp rule set since there will be shielded assets, the plasmas been nerfed, etc. Something I hope all regions can agree upon.
Hobb: Is there a map size limit with the UE3 engine?
Hirezapc: I don't believe so, but that's only a guess from me being an amateur in UDK. I'm taking my own time to learn it... and I'm doing very basic stuff at the moment but my understanding is that you can make maps infinite, it’s just larger file sizes and more rendering, etc.
Hobb: Is there a server flag for linking generators to spawning in kit? It's safe to say that the Oceana vets of the Tribes series have concerns over the depth of gameplay, particularly to do with the role of base assets that are somewhat nullified by spawning in full gear.
Hirezapc: There isn't a flag for that but that’s an interesting concept. I also liked the concept of spawning with everything, but not upgraded. In order to get everyone upgraded, you need to visit an inventory station so those are 2 things I’ll look to propose - at least for a server flag. It’d be great if someone can post that in the feedback forum for 2 reasons. 1) to get other players opinions and maybe get an even better idea out there and 2) somewhere where this is written down so myself and the rest of the devs can read. The devs might not post on the forums a lot, but they certainly look. I like having forums threads since it acts as a consolidated list of suggestions rather than having a notebook on me 24/7 and writing bugs, suggestions and feedback I hear on IRC, Mumble, etc.
Hobb: There are rumours amongst Oceana that Hi-Rez might be starting to see player retention issues. Is that something you’ve noticed, are there official numbers anywhere?
Hirezapc: I don't have any official numbers and I've been hearing expressed concerned on players leaving the Tribes scene due to the lack of updates and core mechanics not getting change etc.. But I do feel that this next patch and other future plans will spark life pack into Tribes. The PTS was an idea to not only get the community involved on their take of the maps and new content, but also to give them something as we work towards releasing a series of patches through PTS with fixes and new stuff. Once we feel comfortable with the fixes and the response through PTS we'll release them.
Chat with hirezapc - Part 2
Hobb: I've seen a large number of pledges to purchase in-game items from the store if only they were available. Are there any plans to provide things like local animations (wave/dance), jetpack trails, reticle sets, classic hud layouts (t1/t2) and vehicle decals(flames)?
Hirezapc: It's not out of the question nor is it never going to happen. There's a lot going on for us being a small studio, so we have limited resources. But with that being said, we can see some cool stuff in the future.
Hobb: Currently the life of a deployed item is linked to the class selection of the person who planted them. Is it possible we might see a server flag for persistent deployable turrets one day with a max_per_team setting?
Hirezapc: I've never heard that suggestion to be honest. Is that something you all at Bittah.com have been discussing? I can't imagine that helping the whole "d-stack" problem everyone has been discussing over here in NA and EU. Doesn't seem that easy but its amazing how different each region plays, its incredible. But i suggest posting a thread in the feedback forum about that for the same reasons I mentioned above.
Hobb: There are a large number of weapons in Tribes Ascend, many of which are variants or similar ones. Do you think it's possible to balance so many? In a rock/paper/scissors kind of way?
Hirezapc: Well we do have a feedback forum available as well as PTS for users to test future content and balance changes. We'd like for our users to come out with constructive feedback and conversations in a public area such as our forums. We test the weapons/perks/nades etc. internally and see how they fit. Once we're comfortable with its mechanics, we then release it to the live build and see how it plays out. If there is a dramatic issue with a newly released weapon, then we'll get a hotfix on it. But now with PTS, we'll have our users give us feedback on everything to make sure we can balance everything properly. All it takes is players to properly test them and give us good feedback. And again, in a public place where all of the developers and myself will see it. I notice a lot of feedback is given through voice chat servers such as Mumble... but that doesn't go very far for obvious reasons. Also, posting in smaller clan forums or some community hubs - even reddit, a lot of the developers don't have the time to go through each site. But that is also part of the reason why i'm part of the Hi-Rez team as a community manager. I'll be able to assist the devs in that matter.
Hobb: So we might see testing servers with adjustable settings for weapons?
Hirezapc: I didn't say that
Hobb: The Spinfusor is both a traditional and practical Tribes weapon in that it can be used for mobility, duelling, destroying assets, nudging players/flags and even sniping. Why not give one to everyone?
Hirezapc: I wasn't part of the team from day one, so I can't speak for them. But it just wasn't part of their vision/roadmap of their plan to create Tribes: Ascend. They wanted specific classes to do specific roles. But again, thats just the way I see it. Their game, their ideas.
Hobb: For some of us one of the things that stood out from earlier games in the series was the ability for players to create their own roles and loadouts based on preference. What would you say to the suggestion that even an additional weapon slot would allow a class to perform more than one role without having to ctrl-k switch class or find a working inven?
Hirezapc: I think that ties into the results of the survey that I released to the public after you asked me about them. The overall sentiment of that survey was that players didn't want a big change to the game - they wanted more content. and maps. I know a few have argued that the survey was difficult to answer since players were only able to pick 2 options from the list - but that was because we wanted to know what direction we should take the game from that point of time - November 26. Doesn't mean we're going to ignore the rest of that list... we wanted an overall idea of what the mass majority wanted at that point of time. We still have other options in mind... but you're starting to see that within the PTS. We're delivering due to the response of that survey and I’m aware of a lot of players saying that "most of the people that took the survey don't know what they're talking about" and etc... well, they're part of the community too.. they play the game too.. It just shows how many of them are playing the game compared to the competitive community, or the lets say vocal community. We like to cater to everyone and I'd say its safe to say we are successful in doing that. And will continue to do so.
Hobb: Is there a rough idea of when the next tribal council will be?
Hirezapc: I don't necessarily want a similar "Tribal Council" that HiRezBart ran in the past about future changes that the community wants to see in the game. I want a Tribal Council where we discuss the current state of the game and how we can progress forward with what we have now. With Shielded assets, weapon rebalances, new maps, etc. In our near future we need to look at a potential new ruleset and hopefully something we can all agree upon in each region. Maybe a new physics preset too. A council of competitive players/representatives of teams would be great to discuss these items. I'll be reaching out to a few people and discuss how we can approach this. Maybe its a group meeting like the Tribal Council... maybe its something we have the community test out in PUGs and scrims... I'm working this out now. I was just talking with a couple of people before this interview on how we should approach this, lets call it T:A Competition 2.0. So we're working on an ETA atm.
Hobb: If the current patch doesn't spark life back into Tribes Ascend, do you think Hi-Rez would be willing to switch to a T1/T2 class system (even as a "classic" game mode) or is that 100% ruled out?
Hirezapc: Honestly, nothing is 100% ruled out for Tribes: Ascend right now. So worst case scenario - if Tribes dies after the next patch.. or just continues to see a down arrow for concurrent users, I don't see why that can't be a possibility. You mean with 3 weapon slots, customizable classes, etc? I don't see it being out of the question but at the moment it’s not on the roadmap. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. You've already seen us try different things recently with Tribes. From hiring a community manager for Tribes Ascend, to a dev blog, to PTS, to being able to change the physics... A lot has happened in the past 2 months or so. Some just seem to look past that. And as I've mentioned a few times... it's certainly not the end for Tribes and there's definitely more to come that i'm very excited about The best I can tell people is if you enjoy the game and still play the game, stay positive with me. I understand why some people may have left due to the F2P model or not being like the other Tribes but this game is still fun and has the Tribes elements I enjoy. And not just because I work for Hi-Rez, because I played the game just as much before I was even hired. Let's take what we got and enjoy it... and be positive about it