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An archived Hellgate: London feature. See the Hellgate Archives for more.

Interview: Flagship's 3 community managers; Ivan Sulic, Brennan Ieyoub, and Kaiser Hwang interviewed on Community Day, May 15, 2007.
Date: May 15, 2007
Source: Transcript thanks to EMP, posted in this forum thread. Original 460meg WMV inHellgate.de. Compressed 38meg flash version in the Movie Gallery.

inHellgate.de Video Interview

Q: Welcome to the Hellgate interview. First of all I would like to ask you to introduce yourself.

Ivan: I’m Ivan and I used to be the community manager. Now I write story and do quests for Hellgate and I still work with them to some capacity but I have no Idea what my title is. I like to think of myself as the overlord of all life in that little tiny cubicle I’m working in.

Kaiser: I’m Kaiser, I am not the community manager I guess taking the place of Ivan after he betrayed all of you guys.

Trish intervenes: He is your coffee sir.

Kaiser: thanks you and now that sandwich?

Trish: “#$#(”. (I have no clue what see said here).

Kaiser: Sorry. Yea I am the community manager. Again I work with Ivan and Brennan here. We all work together with our awesome boss Trish to talk to you guys and keep you into the loop.

Brennan: And I’m Brennan, IU, video production manager Flagship studios. A position that was formed for me, it didn’t exist prior to me. I handle video production and all regards to PR and marketing and now working specifically right now on the Hellgate London (*no clue what this word was unfortunately).

Q: Many people would like to know if there are any e-sport factors in the game or that is will come in ongoing content?

Ivan: e-sports?!?

Q: Meaning PVP, battlefields, that sort of thing?

Ivan: Yea, we have PVP mode, but it’s a pretty straight forward implementation for launch. Going forward is part of ongoing content expanding that and other modes is certainly one of our priorities. But we don’t have specific plans we can talk about. But I do know that Rankings and ladder systems are in the design, but how we will implement them and at what time is still unknown.

Q: Do you know whether the ladder will be on a website, or that it is going to be integrated into the game?

Ivan: We do not know that at present. But we do plan to build a website with as many game pertinent features as we can. So if we do implement a ladder one of our (Ivan, Kaiser and Brennan) big priorities would be to make sure it translates onto the website. And we have developers for the web content already enlisted to do that sort of thing. I am sure they will come to pass.

Q: Will there be other weapons like axes in the game or just swords?

Ivan: Saying that there are only swords is a little misleading, because actually a lot of the weapons in the game don’t exactly qualify as swords. We call them all swords internally, but there are ones that are so odd and obscure they look like maces and they look like war hammers and that sort of thing, but technically because we refer to them this way there are only swords. But as a game with ongoing content one of our plans is to expand that with an ever increasing range of weapons. We may even eventually add two handed weapons and that sort of things. We really want to stress our commitment to ensuring the life and longevity of the product by constantly releasing new stuff, weapons being one of them. Then support and emphasise new as opposed to better or more powerful, because were not going to rip off people who just want to play the game as it is.

Q: Is it planned to include VOIP in the game?

Ivan: Yea I believe so. I think even right now we have voice over IP planned out of the box at launch. And we do have some plans for emailing systems and for chat systems and other things that help keep friends and buddy lists intact.

Q: (I tried a few times, but I failed to fully understand the question here)

Brennan: Yea we are currently working on a lot of new initiatives and we are working on the redesign of HellgateLondon.com. Once all of that is in place we are planning on serving the community by releasing weekly video offerings. This will include: bio’s of the developers, more detail on the classes, weapons and what not. I think it is something that is relatively new to serve the community with substantial video offerings on weekly basis is something we plan on doing once our website is in place.

Q: Can the people expect you to visit the forums more often to answer questions asked in the various community forums? I think it was you (Kaiser) who answered there will be a FAQ. What about that?

Kaiser: Right. That is something I am compiling right now. You know, all over the forums are talking a lot of people. A lot of people who are relatively new don’t read through a 40 page thread, its though to find the answer that they want. You see people asking similar questions.

To make it easier I am compiling a giant FAQ with all information that’s going to be ongoing of course, that everyone can refer to. If there is any other question beyond that, it’s definitely still going to be all over the forums. And we are re-launching the official Hellgate site, so there we will be posting even more information and even have a new set of forums that we will interact on.

Q: The next question is related to the Guardian. Does he have the ability to also inflict more damage?

Ivan: Yea he does have the ability to inflict more damage. Some of the skills such as the ‘hunker down’ technique (I doubt this is spelled correctly) which causes enemies to attack you, gives you an opportunity to inflict more damage. There are also some aura bonuses and attacks that do that as well. The Guardian class is all about sustaining enough damage over a long amount of time so you can deal that damage back to other people.

That’s in contract to the Blade Master which is about getting in really fast, throwing out a few skills and then running away because you do not have the armour or stats to sustain so much direct impacts.

Q. The game is based on different items, random items. Which are the best items? (compares to WoW item system). How is it in Hellgate?

Ivan: We have unique items and they have properties attached to them, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the best items in the game. I believe, currently, the best items would still be some form of randomized item with a type of stat. It’s like legendary or rare or I believe mutant(?) is one. And, making it the best item isn’t just a stats game. Its also how many mods it can take and what sort of additional damage types it does. So again, even though we have unique items, I still think the random items have the potential of being the best. Therefore there is no single item I can say is ‘the best’. Its not like Bill Ropers Champion Sword beats all other swords.

Q. Skills. Is there the possibility to respect?

Ivan: We though about respeccing, but we don’t have it in the game currently. There is a lot of argument going back and forth about its merits and its negative points. Personally respeccing in a game makes deciding skill points inconsequential, so what’s the point of developing a character build the way you want it if at any point in time you can simply reallocate those points?

Further, if you do allow a character or player to reallocate at its digression, you end up with someone that’s seen and experienced all of the game in a relatively short amount of time. Then it becomes pretty boring if you already know everything that’s going to happen, it’s just like you go to the menu and change it up. So I, right now, we don’t have respeccing. I wouldn’t expect it to be implemented unless it’s some sort of one off feature, like you can respect at a cost of some kind that yet to be determined.

Kaiser: Yea, just to expand on that. You know, when you choose your skills and go out on the streets it’s definitely part of the game. You know the fun about the game is discovering what these things do and the replay ability going back to fix your strategy. If you could just make yourself whatever you want, the best for every situation, I mean, where is the challenge in that?

Q: Quests. Are there quest lines in which you have to complete several and only get a reward in the end?

Ivan: There are quest lines. There are basically 3 major types of quests in the game.

There are storyline quests which actually determine how you progress through the game, and they themselves have prerequisites being a certain amount of faction points or you must have completed x and x quests and so on and so forth so that you can move forward.

The second type of quest is what we call the template quest which is just sort of a side mission and those can stack. So if you click on me the first time I could say: “hey I need you to get this thing”. The second time I would say: “hey remember when you got me this thing? I need you to do this”. So on and so forth.

In terms of rewards we can establish rewards almost however we like. We can choose to give you nothing for a quest or we can choose to give you all kinds of crazy stuff. So it’s conceivable to have stacked quests, that the rewards increase as you progress through them, and it is easily done that we could have one reward at the end of the series of quests.

Q. As for sound, will Hellgate support 7.1?

Ivan: We have 5.1, I don’t know if we have 7.1. We do support the X-Fi series and have EAX support in. I’m going to make a judgement call and say we don’t have 7.1 support. I could be wrong of course.

Q. Does Hellgate feature items that cannot be repaired (ethereal)?

Ivan: We don’t really have item degradation; you know you never have to repair an item. There isn’t any degradation on any of the items so you can use a sword forever and it won’t break.

Q. How are you supposed to get healed with the different character classes?

Ivan: Well, in every station there is always a healer that you can contact that will heal you at some undefined cost. In game we have the equivalent of potions which are health booster packs or med kits which is what we call them. In addition to both of those options, some classes will have the ability to heal them selves. They also have the ability to drain energy and life from other classes and imbue their own pets with that health and there are even aura regeneration techniques for other classes. So there are plenty of different ways to heal yourself and your party members as you adventure through.

Q. Those healing options only heal over time. Is there any way to do an instant heal?

Ivan: An instant heal? You know, I don’t think there is an instant heal in the game right now, no. Not any that I can think of.

Brennan: They have health injectors of varying forms: small, medium and large..

Ivan: Oh yea, I guess there are different types of heath injectors and they probably increase the rate at which you heal, but I don’t think you can go from 0 to 400 in a second you know. It’s impossible.

Q. Are there situations that require a group to complete a certain quest?

Ivan: No. All of our game right now is build so that you can play it by yourself. You can play the whole game single player or you can go online and play the whole game by yourself if you want, which kind of defeats the purpose, but go ahead. In addition you can play them with a full party. The maximum number of party members is still in flux but it will probably be somewhere between 5 and 10.

Kaiser: The levels scale with the size of your party in terms of difficulty..

Ivan: Yea, in terms of difficulty they should scale with the size of your party, that’s correct.

Q. So there is no actually raid content?

Ivan: No, not currently, there is no raid content. Again, because our ongoing plans are so sweeping and forward thinking it’s not inconceivable that at some point in the future we could put raid in. Basically we are considering all things for ongoing content. If it makes sense with the game we will put it in, if its fun we’ll do it. That’s basically how development works. Whatever we like gets put in and what we don’t like gets kicked out.

Q. What are the advantages/disadvantages of being or not being a premium member?

Ivan: Okay: in general Bill would probably be a better person to ask about this, but I can outline some of the basics. There are two types of online gamers for hellgate. There is your standard player and there is the subscriber.

The standard player has full access to the single player game. They can play the online game in a secure environment and they have a robust amount of options. Anything you could have expected from Diablo 2 we have here with some very minor exceptions like the amount of characters it can contain.

For someone who is a real avid hardcore gamer that want the experience the wealth of new content as it happens we offer our subscription plan. The subscription plan, in addition to giving players immediate access to ongoing content as it becomes available, has a variety of other features that apply across the board such as a more personalized and in-depth customer support. It’s not to say the standard player does not have access to stuff like customer support. It’s just like you can call somebody on the phone anytime you want, things you would expect to pay for.

If you look at the subscription suite of any given MMO you will find a lot of similarities. They get ongoing content, they get new area’s, exclusive area’s and they get a lot of extra features, stuff that you would expect to pay for. But if you’re not interested in that you can still play the base game which is better than anything other MMO’s offer, because it’s free! And it still offers you anything you would have wanted from a spiritual successor of Diablo. That’s the basic outline. For a more point by point breakdown you might want to talk to Bill.

Kaiser: I just want to emphasise that in no way we are making stuff and then not including it so we can safe it for later. We work day and night to make sure that everything that’s one that game ships. We’ll be open to everybody, and from then on the new content is what you’re being charged for, and not stuff that we are intentionally holding back, unlocking on the disk or anything like that.

Ivan: Yea, there is no hidden content on the disk that you just get access to. It’s all new stuff we’re going to create after we launch the game, to expand the story, expand the quests, expanding environments, make new weapons, make new classes. Its not stuff that we are holding back like: “haha: we can hold that back and get some money!!”. It doesn’t work like that. People here are made up out of gamers who didn’t like the way how Diablo 2 handled it’s ongoing content and its community. Because they wanted to do more then a patch and an expansion, but they couldn’t! There was no financial justification for it. You need to make money to spend money. Allocating a 50 person team on ongoing content that you give away is just not reasonable in this market of game development. It’s so outrageously expensive, so risky. Plus, there is the day to day stuff like all the servers.

I mean, just because our game is instanced it’s not fair to write it off as something that’s not an MMO. We have thousands of people on the server. They can see them all in the stations, talk to them all. Just that we focus more heavily on instanced combat because we find it to be a more enjoyable experience. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are, you know, dirty basterds (there happens to be a large bottle of “Arrogant Basterd Ale” visible in the background).

Q. Will normal player have access to patches/fixes?

Ivan: Patches? Absolutely! Any type of fix we apply to the game applies to everyone. Guaranteed! We are not going to leave a game that has some kind of broken component on the shelves and not allow people the opportunity to fix it. Not to say we intent to release the game with broken components, but patching is inevitable, so everybody will have access to that.