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Multiplayer
From Hellgatewiki.com
Hellgate: London is being designed from the drawing board up as a cooperative, multiplayer game. It's fully playable solo, but will be more fun and more interesting playing with a friend. The six character classes all play very differently, so mixing and matching parties of different sizes and different consistencies should produce a very different play experience.
See the HGL Online page for full details about the Elite, $9.95 a month subscription service and how it compares to free online play over Ping-0.
Contents |
Hellgate: London Online
When you go online in Hellgate: London, you'll find yourself in a very different place than you did in Diablo II. The Hellgate team is designing the game's online component to look more like an MMO, with none of the old style text interface chat Diablo II featured. In Hellgate: London you'll select one of your characters, go online, and enter the game itself. Your character will enter a subway station with lots of other players, and you'll be able to find your friends online and meet up in a station, party up, then head off into instanced dungeons without any other players able to enter unless they join your group. The design goal is to create towns that tens of thousands of players can mingle in in a real game space, from which trips into dungeons are seamless.
A single town can't actually have thousands of players in it, of course. You'd never get to the NPCs or find your friends, so the designers are still tweaking ways to instance towns, or to only let players see other players they've spoken to or interacted with. How to integrate that with server-wide messaging, trade chat, finding a party around your own level, and more is the tricky part.
"The economy, community and characters in Hellgate: London are persistent, as are the Underground stations (you can think of them as towns) where players and guilds come together to meet and interact. The adventuring areas are dynamically generated to accommodate the levels and numbers of characters adventuring in them, as well as to provide a focused and unique play experience. There is no "chat room" as in Diablo II, and there are also no vast static landscapes as in World of Warcraft. The interaction between the persistent and instanced areas of the game is closest to what was done in Guild Wars. There are, however, some major differences that we think players will find very exciting, chief amongst them being the completely randomized and dynamically generated areas where all the demon hunting and loot collecting take place!"
--Bill Roper, Fansite Interview, November 18, 2005
Ironically, this is basically what the Flagship guys had originally planned for Diablo II.
"...one of the things that we had originally planned for Diablo II is we were going to make this what we called Battle.net Town, which was... Basically, instead of having the people in the chat room it was 25 people in a little city that you could walk around, and things like that. It eventually became too much work and too much retrofitting; the Battle.net servers weren't really able to handle that many people and interact in that kind of way. It was never really designed to do that kind of thing. So it would've taken too much time and too much effort to rewrite that, but that was definitely a plan all along, to think about making this seamless world where it was basically a town with instanced dungeons, which is almost cutting-edge versions of morgues today, but that was something we had talked about and worked on for a while before we ended up cutting it."
--Dave Brevik, 1up Interview, September 13, 2005
A Real MMORPG?
A perpetual topic of discussion is whether or not Hellgate: London is a "real" MMORPG. It's an unanswerable question, since that depends on how you define MMORPGs. How many players have to be in the same game? What online features are essential? Can there be instancing or should everyone be in one persistent world? Every gamer seems to have their own definition of an MMO, one that invariably excludes numerous games that are marketed and sold as MMORPGs.
Some players complain that Hellgate: London isn't a real MMO since it's not online-only. True, it isn't. Hellgate: London will include a fully-functional single player game and can be enjoyed without ever going online at all. Most players consider this a bonus though, and like that they can play even if their cable modem goes down. Others complain that all of the instancing, and the fact that your party will only see other parties in town, rather than out in the dungeons fighting demons, means it's not a real MMO.
As for the designers, they think of the game as an MMORPG, and their goal all along was to offer all the best aspects of an MMO, while still supporting single player, offline play.
[HGL Online will have ] ...all the community and economy aspects of an MMO. That means you can form guilds, groups, buy and sell items to other players via an auction house and so forth. There are also numerous new areas to explore, including content specifically designed for high level groups and soloists. There is arena-based PvP combat, Hardcore mode (you get ONE life!) and tons of content big and small (from color themes to items to monsters to quests) that are only available online. You will also get 24/7 customer service and a secured, client-server structure so you’re getting the safest play experience possible. And don’t forget about the continuing content..."
--Bill Roper, October 2006, Strategy Informer interview.
Ping-0
Flagship created Ping-0 (ping-zero) to act as their version of Battle.net and to host the online aspects of Hellgate: London. Ping-0 will do that, but it does a lot more. Ping-0 will function as an online service that combines game hosting capabilities with a mercantile outlet. Games will be sold and digitally-distributed over Ping0, and it will support more than just Hellgate: London. Mythos will be playable only over Ping-0, and Flagship hopes to expand the operation to host and distribute games created by other companies.
See the Ping0 page for more details.
LAN Play
One thing ruled out for sure is LAN play.
As of April 28, 2007...
There will be no LAN play in Hellgate: London.
Why?
It’s a security risk. We have closed servers. We don’t want other people learning how to circumvent our laser grid of defenses. We don’t want other people running their own fake HG:L servers and ripping people off.
Why does it suck and why is it good?
No LAN doesn’t suck at all. I know, I’m supposed to say things like that. It’s somewhere in my job description. But when you really think about it… Who the f*** cares? LAN was great when we didn’t have broadband. It’s also awesome if you’re willing to lug your stupid computer around all over the place. But HG:L runs on closed servers and we have free online multiplayer that’s every bit as robust as Diablo II. So why even bother with LAN?
--Ivan Sulic
As Ivan alludes to, there will be free online gaming over the Ping-0 servers. Something akin to open Battle.net, where anyone could play their Diablo II single player characters. The issue then becomes hacks and cheats and dupes, and the virtual guarantee that other people playing unsecured characters over free Ping-0 are using all three of those things. You can join in the "fun" or not, but if your goal online was to play with friends, just like a LAN, then you can arrange to meet up with them in a private game. The only difference is that you'll be connected through the Ping-0 servers, rather than on a direct TCP/IP connection, which might negatively effect your ping. It's also expected that you will need a valid cd-key and some sort of unique account to log onto the Ping-0 server, which should make things more difficult for people playing pirated versions of Hellgate: London.
HGL Online Fee Structure
Hellgate: London will be free to play online, but with limits. Paying a monthly fee of $9.95 (US fee; International rates TBD) will give you more game content, more characters per account, and lots of special features. See the HGL Online page for full details about pricing plans and more.
In-Game Advertising
Flagship has talked about possibly selling ads in Hellgate: London. Not to just anyone, and not everywhere, but where appropriate. Much of the game is spent in subway stations, after all, and if you've ever been in such a place yourself you know that there is no shortage of advertising on the walls. This issue was the subject of a gaming news item on Mtv's website in February 2007.
Placing the ad in the game, even just temporarily for a demo, I thought, was inspired. It was clever. It drew a connection between the game and a smart piece of fiction, a good movie that might well match the interests of Hellgate players. It also gave some extra bite to Hellgate, since Children of Men has a lot to say about why London might wind up in a state of post-world-war trauma.
Roper told me the ads were just placeholders, that his team put them in there to be clever but expects to yank them before the game is released. When he told me that, a thought flashed in my mind for the first time: I'm going to miss those in-game ads.
Multiplayer Cooperative Play
Multiplayer will focus on cooperative play. Small teams of adventurers will venture into the Streets and sewers of London to massacre demons as a team. Flagship is planning on setting character limits for each region in order to keep balance: some areas will only be for two or three players, while other special areas may be able to accommodate large groups.
On top of adventuring, there will also be special challenge areas set up for online players. The team is kicking around ideas for scavenger hunt zones, or an area where teams will see how long they can hold a safe zone against ever-increasing waves of demon assaults.
--Gamespy preview, May 13, 2005
Trading
Trading items in Hellgate: London works just as it does in most other RPGs. A player selects another player in town and opens a trade window into which each player can place items they wish the other player to see. Once an exchange is agreed upon each player must click the "ok" button to execute the trade. It's not yet known how Hellgate: London will handle trade spamming or professional traders/item trading/selling websites.
Real Money Trading
Flagship hasn't yet said much about their official stance on players selling items or characters for real money (RMT = Real Money Trading). Bill Roper and others have mentioned the phenomena and how popular it is in many Asian RPGs, and they've said some non-essential items in Mythos might be handled with RMT, but there's been no official statements about whether RMT will be supported or banned or anywhere in between for Hellgate: London. The following quote by Tyler Thompson, from an interview held at E3 2007, is the most we know yet.
It's definitely a sign of a healthy economy in a game, when items have value, and currency has value. That's a good thing. If people are actually putting value on those things because they're putting value on their time, that means people are really enjoying and playing the game. As far as the actual economics of it, and whether it changes the game or not, I'm not too concerned about it. Because we have instance play, you're not gonna be running into gold farmers that are going to be stealing all your stuff or taking all your kills. It won't be a physical annoyance to all of those players.
"I know plenty of guys who like to go online and buy those cool items and make the guys stronger and go out and play. You know, that's fun for them, they have fun with that, and that's cool. We can't directly put monetary value on the things within our economy. And so, we don't directly participate in it."
--Tyler Thompson, Shacknews Interview, July 16, 2007.
Also see this vote and the associated forum thread for more info about RMT and evidence of the Hellgate: London player base's opinions on it.
Gold Farming
Flagship hasn't yet given more than a few hints on their official stance on this issue.
"I'm hoping for a healthy, happy economy, where gold and money has value, items have value, and people will exchange money for the time it takes to find it. Yeah, they'll probably cause some inflation. I don't know if it'll be out of control or a problem, but they usually cause some inflation. But it's also--this is like Diablo was. Diablo's got gold farming going on. You kind of have your guy, and you go out, and you do your thing, and you participate to a limited degree in the economy. It's kind of up to you. I never felt like I had to go buy stuff or go buy Stones of Jordan or barter or something. It never was a part of the plan.
--Tyler Thompson, Shacknews Interview, E3, July 2007.
Auction Houses
Flagship has repeatedly promised that Hellgate: London will feature auction houses comparable to the popular features in most other MMORPGs. No details have yet been released, though.
In an earlier feature list for Elite Subscription Auction Houses were listed as one of the benefits. It has not been mentioned since, so it might be an added feature (assumably for subscribers only, as the rest of the added features are) that will be implemented in a patch post-release.
Party Size
The maximum party size as of May 2007 is a relatively small five players, since that's how big the team thinks a group should be. Larger than that is technically possible, but it results in very crowded levels and much more of a mad rush forward than any kind of teamwork and support. The limit is definitely set for gameplay and fun, rather than any kind of technical limitation. There will be various types of raid games online with support for much larger groups.
Difficulty Scaling
Monster difficulty (hit points, for the most part) will adjust for the number of players in your party. Monsters will not adjust for the levels of the characters in your party, and while levels may spawn at a larger size if you join with a larger group, that's probably not going to happen.
We do intend for there to be a lot of cooperative online play, so these areas need to be able to dynamically scale in difficulty to accommodate differing numbers of players. ...Fortunately, the self-balancing nature of a dynamically generated game makes this all very possible.
--Bill Roper, Total Video Games Preview, July 6, 2005
In the early days of Hellgate: London's development there was talk about a lot more scaling, with player level and class considered, and levels were going to change radically in size for larger groups. Those aspects of it must not have worked well in testing, since they seem to have be thrown away as the game approaches Alpha Testing.
Rushing
One aspect of multiplayer gaming that's not often discussed on the feature list is rushing. Using a high level character to help a low level character zoom through the game, level up quickly, reach higher level quests early, etc. Rushing or turboing is kind of an unspoken truth of gaming, and while it's not exactly something they put on the press releases, the Hellgate Team is aware of the practice. At community day 2007 Flux asked about it, and wrote up what he learned.
One thing I thought was interesting was that they don't want to make rushing impossible. As Bill Roper pointed out, part of the fun for a lot of players is helping or being helped by a friend to zoom through the early levels quickly. Flagship doesn't want to make this completely impossible, but at the same time they don't want very low level characters tagging along behind big ones and reaching level 20 or 30 without ever killing anything. So they're including the now-standard limits on experience gain from monsters too far below or above a character's level, and making the experience divide up somewhat by the level of the characters in the game, but not to the point of ruining the game play experience for a party of mixed level characters.
Raids
While the team has talked about supporting large "raid" game play long term, they've still not committed to anything on that front, and have not moved their ideas much beyond the drawing board. Raid support will exist, but it's not yet determined how it will work, if it will be Elite-only or open to free players as well, or what the game types will be. The team has a lot of ideas, though.
One Raid game concept was the ever-increasing monster spawner. Bill said it might be some kind of object or hellgate that would issue forth a nasty boss. Once he was killed, another one would appear with slightly higher stats. And then another one. And another, each getting steadily more difficult. The Flagship guys sounded very excited about this idea, and they envision one player finding it, and then calling in his/her friends to come and help as the monsters coming out keep getting harder and harder. How long could players hang on? How could they get reinforcements to join the game to keep the struggle going? How many levels of monsters would there be to battle?
--Flux, Mega Community Day Report, May 2007.
International Hosting
While Flagship will be hosting their own servers in the US, Hellgate: London will be hosted by numerous other companies around the rest of the world. The question then becomes whether or not these different hosts will allow players to mingle. Flagship wants to allow players around the world to play together, and they know how many guilds have members in Europe, America, Asia, etc. The problem is that Hellgate: London online isn't free, the Elite content at least is not, and that's a sticking point. Should the Korean host allow gamers from Europe or America to access the Elite content on their Korean servers? Will it be possible for players to select their host server and pay them for the Elite content, or will players be limited to the server they are geographically closest to?
There are no answers to this yet.
The Hellgate team is committed to allowing players from around the world to mix and mingle as much as possible, so it should be possible to play with your friends on the other side of the globe; there may just be issues with Elite content and the other subscriber-only aspects of the game.
Multiplayer Technology
Flagship hasn't said much about this, but they did talk about it during a presentation at community day 2007, and Flux was able to report back on what was revealed.
Flagship cofounder and Ping0 C.T.O. Peter Hu talked a bit about the server issues and programming required for Hellgate: London, and indicated that it was a great improvement over past networking systems. I'm not a tech expert and Peter didn't go into great detail anyway, but he said Hellgate: London has to keep track of far more objects and particles than almost any other online gaming service, and that he's confident it will do the job. And if he wasn't, he'd probably have been up in the Ping0 offices kicking over cubicles rather than in the conference room talking to visitors.
One thing Peter and Bill Roper made clear was that lag has to be dealt with since Hellgate: London is a very movement and object intensive game, and they want the combat to be realistic and controllable. It's not one of those RPGs where the fight is initiated by a few clicks, and then proceeds until you break it off or someone dies. Furthermore, collision is not calculated upon firing. You need to see projectiles coming at you so you can dodge them, and the damage calculations aren't made until you actually get hit. Again this differs from a lot of RPGs, where hit/miss calculations are made as soon as a projectile is fired, and all the running and dodging you might try to do is irrelevant to the outcome.
Hellgate: London can't work like that, since it's about fast paced play and lots of combat, and if a player can't click to execute special attacks when they're needed, it's not going to be any fun. So Flagship and Ping0 programmers are really spending a lot of code and bandwidth on making sure the game works properly. Bill's example was that maybe you won't see every bounce of the grenade you just threw, as you would playing single player, but that when it explodes the blast will be seen in the same place by everyone in the game.
--Flux, Mega Community Day Report, May 2007.
PVP
There will be no PKing or non-consensual Player vs. Player fighting in Hellgate: London. There is no hostile button and no friendly fire, so there's no way to inflict direct damage on another player in the normal game. There will be support for PVP and dueling, but only in special arena game types. No further details or map layouts have yet been released.
See the PVP page for full details.
Instancing
Instancing is a concept that was heavily used in Diablo II, even though the term was not yet in widespread use. "Instancing" just means that instead of there being just one huge game world that everyone has to cram into (as was the case with early MMOs, such as Ultima Online and Everquest), there are central meeting spots (towns), but infinite identical versions of most play areas.
"One of the things we're doing slightly differently is that every time you go into the world - whether in single player or multiplayer - we put you in your own specific areas of the world. Other people call that instancing, but what it means is that there are never any other players in the world to steal kills or attack you when you're questing. Basically we want you to be able to play with only the people you want to play with. It's another example of how we want the game to be unique every time you play - you have control over who you are playing with in your very own unique part of the gameworld."
--Bill Roper, PC Zone Interview, June 9, 2005
Flagship has said their instancing system will be similar to the one used in Guild Wars, but with scaling and the ability to join or leave ongoing instances -- features not supported in some poorly-designed MMORPGs.
"Instances can be joined in progress by other players, and the game will instantly compensate with monster numbers and difficulty."
--Bill Roper, CGW Magazine Preview, May 2006
Only shared spaces will not be completely instanced in Hellgate: London. You'll see other players not in your party in towns, and likely in persistent areas such as raid or arena game lobbies, auction houses, and guild halls, but the details for all of those things have yet to be ironed out.
Hack and Cheat Prevention?
Cheating and hacking in online games is always a huge issue, and after the completely out of control situation on Battle.net in Diablo, gamers and the game's designers had hopes for better in Diablo II. It was better, but cheats and item hacks and other problems still cropped up with disturbing regularity. The Flagship guys know this, of course, and from the start of Hellgate: London's development they've been working to keep the online experience is as cheat-free as possible. Let's wish them luck, unless of course you're a future hacker/cheater, in which case you can start jabbing pins into a voodoo doll, or whatever it is you soulless bastards do in your free time.
"We're looking into exactly how people will be able to experience the game in a multiplayer setting. One of our concerns is with cheating and hacking in these modes, which is why we're so focused on building our online component. We also want to have a compelling online experience that we support MUCH more than we ever did Diablo II. In our minds, the ongoing commitment by gamers and developers to giving a great game a long life goes hand-in-hand, and that is where we are currently putting our focus."
--Bill Roper, Fansite Interview, January 4, 2006
They're saying all the right things, at least.
"I believe we're going to be doing more outsourcing to maintain a stable, cheat free multiplayer environment in addition to relying somewhat more heavily on our publisher. These two things alone should greatly decrease the amount of unscrupulous multiplayer action in our game. Additionally, we have a big internal focus on maintaining Hellgate's multiplayer. It's a huge priority for us, whereas at Blizzard current Flagshippers were split between expansions, other projects and regular upkeep. We get to focus more here, basically."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Guild Support
Guild support is another thing Flagship has talked about, but has not yet announced any specifics for.
Most gamers enjoy playing online with friends, and one of the best ways to be sure you've always got people to play with is to become a guild member. Back when they were Blizzard North, the Flagship team had high hopes for guild support in Diablo II. Unfortunately, most of their ideas for guild halls, emblems, and other features fell by the wayside when it came to the crunch. They're hoping to resurrect those ideas, and work in a lot of others in Hellgate: London.
"We know that guilds are a huge part of the online experience, and we've been throwing around a lot of ideas as to what we can do to support them. Things like dedicated chat channels and identifiers are definitely in, but the overall complete detailed list of things is still being hammered out. We'll probably get into greater detail early next year as to our online support and how that will affect people wanting to have guilds, so stay tuned."
--Bill Roper, Fansite Interview, February 2006
No matter what level of guild support makes it into the final game, Flagship is not going to make it mandatory to join a guild. They know how much most players hate the "only major guilds can play the highest level dungeons" concept that some MMORPGs have embraced.
Q: Will guilds be required for some content?
A: "More of a community thing. Currently none of our planned content requires guild, clan or any sort of group membership."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Other Online Features
Online stats ...the team want to build-in tools to allow people to observe games or watch replays with commentary. They're also setting up leader boards and ladders, tracking dozens of stats including most demons killed, wealth accumulated, etc. etc.
On top of adventuring, there will also be special challenge areas set up for online players. The team is kicking around ideas for scavenger hunt zones, or an area where teams will see how long they can hold a safe zone against ever-increasing waves of demon assaults.
--Gamespy preview, May 13, 2005
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but most of these ideas were proposed for Diablo II, way back in 1998-1999, and exactly zero of them actually made it into the game. Fun bonus features like these sound tempting, but when a game goes into crunch time and deadlines are looming, they're the first thing to go. Still, technology has advanced a lot since the days of Diablo II, and with improved databases and server trackers in Hellgate: London, implementing counters and other player tracking stats might not be so difficult... providing Flagship makes it a priority. In other words, we'll believe it when we see it.
"We have a solid stat tracking system planned, actually. Should be pretty neat, from what I hear. Now, I wouldn't expect it to be as extensive as something like that seen in Halo 2, which shows from which direction a bullet hit your character, but it'll have all the basics covered, for sure."
--Ivan Sulic, April 24, 2006
The fact that Flagship is committed to ongoing content, and online subscription features you can't get with the basic game, make this sort of bonus stuff more feasible -- but not for free.
Voice Over Internet Protocol
There's good news if you don't like typing; Flagship is planning to support VOIP technology in Hellgate: London. So you'll be able to use a headset and microphone to talk to people in your game. Let's just hope there's a "mute" option, since listening to someone scream, "Potal gogo plz!" for five minutes would pretty well end my online fun for the night.
Item Drop Sharing
Drop sharing is set up so that each player receives completely seperate drops from each other while in an instance. What drops for your character will never be visible to another member of your party while it rests on the ground, so there is no risk of losing out on items that should righfully be yours.
Item Drop Sharing Development Ideas
Many methods of item drop sharing were discussed during development. When questioned on item drop sharing in May 2006, Ivan Sulic said Flagship did not know how they would handle it.
Q. In a multiplayer game, does the player who killed the monster get priority in picking up the item(s) it drops?
A. "This has yet to be determined."
Q. Can everyone grab all items that get dropped in a Multiplayer game, or only the one who killed the monster?
A. "We don't know how this is going to work yet."
--Ivan Sulic, May 2006
Flagship has mentioned a few ideas, including making it so each player in a party only sees the items they can pick up. For example, if a monster dropped four items and there were three players in the party, the game would determine, pre-drop, which items were for which characters, and then your Templar would only see the shield, your friend's Hunter would see a pistol and a health injector, and your other friend's Cabalist would only see a focal device.
This is just a proposal, so questions about how the game determines who sees what, what happens if an item you'd like is not picked up by the player who sees it, how long items lie there until their exclusively visibility properly wears off, etc, are unanswerable at this point.
One thing in favour of this being the direction Hellgate: London will take is that Flagship's side project Mythos is currently using this system of loot sharing. It remains to be seen if this will be the final solution.
