Table ronde n°14 : Vacances

La Table ronde n°14 est consacrée aux Vacances ou plus exactement, aux événements in game liés aux vacances.

Sondage

Le sondage est visible sur le site officiel : Do you want to see in-game holidays in EverQuest Next?

Résultats le 8 décembre 2013 :

Voulez-vous voir des vacances en jeu dans EverQuest Next ?
I'd like to see some of the ones that already exist within the franchise from EQ and EQII.	13%
I'd like to see in-game holidays that fit the new world and lore, not real world events.	43%
I don't like it when fantasy games celebrate real-world holidays even disguised with game lore.	11%
I love it when we can celebrate real world holidays with something matching in game.	33%

Transcription

Cette transcription de la vidéo provient du site EQ Hammer.

Omeed Dariani: Hi. My name’s Omeed Dariani. I’m the Senior Brand Manager for the EverQuest franchise. Welcome to the Round Table. With me today is Lead Game Designer--and giant--Darrin McPherson. And we’re talking about in-game holidays. And I think the right place to start on in-game holidays is: why do we have in-game holidays?

Darrin McPherson: In-game holidays are a great chance for people to get together with their friends, participate in special activities to get special items...and have cake.

Omeed Dariani: And...because cake is delicious, right?

Darrin McPherson: It’s amazing.

Omeed Dariani: But, to me, I mean, one of the main things is that if we’re trying to build a world that feels real we need to have holidays because the real world is filled with holidays. People love holidays.

Darrin McPherson: In-game holidays typically coincide with the seasons of the real world. We will definitely have our winter holiday. Winter holidays will be in wintertime and summer holidays will be in summertime so that people get a sense of continuity.

Omeed Dariani: One of the things that people were very adamant about is please don’t just literally put real holidays into the game. Don’t have the 4th of July in EverQuest [Next]. Is that something we’re planning on doing?

Darrin McPherson: What I think we saw in the poll responses was that there were people who wanted lore-based only. And there were people who wanted to have holidays inside the game coincide with holidays outside the game. And I think we’re going to satisfy both of those groups. We’re going to have our own lore-based holidays that will coincide with, frequently, out-of-game holidays. So, we’ll have something close to Frostfell from EverQuest II in the winter. We may have a summer celebration in the summertime that will be our own lore.

Omeed Dariani: Yeah. I mean, and the EverQuest franchise is no stranger to having its own holidays, right? There’s the Heroes’ Festival, for example. Which coincides with the launch of EverQuest II, but that’s not a real world holiday.

Darrin McPherson: Right.

Omeed Dariani: Not yet. One of the things that I thought was the most interesting is that people were talking a lot on the forums about how holidays could interact with our AI.

Darrin McPherson: Right. We have such a great procedural AI system, and we definitely want our AI--that has this expanded knowledge of what’s happening in the world--to interact with these things in a procedural manner so that we don’t really have to set things up, we can say, ‘Okay, it’s holiday time,’ and let the AI begin to participate in it.

Omeed Dariani: So, our AI--our NPCs--are actually aware that it’s Frostfell and react to it. And that’s pretty cool; I don’t think we’ve seen that anywhere.

Darrin McPherson: Our holidays will be different. They’ll feel different.

Omeed Dariani: Mmhmm. And this Round Table, I think, felt a little different, too. One fo the things we noticed immediately on the forums was people creating their own holidays or saying how a holiday would work in EverQuest Next. One guy, Rumbleforge, went so far as to create his own lore--a whole story about his holiday.

Darrin McPherson: Right. And we as designers do the same thing. We’ll pick an event that happens in game lore, or something in the outside world we want to mirror because it’s a nice seasonal holiday, and we write lore around it. We try to figure out what the events are. And, so, yeah, it’s a great event that people can participate in. And it would be really good to get that feedback from players. We can maybe integrate that stuff into the game.

Omeed Dariani: So, I think the best thing you guys can do is tell us how you think the holidays and AI could interact, what sorts of holidays you’re interested in seeing in EverQuest Next...because we’re still very much in the design process with this stuff. We don’t necessarily have to just stick to all the EQ and EQ2 holidays. We can make up our own.

Darrin McPherson: Definitely.

Omeed Dariani: So, thank you guys very much for your time. We appreciate it, as always. And we’ll see you next time on the Round Table.