Another stream, another set of notes and updates, though, fair warning, this one's a bit spicy.
- New Skin for suubscribers – May 2021
- Glider Phase-2 coming next week.
- Current map undergoing changes, flattening out hills, allow for more maneuverability
- Momentum on dives currently on internal test builds
- Building the Tsi-Hu: A series of what-ifs – The Tsi-Hu are technologically advanced, but their focus is biology. They are hunters and beastmasters, use weapon staves, instead of guns, but do have ranged fire. In place of mechs, they use giant monsters. They evolved on a planet filled with organic creatures. Instad of flying machines, they use ‘dragons’, instead of tanks, they use war beasts, they can ride these creatures, and are beasts themselves, effectively able to shapeshift into their beast forms.
- As part of the art pass, the Tsi-Hu will lose their guns, and instead receive biotech staves.
- Em-8ER will effectively have battles between fantasy-esque NPCs and heavily mechanised forces.
- The manner of movement of the Tsi-Hu will be changed as part of art pass.
- Omniframe skins have additional shaders.
- Melee weapons available to all frame archetypes, with only the light frame capable of dual wielding melee.
- Frames can equip melee in one hand and a ranged weapon in the other.
- Deepstryke ability will do damage relative to altitude.
- Base building is rts-esque, they can be set up all over the map with certain restrictions.
- Grummz wants players actions to dictate the lore in-game during every expansion. If certain players have a significant contribution to the world, it could be weaved in to the next arc.
- Em-8ER will have two types of dynamic content:
- Scaling similar to WoW Legion pre-launch invasions is being considered where even low level players could make themselves useful. Scaling should work such that the player gets a feeling of having achieved something, rather than the content just fitting whatever power level you are.
- Exploration: There will be no static discoverable items, but the AI may recognize that a player is exploring and generate discoverable encounters. This is under consideration.
- Grummz wants the AI to be able to cater to different types of players, observe what a player is actively looking for and generate content to engage that player. This will not be a launch feature.
- AI influencing gameplay and the player influencing the AI: If Player A wishes to craft a certain weapon, they can flag the item on the tech tree. The AI is immediately made aware that the player is looking for resources to craft the items. It will then influence the resource RNG and dynamic events, within bounds and to a certain limit, such that the player is able to accomplish their goals. This is also influenced by the number of resources the player contributes towards the nearest base. The AI will try help the player maximize their results and rewards for the time they spend, rather than frustrate them.
- Players can create custom builds for their omniframes. If a particular build is unique, the player can name their build which becomes the standard name for future use
- Crafting will be a system of trade-offs. In order to use higher quality resources on one aspect of, say, a weapon, you will need to lower the quality of resources used on another aspect. The crafting system will be shown off in the kickstarter movie, but will not be implemented as part of gameplay.
- The team plans to release several updates as the kickstarter progresses, one of these may be a web-calculator which allows you to build your dream omniframe and slot abilities into it. This is an idea being considered.
- Players can, and will, lose all zones on the surface of the planet, but will have a fallback option in a spacestation above the planet called ‘Home’.
- The light frame does not have a hard-driver (fully enclosed) mode, the medium can switch between the two, and the heavy frame is always fully enclosed.
- Epic rant incoming:
Personal Note: Now, I usually do not transcribe everything said on stream, word for word. That would simply defeat the purpose of quick notes and an overview for those that missed the chat. The notes are meant to be useful for those that would like to keep up on developments, but either are not on discord, or are too busy to get involved in discord conversations and/or chief chats.
This next blurb however, was too interesting to not transcribe. It's a very rare occasion that Grummz gets this animated, even so far as dropping f-bombs live on-stream. For those that would like to watch the whole thing, you may go here:
https://www.twitch.tv/grummz_em8er/video/1029276864
and skip to 1:18:15.
For those that would rather read through, here you go:
- Em-8ER gets richer the longer you play the game. The world expands, it has more things to do, the old zones still matter.
- Events will be happening simultaneously across multiple zones. Some zones may be under invasion, some quiet. Thumping may be locked out in invaded zones, players who are thumping for resources in other zones can convoy these into invaded zones to assist the war effort.
A much shorter stream which ended with raffles for a catch-up pack and a $500 Shifter pack. A new build is expected next week, as mentioned earlier. More notes then.
- New Skin for suubscribers – May 2021
- Glider Phase-2 coming next week.
- Current map undergoing changes, flattening out hills, allow for more maneuverability
- Momentum on dives currently on internal test builds
- Building the Tsi-Hu: A series of what-ifs – The Tsi-Hu are technologically advanced, but their focus is biology. They are hunters and beastmasters, use weapon staves, instead of guns, but do have ranged fire. In place of mechs, they use giant monsters. They evolved on a planet filled with organic creatures. Instad of flying machines, they use ‘dragons’, instead of tanks, they use war beasts, they can ride these creatures, and are beasts themselves, effectively able to shapeshift into their beast forms.
- As part of the art pass, the Tsi-Hu will lose their guns, and instead receive biotech staves.
- Em-8ER will effectively have battles between fantasy-esque NPCs and heavily mechanised forces.
- The manner of movement of the Tsi-Hu will be changed as part of art pass.
- Omniframe skins have additional shaders.
- Melee weapons available to all frame archetypes, with only the light frame capable of dual wielding melee.
- Frames can equip melee in one hand and a ranged weapon in the other.
- Deepstryke ability will do damage relative to altitude.
- Base building is rts-esque, they can be set up all over the map with certain restrictions.
- Grummz wants players actions to dictate the lore in-game during every expansion. If certain players have a significant contribution to the world, it could be weaved in to the next arc.
- Em-8ER will have two types of dynamic content:
1. Events that happen around players, controlled by a dungeon master/overseer AI that looks to ‘entertain’ players.
2. Events on demand: Thumping is an example, you can thump anywhere at anytime, going into the Tsi-Hu world to hunt Kaiju is another
- Scaling similar to WoW Legion pre-launch invasions is being considered where even low level players could make themselves useful. Scaling should work such that the player gets a feeling of having achieved something, rather than the content just fitting whatever power level you are.
- Exploration: There will be no static discoverable items, but the AI may recognize that a player is exploring and generate discoverable encounters. This is under consideration.
- Grummz wants the AI to be able to cater to different types of players, observe what a player is actively looking for and generate content to engage that player. This will not be a launch feature.
- AI influencing gameplay and the player influencing the AI: If Player A wishes to craft a certain weapon, they can flag the item on the tech tree. The AI is immediately made aware that the player is looking for resources to craft the items. It will then influence the resource RNG and dynamic events, within bounds and to a certain limit, such that the player is able to accomplish their goals. This is also influenced by the number of resources the player contributes towards the nearest base. The AI will try help the player maximize their results and rewards for the time they spend, rather than frustrate them.
- Players can create custom builds for their omniframes. If a particular build is unique, the player can name their build which becomes the standard name for future use
- Crafting will be a system of trade-offs. In order to use higher quality resources on one aspect of, say, a weapon, you will need to lower the quality of resources used on another aspect. The crafting system will be shown off in the kickstarter movie, but will not be implemented as part of gameplay.
- The team plans to release several updates as the kickstarter progresses, one of these may be a web-calculator which allows you to build your dream omniframe and slot abilities into it. This is an idea being considered.
- Players can, and will, lose all zones on the surface of the planet, but will have a fallback option in a spacestation above the planet called ‘Home’.
- The light frame does not have a hard-driver (fully enclosed) mode, the medium can switch between the two, and the heavy frame is always fully enclosed.
- Epic rant incoming:
Personal Note: Now, I usually do not transcribe everything said on stream, word for word. That would simply defeat the purpose of quick notes and an overview for those that missed the chat. The notes are meant to be useful for those that would like to keep up on developments, but either are not on discord, or are too busy to get involved in discord conversations and/or chief chats.
This next blurb however, was too interesting to not transcribe. It's a very rare occasion that Grummz gets this animated, even so far as dropping f-bombs live on-stream. For those that would like to watch the whole thing, you may go here:
https://www.twitch.tv/grummz_em8er/video/1029276864
and skip to 1:18:15.
For those that would rather read through, here you go:
Grummz: Wusscake says ‘Wait you are changing the meta of MMO gameplay? That’s crazy talk! But it’s just crazy enough to be potato’.
Yea, we are changing the meta of MMOs. Why? Because I already made them. Right? I’ve made MMOs with that meta, I probably made the MMO that cemented that meta. You know, I didn’t make it, the team did, but I worked on the game that probably cemented that.
You know, before WoW, there were so many different ways to make MMOS, there were so many experiments happening in the field, of Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Ultima Online, people were figuring it out. And after WoW became a huge success, people said, ‘That’s the only meta that works! That’s the one we gotta do!’, and then we all just got sameness! We got sameness for over 10 years! Everybody’s just made the same MMO again and again and again!
And people barked up the wrong tree, ‘Well, we’ll just make the combat action-oriented, that’ll change how things are.’, And then the meta got worse, the meta got worse as the audience expanded, and we made progression meaningless, and we just let you jump to the endgame content, level boost the s*** out of things, and then invalidate all of prior zones and content that were ever made, just to get you to hop into a new one.
That’s stupidity! You spent millions of dollars developing all this content that you just invalidate on your expansion.
Why?
You need a meta that makes those zones playable, so that the world gets bigger and more epic, the longer it’s in existence. Right now it’s just a sliding window. WoW is just whatever the f*** the current expansion is, and f*** the rest of it. I’m swearing more, I’m sorry.
That is wrong, that is wrong. The world needs to get richer and more complex...Or worse yet, Destiny 2, let’s yank entire content out of the game, right? What are you thinking?!’
Yea, we are changing the meta of MMOs. Why? Because I already made them. Right? I’ve made MMOs with that meta, I probably made the MMO that cemented that meta. You know, I didn’t make it, the team did, but I worked on the game that probably cemented that.
You know, before WoW, there were so many different ways to make MMOS, there were so many experiments happening in the field, of Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Ultima Online, people were figuring it out. And after WoW became a huge success, people said, ‘That’s the only meta that works! That’s the one we gotta do!’, and then we all just got sameness! We got sameness for over 10 years! Everybody’s just made the same MMO again and again and again!
And people barked up the wrong tree, ‘Well, we’ll just make the combat action-oriented, that’ll change how things are.’, And then the meta got worse, the meta got worse as the audience expanded, and we made progression meaningless, and we just let you jump to the endgame content, level boost the s*** out of things, and then invalidate all of prior zones and content that were ever made, just to get you to hop into a new one.
That’s stupidity! You spent millions of dollars developing all this content that you just invalidate on your expansion.
Why?
You need a meta that makes those zones playable, so that the world gets bigger and more epic, the longer it’s in existence. Right now it’s just a sliding window. WoW is just whatever the f*** the current expansion is, and f*** the rest of it. I’m swearing more, I’m sorry.
That is wrong, that is wrong. The world needs to get richer and more complex...Or worse yet, Destiny 2, let’s yank entire content out of the game, right? What are you thinking?!’
- Em-8ER gets richer the longer you play the game. The world expands, it has more things to do, the old zones still matter.
- Events will be happening simultaneously across multiple zones. Some zones may be under invasion, some quiet. Thumping may be locked out in invaded zones, players who are thumping for resources in other zones can convoy these into invaded zones to assist the war effort.
A much shorter stream which ended with raffles for a catch-up pack and a $500 Shifter pack. A new build is expected next week, as mentioned earlier. More notes then.
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