CHIEF CHAT BRIEF SUMMARY FROM MAY 20, 2021
==== MAIN POINTS ====
► The new skin for the Em-8er Patron subscribers was announced yesterday! Introducing the “Yellow Flash!” a skin for your Heavy frame! See the description and the image for this months skin below!
”Ever see lightning strike the ground? Ever hear the thunderous roar as it splits the ground asunder? Well you don't have to imagine it. Now you can be it. Introducing the canary yellow heavy frame variant, brought to you by Halcyon Inc. Smite your enemies with the force of nature itself.”
==== GENERAL POINTS ====
► The heavy frame is described as an “Artillery platform” so expect a lot more AOE type damage!
► Light frame will have a lot more high mobility movement and stealth!
► The spider tank concept art was talked about, and Grummz pointed out that the tank has a spider walk mode, along with a siege mode!
► Paraphrased from Grummz: You know when you were a kid and you would ask yourself what who would win a fight between characters from two completely different universes with extremely different themes? I want to explore a battle between two very different themes in Em-8er.
We play as a race of humans called Gatestriders. They are colonists who developed MEK-A technology to help them survive in a harsh planet. Their mechs are sort of cross over between Japan and USA style mechs.
Then they’re suddenly pitted against the Tsi-Hu, an enemy who has a completely different theme and type of technology. They’re equally advanced but in a different way. Their focus is biology, they are like hunters and beast masters. Instead of using guns they use energy projectiles and natural melee weapons. Instead of using mechs, they use giant monsters and they’ve figured out how to enslave from developing on a planet that was just filled with organic creatures. Instead of flying aircraft they are flying dragon like creatures. Instead of using tanks, they are using giant war beasts known as kaiju.
The Tsi-Hu can even become beasts themselves when they shape shift into their beast form. In beast form they forgo their ranged attacks and close in for melee where they try to rip you apart. Part of the art redo we’re doing for this is that we’re getting rid of their guns and were giving them these sort of staves that are a combination of biology and technology. We will also be updating their animations to fit their theme better.
So EM-8ER is going to be about this huge battle between the high mechanized human force verses an almost fantasy-esque attack force of aliens.
==== KETCHUP SPILLED! ====
► ”We did the art pass on the Tsi-Hu which I’m not showing you yet but we've done it! But you know, they're much more “hunter like.” ~ Grummz
==== Q & A ====
► Question: Will there be any unique abilities or special abilities?
Grummz: There are many abilities that you can research and craft in the crafting tree in EM-8ER.
► Question: Is there any plan on redoing the lighting/texturing?
Grummz: Yup, this is a test zone and these are place holder graphics. In fact, I can confidently say right now, that every single graphic you see right now is being redone.
► Question: Is there a reason why the glider has such a long cool down?
Grummz: The reason why glider has a cool down, is to prevent infinite flying. Because of the jetpacks, if you were to use them then glide immediately you could essentially just fly forever. This is mostly because you can deploy them anytime, instead of having a glider pad like Firefall.
► Question: Is the audio in the demo a place holder?
Grummz: Not all of the audio is place holder, we have been doing a lot of work, but we need to work on the gun sound effects for sure, The Tsi-Hu are not final sounds either.
► Question: What about the heels on the frames? Can they be serrated foot knives?
Grummz: The heels? No they aren't serrated for any sort of damage stuff.
► Question: Are all the mechs bipedal?
Grummz: yeah! The 3 standard mech sizes are bipedal.
► Question: Could you dual wield a gun in one hand, with a sword in another?
Grummz: Yes you can, even if your double melee there's a primary and secondary weapon slot, so the idea is that you can switch between them so you could have and assault rifle and then go ahead and switch over to your melee fists.
► Question: Will there eventually be corrupted mecha? Like mechs that are taken over with some organic mass or something?
Grummz: Hey that's a pretty neat idea! So like the Tsi-Hu use their biotech to sort of like, to sort of take you over as an additional enemy type? That's a pretty cool idea, thank you for that!
► Question: Will there be “organic based” weapons/abilities for Omniframes like the recluse had? Or would it be an “EM-8ER version”?
Grummz: I don’t know yet, but I think research and enemy tech is a big part of it. I was a huge X-com fan back in the day and I loved the fact that as you fought the enemies you could unlock research about enemy weapons, you couldn’t exactly create their stuff but you could apply it to what you had.
► Question: Will there be other types of encounters?
Ronyn: Down the road. After launch we will expand on that.
► Question: Will we have any crotch mounted cannons?
Grummz: No I don’t think we will do a crotch mounted cannon, I’m not into that. Maybe I’m biased, I like the waifus more. Boob missiles maybe, crotch cannons dunno.
► Question: As for the player built bases, are they free built wherever we want or do they have predetermined locations players improve upon?
Grummz: so the bases aren't like a survival game, your not going to put up a wall or a roof, this is also outlined in our vision book the buildings are meant to be rezzed like RTS buildings, and the position is open. There will be some restrictions where red you cant place it, green you can place it. The idea is that you can actually go out there and transform the world, your actions have impact on it.
► Question: Will there be an option to add cosmetic buildings to a base?
Grummz: That's an open question, right now you can hang banners that you can customize though.
► Question: Will there be “legendary/hero” players where they have the ability to use unique abilities?
Grummz: So a “legendary player” that have unique ability. So you reach some certain stature in the game, you could have some sort of ability? That's an interesting idea, but we cant customize one for thousands of players. Maybe you could pick from a limited range of elite tier abilities? That's an interesting idea though. So if certain player rise to the forefront and have a very significant contribution to the world? Yeah I think we would weave that into the next arc. Would we give them something unique? I don’t know that's an interesting idea but there's still going to be multiple servers, so every server could have its own leader board. But they could be mentioned right, there could be lore. But creating unique a shader set? I’m not sure.
►Question: Will there be end game open world content and end game instanced content, AKA raids/dungeons?
Grummz: Wow, so you missed my whole MMO stream where I react to the "Absolute State of MMOs". And I talk about what is horribly broken right now is, we don't have enough exploration of the meta of MMOs. Now what do I mean by the meta? We have a lot of experimentation with combat, this one has player cities and this one doesn't. But everything is the frickin' same. Everything is like, level as fast as you can, get to the end game content, do raids to get epic loot, DONE. Wait for new content to drop and do it. That has to change.
And so Em-8er's focus is a little different. We're really about a truly dynamic world and truly dynamic events that can happen anywhere. And less about static content raids and the end game being raiding. If the end game is raiding in this, we failed. This is a dynamic wargame, right? The whole point is that, you need to unlock this world. You need to terraform it, you need to colonize it, you need to push the borders of the frontier past its limits, and then you're at war with a competing force that's trying to do you in at the same time and undo all the work you have done. That's the push-pull dynamic. And the events and the things we do are going to be based on that.
Instead of raids, it's really going to be focused on Kaiju hunting, right? So at some point we're going to be able to go through these rifts that are appearing in the world and go and hunt on their world for specific monsters and Kaiju types to help you get the things you need to research and unlock your tech tree.
So it's a different approach. And I think there needs to be more experimentation in MMOs with different approaches so that it's not all the same thing. It's not all static content. You know, do this raid a million times. It's something I'm really bored of in MMOs. That's not why I play. I want every zone to be usable, I want every zone to be something you come back to, I want dynamic events to scale to your ability and to the progression of your mech through the tech tree.
And I want there to be 2 types of dynamic events. One, is like if stuff happens around you. And unlike some other MMOs dynamic events are not fixed to location, right? And there's going to be a sort of like Dungeon Master overseer system that's looking to entertain you, looking to make stuff happen as you travel through the world. And you never know what's going to happen. The other kind is what we call, things on demand. Things that you want to do that are repeatable. Thumper encounter is a good one of that. You can thump anywhere that you scan for resources, and then it's like okay I want to go do a thumper encounter. That's a type of dynamic event that's on demand. Going into the Tsi-Hu world to hunt for a particular kaiju, also would be a sort of on-demand player thing. And those can range from "Oh it's just myself going in to hunt some minor category 1 or 2 Kaiju", all the way up to "No, I need 100 people because we're going to go in and we're going to try to take down a category 4 or 5 Kaiju."
I hope that answers your question. No, there won't be raids. There will be something else. There will be a fully dynamic world. How 'bout that? That's what we're going for. Something a little different.
► Question: Is this content scaled so a low level player can play with a high level player in the same area where they can both do an event?
Grummz: Yes, we’re looking at how Legion did it in invasions. I did love the way that they made low level players feel viable. Something of that type of scaling is what were interested in.
► Question: what will the environment biomes be like, and will there be rewards for exploration?
Grummz: Everything starts off as snowy and volcanic. As you add resources collectively, you get to terraform these zones, and they will stage up to different stages of terraforming its not a gradual process but its going to be like “this zone will reach a new terraforming phase, so do not enter this zone.” As for the rewards, if a player looks like they are exploring the zone the AI should be aware of that and spawn some interesting things for you to discover.
► Question: How long would it take for the dungeon master to pick up on what a character is doing?
Grummz: I think it depends on there's certain hints you could give the AI so for example this is a crafting game, you need certain resources to craft certain things, you could put it on your wish list and say what you wanna unlock, now the AI is aware you have certain goals for yourself, and its going to suddenly influence the RNG and the types of influenced engaged to fulfill what your trying to accomplish. So this way you have certain influence over the system.
► Question: Wouldn't you worry that players that played on one zone, and did all of the terraforming in that zone, will not bother to play on that zone anymore, reducing the relevant player space? Similarly to how procedurally generated content can get stale even though it is theoretically infinite, since there is only so much relevant variety they can be generated with the same system.
Grummz: That's the beauty of a dynamic system. We can have world events spawn anywhere and we can rotate them through the zones and always make them relevant. Some zones will be under invasion, and some zones will not be under invasion and be conducive to thumping for resources. If a zone is under invasion, we're probably going to lock out mining. Those who are mining in other zones can convoy resources in.
==== FUN STUFF ====
►The Gizzard Gun
Ronyn: “KAIJU GIZZARD GUN!”
Grummz: “WE HAVE MADE A GIANT TURKEY BASTER!”
[Ronyn chuckling]
Grummz: “ITS A COMBO ABILITY YOU BASE THE KAIJU IT TAKES MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY FRAMES TO BASE THE KAIJU, AND THEN SOMEONE WITH A FLAMETHROWER SETS IT ON FIRE.”
Ronyn: “Good eatin’.”
Grummz: “Good eatin’, deep fried kaiju.”
---------------------------------------------------------
TWITCH VOD LINK!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1029276864
==== MAIN POINTS ====
► The new skin for the Em-8er Patron subscribers was announced yesterday! Introducing the “Yellow Flash!” a skin for your Heavy frame! See the description and the image for this months skin below!
”Ever see lightning strike the ground? Ever hear the thunderous roar as it splits the ground asunder? Well you don't have to imagine it. Now you can be it. Introducing the canary yellow heavy frame variant, brought to you by Halcyon Inc. Smite your enemies with the force of nature itself.”
==== GENERAL POINTS ====
► The heavy frame is described as an “Artillery platform” so expect a lot more AOE type damage!
► Light frame will have a lot more high mobility movement and stealth!
► The spider tank concept art was talked about, and Grummz pointed out that the tank has a spider walk mode, along with a siege mode!
► Paraphrased from Grummz: You know when you were a kid and you would ask yourself what who would win a fight between characters from two completely different universes with extremely different themes? I want to explore a battle between two very different themes in Em-8er.
We play as a race of humans called Gatestriders. They are colonists who developed MEK-A technology to help them survive in a harsh planet. Their mechs are sort of cross over between Japan and USA style mechs.
Then they’re suddenly pitted against the Tsi-Hu, an enemy who has a completely different theme and type of technology. They’re equally advanced but in a different way. Their focus is biology, they are like hunters and beast masters. Instead of using guns they use energy projectiles and natural melee weapons. Instead of using mechs, they use giant monsters and they’ve figured out how to enslave from developing on a planet that was just filled with organic creatures. Instead of flying aircraft they are flying dragon like creatures. Instead of using tanks, they are using giant war beasts known as kaiju.
The Tsi-Hu can even become beasts themselves when they shape shift into their beast form. In beast form they forgo their ranged attacks and close in for melee where they try to rip you apart. Part of the art redo we’re doing for this is that we’re getting rid of their guns and were giving them these sort of staves that are a combination of biology and technology. We will also be updating their animations to fit their theme better.
So EM-8ER is going to be about this huge battle between the high mechanized human force verses an almost fantasy-esque attack force of aliens.
==== KETCHUP SPILLED! ====
► ”We did the art pass on the Tsi-Hu which I’m not showing you yet but we've done it! But you know, they're much more “hunter like.” ~ Grummz
==== Q & A ====
► Question: Will there be any unique abilities or special abilities?
Grummz: There are many abilities that you can research and craft in the crafting tree in EM-8ER.
► Question: Is there any plan on redoing the lighting/texturing?
Grummz: Yup, this is a test zone and these are place holder graphics. In fact, I can confidently say right now, that every single graphic you see right now is being redone.
► Question: Is there a reason why the glider has such a long cool down?
Grummz: The reason why glider has a cool down, is to prevent infinite flying. Because of the jetpacks, if you were to use them then glide immediately you could essentially just fly forever. This is mostly because you can deploy them anytime, instead of having a glider pad like Firefall.
► Question: Is the audio in the demo a place holder?
Grummz: Not all of the audio is place holder, we have been doing a lot of work, but we need to work on the gun sound effects for sure, The Tsi-Hu are not final sounds either.
► Question: What about the heels on the frames? Can they be serrated foot knives?
Grummz: The heels? No they aren't serrated for any sort of damage stuff.
► Question: Are all the mechs bipedal?
Grummz: yeah! The 3 standard mech sizes are bipedal.
► Question: Could you dual wield a gun in one hand, with a sword in another?
Grummz: Yes you can, even if your double melee there's a primary and secondary weapon slot, so the idea is that you can switch between them so you could have and assault rifle and then go ahead and switch over to your melee fists.
► Question: Will there eventually be corrupted mecha? Like mechs that are taken over with some organic mass or something?
Grummz: Hey that's a pretty neat idea! So like the Tsi-Hu use their biotech to sort of like, to sort of take you over as an additional enemy type? That's a pretty cool idea, thank you for that!
► Question: Will there be “organic based” weapons/abilities for Omniframes like the recluse had? Or would it be an “EM-8ER version”?
Grummz: I don’t know yet, but I think research and enemy tech is a big part of it. I was a huge X-com fan back in the day and I loved the fact that as you fought the enemies you could unlock research about enemy weapons, you couldn’t exactly create their stuff but you could apply it to what you had.
► Question: Will there be other types of encounters?
Ronyn: Down the road. After launch we will expand on that.
► Question: Will we have any crotch mounted cannons?
Grummz: No I don’t think we will do a crotch mounted cannon, I’m not into that. Maybe I’m biased, I like the waifus more. Boob missiles maybe, crotch cannons dunno.
► Question: As for the player built bases, are they free built wherever we want or do they have predetermined locations players improve upon?
Grummz: so the bases aren't like a survival game, your not going to put up a wall or a roof, this is also outlined in our vision book the buildings are meant to be rezzed like RTS buildings, and the position is open. There will be some restrictions where red you cant place it, green you can place it. The idea is that you can actually go out there and transform the world, your actions have impact on it.
► Question: Will there be an option to add cosmetic buildings to a base?
Grummz: That's an open question, right now you can hang banners that you can customize though.
► Question: Will there be “legendary/hero” players where they have the ability to use unique abilities?
Grummz: So a “legendary player” that have unique ability. So you reach some certain stature in the game, you could have some sort of ability? That's an interesting idea, but we cant customize one for thousands of players. Maybe you could pick from a limited range of elite tier abilities? That's an interesting idea though. So if certain player rise to the forefront and have a very significant contribution to the world? Yeah I think we would weave that into the next arc. Would we give them something unique? I don’t know that's an interesting idea but there's still going to be multiple servers, so every server could have its own leader board. But they could be mentioned right, there could be lore. But creating unique a shader set? I’m not sure.
►Question: Will there be end game open world content and end game instanced content, AKA raids/dungeons?
Grummz: Wow, so you missed my whole MMO stream where I react to the "Absolute State of MMOs". And I talk about what is horribly broken right now is, we don't have enough exploration of the meta of MMOs. Now what do I mean by the meta? We have a lot of experimentation with combat, this one has player cities and this one doesn't. But everything is the frickin' same. Everything is like, level as fast as you can, get to the end game content, do raids to get epic loot, DONE. Wait for new content to drop and do it. That has to change.
And so Em-8er's focus is a little different. We're really about a truly dynamic world and truly dynamic events that can happen anywhere. And less about static content raids and the end game being raiding. If the end game is raiding in this, we failed. This is a dynamic wargame, right? The whole point is that, you need to unlock this world. You need to terraform it, you need to colonize it, you need to push the borders of the frontier past its limits, and then you're at war with a competing force that's trying to do you in at the same time and undo all the work you have done. That's the push-pull dynamic. And the events and the things we do are going to be based on that.
Instead of raids, it's really going to be focused on Kaiju hunting, right? So at some point we're going to be able to go through these rifts that are appearing in the world and go and hunt on their world for specific monsters and Kaiju types to help you get the things you need to research and unlock your tech tree.
So it's a different approach. And I think there needs to be more experimentation in MMOs with different approaches so that it's not all the same thing. It's not all static content. You know, do this raid a million times. It's something I'm really bored of in MMOs. That's not why I play. I want every zone to be usable, I want every zone to be something you come back to, I want dynamic events to scale to your ability and to the progression of your mech through the tech tree.
And I want there to be 2 types of dynamic events. One, is like if stuff happens around you. And unlike some other MMOs dynamic events are not fixed to location, right? And there's going to be a sort of like Dungeon Master overseer system that's looking to entertain you, looking to make stuff happen as you travel through the world. And you never know what's going to happen. The other kind is what we call, things on demand. Things that you want to do that are repeatable. Thumper encounter is a good one of that. You can thump anywhere that you scan for resources, and then it's like okay I want to go do a thumper encounter. That's a type of dynamic event that's on demand. Going into the Tsi-Hu world to hunt for a particular kaiju, also would be a sort of on-demand player thing. And those can range from "Oh it's just myself going in to hunt some minor category 1 or 2 Kaiju", all the way up to "No, I need 100 people because we're going to go in and we're going to try to take down a category 4 or 5 Kaiju."
I hope that answers your question. No, there won't be raids. There will be something else. There will be a fully dynamic world. How 'bout that? That's what we're going for. Something a little different.
► Question: Is this content scaled so a low level player can play with a high level player in the same area where they can both do an event?
Grummz: Yes, we’re looking at how Legion did it in invasions. I did love the way that they made low level players feel viable. Something of that type of scaling is what were interested in.
► Question: what will the environment biomes be like, and will there be rewards for exploration?
Grummz: Everything starts off as snowy and volcanic. As you add resources collectively, you get to terraform these zones, and they will stage up to different stages of terraforming its not a gradual process but its going to be like “this zone will reach a new terraforming phase, so do not enter this zone.” As for the rewards, if a player looks like they are exploring the zone the AI should be aware of that and spawn some interesting things for you to discover.
► Question: How long would it take for the dungeon master to pick up on what a character is doing?
Grummz: I think it depends on there's certain hints you could give the AI so for example this is a crafting game, you need certain resources to craft certain things, you could put it on your wish list and say what you wanna unlock, now the AI is aware you have certain goals for yourself, and its going to suddenly influence the RNG and the types of influenced engaged to fulfill what your trying to accomplish. So this way you have certain influence over the system.
► Question: Wouldn't you worry that players that played on one zone, and did all of the terraforming in that zone, will not bother to play on that zone anymore, reducing the relevant player space? Similarly to how procedurally generated content can get stale even though it is theoretically infinite, since there is only so much relevant variety they can be generated with the same system.
Grummz: That's the beauty of a dynamic system. We can have world events spawn anywhere and we can rotate them through the zones and always make them relevant. Some zones will be under invasion, and some zones will not be under invasion and be conducive to thumping for resources. If a zone is under invasion, we're probably going to lock out mining. Those who are mining in other zones can convoy resources in.
==== FUN STUFF ====
►The Gizzard Gun
Ronyn: “KAIJU GIZZARD GUN!”
Grummz: “WE HAVE MADE A GIANT TURKEY BASTER!”
[Ronyn chuckling]
Grummz: “ITS A COMBO ABILITY YOU BASE THE KAIJU IT TAKES MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY FRAMES TO BASE THE KAIJU, AND THEN SOMEONE WITH A FLAMETHROWER SETS IT ON FIRE.”
Ronyn: “Good eatin’.”
Grummz: “Good eatin’, deep fried kaiju.”
---------------------------------------------------------
TWITCH VOD LINK!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1029276864
