1) There are many questions about the head start - what exactly can be done and what can’t?
Bobik: You can’t claim anything (put down guild or personal claim), but aside from that you can do everything you can now - dig, gather resources, terraform, build, just keep in mind that the decay is active so buildings will get damage as they won’t be on claims.
2) Is it possible to transfer tickets between players (gold pack gifting 1 of his tickets to someone with only 1 from YO) and if yes then when can that be done?
Bobik: You will get the tickets in your premium shop inventory. From there you can redeem it/them and the ticket/tickets will appear in your ingame inventory as item. You can trade it to others on the newbie island. So you can spawn 2 tickets, give one to a friend while you are on the newbie island and you can both sail to the mainland with 1 character each. And of course the power hour boosters - it was decided to be x2 only.
3) Is the MMO starting during the spring?
Bobik: Life is Feudal, nothing is promised
4) What exactly will be awaiting us in the game shop? We are curious and want to know before we see it in game when OBT starts. Also are there going to be different boosters or only x2 as in the last interview you said between 2x and 4x.
Bobik: Mostly it’s weapons and armor skins. Also clothing like alternative Blacksmith's outfit. Then some service like increased trade post storage, increased personal claim size.
5) Considering the long running poll in the forum - how much will the extra characters cost at the end?
Bobik: 10$
6) Will you disable the console and will you add files verification for OBT start or only during the OBT?
Bobik: Yes we have such plans along with some files encryption. Maybe not initially, console is useful not only for “cheating”. File verification is more complicated, maybe at the beginning of next year.
7) How exactly will name reservation work. Also can we reserve only 1 name of multiple?.
Bobik: You can create up to 10 characters on the newbie island which will reserve them as names. Then you can transfer them if you have all those tickets to the mainland which will reserve them there as well.
8 ) Is the power hour booster limited per account or character? Can I use it on both my characters or only on 1 of them?
Bobik: Once per account, so you can use it for 1 character only that day.
9) You know the community’s concerns about personal claims - do you think the changes with the influential area that you mentioned earlier will be ready for OBT launch? There are guilds that already plan to spam personal claims all over - some for securing resources, others for griefing and 3rd just as protest to demonstrate how abusive the current system can be.
Bobik: Beginning of OBT / Soon™. It’s good to have it, but not sure it will really matter that much the first days. If we see that players are really abusing them we will make that higher priority and finish the system faster. About size - the “free” claim that you can support with only ingame currency is 100 tiles which goes up to 150 tiles if you have premium active. Other then that if you support it with premium currency instead of in game coins you can have it up to 250 tiles in size. You can get the 250 without premium too, you will just have to pay higher price for supporting it.
10) We heard that the instanced sieges will be implemented for OBT launch. Is it true?
Bobik: We plan to have them ready for the release date. There won’t be big sieges initially, so there will be extra time to polish it. Possibly invite the community to test them on the internal testworld.
11) What kind of visuals are we going to have for OBT start - just weapons and armors or other stuff too? Like better tabards, horse tabards, lance flags etc.
Bobik: So far only armors, outfits and weapons.
12) Can you share some more details about the resources shuffle that awaits us? The change between CBT 0 and CBT 1 was pretty large - can we expect the same for OBT? If so can you share some details about what you want to change in the current world?
Bobik: Not a lot of modifications - more like tweaks and fixes. Minor differences, clay deposits will most likely stay where they are right now, but underground resources will shuffle. EU and NA will have different resource locations too, so if you find 100 quality iron ore on EU it won’t be on the same spot on the NA server.
13) Atm we have a ingame economy system that serves no purpose, there’s no real money sink, so no reason for people to want to make money. What is the plan for a “money sink”? Are we talking purely the cost of monument maintenance for guilds or is there gonna be something that the single individual can need money for?
Bobik: For now only all the support functions (guild and personal monuments). Also for trading with other players. The stockpiling of coins is kind of sink as well as it’s not used.
14) How hard is it gonna be to support a guild claim? I know a lot of the larger guilds are planning several claims at a time for farming, mining, city, fortress, etc. Will it be doable to support all of that as a single guild?
Bobik: All depends on the guild and their resources. For large guild no doubt that they will be able to support 3-5 or even more claims.
15) How is the trading post meant to work? Atm the permission to use them are not separate to the claim permissions, so only people with permissions on your claim can use them, which means you can basically only trade with your trusted allies. Any plans to make the trading post permissions separate from the rest of the claim?
Bobik: Now they need permission only to enter the claim, not to access anything else like storage or gates. For later we are close to finishing the per object rules, so you will be able to set permissions per individual buildings in the claim.
16) How far away are the guild coins in your opinion?
Bobik: Not a priority feature, hopefully in the first half of next year.
17) Will we have the blueprint system for weapons in to boost trade and rarity? If yes how do you think that can be implemented after the OBT starts when guilds stockpile “cheap” weapons?
Bobik: For now there will be blueprint system for shields that will have better stats, but require regional materials), but we don’t plan blueprints for weapons. They will need better stats, so we will need to rework the entire balance around that.
18) When will we see more regional specific items? They seem to be what is traded most so more than just iron, leather and flax would be nice.
Bobik: Rope, wood - pretty much all the basic resources that you can gather will be eventually regional (not all of them on OBT launch, we will expand the system as we go).
19) Can you share more details on the final design of the capital - what can we do there? Rent space, traders posts, workshops? Can we build our own stuff near the capital?
Bobik: The renting mechanics are not ready yet, so for now the capital will be mostly for decorative purposes. Traders posts will work. Also some area around the capital is safe zone with PvP disabled, so you can put personal claim there, but it will have higher maintenance cost.
20) Nothing was mentioned about the NPCs so far so we take that as they are delayed. When can we expect them?
Bobik: The first major update of OBT will be about them, hopefully this year. It all depends how well the OBT start goes - if it’s stable we can focus on the new stuff instead of stabilizing the OBT build.
21) How is it looking with the JH, do we have final decision about how often and long it will be? Also when will it start, having JH enabled the first 2-3 weeks doesn’t look like good idea.
Bobik: Probably won’t enable it the first week, but after that probably 1 to 2 hours of primetime and 3-4 hours during Friday and weekends. JHes are only for guilds in war to raid their realm claims.
22) Do you have ETA on siege ladders, rams etc? Can we expect that content in 2017 or it’s too optimistic?
Bobik: Definitely not this year. Hopefully first half of next year - that will be more realistic. That’s planned for the 2nd major OBT expansion (first one NPCs as already mentioned).
23) What is the status of ingame voice system? Will you surprise us on OBT launch or it’s too early for it?
Bobik: Hard to tell, it’s quite complicated when we talk about MMO scale. So shouldn’t be expected during OBT, that will be something for the release in 1 year or so.
24) How do you plan to deal with the exploits that will come considering the no more wips thing? What will happen if some guild finds another duping bug and benefits a lot from it? Are you going to check logs and ban offenders, will you take away stuff from guilds etc?
Bobik: First of all is detections, we already have quite complex logging system right now that records lots of the activity. We will take actions and not let it affect the economy, how exactly it depends on case by case basis.
25) Any plans to make copper actually useful in crafting? That issue was not addressed during CBT at all so even tho there are tons of copper everywhere we use it only for few buildings, few cooking pots and that’s it.
Bobik: Copper was not really used much in the medieval, most focus on weapons and armors and yeah, copper might have been suitable for that in the Bronze age, but not in the medieval. Iron will always be prefered.
26) During the entire CBT the design of vostakus steel was not addressed despite feedbacks. How is it supposed to be viable outside of 100q tools which you don’t need many of per guild?
Bobik: We will see how late game goes. Early on it’s not worth it yes, but 10% advantage really late game might be good advantage - it should be precious.
27) Are you going to finally fix the 4 tiles paving for OBT launch? The new roads that were implemented with marble and slate drop only 2 tiles while the old ones still allow 4 tiles difference leading to the crazy terraforming possibilities.
Bobik: It’s already changed, but you will see it next patch - paving will have drop like normal soil.
28) Will there be fog of war on the minimap or monuments will be visible?
Bobik: We are filtering out tier 1 monuments, the rest will be visible.
29) Given the population size will first names still have to be unique or will it be only restricted to first name AND last name? For example, can we have a "Bob Miller" and a "Bob Parker" or can there be only one Bob? “Bob123”, because “Bob” is already taken is not very RP.
Bobik: We will keep it the way it is now, only first name will be unique.
30) How do you plan to keep the world alive now after we cross the no-more-wipes line? Will you publish some sort of a roadmap? Because grinding and building will last for few months at best. Then the lack of content will start getting boring and that's the way YO servers die. So ships, new continent, new resources to hunt for?
Bobik: We will be organising some events maybe, but the first months will be devoted to stabilizing the OBT. other the the coins there will also be the global cardinal and pope system for another layer of politics.
31) Can we change last name after we switch guild. Ingame shop feature?
Bobik: Yes it’s planned as one of the ingame shop customisation features.
32) Do you have more info on the new horse training system, is it a minigame?
Bobik: Not sure what was already exposed, but the idea is to ride a horse without bumping anywhere or receiving damage to actually train it - no more progress bar. You will have to travel certain distance
33) Is OBT EA going to be available on Steam?
Bobik: Yes, same date - 17th November. But keep in mind that when you play the MMO through our launcher it’s all fine. If you launch it through Steam then part of the revenue goes there. So it’s obvious what’s the prefered way for us as the only difference is how you launch the game and even Steam will redirect you to our own launcher.
34) Do you feel the blueprint and regional drop chances are sufficient?
Bobik: Yes, for now they all look fine to me. We will see how it goes in OBT, we might tweak them again after we get better data sample.
35) Will you limit the amount of max active wars that you can have?
Bobik: Not initially, but later on we will implement guild alignment system which will change that. We will share more details when we iron out the concept.
36) Any new building planned - like a church that functions like a schoolhouse for piety? Or any other buildings that may have to adjust our build plans ?
Bobik: It’s still open topic about the Bell towers, also decorative buildings and objectives are planned, but everything is next year.
