Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Updated Q&A - High-Level Content, Quests, and Community

Most massively multiplayer role-playing games set themselves in fantasy realms that wouldn't be too out of place in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. You get to create a fantasy character and adventure around in virtual worlds populated by orcs, elves, dwarves, trolls, and more, along with thousands of other players. That's not going to be the case with Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, the upcoming massively multiplayer RPG from Perpetual Entertainment and Sony Online Entertainment. Gods & Heroes is set in the rich mythology of Ancient Rome, as you'll create a Roman character (choosing from careers such as gladiator and rogue) and then battle creatures taken from myth. Perpetual is packing a lot of content into Rome Rising, and to get the details, we caught up again with design director Stieg Hedlund, who also designed the hit RPG Diablo II. Gods & Heroes is scheduled to launch this winter.

GameSpot: First, can we get an update on Gods & Heroes? Where is the game at? And what is the development team working on right now?

Stieg Hedlund: Right now, Gods & Heroes is in the preliminary stages of a beta test and the team is focused on getting the remaining content--classes, minions, and quests--ready for launch. So as you can imagine, it's basically controlled chaos around here.

GS: There are about 1,000 skills, as well as about 1,000 god powers in the game. Are you afraid of overwhelming the player with so many options? How do you present this to the player so it seems very logical?

SH: Well, if you logged in and were immediately confronted with a thousand skills and powers to sort through, then yes, we'd be concerned about overwhelming the player. As it stands, the large number of skills and god powers are spread out over six classes, and in addition, they're not just dumped in the player's lap without just cause. Presentation is actually our ally in this case thanks to the fact that the player is a scion of a particular god; thus, a player will find that his god is the guiding light over time, helping with the discovery of his newfound powers.

Overall, we're pretty comfortable at this point at how the player progresses through the game and the acquisition of new powers and new skills. As we continue through the beta stages, if we find that players are telling us that they're feeling overwhelmed, then we will adjust the progression accordingly.

GS: The game has a maximum level cap of 50, so how much playing time do you estimate it would take to reach the cap, assuming you play about one or two hours each night?

SH: It's hard to tell at this point. I mean, everyone hopes that they've created a game with the right amount of content to keep the insane powergamer at bay for at least a couple of months the first time around, weeks if you're really unlucky. Yet, at the same time we're careful to remember that there's no fun in the quagmire that tedious content can create for the casual gamer. I'd say right now the casual player can expect that the road to 50 should be on par with most massively multiplayer role-playing games, if not a little bit more challenging.

GS: OK, imagine that someone has played quite a bit and hit level 50. What sort of content is being designed for high-level characters? What's the incentive to keep on playing after you've hit 50? Will there be plenty of stuff to do, or do you create a new character and explore a different character class and skills?

SH: When you hit level 50, we automatically kill your character. Well, that might be a bit of a lie! In reality, we have quite a bit of content planned for the 50-plus players, but by the same token, we certainly want to encourage players to try out the various classes and skills.

As far as the post-50 content goes, players can expect to see themselves as key elements to the growth of the story and the game overall. We'll definitely have plenty of high-end content for all types of players, from casual to hardcore, and it's at this point that players will really begin to get a grasp of what we mean by an "epic" storyline.

GS: Give us an example of some of the level-50 skills and god powers that you can unlock in the game? What are some of your favorites, and why?

SH: We haven't really talked much about post-20 content at this point. We've been deliberately keeping a lot of our upper content under wraps and really pushing the up-to-20 content that players can expect when they log in.

I think the most we want to say about level-50 skills and god powers is that it's really what a player would expect from an epic-level hero. The whole point of Gods & Heroes is that the player is directly descended from the gods, and as such, rightly lays the divine judgment down on some equally epic situations. We've built the game on the premise that when players reach 50, they're pretty in tune with their chosen god, and vice versa, so that god trusts the player, and in turn gives him the most jaw-dropping and outright devastating powers. When it comes down to it, it's all about gods trying to outdo one another and the player ultimately benefiting from their vanity.

GS: We know that crafting won't be in the game at launch, but what can you tell us about the crafted items in the game? We imagine that there's going to be a fair amount of randomly generated magical items, but are there also going to be plenty of one-of-a-kind items that were specifically created by the development team?

SH: There really isn't much to talk about with regard to crafting at this point. We are acutely aware of how integrated crafting has become in the massively multiplayer role-playing genre, but we also understand that it is not the single system that makes or breaks Gods & Heroes, or any massively multiplayer RPG for that matter. If we did decide to ship a player-crafting system, we feel that it would have to genuinely enhance the game as a whole.

Right now, this means that we are focusing our "crafting" efforts more on the minion and not so much on the player. After all, the base player experience already revolves around the acquisition of epic items and other loot during his journey through the game. Since minions don't get any of that sweet loot, part of what we feel crafting can actually bring to the game is the creation of unique items and gear that other players may or may not be able to acquire for their personal army. I think there's a certain amount of personal pride that's associated to the discovery of new recipes that make your minions more powerful and unique looking. After all, there's no better feeling than having the rest of the world stare in envy as your army marches by in newly discovered gear.

1,500 Quests

GS: Do the non-player characters that you recruit in your party improve over time? In other words, if you hire a swordsman while you're at level one, and you level up, does the swordsman also level up, or do you go out and hire a higher-level swordsman? And just how customizable are your party members?

SH: Minions will definitely improve as the player progresses through the game. It is entirely feasible for a player to keep his original minion in his party throughout the course of the entire game. While you can certainly hire or quest for other, more experienced minions, a player will never be forced to dump the original guys he came across in earlier levels.

As for minion customization, it will be available and it will be a key aspect of maintaining minions. In fact, what I was talking about with the minion crafting is very relevant here in so much as it is the only way to upgrade your minions' equipment. After careful consideration, we began to realize that minions are incredibly fundamental to the player, and so it came down to the fact that you have to take care of these guys and it's not going to be "give minion X some bread and some water" and poof, he's happy. By the same token, we're really not aiming to re-create The Sims here. The goal is something in between: They're important to your progression through the game, and as such, you'll need to put some effort into making them worth keeping.

GS: There are more than 1,200 quests at launch, which is a very impressive number. Why did you feel you needed so many at the start? And how would you say that the quest system in Gods & Heroes differs from other massively multiplayer role-playing games?

SH: Twelve-hundred was an early estimate. Right now, we're projecting over 1,500 quests at launch, with many more on the way as the game progresses. The whole premise of Gods & Heroes is that players exist in a time steeped in mythology; this is a strong story-based culture they're becoming a part of. Because we're working in such a unique culture and bringing to life these things that people are already familiar with, it was critical for us to find a way to bring those stories to life in a way that recaptured those emotions many of us felt when we first began to explore these myths.

Gods & Heroes really sets a new bar with our quest system for what it does behind the scenes rather than what players actually interact with. It's a familiar system on the surface, and any seasoned player of modern massively multiplayer RPGs shouldn't be confused by it in the slightest. However, we've built an underlying structure through the quest system that affords us a lot of power to change the world, so to speak. I really don't want to go into much more beyond that as it's one of those things that players will experience as time goes on.

GS: It's been noted in an earlier Q&A that you'll probably want to play with other players to tackle some of the latter quests. What sorts of community tools are being built to facilitate this? Buddy lists?

SH: We're really big on the community aspect of Gods & Heroes, and it's something that we're working on expanding over time. Right now, we're looking at friends lists, in-game e-mail, standard chatting communication, and some other features that we hope to see at launch or immediately following launch. Something else we're working on is tribe-related tools. It's important that we give players the ability to communicate with their friends and their like-minded companions, so we've been working to put those tools in place for players to utilize.

GS: You can form companies, which sound like they're the Gods & Heroes equivalent to guilds or clans in other games. How large can these companies get, in terms of number of players, especially since each player can have a party of up to seven minions. And are there any special perks, like being able to have a custom cloak or banner?

SH: Again, this is another area that we haven't really revealed at this point, mainly because we're still working out the nuances of large groups with minions wading into the throes of war. However, players can expect to take part in massive battles with their fellow players and their minions. We're currently working on a system that allows certain players to assume leadership roles in large-scale companies, and we've certainly discussed the use of standards and banners in these situations, with possible moral bonuses that affect the company when these items are in play.

Right now, the biggest concern is focusing on the content itself. Something we've talked about before is that we're pushing the content to the limits of what systems--both server side and client side--can handle. It's putting the players in a situation where we're behind the scenes going, "If we load one more NPC in this zone, the servers are going to burst into flames." As for what that number is, we're still trying to find out. Suffice to say, it's a big number.

GS: Finally, people would like to know about any plans for the beta. Do you plan to have an open beta test, and if so, when?

SH: We do have plans for an open beta, however right now we are focused on the technical beta stage we are already in. Right now, it's about getting the world ready for an open beta and ensuring that when we open those flood gates, players can actually enjoy the world we've built. Right now, the best I can say is that we'll move to an open beta when everything is ready to go.

GS: Thank you.