Ironclad Games, developers of the critically acclaimed Sins of a Solar Empire, continue to change their Dota-style game Sins of a Dark Age. Originally it had one player operating as the player Commander, building bases like a traditional RTS while the other heroes ran around and battled the enemy team. Then Ironclad removed the base building, giving the player Commander more time to focus on the fight. And now they've changed Sins yet again and removed the player Commander altogether.
This news comes alongside the announcement that, in conjunction with Infinite Game Publishing, they're rolling out Founders Editions, which allow you to purchase immediate early access to the Sins beta, as well as acquire additional items depending on what level you purchase. To find out why Sins continues to change, how the studio plans to make their game standout in a space where League of Legends and Valve's Dota 2 dominate, and learn more about the Founders Package program, we conducted an email interview with Ironclad co-founder and producer, Blair Fraser.
IGN: OK, where’s Commander Mode and why would you change this?
Fraser: Sins of a Dark Age’s original premise was MOBA meets RTS where the RTS component was embodied by the Commander Mode. Commander Mode was sent to the graveyard because it simply wasn’t anywhere near as fun as some of the other ideas we were experimenting with (such as RPG elements). After a lot time and effort, we came to the conclusion that a MOBA-RTS combo has some insurmountable design problems. While it would take a number of pages to fully discuss the issues, I’ll quickly identify 3 major ones.
A preview of the previous build of Sins.
First, the Commander Mode was built up out of the typical RTS model of acquiring resources (e.g. mining gold) and investing them into assets (e.g. buildings and units). These assets can be destroyed eliminating the player’s investment and power progression. The Hero or MOBA component was built on the RPG model where investment into power is not typically lost (aside from consumables). Meshing these two concepts together leads to all sorts of problems. Attempts to convert either mode to the other form were equally bad.
Next, in an RTS the concept of specializing in a build path is important. A whole host of strategic elements derive or are supported from this (e.g scouting, tech builds, rushing, gambits, etc). Because the MOBA component introduces a wide variety of hero types and diversity through itemization the Commander’s ability to specialize in a build path is rendered useless. There are simply too many potential counters and he is forced into a mediocre mix of everything or in the more likely case, forced into a desire to just play a powerful hero instead. Is essence, the RTS counter diagram and army composition macro game is destroyed.
Finally, Commanders have a more granular composition of their power compared to the single unit unification of power in a hero. Due to this, Commanders are more willing to sacrifice or distribute their forces to attain map objectives as the risk is distributed. For heroes it’s an all or nothing game. This disparity can lead to various imbalances (e.g. tower pushing) and bad emergent gameplay (e.g. whack-a-mole). Overall, the decision to remove Commander Mode wasn’t taken lightly but the lessons learned have resulted in a much better game.
IGN: So you've added "Realm Quests" since we last saw Sins, what exactly are they?
Fraser: Realm Quests are part of our expansion on the RPG elements of a MOBA. Essentially, they are optional dynamic objectives that temporarily change the rules of the game and that yield a reward if accomplished. Over the course of a match, the state of the game is constantly analyzed by the Quest Director who may decide to spawn a quest. His most important objective is to make sure the quest is fair to both teams – we want skill to dictate victory not luck.
A Realm Quest in action.
As an example, the Quest Director may decide to spawn the Troll on the Bridge Quest which creates a giant troll on a bridge, temporarily shuts down further minion spawning in that lane and notifies players of the objectives and rewards. Killing the troll will grant a small gold and experience reward however he also drops a treasure chest which can be picked up and hauled back to base for a larger reward. The gotcha is that carrying the treasure slows you down a lot and prevents various forms of instant long-distance travel. In essence it’s a boss fight with a capture the flag component. Of course, this is just one example as we have a wide variety of Realm Quests and plans to introduce more on a regular schedule (for free).
Over the course of a typical game players can expect to be presented with three to four Realm Quests. However in some of our games, we’ve had such epic battles over single quests that we only received one or two over the entire duration of the game. These are the kinds of great gaming moments that we will never forget and confirm that Realm Quests are a great new addition to Sins of a Dark Age.
IGN: What sort of RPG elements do they add?
Fraser: Heroes accomplishing quest objectives such as kill, carry, collect, defend, race, CTF, push, area control and more to earn various rewards like gold, experience, buffs and other forms of progress is very much an RPG concept. The trick is we couldn’t just place classic RPG or MMO quest mechanics in directly. They are all custom designed to fit within the MOBA framework and some of our cases don’t have any obvious analogue but we’ll save the details of those surprises for another time. We are also looking how Realm Quests can tie in to the out-of-game experience (i.e. the external meta-game), which would move them into the persistent RPG design space as well.
The hero Slivus enters the fray.
IGN: How do Realm Quests make Sins stand out from the rest of the MOBA scene?
Fraser: Realm Quests were designed with several goals in mind including: adding more team conflict and team cooperation, avoiding repetitive gameplay (particularly early game), providing unique experiences, introducing more psychological gameplay and strategic opportunities, making the world feel more alive and creating more epic, memorable moments. Given this goal set, you can see that we view there are some opportunities that will to continue to evolve the MOBA scene and set ourselves apart. Realm Quests are one part of this process.
One common question has been if Realm Quests may separate us from MOBA’s in a bad way, specifically, will they reduce the skill and competitive nature of the game? We don’t feel this is the case for a number of reasons. First, the Quest Director’s primary objective is to spawn fair quests – we don’t want one team getting a random advantage over the other. Second, rewards are typically temporary (except for a few gold/exp rewards). Third, quests are on a rotation that reflects a small subset of the total quest pool. This allows players to have an expectation of what they will have to contend with and plan accordingly. Fourth, we believe there is skill involved in a team being able to adapt to changing circumstances (as long as the total possibility space is reasonable – see the previous point). Fifth, there is skill involved in psychological gameplay which we feel is increased with Realm Quests – poker, yomi and others are great examples in this area. Finally, games with an element of chance can still be very competitive given a variety of criteria which we feel Sins of a Dark Age meets.
IGN: Are all of Sins creeps now AI controlled, similar to other games?
Fraser: Yes and no. Yes, there are waves of minions and creeps in the jungle that are AI controlled and behave in the expected manner but not in several other instances. First, Realm Quests can temporarily change the rules of the game in many different ways. One of the ways is by introducing new wave types that behave differently or boss creeps that follow completely different rules than regular creeps. Realm Quests may also allow players to control small groups units to form their own posse or retinue to control like pets with direct orders and specific AI stances (e.g. defensive, neutral and offensive). In general, Sins of a Dark Age will be a mix of typical AI controlled creeps and new forms. IGN: Are the maps more typical now, with pre-made towers defending the bases?
Fraser: What we call our “Classic” map is certainly more MOBA-typical (including pre-made towers) but that isn’t to say we haven’t put our own interesting twists on it or that we don’t have other maps under consideration. Even with the Classic map, one of the more important points is that while the geometry and layout are familiar, a given Realm Quest can change up the rules, incentives, population, dynamics and importance of various areas of the map. A few simple examples include a quest that changes the properties of a pre-made tower, adds special creeps at unique place in the jungle, and modifies lanes in some fashion or changes the properties of some fixed element of the geography.
IGN: Since you’re offering these early Founder Editions, when will they grant access to the game?
Fraser: Through the various Founder Edition options we are granting immediate access to the Closed Beta and players will receive a variety of content (some of which is exclusive and is only available for a limited time – details of the packages and content are available on the game's site).
With Sins of a Solar Empire, we also allowed anyone who pre-ordered the game immediate access to the beta and that process helped us a lot because players who were willing to pre-order tended to be players that were very interested in helping us perfect the game by providing us with meaningful criticism and feedback (I expect we’ll get great feedback in open beta as well but the signal to noise ratio is much more difficult to parse). Sins of a Solar Empire would not have been the success it was without our pre-ordering Founders and we want to recreate that with Sins of a Dark Age.
Slay the dragon for fat loots.
IGN: Do you have any more insight into your pricing model outside of the Founder Editions?
Fraser: I don’t think we are doing anything unusual with regard to our pricing model. Our primary goals here are to be competitive and to make sure we aren’t selling power. We are primarily selling visual elements and convenience and anything that affects gameplay can be acquired without spending anything. Players who don’t spend any money will be able to compete fairly against players who have invested substantially.
Does Sins of a Dark Age interest you? If you're willing to wait it's slated to launch later this year. For now we're left wondering what else will change before it comes out.
Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on @Chufmoney on Twitter and on at Ant-IGN on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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