We speak with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper about the future of Hellgate: London, and give him a chance to answer some of the most vocal criticisms against the game.
GamePro Reviews Hellgate: London
Hellgate: Disappointing?
Hellgate: Disappointing?
Hellgate: London does offer some simple-minded entertainment, but it falls well short of its lofty goals
GP: Why don't you start by showing us what's in store for Hellgate: London players in the form of extra content and subscriber-only features?
Bill Roper: Sure. Subscribers get different gameplay modes, perks like extra character slots and a bigger item stash. But right around Halloween we wanted to have things that subscribers could get right away. There are three things. First, we wanted to have a repeatable quest -- trick or treating. There are different kinds of candy you can get, and some of them have gameplay effects. We also have a unique piece of armor called "All Hallow's Visage," a helm that looks like a flaming skull. It's a pretty rare drop. There's also a Halloween-themed pet -- the "Zombot." There's a recipe you can find, and you track down the components and build it.
Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios
Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios
Around the December timeframe, we'll be adding a new town to the game, with new surrounding adventure areas. It's all-new environment artwork. The new town will be set in Stonehenge - outside of London. [Stonehenge] is in this protected mystic bubble, so it still stands despite the demon invasion. The adventuring areas all around it will be outdoors, set in the wilderness. There will be new quests, new story points, and some other things that we'll share later.
GP: I've lurked on the Beta forums quite a few times, and I see you have quite a passionate community...
Bill Roper: [laughs] We definitely have a passionate community. That's a great way to describe it - the "passionate response" we get in our forums. If people didn't care about the game, they wouldn't say those things. But sometimes it's hard for us to read some of [those comments].
GP: I can imagine. I've seen some really withering criticisms in those forums...
Bill Roper: I think there was some confusion about what the game was going to be initially, [particularly] free play versus subscribing. I think there's still a lot of that. It's honestly confusing to me about the way people react to the subscription option in Hellgate. It's been more of a challenge to us than we anticipated. The whole idea was to give everybody what they wanted. Because we're doing this hybrid model, it's almost like people try to figure out how we're screwing them... but we're not! For subscribers, it's actually less than other MMOs like Tabula Rasa or World of Warcraft [$9.99 versus $14.99]. We're not trying to hose you, we're just trying to give people what they want.
But yeah, it can be tough to go on the forums. You try to explain things and interact with the community, but there's a small percentage of people that will never be happy no matter what. You could pay them $5 a month to play your game, and they'll complain that they want $10.
GP: It's pretty common in the games industry.Bill Roper: And I wonder if it's unique to the games industry. I don't see people [complaining about and slamming] TVs and movies on message boards, but it's very much that way for games.
GP: One of the biggest complaints is about the variety of the levels: despite being in London, you fight in dungeons and basements and sewers an awful lot.
Bill Roper: We re-flowed the level layouts in the final version, with a focus on theming the Acts, so that should help. We probably have as many, if not more, level variations in Hellgate as we did in Diablo 2. The reason it feels different is because the game takes place in London or Hell. I think the Act changes in Diablo 2 were more striking - desert, forest, jungle - but if you look at the individual areas, it pretty much boiled down to forest, graveyard, underground caverns, and the Rogue's headquarters. That's pretty much Act 1 of Diablo 2.
But I don't wholly disagree [with the complaint about a lack of visual variety], and I think it came off that way because the levels weren't themed really well [in the earlier versions of Hellgate]. Theming Acts really helped things feel different. We didn't add any areas, but the game now feels far more thematic because we tweaked the layouts and graphic look for each Act. That's one of the big changes we made in the last month of development.
GP: Here's another popular complaint: In Hellgate, weapons are far more useful than skills -- my Marksman mostly used his gun, not his skills and abilities. Will you further tweak skills to make them more useful? Would you ever consider totally re-doing the current skills?
Bill Roper: We will never completely re-do skills, but we will always look at them. The final version has a seen many skill changes. What we wanted to do in Hellgate was to make the weapons into spell-delivery systems. Skills in Hellgate alter the way you use your primary weapon, such as the Marksman's grenades.
The other thing is, players have had a long time in Diablo 2 to figure out all the different character builds. Honestly, players haven't had much time to [experiment] in Hellgate with different skills and builds. In Diablo 2, a lot of the skills outright sucked. It's also very different in Hellgate, because skills grow with you as you level. In Hellgate, we didn't want people to regret putting points into early-level skills. Obviously we'll continue to tweak and balance the skills, but Hellgate uses a very different skill system from D2 and people will figure it out.
GP: You guys deleted some of the zanier humor from the characters for the final version. Was that in response to complaints from Beta players?
Bill RoperYes, that was definitely in response to people saying "this is too wacky and out of place" and "it doesn't feel as urgent, it feels too goofy." I've definitely pushed for the storyline to [go a certain way]. There's been Hell on Earth for 18 years...their perception is pretty twisted at this point. But there were some characters that were over-the-top. The way we handled it was to dial back the [crazier dialogue] from the NPCs so they are less likely to say them.
GP: Finally, what will Hellgate look like in six months or a year?
Bill RoperIt's going to continue to grow. For the first time, we have the opportunity to produce ongoing content and not say "let's wait a year for the expansion." It's been a lot of work...but in six months or a year, we'll have longer windows to produce [bigger] subscriber content. [For example], this December we'll be releasing a 300MB or so patch.
GP: Thanks, Bill.
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