June 29, 2007

Producer Jason Faller talks about the persistent-world RTS, Saga
By Michael Lafferty

“I’d say we’re number one in our little genre for now, and we’re going to fight to keep it that way”

The genre that bears the title of MMORTS (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy) has seen a few attempts in the past couple of years. Attempts that were as persistent in clawing for a handhold in the video-game industry as the worlds upon which they were founded. Few, though, have managed to really grab hold of the gaming community’s attention in the way that the RTS genre has.

Saga is out to change that. Developed by Wahoo Studios, and currently in beta, Saga melds the look and feel of classic RTS gaming with the persistency and time-consumption of MMOs. You won’t win the world in a day, but you won’t be wiped out either.

The official press release for the title lists off some of the features of the game:

“Saga brings persistency to RTS gaming. You build cities and armies to defend and manage a persistent online kingdom in a persistent fantasy world. When you’re offline, your kingdom continues to function; your guild wars progress as your friends and teammates play, your resources continue collecting, your kingdom continues to defend against enemy assassins and espionage missions…

“Saga’s features include military questing, an auction house for trading troops and spells, guild wars, espionage, and more. Kingdoms and armies gain permanent experience that carries forward perpetually for a more realistic and more exciting RTS experience.

“Additionally, Saga brings the excitement of collectible gaming to the online environment. Rather than pay subscription fees, in Saga you pay as little or as much as you decide. Just as in collectible card or miniatures games, players can buy ‘booster packs’ of random troops and spells, which are traded and customized to create the strategic army of choice for each player.”

Intrigued, GameZone wanted to know more, so we managed to secure an interview with producer Jason Faller, who was ready to chat about the title.

The scope of this game seems pretty broad, and considering that it takes place in a persistent online world, will players have trouble maintaining their societies when offline for any length of time?

Jason: We did a lot of thinking on how best to handle the online/offline issue. For the most part, you don’t lose all that much if you leave your empire management in a sorry state while you’re offline. But on the other hand, you’re certainly not making nearly as much as you could be. It’s more a case of the diligent empire micro-managers being well rewarded, than penalizing those who leave their kingdoms in states of disarray. However, if you have recently riled up a lot of enemies, or if your guild is in the middle of a bitter war, there can be quite a number of raids/espionage actions taken against you while away, up to a certain limit. In those situations, being online more often is probably wisest. Players often leave their accounts for a week or more, and typically are quite happy when they return; although things may have ground to a halt due to governmental neglect, they’ve often amassed a tidy sum in taxes and resources which are ready to be spent in the market!

You have a wide variety of elements available as potential play styles within the game, including resource gathering, crafting and espionage. Is it possible for a player to be a neutral country or is fighting an essential part of this game?

Jason: Excellent question. We have one school of players that claims that Saga is all about the PvP, and if you’re not in a guild war you’re not living the good life. Certainly, PvP and guild warring have their great rewards. But about half of our players primarily spend their time collecting and customizing their armies, building up their lands and cities, adventuring on quests to get better weapons and armor; and seem to rarely - if ever - participate in the wars and PvP rankings. A decent number of players actually spend most of their time in the market, trading with others to get their dream army. One of the advantages of the collectible troops and spells is that players have a lot of pride in their assets, just like any, say, baseball card collector. Some players collect to compete, others collect just to collect. Saga, for some, is just showing off what you’ve managed to amass for your empire. But usually, at some point, even our gentlest commanders want to put their army and cities to the test; they quickly find that PvP really enhances the game experience, as it shows off and validates all the empire-development hard work they’ve put in.

Tell us about the factions in the game and how they affect game play.

Jason: The factions are Magic (Dark Elves), Machines (Dwarves), Nature (Elves), War (Orcs), and Light (Giants). Something I rarely get to talk about is the ‘conflict wheel’ that the five factions were designed to fit within. Each faction is diametrically opposed to two other factions. Machines hates Magic (they are naturally opposite, technology vs. mysticism), and Machines also hates Nature (machines vs. living things). Nature also despises War, for their tendency to destroy nature, and so on... Light faction are champions of order and justice, while Magic faction delve deep into the black arts, and the circle completes itself. Each faction has an ethos and a strategic quality that sets it apart, giving players a good spectrum of play styles to identify with. The system is designed to create a balanced tension between the factions, giving each faction two archenemies and two neutrals to war with or form alliances with. The result is a world where endless war is inevitable, which I guess is where the title SAGA fits in.

Does the game follow the play/HUD mechanics that are generally part of the RTS experience (with dragging cursors and such)?

Jason: Yes. At least as far as battle is concerned. With so many new factors that we haven’t seen before in RTS mainly due to the persistency aspect, we tried to keep as much of the old and familiar that we could, to keep the learning curve less steep. Drag select to select multiple units, ctrl # to assign hotkey to selected troops, left-click to select, right-click to attack, and so on. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke…

When you built the game, how did you decide on environments? Did you have a base set of system specs that you relied on so that the game could run smoothly on a wide range of machines?

Jason: Yes, we intentionally designed the game so that the more casual gamers and those who don’t annually buy/update their machines could play Saga. We are in an optimizing phase right now, and our specs will continue to improve. We expect to appeal to an international audience of a variety of demographics.

The game is basically an online experience. Are there any ‘offline’ elements?

Jason: Not really; no part of Saga is played offline. Perhaps a related issue is that we have a Web site that allows for limited game-play while away from the computer you installed on, so that you can check your status and in-game emails, manage your armies, check your player/guild rankings, etc. while at work (hmmm. Note to Saga players: That’s probably not a good idea…) or at a friend’s house… We intend to continually expand this web supplement capability, which increases the persistent experience by increasing accessibility.

There have been other RTS online games tried with marginal success. What makes Saga different?

Jason: (laughing) This question always gets me talking.

Every genre goes through its birth pains. MMORPGs didn’t start with WoW, or even Ultima Online (see Wikipedia’s history of MMORPG).

First reason why MMORTS hasn’t broken out yet: until Saga, MMORTS titles have typically implemented a cyclical structure; the game cycle from start to finish is a few weeks or months long. Most gamers aren’t looking for a 24-hour, mad-dash-to-the-finish for weeks on end. It only works in Utopia (a text-based online strategy game) because it’s less frenetic, battles aren’t real-time. All MMOs need to have the option of casual play at times, with bursts of intensity. You need to have a variety of game-play options to fit a player’s current mood or circumstance. When you have lots of free time or if you’re a hard hardcore player, you can PvP to your heart’s content in Saga. When you don’t have time to play, you can just collect resources, log on every once in a while to see how your guild is doing, check on your auctions in the market and have the occasional four-player ‘scrimmage’ battle (which doesn’t actually damage your buildings or troops). Races to the finish just frustrate players who can’t be online 24-7. You inevitably miss a few days and cancel your subscription because you can’t win, can’t compete with the hardcore. Saga is fully persistent: your nations last forever, like your MMO characters. You can be passive or aggressive, sociable or hostile. No big hurry, unless you want to. You can level up at your own rate, and battle others at your level; eventually the tortoise catches up to the hare, and they can still have a fair fight (which raises an interesting question: Tortoise vs. Hare - to the death - who wins?). Find a guild that matches your style.

Another thing: most of the MMORTS titles have had one or more of the following: unattractive art design, low budgets, lack of depth, bad marketing campaigns, terrible lag, bug-ridden-ness, inaccessible settings, etc. No MMORTS has taken a real stab at taking the RTS to a full persistency with quality gameplay. It’s been 15 years (Dune 2 - 1992) since the RTS really changed at all! It needs something fresh. Something more exciting, more real. Until recently, RTS has actually traditionally held a much bigger share of the PC market than RPGs (approx. 26.9% vs. 10.0% in 2003, I believe). WoW and others like it have upset that statistic by adding MMO to RPG, which revamped the RPG to a new high. At some point RTS will go MMORTS, and when it does, the industry will re-adjust and RTS will dominate over RPG again, and it will be in the form of a persistent online MMORTS. I’m going to stick my neck out and make that prediction.

A third MMORTS pitfall: Weird worlds and inaccessible concepts aren’t any way to break open a new genre. Orcs and elves, dwarves and dragons have the largest following. A game that appreciates this has the best chance of becoming the flagship.

Last thing to end this rant: MMORTS is on its way. Someone’s going to get it right. Players don’t want to play for an hour or two and game over, sorry try again. Every RTS is adding little persistent elements. Troop veterancy and experience, heroes gaining levels and finding weapons and armor, home cities that grow and develop from scenario to scenario, offline developments that carry over to online PvP… Every major title knows what persistency can add to RTS. But nobody has the guts to go all the way yet. Saga has improved on the ideas that other MMORTS-ish titles have tried and failed. Is Saga the game to launch a thousand games? We’re pretty confident, even cocky sometimes (that’s probably not a big revelation at this point). I’d say we’re number one in our little genre for now, and we’re going to fight to keep it that way.

What do you consider the strongest game mechanics that this title introduces to the genre, or that you get right in terms of the recognized genre mechanics?

Jason: Before answering, I’d just like to point out that we are releasing Saga 1.0, so to speak. We have a scheduled list of feature adds and upgrades that will eventually compete with the big A-list RTS titles. That’s the beauty of online games. They’re never… quite… done…

I’d certainly say we’ve put the most effort into getting the persistency right, and there our strength lies. Balancing persistency with hardcore strategy gameplay is the real challenge of any MMORTS. We decided that Saga needed to have two modes of play: 1) Empire development and 2) Battle. Each has its own tactical/strategic system, and each has its own skill set to develop and utilize. Traditional RTS games combine the two in one system. Saga has significant crossover between the two, but you’re not collecting wood from lumber camps or food from farms during battle. Rather, your buildings take hours or days to build, and your resources collect slowly over time, whether you’re on or offline. This reflects a heightened realism that is expected in an MMO. However, your buildings and resources DO affect the battle side of things. Houses can spawn peasant militia during a battle, watchtowers can shoot, quarries can strengthen defensive structures, farms decrease your troops’ fatigue and morale to reflect your ability to withstand sieges better… So the cities and territories you build up and strategically design really have tactical value in combat, and yet you don’t have to make those decisions during the heat of battle. Gone is the crazed mad rush at the start of a battle to place-the-lumbercamp-just-exactly-in-the-right-proximity-to-the-forest-resource-so-that-your-peasants-maximize-production-immediately-because-that’s-what-really-decides-who-wins... Is that what strategy war gaming was meant to be?

Saga gets pretty intense. When the enemy has captured your outlying lumber camp and is pillaging away your precious resources while burning your camp down, you really sweat. You CARE about that lumber camp, it took time to build, and cost persistent money. That changes the way you play, how you do battle; it amplifies the importance of your strategy. The stakes are higher. You CARE about your troops dying, because it’s gonna cost a lot to resurrect them (at the end of a battle, you get a casualty report, those that merely fell in battle vs. those that actually DIED). When someone sends assassins or thieves at you while you’re offline, or someone sends covert arsonists to burn your buildings, it really COUNTS.

That’s the strongest game element that Saga adds to traditional RTS. Persistency. If we got that right, then the Age of MMORTS—the ‘saga’— has begun…

What graphics engine does this game use and what did it enable you to do to achieve the look you wanted for this title?

Jason: We use Wahoo Studios’ (the developer) own in-house engine (with many add-ons and changes), called Wraith. Our lead programmer Dallen Christensen (also lead programmer of Starcraft: Brood War) was very familiar with Wraith, as was the rest of the Wahoo team. This allowed us to get started fast and custom-build parts of the engine to suit a game that had a lot of new elements that other engines weren’t necessarily set up to do. At some point we may change out the engine if it gets ‘old’ or doesn’t seem right for Saga any more, but for now it’s great.

...

Those interested in playing this title can sign up for the beta at www.playsaga.com

Share | Digg This | Glink It

---