Summary by Doc (Trustee)
There was a lot of important topics going on in this one, and some very thorough answers (and i’m le tired). Therefore, while a lot of this is still in my own words I also copied quite a bit verbatim so as not to influence the answers with my own ideas. Sorry it’s quite a big longer than normal.
###Attendees
- DashAhead
- TiffyTiff
- Zbornox
- Willem
- Mike Sellers
- The Blue Angels, briefly
Mike’s the new General Manager (the other kind of GM). The boss man.
###Community News
Speed Run Challenge Event had lots of winners with very impressive times. But there were not as many entries as we had hoped. If anyone has suggestions to help increase participation please share them with us.
Oryxtoberfest, through October 11th
Beer God & Beer Slurp
Take a video with yourself or with your guild hanging out with the Beer God and Beer Slurp in the biergarten. Top 3 most creative guilds win six packs of prizes. Find us in-game or send us a tweet and we’ll join you.
Forum updates:
Rules are forthcoming. Some will be about unwelcome behavior.
Regarding Linkshot: won’t go into more details than we’ve already shared but his suspension is temporary. His account will be unbanned soon enough.
Willem: we’ve heard for a very long time that people don’t know what the rules are. What game mods/tools are allowed, what kind of trading is allowed, etc. We’ve been aware of these things but we’ve historically taken a hands-off approach to it. “Now that Realm’s growing as a game it’s time for us to take an official stance on some of these things.”
Mike: “The reason for this is not so that we can be “official”, because it’s not just about just being official. Really this is about everyone having a good a time as possible. So we want to make sure everyone feels welcome on the forum, everyone can have a good time, no one feels harassed or belittled or anything like that. And in the game as well, we want everyone having as good a time as possible, and not be dealing with scammers or things like that. So we’re really just trying to clean things up so that we have the best game we can and everyone can have the best time they can.”
###Game News
New build: New Ninja class, available on Kongregate for 60 days then publically available to everyone after that. It also has the Katana weapon and shurikin abilities, Beer God and Beer Slurp.
The gifting vault is a place for us to give you items when we need to.
We’re working on a bunch of Halloween stuff. It’s Willem’s personal favorite holiday so he’s going all out. Someone must make an Oryx costume!
We’re doing this deal with Kongregate because they wanted to do a special promotion where they’re going to have RotMG cards in GameStop stores and to do this they wanted some degree of exclusivity for a period of time. It is very important to us that this content is available to everyone so it will be completely open to everyone after a wait. And it is available today because RotMG is free to play on Kongregate and you can link your account to use the ninja class right now. We hope no one feels left out on this one.
Mike: we have a lot of stuff coming out for October, but we can’t discuss much but it’s coming along.
###Mike Sellers’ Q&A
Q. What is your job title and what do you do?
A. My title is General Manager. I have “product oversight” over RotMG and two other unreleased games. I’m really excited about being on RotMG, excited about the community and getting to know people in the community. My background is game design. I’ve run game companies in the past where there’s a lot of game design but also product design. Like what’s the long term roadmap, how do we take great ideas and grow those into the game. How do we take the game from where it is now to where it will be in the future.
Q. When do you start working on realm?
A. A week, I think? It’s been a wild week.
Q. What were you working on before realm?
A. I’ve worked on several internal products: Kings of Camelot, and those other things that haven’t been released yet. Most of my career has on “the next thing”. It’s refreshing to be working on Realm because it’s already here. Before Kabam, way back in the 80’s, I wrote a text RPG, then worked in software and eventually games, creating Meridian 59 with my brother. I’ve worked on some social games, was the lead designer on Sims 2, lots of other stuff. I teach AI and game design part time for a Swedish university.
Q. What’s your favorite class?
A. Today’s the ninja. I’m not as good a player as I want to be, but I’m practicing and going through the whole NPE. I noticed there wasn’t a Ranger class, which is always my favorite class in any RPG.
Q. What’s your non-professional game history?
A. RPGs first of all, builder games, and the occasional shooter. I’ve been playing lots of retro games on tablets, like Syd Myers Pirates on the iPad. Zeus on GOG.
Q. Do you have any tattoos.
A. No. I have no permanent tattoos. I’ve had some temps that I’m glad they wore off.
Zbornox has a star on her wrist. Tiffy has guitar with musical notes on her right shoulder blade. Dash and Willem are without.
###Realm Q&A
Thanks everyone for keeping the question thread civil!
BlackJam: Mike, were you required to play realm to get a sense of the game or do you do that on your own volition to make more informed decisions.
Mike: I wasn’t required to but of course I play. I enjoy games like realm anyway. I played a long time ago because I was introduced to it by my friends at SpryFox (!) but hadn’t had a chance to get back to it. In terms of decisions, that comes from experience and having a great team.
BlackJam: permadeath is arguably the defining design foundation of the game is now largely avoidable due to the price of amulets. What are your thoughts on permadeath and is it something that will be addressed?
Mike: there’s no question permadeath has been diluted. It is a key, unique part of the game that makes is stand out from other games. Permadeath needs to be more important to the game than it is today. We’re tracking the price of goods in game very closely and am taking that into consideration.
BlackJam: how much of your decision making is based on veteran player feedback?
Mike: some of it for sure. Veterans are in many ways the ones who hold the heart and soul of the game. But at the same time they don’t speak for the entire game. There are thousands of new players coming in daily so we can’t lose sight of them as well. We have to think about all players at all skill levels. New content has to be for new players, but also definitely for older players. I’ve been reading the forums and I hope to start becoming more active there.
BlackJam: what’s your vision for the future?
Mike: there’s lots I want to say but I can’t. Realm has an awesome gameplay and community and we only want to make these things better. We want to improve the social aspects of the game, we want to make it more welcome to new players, but we also want to preserve the special traits of the game, like the artwork and permadeath. I’m very happy to see all the awesome player made artwork and that’s the kind of thing we want to encourage going forward.
BlackJam: slappy hands, you game?
Mike: thanks to my brother I am unbeatable.
Frogboffin: Mike, how far have you progressed in playing?
Mike: not far enough.
Frogboffin: would having a controlled group of testers be a good idea?
Mike: That’s something we talk about a lot. There’s some things that benefit from big open test groups, sometimes controlled groups, and other times just doing it internally. It depends on the feature.
Frogboffin: how many pushups can you do?
Mike: I can do 100 on a regular basis but I’ve never maxed out. (doozer, Mike will take on your challenge)
Kopokid: infamous CEO quote, is this Kabam’s strategy for RotMG?
Mike: the context of the quote was him talking about another company and the benefit of having high quality users vs people who come and go. Our goal isn’t to squeeze everyone for money, but rather to make compelling games that make people want to spend their money on. We don’t approach designing the game asking ourselves how to make money, we first want to make something fun and the money will follow from that.
Marcos: ones source of tension I see is Kabam doesn’t seem to understand just what it has in Realm. What do you think makes realm special from other games by Kabam.
Mike: all the communities around our games are different, and I think Realm may be the most energetic. I wouldn’t say we don’t get it but Realm is a very fast paced community and game and it great to help keeping it going.
OSX: what is the realm team working on right now? It doesn’t seem like much but I suspect there’s more behind the scenes.
Mike: there’s a huge amount going on. We just finished the new build, we have that Halloween content coming up.
OSX: what do you think about RWT depriving some people of a way to spend money on the game?
Mike: this is a difficult area. We of course want people to play the game but we also don’t want people to have advantages over each other. I’m not against RWT on principal, I’m against it when it happens in an unregulated way where you can get scammed. (Tiffy: we get many support requests every day. Dash: it’s difficult to hear from parents and grandparents writing in about scams when there’s nothing we can do about it.) I think a lot of people aren’t aware of the scale of the fraud that happens.
OSX: thoughts the alternative forums being make in response to the recent actions against muledump/QS/RWT?
Mike: we’d like people to stay on the official forums. If someone wants to create another forum that’s terrific, we’re not going to try to control them, but we think the best forums will remain the official one. If someone wants to go elsewhere for things like this it’s their choice.
Maynard: are signatures coming back? What will be the new limits?
Dash & Tiff: sigs will be coming back early next week after things have a little while longer to cool off. We’ll be trying to put size restrictions on it then.
Zbornox: to protest the length it’s not a good idea to spam the forum with huge signatures. We know, we understand, but it’s really not helping at all.
Maynard: why do I see a GM spamming baby pets while doing nothing about spam bots?
Zbornox: I was the baby spammer. GMs cannot get rid bots. We’ve tried with the tools we have and it just had no impact.
Mike: this is a known issue. It’s frustrating but yes we know about it, no there isn’t a solution today, and yes there will be a solution.
Dash: we’ve been banning more than people think, it’s just not many people realize because we’re invisible while we’re watching everyone.
Zbornox: I’ve been on A LOT and have been banning people who were obviously breaking the rules. Even mention you’re duplicating and you’re banned.
Liam: what was your emotional response to the forum? Can you shake it off or did it affect your mood and motivation?
Dash: yes, it affected my mood and motivation. When people are spamming insults at us it is hard to say positive.
Mike: it doesn’t affect my mood personally because I’ve seen this all before in the industry.
RubeII: “Have you any plans for a balancing subforum, complementing the idea subforum?”
Mike: the support tickets are really the best way. My take on this is to leave it as it is and have it go through support tickets. If there’s an issue where we’re not sure exactly what players are seeing then we may make an official sub forum or IRC channel but these things can become disused and not be useful for what it was created for in the first place.
Willem: there’s good ways to convey your ideas and there’s bad ways to do it. To be honest walls of text, while it’s great that you’re passionate, are very hard for us to find the time to read though. Being concise as possible is much better. Also, if the community can focus on specific issues, either through polls the GMs can make for you or something else, make it way more likely we’ll see it.
Dash: forum moderators are good, too. Bring your ideas to them and they will pass it along to us.
(Doc here: RubeII stated his question very well, I thought, but I think the question was misinterpreted somewhat. What RubeII and the users on IRC was looking for was a discussion on balancing, not a method to pitch ideas. Sending a submission to support is largely seen as a black hole when it comes to things that aren’t necessarily “support”. Having more voices is beneficial to complex subjects such as balancing, hence the reason it’s been suggested something be made specifically for this rather than having us talk at a wall, so to speak. They’re looking for engagement, not an outlet.)
ulosen: would you consider adding performance enhancing options commonly found in hack clients to the official game?
Mike: performance and convenience increases are things we’re working on. They’re getting mixed in with all the other priorities. With so much in the pipeline what it comes down to is if we add this thing, for example, then what other things are we going to have to put off, and how does that effect the longer term plans? It’s always a very difficult decision, even among ourselves, choosing what gets done when.
Piggah: when you’re discussion ideas, how do you determine priorities? What are your current priorities?
Mike: Usually what it comes down to is what will create the most fun and most stable for the most amount of people? We consider the veterans on the forum and also the 1000’s of new players, so we really try to balance these things when planning. And we also have to think of things like duplication, spam bots, etc and what it takes to address those things. It all goes into the decision making process.
Willem: we look at what we’re putting in and who we’re serving. If its new content now, then we try to make the next thing for veteran players, but also time factors matter. Bigger content takes longer and we sometimes don’t have room to fit it in.
Somebody: when you setup the Account in Use disconnect dupe fix it didn’t work out. Why not just make that work when leaving the vault?
Mike: there are deep technical issues and we are working on solutions to get rid of as much of it as possible. Every game I’ve ever worked on has had duplication issues: players always figure out a way to do it. So we’re working on ways to make it as hard and as inconvenient as possible. Regarding the vault idea, it would actually be difficult to do, and could also cause problems with other parts of the game.
Willem: while we appreciate everyone’s suggesting fixes for duplication, our engineers are very good. I’ve suggested similar things before and they’ve laughed at me because it wouldn’t work at all. They’ve put a lot of thought and effort into how to fix this.
Mike: I’ve had some of these same thoughts playing as a noob and really none of them will work. If simple solutions worked then they would have already been done.
Trustee/Doc (woot!): what’s a GM day look like?
Zbornox: I get up at 5:30am, walk the doggie, get some coffee, take the train, get to work around 8 and jump right into support tickets. Sometimes I have food at the office, but no breakfast tacos (alas). From there every day is different, it all depends on what Twitter looks like, what’s going on with the forum, how many support issues we have to tackle.
Tiffy: we also compile metrics. Recording and categorizing issues so we know which are the most important. We send these out as weekly reports. She’s the spreadsheet goddess. (heh, I’ll be the judge of that! stares at my report logs showing my own spreadsheets and related tools have been used over 400,000 times in my company over the last 4 years )
Zbornox: we all come and go at different times so we’re usually around.
Dash: We have other projects, too. Podcast prep takes almost a whole day. Will and I have started putting together videos and we’re going to be doing more of them. We spent a lot of time on the forums this past week.
Tiffy: we also do QA testing on new builds sometimes.
Dash: brain storming for community events, too. Monday and Friday there’s only two of us, and only one over the weekend. So some days are a bit harder than others.
Trustee: how about them peoples outside the USA?
Mike: we actually have a number of ideas for our international audience. I love the idea of celebratory loot and events that go outside the US borders, exposing everyone to the traditions of other countries. We also have some plans we’ll discuss later about reaching out to international players beyond events and items.
Mankay: will there be more katana classes like a samurai?
Willem: Perhaps. Our players have some pretty good deduction skills.
R3i11y: it seems the purpose of the testing server has changed. What’s the plans for testing?
Willem: Your perspective depends on when you started playing on test. Before Kabam it was pretty typical to bring test on and offline every couple weeks. After Kabam we did leave it up for a long time so now that it’s been down it is a change from the last few months. But again it’s a tool for us and it’s fulfilling its purpose for us.
Kraehe: Masamune > Muramasa? I would like to know why they are in this order. As from myth and legends, I would say the other way.
Willem: That’s not true. In the legends surrounding these swordcrafters they would hold contests for who makes the better sword. Muramasa is traditionally the evil sword, while Masamune makes good swords. Generally it’s agreed the Masamnue was the greater sword maker of the two.
Lnkd: any class balancing soon?
Willem: I’m sure the ninja will be getting tweaks because it’s new, but there’s always possibilities for balancing.
Lnkd: will Dr Terrible get a nerf to healing? He’s a battle of attrition.
Willem: we’re working on balancing a number of things for the whole game. We’re working on the zero def bug for our next release and we’re rebalancing across the board to keep the game feeling correct because the bug has been around a long time. The Lab and Dr Terrible will be part of that, too.
ZucchiniZe: Will there be community appearances in realmcast?
Mike: it’s a great idea and hopefully we’ll be doing something like that in the near future.
Willem: realmcast is young so as it grows we’ll work more things into it.
Amitp: have you considered 100% soulbound loot drops?
Mike: it’s interesting but I think it may be a little extreme. We may consider it but it may not be the most elegant solution.
Amitp: could you share a breakdown on user experience?
Mike: I don’t have the numbers today. But I think it is worth mentioning that there are 10’s of 1000’s of players who don’t log into the forum.
Amitp: Source Sans for player name legibility?
Willem: we can investigate if it’s a persistent issue. I personally like the font but again if players come together on issues like this and bring it to the GMs we get a sense of how big these things are.
Mike: this is salt, as the metaphor goes. But it does speak to the social aspect of the game, namely the security of knowing who people are, who you’re dealing with, etc. Things like this are definitely part of our mid to long term goals.
Averthorn: mystic is kinda underwhelming vs other staff classes. Any changes planned?
Willem: while we’re always considering balance it’s a big task with a lot of thought and work going into those small number changes. For now we want to focus on other important items on our to-do lists before going back to class balancing. Maybe around the time the next class comes out.
Averthorn: new untiered equipment has been uninspiring. Any thoughts to spice them up?
and
Mquery: lots of UT class sets from dungeons. Will we go back to more unique UTs?
Willem: I don’t think UT have to cause huge gameplay differences. We’ll keep adding a variety of UTs of all kinds.
Kable: any plans to add Quickspeech or muledump directly to the game?
Mike: there’s clearly some features in things like QS that are really useful, no question. The task for us is to get it into our plans. But also look beyond what these programs do and add features that improve on them.
Kable: how about adding more vault space?
Willem: we don’t have plans to just throw out more vaults but rather the entire vault system is something we’re thinking about.
Dash: we’ll probably be doing another Realmcast next week so be on the lookout for that. Thanks for joining us!
Fin.