Hello, everyone! One of the most important things about the design philosophy of March of War: Face Off is community involvement. We want to make sure we, as a team, are approachable to all of you, be it for your problems, your feedback, or your complaints, as well as your compliments. And what better way to do that is there than to introduce ourselves?
For the next couple of weeks, we're going to have Q&A with our FO team members to let you get to know them better. They'll also be talking a little bit about their upcoming projects, and other things you might find interesting.
Today we're spotlighting: Wilson (In game name: Wilsono)! He's the head of balance and the unit designer. He's been with us a long time and also works on March of War between tea breaks and jaunts to the pub.
A lot of people hear the word "developer" and obviously attribute it to making things but the word itself is kind of vague. What would you say your role in Face Off is?
I do balance and implementation of the cards and artwork (2D and 3D). I'm not an artist, but I have some basic understanding of the systems involved in how a unit looks, so I can tweak the odd bit of visual FX, fix some simple animation bugs, and stuff like that. I also do design for gameplay features, though we have a collaborative process for that allows the involvement of the whole team, so different people tend to take the lead on different aspects of the game.
The game is constantly changing, which is great, but what project have you enjoyed working on the most so far?
I've been enjoying working on the new cards for the upcoming Empire faction a lot - it's always fun creating new cards, and especially with Empire since they need to have some interesting new abilities to make them stand out from the current factions. Aside from that, collecting player feedback and my own experiences of the balance in the game and translating that to balance changes can be very satisfying (though challenging).
Of all the things you've done for Face Off, which would you say is your greatest accomplishment?
Probably the initial design and implementation of the cards - going from nothing to 200 in not all that much time! Of course the whole team contributes to the design of the cards with their feedback and based on our playtests together, but I do the base design and make the final call on how a card works.
When a new player comes to the game they can get confused, feel overwhelmed, and need some encouragement. What do you say to new players?
Once you've got the basic gameplay down and understand Domination Damage and how units move and attack, it really comes down to learning the cards and their capabilities. You could pour over the collection page and examine each card to prepare yourself, but the best way is to jump in. The AI has a decent selection of cards, especially the hard AI, so playing a few matches against Alliance and Republic AIs should give you a decent grounding, otherwise you just need to be careful to check the stats and traits of any new units you see opponents deploy if you're not familiar with them.
There are a lot of new things coming to the game in the future but which of them are you most excited to unveil?
Definitely has to be the Empire faction - they were probably my favorite faction in March of War, and I just love the artwork we have for their units and the card portraits. I think people are going to find their abilities really interesting, and they should offer quite a different gameplay experience compared to the current factions.
Have you ever been working on an FO project and been under a deadline? In your most dramatic story telling words, would you tell us about it?
I think I've actually been pretty lucky as far as deadlines go when it comes to FO so far - the most pressure has been trying to figure out odd unit bugs in time to get them into an upcoming patch or hotfix. It's when you have a problem with a unit which is reliably happening, but you don't know why - you've looked over the setup of the unit ten times, have tried all sorts of strange card combinations in game to see what triggers it and what doesn't (and everything does), and you're down to changing random values in a hope that one of them will have an impact on the problem. That can be frustrating - especially if you don't make the deadline for the next patch, and then next day have an epiphany about how it's actually a really simple problem to fix... but it's too late by then. Luckily there's always more patches.
What game, in the history of games, would you say is your favorite (after FO, of course) and why?
That is an extremely difficult question! Company of Heroes is one of my favorite RTS games, but I'm not sure I'd call it my favorite ever. I think the Wargame series is way underrated there. The X-Com games of course, both the original and the new one (I also had some fun with Apocalypse, though I don't think it was quite as good as the others). The old LucasArts adventures will also always have a special place in my heart, particularly Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Full Throttle. I played the Grim Fandango remake recently and thoroughly enjoyed that too.
This time next year what would you like to see happen for Face Off? Where would you like it to be?
I'd like to see a thriving community, all the factions implemented, and a regular stream of cool new cards in place. We have a ton of ideas for new abilities, it's just a case of having the time to build them, so I'd hope to see lots of new unit traits by that time too.
If Face Off were to implement a joke booster full of random new cards designed to be playable but have a very funny effect, look, or feel what kind of comedy card would you be interested in seeing? For example a cookie card that makes one enemy unit unable to move for one turn because they are stopped eating cookies.
This probably wouldn't be funny to anyone except me, but way back when in the early development of March of War, before we had 3D models for everything, some units were represented by boxes with poorly rendered stick figure art on them - so you'd have things like huge mustaches or silly hats to distinguish the different types of units. The Warlord Warbeast still looked pretty cool - even stick gorillas stand out! Imagine how many new units we could do if that was the only art requirement...
As a break from the really hard questions, what five things would you say are crucial for a zombie apocalypse survival kit?
To be honest I wouldn't really expect to survive all that long come the zombie apocalypse (I'm more of a side character, not one of the protagonists), so I'd probably go for some kind of handheld gaming device, a whole lot of batteries, some classic games, a selection of delicious junk foods, and a few bottles of quality booze. That way I could hopefully barricade myself in somewhere and settle down to enjoy my time before the inevitable happens :)
Tom Hanks wants you to forgive him for letting you drift off to sea while he was trying to be rescued. Do you forgive him?
It's to my ongoing shame that I have to admit I haven't actually seen that movie, despite people regularly making jokes about it and my nickname! In any case, I think I'd always have to forgive Tom Hanks, even for that.
If you're more interested in getting to know Wilson he's done some interviews for us in the past. Check them out!
Make sure you leave us a comment with who you'd like to see interviewed next, and we'll follow up next week. Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!