Fallen Age Info Digest: February 2001 - March 17, 2001

The following list of statements are the highlights of issues discussed on the forums over at 'The Official Site' over the past week by Savant and Drysart.

Colony PvP

• Savant: You can never lose more than 10% of your colony from being conquered.
• Savant: You have 3 days of immunity after being conquered.
• Savant: 3 Days is roughly what it would take the casual/leisure player to rebuild that 10% and a little bit extra.
• Savant: Your King cannot attack you.
• Drysart: In response to "why not just go all offense" - The colonies you conquer will easily be able to come in and beat you up in return, and you'll be without defenses to stop it.
• Drysart: While you're immune to attack, you can't attack anyone else, so if you are hit every three days with no defenses, you won't be able to conquer anyone else.
• Savant: In response to "colony's open to attack upon reaching level 30" - Actually, there's a safe period of time (until you reach a certain tech) where you can't be attacked.
• Savant: There is no reporting or spending time in jail for colony pvp
• Savant: If you conquer an opponent, they now pay you a tithe of 20-30% of their production/resources.
• Savant: Nobody can scout your colony until their own colony is open for business.
• Savant: In response to "email me when my colony is conquered" - An email function for when you're offline sounds intriguing -- maybe I'll do a poll on the main page and see what people think.
• Savant: Your colony exists when you're offline, ..., as AI defends your colony while you are offline
• Savant: If hunting and killing monsters or question when your colony gets attacked, you will get several warnings about approaching forces and attack. AI will defend your colony until you can get to it.

Consentual PvP

• Savant: There are various options such as Deathmatches, Gamble Matches, and "Battleground" PK zones.

General Combat

• Savant: When you are PK'd (or killed by a monster) you may or may not drop 1 [random] item. If you end up dropping the 1 item, that's all they can loot.

Jail

• Savant: In response to "what about an ingame mini-game while i take my penalty" - That would defeat purpose of sitting in jail, as far as not being able to do anything and not staying idle... well, you'll see.
• Savant: There is no reporting or spending time in jail for colony pvp

Beta

• Savant: In response to "will europeans be able to play in beta" - Yes of course
• Drysart: A good mixture of all types of players will serve us best in beta. With beta tests like ours, we're looking both for people that will test game mechanics for bugs, and we're also looking for people that will more or less play the game, so we can work on balance issues.

Interface

• Savant: In response to "will we be able to alt-tab [multitask] out of game" - Yes you can absolutely alt-tab out of the game. It's silly not to allow it.
• Drysart: In response to "communication" - Text appears over the head, a la UO, and in the upper left corner of the screen temporarily, a la Quake, and there's a chat window you can have on your screen if you prefer a more EQ style of communication.

Macroing

• Drysart: I like to think we don't have anything that you need to tediously do over and over again. I like to play games to have fun, not spend hours hitting the same button repeatedly to get a skill to go up a point.

Characters

• Drysart: Aging is a positive thing, to reward you for sticking with a character for a length of time. Your age will never be a liability.
• Drysart: You only accumulate play time for being non-idle, and non-macroing. The idea is that if you're on and playing, you'll gain time, but if you're not actively playing, you won't.
• Savant: There is currently no cap in how high you can raise [stats] because the cost raises exponentially. Essentially, it's a "soft cap.". Stats are currently as follows: Strength, Dexterity, Sinew, Wisdom, Blessing, and Concentration.
• Savant: In response to "how fast will we advance in levels" - In our internal beta, I did level 10 within a day -- and it increases in difficulty from then on. Level 30 should approximately take 2-4 weeks, depending on how often you play.

Bug Abuse

• Savant: If a bug is corrupting data, or causing some other form of damage, then we will first *announce* that the bug is indeed harmful, then if certain individuals decide to continue, then and only then we will ban them.
• Savant: The approach [to bug abuse] is simply "Innocent until proven Guilty", not the other way around. I'm sure most of you would expect that courtesy if you unknowingly abused a bug.
• Drysart: As far as how we'd handle the people taking advantage of these bugs.. our response depends alot upon the severity of the bug, who else it affects, and the apparent intent of whoever was using it. The benefit of the doubt will be on the player's side when we evaluate each individual case.

Colony Trade

• Savant: There is a common market trade between colonies where you buy and sell your resources. The prices fluxuate real time based on the demand or lack of demand. The unique items and such that you produce are the items that you have to trade in person.