Interview of Naval Action's admin

[PIerrick de Badas]

Hi, Admin accept to answer an interview about the games.

You can found it on : http://navalaction-france.com/interview-de-ladmin-de-naval-action/in english and French.

As i don't force you to move on my website i copy paste it there for you.

Enjoy :-)

 

 

Hello and thank you for answering some of our questions about Naval Action.

1) First of all, can you introduce yourself and your team ; How many people are currently working on the game?

 

• Our core team is 10 people: 4 programmers, 4 artists and 2 QA engineers. You might have played games our team members have worked on before: Metro, Battlefield, World of Tanks and several other well known titles. Team is based in Kiev Ukraine but we have several consultants based across the world.

 

 

2) How would you define this game? Is it a navy open world or a massively multiplayer game?
How many servers are you planning for the game release and how many simultaneous players are needed to give a good gaming experience to everyone?

• Naval Action is an experience. It is a multiplayer sandbox giving the player the opportunity to immerse himself in the most beautiful period of naval history – Age of Sail – when sailing ships ruled the seas. Of course due to the size of the team we are not able to bring all aspects of that period to life, but we guarantee that combat and sailing elements will be represented properly. We plan to launch 2  servers during Early Access: calm and peaceful PvE server and PvP server. Each shard can support up to 2000 simultaneous concurrent players online; the final number will depend on additional testing. If the demand is high we will of course open additional servers.

 

 

 

3) The game’s development model favour the community and her opinion on certain points.
Is the development team satisfied with this open development model and these interactions hasn’t changed too much your vision and some aspect of your own game?

• We are very much satisfied with the open development community model to this date. Giving the players the opportunity to test the game early allows us to experiment and iterate on the features more often – which makes the game better as a result.

 

 

4) More specifically, you mentioned premium ships and many are the players worried about it. The only thing that really worries us is whether the Hermione will be part of them. Can you talk a bit about these premium ships and tell us what are the ships we could find there?
Will there be other objects in the game’s shop? If so which ones?

• We have not yet decided on how premium vessels will function in game. The game is not cheap (boats are expensive) and we are against monetization in a full priced game. The only reason premium ships could be needed is to fund the development.

 

 

5) Problems with rules of engagement seem to matter to you.
Do you think that players, in an open world game, could actually impose themselves rules of good conduct?
Or on the contrary do you wish to restrict them by game mechanics?

• Players will be players and will use all the mechanics available to them in game (if they are not specifically forbidden by rules). Because we are testing the game with the players together – annoying mechanics or rules are quickly abandoned or reworked.

 

 

 

 

6) Some are beginning to regret the times of sea trials.
While the game was well advanced during this phase, was the decision to move to the open world phase not too hard to take? Were you thinking about this when you started to develop this game?

• There are too many MOBA’s in the market right now. Sea trials 1 was always presented to players as the tool to test combat. Even before sea trials started open world was the most requested feature. We delivered and are satisfied with how it worked out.

 

 

7) By the time you will answer, the craft system will already be in the game.
Therefore can we talk about the escort system to protect merchant and explorer you wish to implement?

• Player escort function sign up will be developed some time in the future. It will work this way: when you will sign up for the escort fleet duty you will be invited to the battle when there is a player in need of support. At this stage (today) the escort is purely player driven. You need to sail near the trader to protect him/her if somebody decides to take his cargo.

 

 

 

8) You made the exploration an important thing on paper some time ago.
What are your plans concerning it in a world we already know anyway the contours?
How do you wish to reward explorers despite having said to refuse to create class, such as merchants, corsair officers etc.? Will the explorer be an exception to the rule?

• Exploration has to be a natural part of the game useful for other players. Right now we are focused on finishing the conquest mechanics (port battles) and will come back to exploration discussions at a later stage. The first important useful thing explorers could do in the future is exploring of resources (geology) for crafting, but we will only start designing this after early access launch. After this is done we can start thinking about adding fishing and biology exploration ( for learning the flora and fauna of the Caribbean).

 

 

 

9) Once the main features that are craft and conquest added, what will you develop next?
Do you have a development schedule for the next 6 months? Or are you willing to develop a new game once NavalAction finished?

• To support this idea, do you plan to add other locations, like the English channel we already saw, in the game. The next three big steps are: conquest (port battles), UI improvements, and potentially exploration. + working on annoyances and bugs.

 

10) There is currently 20 different warships and 4 merchant ships.
How many ships do you plan to propose to players at the end?
Is it a finite number or you will continue to support the game by adding free or paid DLC when the game will be officially released?

• Demand (game purchases) will fund the ship development. That is another reason why premium ships are potentially needed. One popular premium vessel can fund 2-3 additional ships. Current priority is to deliver the player select vessels and close the gaps that exist in the line up: specifically we do not have enough ships in 24-34 guns 40-54 and in the 64-120 guns range.

 

 

11) Finally and also to talk about your other game, Ultimate General : Gettysburg was developed relatively quickly.
What is the experience you have learned and applied to NavalAction?
Have achieved your business goals with this game?
Is a suite or another field of action possible?

• We are satisfied with the results of Ultimate General Gettysburg. It was named “Top 20 wargames of all time” by PC Gamer, “Best wargame of 2014” by PCGamesN and is currently in the top 25 highest rated games of 2014 by Metacritic.

 

The lesson is simple: “Just make a good game” and things will work out ok.

Thank you for the time you spent answering us and see you soon on the seas or on the forums.

 

 

[admin]

bad formatting ... someone please fix

[PIerrick de Badas]

i edit it. Btw , you can visit na-france to get a better format

[Captain Holman]

Good read. Interesting to read these honestly, can we get a sticky on this? Might help players who are thinking of buying later on...

[Macjimm]

This is very informative. Thanks very much for posting it.