Another Friday and another Prime: Battle for Dominus live Q&A/Info dump.  Unfortunately, no gameplay video yet again this week but still some good information from the Pitch Black Games team.  I was able to attend the stream as it was live this time (instead of missing it by one hour) and I really like the connection it creates with the community and a small dev team; it personalizes the development experience and lets people feel included.    I wrote down my notes while watching and pasted them in for you all below.

Beta
Only about 30 people got online in the beta and due to some issue with servers being at an old location the connections were not stable. They’re working on bandwidth issues on their end.  Pings from as far as the UK were ~200 or lower.  The “gear” they’re using is “world class” now in the new location and they seem quite confident in how things will perform going on.  The beta itself appears to be, in my opinion, more of an alpha testing experience as they still get their hardware set up and test minutia.  No complaints from me since I think it’s impossible to over-test a MMO.
– Guild Pages and Signups should be done early next week.

Bases
– Set locations.  Can’t just build anywhere.  Can choose what is built at them, though.
– No Siege Engines
– Can’t claim a base without destroying it.  Each faction’s bases look different.  “Not just one type of base”.
– Only takes one person to claim a base and build it up.  Good luck defending it, though.
– Bases do not have shields or domes protecting them, so a fleet of jet packers *can* jump into them. Turrets are mean, though.
– 7 Kinds of things that can be built in bases. Not ready to reveal these just yet.
– No Vendors or NPC guards protecting bases.  Just turrets.  (Subject to change.)

Crafting/minerals
– Profession made items are the best items in the game.
– All items are homogenous together.  There is no “PvP gear” seperate from “PvE gear”.  Crafted gear, bottom line, is best.
– 50-70 types of minerals being tested.
– Abundance of minerals changes and won’t always be the same.  This detail was a little fuzzyily explained.  I assume they move around the planets, perhaps weekly.

Random Mechanics/Features
– Open world, go anywhere, do anything. Standard “see a mountain and go there” stuff.
– Lava = instant kill
– World bosses can be static (in one place) or patrolling.
– Line of sight is fixed at a “pretty far” distance for everyone.

My question(s) that did not get answered: Do guilds, alliances, individuals, or factions claim bases? Who has control over what is built?  Like in DAoC a guild claimed a keep.  Can I claim a base and not let anyone build or harvest in it?  Bottom line, who manages the base once it is claimed?

If anyone knows and can give me the info, that would be great.  I feel it’s an important enough detail.  I’m hoping that a base is claimed for the entire faction to use.  I’m skeptical that this is the case because of the ability to add various things to the base.  Someone has to have control of what is added, unless each base can have ALL of those things and it’s up to the entire faction to work together to build it up.

I’m adding “PvP/Combat Video” to my list of want-to-see’s for next week.  Once they iron out the tech issues it would be great to see even a 20 second clip of players fighting each other. More nitty-gritty details on how server community politics play out, like those alluded to in my question above, would also be welcomed.

Watch the video of the live stream by reading on. (more…)