IamA Bobik - project leader of "Life is Feudal" Sandbox MMORPG and "Life is Feudal: Your Own" solo/multiplayer sandbox that is going to be available on Steam Early Alpha at 19th of September! AMA!

What inspired you to make the game? Where do you get your ideas?

TBH a fail of Darkfall as a good sandbox and PvP game had forced me to start that project on a enthusiasm. Most ideas came from my head, while others are inspired by such games as: UO, Shadowbane, Haven'n'hearth, Wurm, Mount and Blade, EVE online.

Hey, Bobik! ;) Can you please explain what is the strongest points of your game comparing to other sandbox-style MMORPGs like Mortal Online and/or Wurm Online?

What can you tell us about the PvP aspect of LiF?

How realistic will be the combat? Will it consider such factors as type of armor and part of the body that've been hit?

And - as a traditional reddit question - what is your favorite pizza topping? :)

Heya Lexxx20!

I believe our strongest points are complete terraforming and building freedom that does not look so "squarish" and allows you to achieve such type of villages/cities/castles as you have seen in our pormo vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMzMLo0hQ_c We do not aim for a grind and do not have tunneling limitations as in Wurm (spiral tunnels are possible in our game ;) ). Also we have a phisics based Mount&Blade style melee combat. We have more building freedom and have full terraforming if compare us with Mortal Online. Actually we have a good page on our site on that topic: http://lifeisfeudal.com/Life-is-Feudal-like

PvP is free with a full loot. But we have an alignment system that should strike hard all those PKs wannabees or how they called griefers. It works the following way, that for every assault, knockdown or murder of a player, you will lose some alignment. The more negative your alignment the BIGGER your skill loss will be upon death. So if you're super evil, almost all your skills might be wiped from a single death and if you don't have a safe hideout - you will be weak as a baby, unable to wield good weapons and armor and you will be killed by a good alignment players, because it will be fun and easy :)

Combat is quite realistic. We actually had some discussion on our Alpha testers forum, when some people were upset that is hard to hit. Because you REALLY need to hit with your axe blade, not just to click left button when your enemy somewhere infront of you. And in order to score that hit you must FEEL the right distance for your attack so that axe blade will not be infront or behind your victims torso. We have wounds, bleeding and fractures that can lower your combat performance. That can be a good tactics for some weapons to bleed out your opponent and loot him once he had passed out, without actually killing him. Or break both his arms and torso, so he will not be able to effectively use his own weapon.

I like meat + pepper + onions. It is called "Supreme" in our local pizza delivery shop :)

So playing a genuinely ruthless character for the sake of role-play is actually impossible? I mean, nobody could play a killer, a duelist, a town guard and such.

It is possible, if others will accept your role-play. In that case alignment will not change anything that much.

That all sounds like fun and great news :)

Regarding PvP penalties though - they only apply if player was 'griefed', right? No penalty if both players agree they want to fight each other to death? Will there be some zones for free pvp and some restricted ones?

How complicated is crafting of weapons and armor?

What's your stance on mounted combat?

What do you think of another quite famous indie project set in medieval setting - Kingdom Come: Deliverance?

PvP penalties will be applied always, unless both are from the same unit. So if you want to practice - make a Unit (group in other games) and hit each other for free :) In MMO we plan to have only some area around starting city free of PvP and biggest part of the rest of the world will be FFA PvP. In LiF:YO PvP can be everywhere, unless server owner will enforce some rules on his server.

Well, crafting can be quite complicated :) For instance to craft some sword you will need (aprox.):

1. Prospect for iron ore

2. Build a mine shaft towards iron ore node and mine it

3. build a furnace or bloomery to smelt it into ingots (you will need to chop down a lot of trees for fuel)

4. Chops some trees and use crapentry tools or workbench to create a handle

5. Go out in wilderness to find and tame wild cow (aurochs) and wild bull

6. Build up a stable and place them there.

7. keep them feeding with crops from your farm (farming is a whole another story :) )

8. Once they have bred few times you can slaughter one of them in order to get a hide

9. Place a hide on a drying rack and wait for some time

10. place a dried hide into a tanning tub to produce leather after some time

11. combine leather, handle and iron ingots on a heated up forge (fuel again ;) to craft a sword or two

We will have mounted combat, but just sometime later. Kingdom Come: Deliverance - is beautiful indeed with somewhat 3 sq kms world? It is single player only. Nough said IMHO ;)

Oh, I see. I'm totally okay with that system.

Wow, that's a lot of things to do! :D Can I use the mines or stables of other players, though?

Yup, didn't say that you're competitors :)

By the way, how many people are in your team? Are you the one who's in charge of PR and dealing with press?

Ofc all those crafting actions can be done by other people to speed things up. And you can use their mine tunnels and stables if they will allow or will not be able to stop you ;)

We're about 7 ppl in our flat here and about the same amount distributed around the globe (Latvia, Ukraine, Canada, USA, Poland). I am the one who is in charge of everything, because the rest of the team are either programmers or art creators :) Lead game design, software architecture, marketing, PR and servers administration are on me along with 1000001 other situational tasks. BTW I'm not crying - that is actually interesting and fun sometimes, but just too much for one person, so that is why we're not doing EVERYTHING that is needed to be done for our project.

Now, there's a lot of responsibilities! Lack of people is a common problem among indie devs, I guess. I wish best of luck to you, your team and your project!

Thanks!

"Server owner"

Can you expand on this? I hope your servers won't be client run. I'd hate for an mmo character to exist on the whim of someone living in their parent's basement.

We're talking about LiF:YO. You can observer difference between LiF:YO and MMO here: http://lifeisfeudal.com/LiFYO#compare

In LiF:YO private servers can be everywhere, including someone's basement - but you're not forced to connect to them and create anything there ;)

So I've been following your game since it was announced and I have to say it looks very promising. While I have several, my big question is how are you handling your support team?

In some similar games I've seen volunteer GMs which leads to favoritism and / or the speculation of it, not to mention a lack of GMs at certain times. And on the flip side I've experienced paid GMs which do not care about their effects on the game at all.

Currently LiF:YO servers will have no GMs or very few of them. Private servers started or rented by other players will manage by them selves hopefully.

MMO servers should be GMed by a hired staff that will sit right near me and I'll make a polygraph tests on them daily :)

Hey thanks for doing this! The game sounds really interesting. If I setup my own server with 5 people/friends, is that enough? Or will the world seem "dead"?

It will be more than enough, depending on what are you trying to achieve. I bet that solo player can have a lot of fun building a cool looking castle alone just to share his screenshots so everyone will envy him :)

Or you can setup your village with your friends, share responsibilities and jobs and slowly progress to bigger buildings, farms etc.

It is sandbox - do whatever you want to do ;)

Hello! Are you interested in feudal history or did you pick up the feudal subject because it offered you giid bases for your game?

Heya,

mostly because I like that period, but I am not a full force geek of a medieval TBH :)

Okay! Your game seems really nice btw.

Thanks!

Hey!

I am a long time player of M&B: warband. I understand you take certain inspirations from that game.

My question is, how do you balance the need for combat with the need for a simpler life there? Basically, why shouldn't everyone grab a sword and kill each other? What are the incentives of being a peasant?

It depends on your neighbors ;) If they're peaceful or non existent - you're not forced to take a sword. But if they're not - you'd better do ;)

You can always be helpful to your village/guild as a crafter/peasant by providing them with food and crafting results and they will provide you with a defense in return. There are a lot of options of how you will live in our medieval world.

Maybe you will tell me some day, how you ended up being peasant or a swordsman ;)

I Hope you guys get more exposure, the game looks quite neat.

1) I was wondering why the significant reduction in map size from MMO game to Single/multi player? Technical reasons?

2) How did you come up with the offline minigame idea? Might be fun to do some of that over my lunch at work, then go home and reap the rewards.

3) Do you plan to add more minigames as the game evolves?

1. MMO version uses server nodes infrastructure. Technically it is 49 servers that are seamlessly interconnected with each other. And area for one server is 33 kms. So in LiF:YO is simply one server, which is 33 kms.

2. Just woke up one morning with idea how to make craft funnier and more immersive :)

3. Sure, why not.

Heyo. Is your terraforming system built on top of a heightmap renderer? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you've found a way to selectively punch holes in a heightmap renderer. The tunnel and their sizes look like a size-multiple of something that I imagine is related to the terrain rendering. Also, what happens if you tunnel into the water?

Heya,

yes, we punch holes in heightmap terrain and generate custom geometry to create tunnel walls. Sizing is mostly to ease orientation undeground, so it is 2 meters height and 2 meters wide. But you can expand them in all dimensions and create huge undeground halls, spiral ways and so on.

You will see a water inside the tunnel. Once you dig deeper - you will start floating and will be unable to continue digging.

How do imagine the economy running?

A broken economy can ruin a game or at least hurt it. Look at Diablo 2 with gold being essentially worthless.

I would hope it would work something like UO (I am only really familiar with The second age and previously) where a solidly build set of equipment could be just as good (relatively speaking) as a magic item.

Yes, we can compare it to UO, to EvE and to none above :) You can compare our economy to Eve and UO because we have everything player made with full loot and durability decay. Also we have no monster drop loot :)

one more thing - actually all ores, granite, marble, clay are depletable. So they're not going from a thin air, though their amounts are huge :)

Alright going off of the durability, when durability is finished and your item breaks, will that be it or will you (or a smith of appropriate skills) be able to salvage or recycle some part of it?

It would be a shame to see some resources become even more rare or impossible to come by for people late to the game. I always liked UO because of the ability for a new player (relatively) to still be on the same level as an older player. Skills always mattered more than loot. So I have found myself turned off by newer mmorpgs.

Broken items can be repaired. All metal containing items can be recycled back into ingots.

And of course - skill will matter more, than just loot in our game ;)

Hey there! I'm excited for the early access launch of YO tomorrow. Good luck with all that!

1) what social features will be in YO? I know there are no guilds, but what about parties or bands or whatever? Even if I'm playing on a public server I still want to make it clear ok playing with my friends.

2) What is your personal favorite way to play LiF? In other words: What are the first few things you do when you start a new character, and what's your favorite "class" to make?

3) I know I can probably just wait until tomorrow, but any idea what server specs will be needed for hosting a server?

Good luck with LiF! Looks great so far, and I can't wait to support it!

Heya and thank you!

1. No social mechanics will be possible so far, except unit and formation if it can be called "social" :) But you can start your own server, make it password protected and roleplay whatever you want with your friends ;)

2. I'd go for a builder. building stuff is really interesting, and everyone will be able to see your walls with big residential houses behind them! But I'd also go for a turtle footman, shield on the back to block arrows and blows to back, shield in hand, not heavy scale mail and a war pick. I do aware that I will be easily kited, but hard to kill and that is a perfect setup for a choke point defence of your gatehouse or walls breach ;)

3. Well, anything quad Core with 6-8 Free RAM should suffice.

Hey there.

I've had my eye on "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" for a while, and your game seems like it could be an interesting variation on a similar setting.

How much player-influence do you plan to allow in the game world? Will it be like EVE where anything goes, or will it be more controlled? If players will be allowed to influence the game world, in what ways will it be done? Will we influence the economy, take over territory? Maybe something else?

Thanks for the AMA.

Heya,

it will be pretty much like EvE in everything but setting and combat ;) Everything will be built and controlled by players (except starter city in LiF:MMO). PlayerS influence at max. And by playerS I mean playerS, not just a single player :)

How will you prevent inequality gap from becoming a major problem, i.e. starters can never catch up to the veterans?

Skill progression is quite fast, so everyone can level up very fast. It is all about end game, but not about grinding your skills. So a clever minded player will surely adopt and learn gameplay mechanics faster than some veteran who is a few years in a game, but still don't understand some of its aspects

What kind of mechanics will facilitate large-scale trade? Will there be currency, or strictly barter? Auction houses? Contracts? Will players be able to effortlessly move around tons of lumber/metal/stone, or will wagons/draft animals be necessary for that?

We will have currency (gold, silver, copper coins) sometime soon. In MMO version we wil implement trading posts. They will act as stations in EvE - you can place a buy or sell offer on it and you can browse all or nearby trading posts for other players offers.

And yes, once you will find something that is interesting to you - you will have to bring your mcoins there and transport whatever good you had purchased back. And chances high that there will be a lot of goods and you will need a cart ;)

1) Why are minigames NOT in the Your Own version? minigames for crafting is pretty much the best thing I've ever heard. I nearly feel asleep playing wurm waiting for the crafting bar to fill up.

2) Are there any NPC threats in Your Own? I wanna make a village but after i get a house, what do i do. Similar to how the game Space Engineers is currently. You build a bad ass base then nothing attacks you but griefers.

3) Finally Are you considering adding in a "God Mode" for server admins so they could possibly create adventures and challenges for other players on the server?

1. Mostly due to technical reasons. Minigames concept requires a web backend. We have it for MMO, but implementing it for every private server in an automated mode - it is not possible with our resources.

2. Nope. We have only wild animals and there will be no NPC threats. LiF:YO is originated from MMO where is everything is created and done by players.

3. Yes, we will have a GM (Game master) mode sometime soon as our first update.

Minigames concept requires a web backend.

How?

Firstly they're flash games and their gameplay is adjusted according to a skill level of your character. The higher your skill - the easier is the game - the better result you might achieve. And that result is stored in a DB and for some minigames id compared with Top5% of last 24 hours results.

So if you're in that top5% - you will receive a slight item quality boost or other bonus.

And all described above is done with a help of a web backend.

In the Dev video, there's a pistol in a shoulder strap hanging by your desk.

Is this the Boris failsafe device, or just standard dev issue desk gear?

Thank you for confirming to me that Russian apartments appear exactly as I imagined them to be. Putin is a great man for putting a bear in the home of every Russian.

Both :) Camera went that way, so you haven't seen a pile of shot PC displays. Coding can be frustrating sometimes :)

We got our bear ourselves! He is a part of our team! :)

Is there turnip farming?

No :)

Hello! I'm a big fan of Haven and Hearth and Life is Feudal is looking pretty good so far, but, for me one of the things best things about Haven and Hearth was the tension whenever you would meet somebody new. You had to ask yourself: "can I trust this guy? Is he going to kill me?". That was a big part of the game for me, and having this karma system takes it away from the game.

Now, for the actual question, are we going to have siege weaponry?

Edit: Oh, and how are you going to monetize the game?

Well, karma system does not tell you EVERYTHING about that player ;) he might be blue, but maybe in your case temptation to knock you out and steal your precious stuff wiill overcome him? Or he is just not killing everyone and praying properly every day to make him look better? Everything is possible, cause life IS feudal ;)

Yes, it is coverred pretty much on site. W plan for trebuchets, maybe some siege ladders. Hope battering rams and one day siege towers will be possible

Mount&Blade inspired your combat, how whiffy is it? Is it more like War of the Roses? Here's hoping it's as close to Warband as possible. No other combat even comes close.

Not sure what exactly you are trying to ask. But only similarity is between MB, War of Roses and our game is 4 directional attacks, damaging weapon parts and physics based combat.

But do not forget that it is MMO scale combat we're trying to achieve along side with formation system and attack combos systems. And currently we stick for more precise hit detection system - aka "Why I can not hit someone who is infront of me!!!11" :) Because you're keeping a wrong distance and either hit him with your hand or shaft or just missing.

Just found out about LiF early this week and it seems like it is combining the best features of some of my favorite MMO's so I am excited to try the game out.

Onto my question, will there be any incentive for guild vs guild warfare over towns or resources? Would love to see some large and epic medieval battles =D

Plenty of incentives I'd say. Higher quality ore and gold, higher quality soil for farming and tree farms. Better terrain positioning for a defense. Closer to the trading hub or important roads. They're not sharing your political views :)

There will be plenty incentives I do not doubt.

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There are no such mechanics in game yet. Though you will be able to brew different poisons via our alchemy system and apply them on a bladed weapons.

Hello Bobik, Hobo Grandpa here from the official forums / irc.

Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your team Bobik?

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Any hobbies outside of video games?

Heya Hobo Grandpa :)

It is a hard question really. We're just a bunch of guys with extended experince in their fields of knowledge, but outside of gamedev. For instance, I was a project leader in one of top russian system integration companies, when I had initiated that project. Mihey (lead developer) had a few years of C++ commercial development. Link (Art director) was a good freelance artist and designer for web.

Boris was a bear and he is a bear :)

I ate some smoked meat with onion bread and yogurt after that. P.S. What is the trick with those meal questions? :) (pizza, breakfast)

How far will the maximum viewing range be? I'm hoping for 5km+

Yes, terrain is rendered at aprox 5 kms. Though you will be able to see objects not further than 2 kms. These distances are better look in LiF:MMO, because LiF:YO is just an island 3*3 km and there is no other terrain around it.

What education do you have and what would you recommend to become a game designer/developer?

I have an Applied Computer science unviersity degree and Phd in Economics. I would recommend any IT or mathematical education, that will teach you how to systematize and structure your thoughts and ideas.

Any plans for oculus support?

It is quite possible and I think we will implement it one day. It should be really interesting!

What do you expect the price to be when released on Steam. Will this be an Alpha? Also, do you plan on releasing DLC content at a later time?

That will be Steam Early Alpha, currently we plan for 29€. No idea for DLCs so far - we need to survive ATM, because if LiF:YO will fail for some reason - there will be no MMO nor LiF:YO :(

What games where your inspiration and did you make the engine yourself from scratch?

Heya,

I've answered above about inspirational games: UO, Shadowbane, Haven'n'hearth, Wurm, Mount and Blade, EVE online.

Nope, we are using heavily modified Torque 3D engine. Well, we're like 3 years elbow deep in its intestines, so we can pretty much call it ours :)