Welcome to The Repopulation Alpha test! The purpose of this documentation is to get new players up to speed with the game, covering all of the basic topics in a bit more detail than the tutorial provides. It is split up into sections that cover the various aspects of gameplay and setting.
Earth was all but destroyed in a cataclysmic event. In a last ditch effort to save humanity the international community sent out colonization vessels to the nearest Potential Candidates for Life. These vessels were self-sustaining but could only support a limited number of passengers. Instead each contained large quantities of the DNA of the brightest minds and strongest bodies that Earth had to offer.
During the course of the long journey several important scientific advances were made, including the ability to imprint memories into humans, and the ability to teleport matter. Your adventure begins on Rhyldan, a small planet in the Alpha Centauri system. It is unknown whether or not the other colonization vessels were successful in their long journeys, but this planet can support human life. There are a number of intelligent species on Rhyldan, but our technology level surpasses theirs. They are mostly tribal and often live in underground cave systems. Most of these species are not happy to share the world with their new visitors.
You begin your adventure in a Cloning Facility, taking your first look at a new world. You were not granted the gift of life out of kindness, but out of necessity. Your goal is to help populate Rhyldan with human life, and to do your part in the preservation of humanity.
In the months following the landing of the TSS Northern Star on Rhyldan, man was united under a common goal: Survival. A native species referred to as the Lesoo waged a series of attacks on the new settlement, but while the Lesoo are a strong and hardy species, they were outmatched technologically.
The new settlement was named Plymouth, and that name once again marked the discovery of a new world. Plymouth City was slowly built up using a combination of local natural resources, and of parts off the Northern Star. For some time there was peace and unity among men. But it wouldn't last long.
The laws of the land were simply that everyone needed to pull their own weight. Your life was not a right, it was a privilege. This was a dangerous land, and death in the wilds was a common occurence. The ability to restore memories though and quickly rebuild humans from their DNA made death nothing more than a painful setback.
Things took a turn for the worst though when a soldier named Obore Daniels began to stir the pot. Daniels took issue to the fact that children were not permitted. Children could not pull their own weight and worse yet they made the adults less productive. He also took issue with the fact that the Council, a collection of the original colonists, chooses which DNA to use on new clones and kept the DNA secured away from others. Some colonists wanted to have family members restored, but unless those family members' possessed unique talents to justify the cloning time, this was not possible.
Daniels continued to be vocal about his feelings and over time he swayed a reasonable number of other citizens to push for change. He then disappeared while out on a patrol one day, reportedly falling prey to a Lesoo ambush. Rather than spawn a new life for Daniels though, the council decided against it. From their standpoint he was a trouble maker and could be replaced by someone who would be just as productive, but less of a problem. This decision did not sit well.
Protests began by a number of citizens, led by man named Edward Salazar. Salazar theorized that Daniels had in fact been murdered at the will of the council. There was no evidence to support this, but the refusal to restore his life left it open to question. The protestors refused to work until this issue was resolved. The unity of men was splintering and emotions were running out of control. To quell the rebellion the council created the first of a series of Cyborgs which they called Peacekeepers. These Peacekeepers were created using a mix of hybrid DNA, and integrated with brain wave inhibitors that made them controllable and completely loyal to the council.
The Peacekeepers were used in an attempt to force people back to work. When they were pelted with stones, they opened fire and blood was shed. Salazar and those supporting him fled and became outcasts. They deemed themselves as the Free People's Republic (FPR) and took to the hills, where they seemed to disappear.
Until one night when they staged a well-coordinated attack on the Cloning Facility at Plymouth and were able to make away with a collection of DNA strands. The FPR were now able to raise their own army. The council condemned this act of theft and formed a nation of their own, which they referred to as One World, One Nation (OWON).
The sides are so diametrically opposed that they have fallen into a state of open war. OWON believes that the FPR split has weakened both factions, and that they did it for selfish reasons. Their goal is the survival of humanity, and do not want to allow individual agendas to get in the way of it. The FPR meanwhile feels that OWON was an oppressive government who refused outside opinion. They have waged a propaganda campaign against OWON, attempting to reach out to new clones. OWON meanwhile has villainized the FPR as a band of separatists.
At the time that players are cloned they will have the choice of starting in the OWON controlled city of Plymouth, or the FPR controlled city of Freedomtown. All players are automatically enrolled into the corresponding military as reservists. We'll cover the military a bit more in the next section.
We mentioned previously that players are automatically enrolled in the local military as Reservists. They have the option of switching to Active Military at any time by visiting their local Recruiter. This section will cover the difference in the two, and the benefits of each.
In a nutshell Active Military members can attack Active Military members from other factions in any zone, where Reserve Military members employ a form of opt-in PVP. Reserve military members can only attack or be attacked in specific areas. If they are within a Control Point of a contested area, they can attack or be attacked, or if they are in zone that is flagged as Free For All PVP they can be attacked. It should be noted that OWON and FPR citizens can never attack those of their same faction. Your faction guards will also defend you from enemy attacks.
So how does the military tie in to all of this? As you complete activities that aid the military, you will gain Military Experience, and eventually Military Ranks. These activities include killing players of the opposite faction, completing military missions or bounties, participating in local events or engagements, and conquering enemy controlled cities or control points. There are numerous perks that you gain from military rank, including titles, access to unique skills, and access to unique pieces of equipment or crafting recipes. Military ranks are sort of an alternate form of advancement. You don't need to participate in the military if you don't wish, but if you do then you can gain some unique toys.
What we haven't yet explained is that there is a third faction type that you can become if you desire: The Rogue Nation. Rogue Nations are enemies of both OWON and the FPR. They are their own entities. Clans (similar to guilds in fantasy games) are player-created social groups that allow like-minded players to band together and form their own nation. Not all clans are Rogue Nations, this is determined when you create your clan. If you register the clan at the OWON or FPR City Hall, then your clan falls under the rule of OWON or FPR, respectively. If you form it outside though, you can become a Rogue Nation.
Rogue Nations are unique because they do not follow the normal set of PvP rules. Instead they follow their own. Rogue Nations can be attacked by any other player who is not in their clan, as they are always flagged as Active Military. Likewise they can attack Active Military members of anyone not in their clan.
When you approach other players, their names will be color coded by their relationship to your faction. If their names are Orange then they are enemies, but you can not attack them due to one of you being a Reserve Military member. If they are red, then they can be attacked and can attack back.
Clans allow players to easily communicate with their friends. There are social mechanisms that allow for easy communication with clan members, a message of the day, ranks, etc. These are all the traditional roles of guilds in fantasy games.
Any time that any of the clan members do something noteworthy, such as completing an Epic Quest, or defeating a boss mob, the Clan increases their reputation. As the reputation increases, the clan gains access to new capabilities such as being able to set their own laws, grant members unique titles, or being able to own Clan Lodges. (Note: Clan Lodges are not yet implemented) Another perk of your clan increasing in level is that it gives you access to more advanced raid content. The ability to set their own laws is very important and will be described in the next section.
The Clan GUI menu will allow you to easily monitor who is online from your Clan, and also allows you to see the recent accomplishments that increased the Clan's reputation.
There are only two safe outdoor world zones that can not be conquered. Those are the starting zones of Freedomtown and Plymouth. Those zones have a nice compliment of content, with crafting, solo, group and raid content. Players will always be safe in these zones. Outside of those zones though, the local laws vary based on who controls the zone. This works through our Control Point system.
Each zone has numerous Control Points. Control Points can be cities, towns or military outposts. Each zone has an odd number of these. Whoever controls the majority of the Control Points in a zone controls that zone. The laws of the controlling faction will be used. The laws of OWON and FPR are the same: Only those of the same faction can use the teleportals, and the PVP is opt-in for Reservists, while being active for Active Military members.
If a clan from a Rogue Nation controls the majority of the control points in a particular zone then the zone will use the Laws of that Clan. Clans with sufficient reputation can determine two major things in particular: The Teleportation and the Conflict Settings. Teleportation can be modified so that anyone can use it, or so that only your Clan can use them. The Conflict Settings allow a Clan to set a zone as either opt-in PVP, or as Free For All. It should be noted that in Free For All PVP you can still not attack anyone from your Clan or your Faction, but you will be able to attack Reservists. Players will be warned any time that the settings change, so that if they do not wish to be attacked they can leave an area.
Control Points can be captured using the Siege System. When you enter into a Control Point you will see a Damage status indicator appear. If this region has not been attacked recently, then it will likely be full. In order to conquer a Control Point you will need to defeat its Military Leader. He will not enter the fray though until a Control Point is significantly damaged. This means you must first widdle away at its defenses.
To initiate a siege you simply need to target one of the military structures of the area, such as a Turret, and begin attacking it. It should be noted that while all weapons can damage military structures, Siege Weapons will do the most damage, by far. Once you begin attacking a Control Point you will place the guards on alert, and you can expect to see soldiers popping out of the barracks to defend the city. The guards will come in waves, and each control point can be different. Sieges are sort of like a PvP based raid, you can expect the bosses to have special abilities, sometimes psychic in nature, and you can expect different Control Points to have different strategies. It should be noted that boss special abilities are generated using our Boss generation system, which we'll cover later in this guide.
If you can deal sufficient damage to the Control Point, the local leader will show himself, but he'll be inside of the walls. Defeating him will transfer control of that Control Point to the faction of attacking clan in the case of OWON or FPR, or to the attacking clan in the case of a Rogue Nation. All of the guards will become the guards of that Clan or of OWON or FPR, respectively. Players of the appropriate Clan or Faction will now be able to declare citizenship if they desire and gain access to the perks of this Control Point.
Players are able to help repair a Control Point by using Structural Repair or Emergency Repair skills. These skills require Repair Materials and are part of the Repairing skill tree.
There are many other reasons that you would want to control a particular city or control point. Each Control Point has its own set of Technology caps, and the mayor of the city can control how to advance the city. When a control point is captured there will immediately be an election calculation 15 minutes afterwards. This allows players who have captured a city to quickly gain control. Under normal circumstances an election is held every 3 days.
Mayors are elected by the residents of that city. To declare residence in a city, or to view the control point's technology settings, you can access the Mainframe computer, which is located in the middle of most control points. This will show you the technology levels, allow you to locate your house here, allow you to set up your Shops (if available), or to vote for the mayor. If you are the mayor it allows you to spend your technology points on areas that you desire.
It should be noted that each control point has its own cap settings for each technology level. Military bases may not be able to get as high in some commercial settings as other control points, but may have stronger military caps. Depending on the number of natural resources a control point will also generate more or less technology points. Players can boost the number of technology points available by using the Installations based skill: Structural Planning. This will require a Construction License. The mayor can spend the technology points on any number of different areas. These are documented below:
As you can see there are a variety of ways to improve a city. The crafting related bonuses will make crafters more efficient, while the military benefits will help keep the control point under your control.
There are teleportation devices located in at least one city in every outdoor zone. These teleportals will allow you to teleport to linking zones, but will only do so if that zone is under the control of your faction or clan, and if the laws of the controlling clan or faction allow for it. Controlling areas will thus allow for quicker transportation.
Control points also often have crafting stations, which won't be accessible to players if the guards are shooting them when they go within 200 meters of the city.
The mission generation system allows certain missions to take into account who controls a particular zone, thus allowing for more mission options if you control the neighboring zones.
Housing plays an important role, as it determines your city of residence. Since the city of residence determines the bonuses you will receive from the technology level, and allows you to participate or run in elections, you'll want to keep a house active. All players are automatically given an apartment in either Plymouth or Freedomtown when they create their characters, but this can be transferred at any time by declaring residence elsewhere.
Rent must be paid in order to enter your house. When you pay rent it will give you a weeks worth of free entry, and then you will be required to pay up again. You can pay up to 4 weeks in advance if you desire. Larger housing structures have higher rent costs, but also contain more furniture hooks.
Furniture can be placed in your home by accessing the control panel in your home. Different types of furniture fit into different slots. Furniture can be purchased from NPCs, crafted, or obtained as trophies from certain monsters or missions. Placing furniture into a slot will immediately display it in your room. If your current house does not have a hook of a particular type it will be colored red on the Control Point panel. It should be noted that you can still place or remove furniture into red colored slots, but they will not appear in your room. The reason for this is so that if your home is lost in a siege, you may not have the same sized home in your new location, but the furniture will automatically be transferred to it.
If a Control Point falls under enemy control, you will be evicted. This will cause you to lose any Shops that you owned in that area, and will cause you to lose your house. It should be noted that the furniture in your house will automatically be transferred to your new home and will not be lost. Players will receive a message when they log in if their city of residence was conquered, and will also be notified if it falls under attack.
If your city of residence has an Industrial Level that is high enough, you will be able to place up to 5 shops. Shops are virtual structures which can be accessed from the cities mainframe computer, and which provide you with some sort of benefit. There are two types of shops currently in testing: Resource Shops and Training Shops.
Resource shops will allow you to automatically accrue a particular type of resource without needing to go out and harvest it. Shops will never find rare or exotic resources, however and they only produce a small number of resources per day. The quality level of the shop determines how many it can produce. Examples of Resource Shops include Fishing Lodges, Mines, Farms and Lumber Yards.
Training Shops allow players to slowly increase a certain skill, even when they are offline. The skill rates are very slow on them, but they allow you to have some progress in them. For example, opening a Gymnasium will allow you to slowly skill up your Acrobatics, granting a small number of points each day. A Martial Arts Dojo would allow you to increase your Martial Tactics, etc.
You can purchase some of these shops from NPCs, but most are crafted by players.
Harvesting is the manual collection of resources. It is a non-combat skill and includes the skill trees: Fishing, Foraging, Foresting, Mining and Gathering. Each of these harvesting trees, aside from Foraging requires you to harvest a certain type of resource node, and require you to have equipped a specific type of harvesting item in your Tool slot.
Miners will need Mining Drills, Gatherers require Machetes, Foresters need Powered Saws, and Fisherman require Spear Guns. Foragers can simply use the Foraging ability when they acquire it to automatically search the nearby area for items.
The harvesting process is simple, assuming you have the proper harvesting tool equipped. For example if you had a Powered Saw and you came across a Gnarled Tree, you could double click it or hit the auto-attack button to chop it down. You then double click the downed tree to loot its contents: in this case Wood would be the common result. That Wood could then be used in Crafting.
Now and again you'll receive some rare items when harvesting. These are typically rare Crafting items, but can also be collection items or usable items.
Different resource nodes are available in different zones, and they spawn in random locations. You can find things like wood or ore in most zones, but you'll only find Byna Berries in certain locations. Higher quality and more rare resource types are only found in higher end zones, and may have a minimum skill requirement to effectively harvest.
Crafting skills have long been a staple in MMOGs, as something that players can do when they are bored of combat, or to produce items which make them more combat effective. We've attempted to take our crafting system back to the basics that made Ultima Online such a fun game. In your typical MMOG, your ability to craft and harvest is tied directly into your combat level. You'll need items that drop from higher end monsters or resources in higher end areas that you may not be able to do without leveling up. While there are some components that you will only be able to find on monsters, they are tradable components. Most of the components needed can be harvested or obtained by completing crafting missions.
In order to craft anything, you will first need to learn the recipe. Recipes are learned by reading a Crafting Book which contains them. Players who begin their careers as a crafting profession will already be given one or more of these books when they create their character. Each book typically has 2-20 different recipes.
The actual crafting process takes place as Crafting Stations, which can be found in most cities. Click on the crafting station and you'll receive the Crafting GUI. This GUI is split into three sections. The left hand section allows you to select which Recipe Book you want to open up. Once that is selected, the upper right section will display the list of recipes in that particular book. They are color coded based on the difficulty level to produce in relation to your crafting skill level. The bottom right section will display the required items to craft this recipe. If you have all of the items in your inventory already then a Craft button will appear, allowing you to make the combine.
It should be noted that there are multiple resulting items that any recipe can produce. The quality of the result will vary based on the skill level required by that recipe and on your own skill level. Crafting recipes that are trivial will result in higher quality results more often. If a recipe is challenging to you, then you probably will only be able to produce lower quality versions of it most of the time.
We've made an effort to ensure that our crafting system can create quality and useful items. Some crafting skills such as Hacking have other purposes in addition to being able to allow you to craft items. In the case of Hacking it can also be used to open containers or hack systems. Trap Knowledge also fits into this category, allowing you to create, detect and set traps. There are other crafting skill trees which are primarily support trees to other skills.
There are a wide variety of Crafting Missions. These generated missions will ask you to create some items for NPCs, and can reward players with a variety of rewards including equipment, crafting components, recipe books or training cards.
It's a dangerous world out there, and you'll probably find yourself in combat before too long. We've taken strides to ensure that players can have non-combat careers with our harvesting, crafting and diplomacy skill trees. But even then, sometimes you'll find yourself jumped by a patrolling monster (or player) and you'll need to either flee or defend yourself.
The combat system in The Repopulation will be familiar to anyone who has played a modern MMORPG. We use a series of abilities that can be placed on your action bar, cool down times and usage times on all of our abilities. The system plays out in a role playing strategy style and not in a first person shooter type action style. We have introduced a number of new wrinkles to the old system though, and we'll describe those in this section.
When you target an enemy you will receive a rough estimation of how difficult they would be to defeat above their name. If there are up arrows above the name, then this monster will be difficult to kill. The more arrows, the higher the difficulty level. Down arrows indicate a monster that you should be able to kill. No arrows indicate an even fight. Some monsters, such as bosses, are intended for groups of players, or multiple groups of players (raids). If you encounter a boss intended for a single group, you will see three heads displayed in blue to the right of their name. If they are intended for multiple groups of players, you will see many heads.
One of the more unique systems is the use of cover objects. All characters receive the Take Cover ability at character creation. This skill is used when you are standing near an object that is marked as a Cover Object, to hide behind that object and use it for defensive purposes. For example if you see a sandbag bunker or a pile of refuse you could take cover behind it by crouching, making it difficult to more difficult to hit you plus you will get the crouching bonus. Intelligent NPCs will also take advantage of these objects though, so be forewarned.
When you select an NPC you may notice a paperdoll appears, by default it is located to the right of your action bar. This paper doll will have a red mark on the chest. This is your target location indicator. It reflects which part of the body you are aiming for on your target. Aiming at different locations is desirable for several reasons. First off, the amount of armor they are wearing could make certain areas less protected. If your opponent has an Ultra Heavy Breastplate on, but just Ultra Light leggings, then you may want to aim at their legs. Beyond this though each target area has a unique affect:
Each weapon has a specific range at which they are most effective, or at which they are completely ineffective. Sniper rifles for example are effective at log distances. A normal rifle may be able to reach some of the monsters at similar ranges, but they will be less accurate as it is outside of their effective range. Melee weapons obviously have very short ranges in which they can be used. Because the accuracy levels can be hard for players to differentiate when switching weapons, we have placed an Accuracy Indicator on the top of your action bar. You will notice this light up any time you select an NPC who is in attack range of your currently equipped weapon (or weapons if dual wielding). If an NPC is in a position where your attack will not be very accurate this bar will be filled at a very low level. When they are in optimal range it will be completely filled. You should take advantage of the Accuracy Indicator to maximize your combat effectiveness.
Certain weapons and shields are energy based. This will require you to purchase an Energy Tank so that you can build up energy to use them. Energy weapons are useful because they do a different type of damage, and are generally more effective against heavier armor types as it ignores their armor. In order to stop energy weapons the target will need an energy tank on them to power their energy shield. Energy weapons drain this shield fast while regular ranged weapons will drain some of the energy, but at a much slower rate. If you are going to use an energy weapon it is a good idea to balance it out with how much power you are going to need to power your shield as you can find your weapon not working very well and yourself open to ranged fire since you have nothing to stop it any longer. There are even energy melee weapons, but they are a bit rarer than energy based ranged weapons.
Also on your action bar is the Momentum meter. Momentum is a reflection of how combat is going for you. It will slowly drain when you are not in combat or when negative things happen to your character. It will slowly build as positive things happen to your character while in combat. Some special abilities have a Momentum requirement, and will only become usable when you have sufficient Momentum. These are generally powerful abilities, but will not be usable unless you have gained momentum.
Chains Abilities are special abilities which are more effective when a previous ability has been used. In some games such as Dark Age of Camelot or Age of Conan, chains are very common but if you miss any one attack in a chain the following attacks will not be usable. We went with a different approach. You can use later abilities in a chain, but they will be less effective if the previous requirements haven't been met. More importantly, the chains can be shared by multiple players through our Opening system. Certain abilities have chances to create openings when they are successful. Other abilities will be more effective during the window that those openings are available. By coordinating with your allies to land certain attacks at different times, you can maximize one another's effectiveness by feeding off the openings created by others.
You might have noticed that there are two different movement modes, and three different combat positions on your action bar. The movement positions are Walk and Run. Walk mode is your standard baseline movement. You will receive no penalties, but you will move at slow rate. Run mode allows you to move more quickly, but it slowly drains your energy, and makes your attacks a bit less accurate.
The combat positions are: Standing, Crouching and Prone. Standing is your baseline standing up position. Crouching will limit your movement speed significantly and make you more vulnerable to melee attacks, but it will increase your ranged accuracy and make you less vulnerable to ranged attacks. Prone is similar to crouching, but the modifiers are more notable. A sniper may want to lie prone and tear an opponent apart, but if a character with a melee weapon gets near them, they could find themselves in trouble in a hurry.
There are 5 different armor/clothing categories in The Repopulation, with advantages and disadvantages to each. They are classified as Ultra-Light, Light, Medium, Heavy and Ultra-Heavy. Unlike in most fantasy MMOGs where you generally want the heaviest armor you can find, there is a tradeoff to that in The Repopulation. Heavier armor will absorb more damage and protect you better, but it will also make you move significantly slower and consume energy faster. If you see a character running around in big bulky armor, they will move quite a bit slower than someone in Ultra Light. Each of these armor types is also a skill, and will become more useful as you wear it more often. Our goal here is to make the armor mean something, and for different playing styles to be more successful with different types of gear.
There are 19 different forms of damage in The Repopulation. These are referred to as Resistances in most MMOGs, but our system goes a bit beyond that. In addition to the resistances that your armor or stats can provide you vs. different attacks, there are also different defensive skills vs. many types of weapons. For example there is Swordfighting Defense, which reflects your ability to defend yourself when being attacked by a sword. The more often you are attacked by certain weapons, the better you learn to defend yourself against them.
Another thing to note is that monsters have different intelligence settings with some random elements. More intelligent monsters may target specific parts of your body that are weaker in armor, or they may seek cover behind cover objects. Different monster types have different special attacks. We have a few other AI tricks up our sleeve that we'll be introducing later on in testing.
We mentioned previously that each weapon type/skill tree has a specific purpose and we will document those below:
Melee weapons are useful despite their short range because they are more capable of deliverig elemental or special damage types. Things such as Vibrating Swords or Fusion Axes can be quite deadly. Some examples of melee weapon modifiers include: Venomous Injection Devices, Heat and Cold Weapons, Disease Injection, Vibrating Weapons, Shock, Force, Fusion, Acid, EMP and Sonic attacks.
Ranged weapons also receive their own unique set of modifiers, though they are a bit more vanilla in general. Some examples of ranged weapon modifiers include: Silentfire, Targeting Computers, EMP, Lightning, and Heated Projectiles.
Rhyldan has an assortment of different monster species, and we have developed a system which rewards players for destroying these beasts. As you slay a certain species you will increase your knowledge against that particular species. The more familiar you are with a particular species, the more effective you will be in combat against them.You could also earn unique titles.
The effects of species mastery are very subtle, but they are there.
Death is an annoyance in The Repopulation, and nothing more. When a player dies he will be spawned at whatever cloning facility or apartment complex they had last bound themselves to with the /bind command. The only penalty of death is the time required to run back.
NOTE: We are planning to rework the death mechanics in the near future. Currently you auto-release back at spawn. If your respawn point has been captured, you default back to your starting city or a safe point. In the future you will not auto-release, so we can allow for revive skills to be used. We will also offer you your choice to respawn in any friendly controlled bind point in the current zone, or at your bind point.
Alliances in The Repopulation are bands of up to 6 players who hunt together and are able to split the loot and monster bonuses from missions. You can invite a player into your alliance by clicking the Invite button on the Group Window or typing /invite when you have the player targeted. They can then join by clicking on the join button.
The most obvious advantage of alliances are that they allow you to communicate with your allies by typing /a <text> in the chat widow. They also allow you to monitor all of your allies health bars though, and to click on their health bars to easily target them. If you are playing an assistance role such as using your medical skills, this is invaluable.
Another feature is that coin loot will automatically be split when it is looted. When completing missions it takes it a step further. The coin reward from a mission will be split among alliance members, but everyone in the alliance receives a chance at any additional loot that may be rewarded. This could include Training Cards or equipment. The player who turns in the mission will receive a full chance at loot, while each additional member receives a lesser chance based on the number of players in the alliance.
NOTE: In the future we will be extending the alliance system so that you can band two alliances together to form a Raid, and so that the loot system allows for a Need/Greed/Pass system for looted items.
Bosses are nothing new to RPGs, or most genres for that sake. The definition of boss here is a less common monster who is tougher than normal beasts, often has special abilities, and usually has better loot than your garden variety mob. This includes both Raid bosses (bosses that require multiple alliances to defeat) and solo or single alliance bosses.
One thing that always disturbed us about boss encounters, in particular raid encounters, was that they had static abilities. While these abilities made them a pain for the original guilds to conquer, once the strategies were known they were easily defeated. Guilds in fantasy games would commonly farm the monsters just for their loot once they had discovered the tactic, until they had killed the bosses so many times that they were bored out of their minds.
We've attempted to alleviate this problem in The Repopulation by allowing all of our bosses to have generated special abilities. That doesn't mean they can't have static abilities, as well. But each boss mob has a setting that determines how many generated special abilities they can have. It then chooses a random special ability from those available for that boss mobs tier. The tiers of boss mobs are decided by the zone that they spawn in, the mission instance dificulty level and/or the number of players in your alliance or raid if you are doing an instanced boss. There are over 125 different special boss abilities currently, across 7 different tiers.
This system ensures that when you face a boss, they will be a little bit different. You will need to adjust your tactics based on their special abilities. The loot is randomized based on tiers (though unique loot can also be assigned), and in the end we hope that this system will provide clans with a raiding system that won't get old or easy overnight.
One of the mission types that we assign players is clan missions. These missions take your clans level into account and use that to generate you special raid missions or instances with bosses of the appropriate skill range of your clan.
Everquest 2 was the first game I came across that rewarded players for exploration by granting them experience when they first discovered a new area. Nowadays this is common in MMOGs.
Being a skills based game we couldn't very well award players experience for discovering new areas, but we do reward them. Each exploration point can be attributed to a skill of its choosing, and when you explore that area you will gain a minor but permanent increase to that skill. For example visiting the city of Plymouth will grant a permament increase to your Diplomacy skill, while visiting the Tunnelwatch Battlefield gives a boost to your Combat Tactics.
Each exploration point also marks your character with a character flag denoting that you had been there before. That flag is used primarily to ensure that you oly receive the exploration bonus once, but it can also be used as a filter that allows you access to different missions.
One of the most unique factors of The Repopulation is our Mission generation system. Generated missions are nothing new and have appeared in Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies to name a few games. In the past though generated missions were primarily simple kill or delivery quests. We've taken that concept a step forward in The Repopulation.
While our mission are generated, they come from hand-crafted templates. The templates can be very complex. Our starting tutorial is an example of a templated quest with generated elements. This is the same quest, but can be obtained by different players from different factions, which would result in the necessary NPCs being different. This is a 17 step generated mission. In this case the mission is primarily static, just with differences based on the factions. The point is though that we can have extremely long quests such as Epic quests where the locations, NPCs, targets, and items are randomly generated. In general our quest system can do about everything you see in any other system out there, except that we can also generate the NPCs, items or locations that you must visit.
Where your typical MMOG might ship with 300-3000 hand-tailored quests, 99% of those are simple kill or deliver quests, and they are all only doable once. With our system we have a mix of simple and complex quests that can fall into a variety of different categories. At the time of writing there are over 100 different mission templates currently in-game, and each of those can be reused many times over the course of the players career.
Another innovation is that players don't typically need to seek out Missions, they simply turn on their LFW button (which you'll do at the end of the tutorial) and the NPCs will seek out your assistance instead. There is no more running around and hailing NPCs or looking for markers over their heads. You can now receive new missions even while out in the wilderness. Some missions will even wire your rewards rather than forcing you to return to town.
Periodically you'll notice that you have a new email. Head into your PDA and click on the Mail Icon and you can read the mail. It will be a rough description of what you will ned to do in the quest, and you'll have the option of Accepting or Rejecting the job offer. If you accept it, then the quick info will appear on your Mission Window on the right hand side of your screen, by default. There is a yellow button on the side of each quest, and you may have one green button. Clicking these buttons will pop up the Mission Journal, which gives a bit more information on what you need to do for this mission, and will also set this mission as your currently tracked mission, which sets the button to green.
When a mission is tracked it may display a tracking arrow towards the NPC or area needed on your Mini-map. This is configured per mission template, and some objectives are only trackable if you are in tracking range. Our goal here was to make it easy for players to track simple quests and complete them, while allowing us to hide that information on more complex quests if we desire. Early on you'll be able to track most every quest, as you reach more epic quests then you may need to figure out some things on your own from time to time.
One of the advantages of our approach of having NPCs contact players with job offers is that we can tailor your missions to your playing style. The generation system takes into account all of your skill levels and tries to match you with appropriate mission templates. If you are a Firearms Crafter, you will find yourself getting quite a few Firearms Crafting assignments, where someone who doesn't craft won't receive any. If you spend most of your time in combat, you'll receive mostly combat assignments. When you first start off you'll receive a lot of menial tasks such as delivery quests.
If you have been doing some shady activities, you may earn the attention of Underworld types who will offer you some of the shadier assignments such as theft, assassination or espionage. It should be noted that these activities may cause the normal every day citizens or the local law enforcement to sour on you, but will also open up unique rewards that can only be obtained by breaking some rules.
Our missions are generated using specific criteria for NPCs such as their professions, personalities, relationships, moods, etc. Each of our NPCs has settings in all of these areas. This allows our generated missions to fit the right criteria. If a quest asks you to visit a weaponsmith, you'll get a weaponsmith. The local baker probably isn't going to hire you for a kill quest. You won't get missions to kill a monster that is on the other side of the world when your just starting out. The criteria allows us to tailor the missions so that they are appropriate for you, and so that certain NPCs will wind up in certain types of situations.
Another feature of our mission system is that we can roll against any skill and use those rolls to provide alternate endings to missions. Sometimes players will be given branching dialog options and one of those might be the standard baseline option, where the other option will require a skill check. If you fail the check you might fail the mission or bad things could happen, but if you succeed you could gain a better rewards or the mission could be extended even further. At the time of writing there are templates which take advantage of the Diplomacy, Intimidation and Hacking skills. We'll continue to add in more templates to take advantage of other skills as we go.
It should be noted that you can only have 5 generated missions active at any time. Static missions such as collections or bounties are always available from NPCs and repeatable. They are used to collect rare items that can be foraged, harvested or found on monsters in exchange for a reward.
Rewards for completing missions range from items, to new special abilities, to DNA which can be used to advance skills of your choice by visiting DNA Stations at the Cloning Facilities.
Instances are a very big part of most modern MMOGs, and The Repopulation is no different. For those new to the genre, instanced zones are special zones which give a unique instance for each player or alliance that enters them. The advantage of this is no crowding and players can experience a dungeon filled with monsters. We do realize though, that some players prefer the traditional, static dungeon crawl, and there are plenty of those dungeons to be found, as well.
Our instances rely heavily on generated content. Many instances will only be accessible if you have a quest that asks for that particular instance, or if someone in your alliance does. If you are in an alliance the first person who zones into an instance will have their mission used when it comes to generating the instance. Other players in the alliance can enter and aid in the instance, but it will be using the original players mission. You can accompany them to turn the mission in though to receive a chance at loot and rewards.
Where a typical MMOG instance involves a collection of static monsters and content, ours focus on generation. Each instance type (example: Sewers, Industrial, Caves, etc) can have many different layouts. When a player enters into an instance it looks for a quest that they have for that instance. The quest would have specific requirements, and it makes sure that all of those requirements get met when your instance is created.
Monsters, bosses and traps are then populated based on your skill level and the number of players in your alliance. If you enter an instance solo, you'll get an easier instance than if you enter it with a full alliance. This means there may be less monsters and traps, and those monsters may be lower level. The idea here is that with enough dungeon templates and by randomizing the monsters and traps of a zone, as well as the objectives, players will be able to have a more unique dungeon crawling experience.
NOTE: We have a limited number of layouts at this stage of testing, but we'll fill them in as we go.
Events are special occurances that occur in various zones. Every outdoor zone has at least one event. These events don't occur constantly, and often will broadcast to anyone in the area when they do occur.
Anyone who has played Warhammer Online would be familiar with the concept of public quests. Events are our version of public quests. They don't constantly happen the way that public quests do, and they don't list a collection of artificial goals. But they otherwise work in the same way.
An example of an entry level event is the Lesoo Invasion in Plymouth. When the alarm bells sound, Lesoo attackers will spawn outside of Tunnelwatch and begin to lay a siege to the area. Soldiers will spawn in Tunnelwatch in an attempt to attempt to repel the attackers. They will not suceed in defending without help from players, however. If players are able to defeat the first wave of Lesoo, more will come, with greater numbers and higher difficulty levels. This will include bosses at different stages.
If an event is successfully completed then every player who participated in that event will receive a share of Military Experience and a chance at loot based on their contributions. This happens automatically. If you were just standing around watching and landed one attack your chances at these will be slim to none. Those who were very involved will have a higher chance.
Events can also award medals for exemplary performances. These medals give you a boost to a particular skill when acquired, as well as granting a character flag. Those characer flags can be used by the mission generation system to generate you new types of missions.
One of the most loved, and most hated features in Warhammer Online was their scenario system. Scenarios were Player vs. Player instances that were similar to FPS servers. These scenarios gave players specific goals and pitted the two factions against one another. Players then received a split of experience and realm points based on their contributions.
Scenarios were near-universally loved by players at the early levels. By the time players began to reach the mid-upper levels though they began to tire of them for a variety of reasons. For one, they found themselves doing the same scenarios over and over again, and it became repetitive. The other reason was that it took players away from the world, and at any given time half the players on a server would be inside of scenarios. This resulted in a barren world, where many players didn't do anything but compete in scenarios all day, due to not having enough break time in between them to get anything productive done. Questing in between scenarios resulted in a net loss of experience beause you couldn't do the scenario quests in time between instances.
We loved the basic premise of WAR's scenarios, but noted that it would be necessary to make improvements to it in order to keep from falling into the same pitfalls that Mythic did. As a result we have made two major changes in our own implementation. The first is that players can not determine which engagements they will be a part of. If you want to be eligible for engagements you turn the flag on through your PDA. Which engagement you receive though will be random, so you will not get the same instances again and again. There is also a delay in the way our queue system works to ensure that you won't constantly be in engagements. The goal here is for players to have these types of opportunities once every so often during their gameplay session, and for them to be offered to them through a radio transmission.
Another thing we have done is to allow for both Player vs. Environment (PvE) and Player vs. Player (PvP) engagements. Player vs. Environment engagements are similar to Events, except that they are instanced and random.
Both types of engagements will reward a player with military experience based on their contributions to the engagement. They will only receive military experience if they successfully complete the engagement though.
What would a science fiction game be without vehicles? Vehicles in The Repopulation are pricey, and can be purchased from NPCs or crafted by players.
The primary role of vehicles is to increase your movement speed. Each vehicle type controls a bit differently, but the common usage is to reduce travel time. You use a vehicle by dragging it to your action bar when you acquire it, and then clicking on the action bar icon to use it and enter your vehicle.
While in a vehicle you will not be able to use the vast majority of your skills. The exception is vehicle skills. As you grow in operating skill you can gain special abilities that can only be used while in a vehicle. Examples of vehicle abilities include: Ram Into, Burst Fire and Turbo Boost. It should be noted that vehicle abilities which fire weapons will require you to have a vehicle that is equipped with weapons.
Another uncommon feature of our vehicle system is that vehicles have their own inventory. This means that you can upgrade your vehicle with things like weapons, turbo boosters, an enhanced engine, etc. Our hope is that players find “tricking out their dies” as an interesting form of alternate advancement.
Over time your vehicles will begin to break down from wear and tear. Their repair level will be noticable when you use a tooltip over the vehicle item or open up an item information window for it. Vehicles can be repaired by an Automotive Engineer's Tune Up skill.
Pets are another long-time staple in MMORPGs. In the Repopulation pets play a major role, and all characters can have them. There are three types of pets in the Repopulation: Robotics, Genetically Engineered and Tamed. Each of these pets is acquired in a different manner, and has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, which will be covered shortly.
Pets have egos, and they are not all easy to control. The more intelligent or powerful a pet, the more difficult they will be to control. Pet commands operate under the Pet Control skill tree, and this will reflect your ability to control your pets. If your pet is too strong-willed for your Pet Control skill, it may refuse some of your commands.
It should be noted that you can only use one pet at any given time, regardless of the pet type.
Robotic pets are expensive but offer the widest variety of functions. They serve specific roles and can be used as medical robots, assistance, etc. Robotic pets will never turn on their master. Robots can be used many times, but do require fresh batteries. They will never be permanently destroyed. Since robots can be purchased from other players and due to their ability to perform different duties, they make good general purpose pets.
Robotic pets are quite vulnerable to Electro-magnetic Pulse attacks, and can also be improved or sabotaged by Robotic Engineers.
Another unique aspect of robots is that they have their own inventory system, similar to vehicles. Example of robotic upgrades include Shielding Plates, Targeting Computers, Enhanced Engines, and Weapon Attachments. Similar to vehicles, we hope that the ability to develop unique robots will be attractive to players.
Genetically engineered pets are created using the Genetic Engineering skill tree. This process involves gathering a DNA sample of the species of animal that you wish to produce, and then creating the pet through crafting. Advanced Genetic Engineers can combine DNA types to create hybrid pets.
The big advantage of genetically engineered pets is that they can use the special abilities of their species, though typically genetically engineered pets are less powerful than the monsters they were cloned from.
The downside to genetically engineered pets is that they will perish forever when killed. Each creation is like a one charge pet. When that pet dies, you will need to create another. You can stack these pets though and carry a number around. These pets can be purchased from other players.
Tamed pets are obtained through the Animal Taming skill. This only works on certain species and they must be tamed when they are young. Young pets are not very powerful at all, but they will slowly grow in power as they age.
Tamed pets are interesting in that they can have some special attacks, and when they fully mature they can be quite powerful. They will not immediately perish if they are defeated in game, but they do rely on the Veterinary Medicine skill to keep them going. Veterinary Medicine can heal or cure tamed pets of their ilnesses.
Over time as your pet dies more often they will take ill health. It is very important that a Veterinarian gives them proper attention. Otherwise this pet could be permanently killed.
What is a Role Playing Game without stats? Our stats are similar to what you will find in most other RPGs, but each affects a slew of different things.
We also have 3 combat use values that replace HP/MP that is seen in many games.
The Repopulation is skills based. That means there are no levels. Instead your character is created with 102 uniquely different skill trees. All characters start with these same skills at an unskilled level. When you speak to the Cloning Officer after creating your character, they will ask you what your profession was on Earth. Whatever you answer here will determine your starting skills, equipment and abilities. This will give you a boost in that field, but is not a class.
For example if you mention that you were a Weaponsmith in your prior life you would start with some knowledge in Firearms Crafting and Artillery. You'd be given books that when read would teach you Crafting Recipes related to these skills. Meanwhile someone who was previously a Spy would gain some knowledge to their Stealth and Disguise skills trees, and would be given some Stun Grenades, Disguise Kits, and the special ability: Disguise. A player who started as a Spy could still acquire the Basic Firearms Crafting book and practice the recipes in it to become a Firearms Crafter, just as the weaponsmith could learn the art of Stealth and Disguise.
Viewing the Skills tab from your Character Menu will show you a complete list of your skills, and will be expandable and retractable by filter area. There will be a visual bar which shows your progress level to the next skill rank. You increase your skill in a particular tree by using the abilities of that tree. For example if you wish to increase your Pistol Tactics, you could increase it by attacking monsters with a Pistol. Acrobatics can be increased by using Acrobatic skills, or jumping off the side of mountains. Crafting skills are increased by crafting items from that tree, etc.
The visual indicator breaks each skill down into groups, which are sort of like a level for that particular skill. There are 14 levels for each skill tree. The ranks are:
There are two reasons for breaking skills up along these lines. The first is so players can receive some visual feedback on their progress, and the second is because your special abilities are generally grouped to match up with a particular skill rank. This is not always the case, but in most cases it is.
Special Abilities are like spells in a fantasy game, and are learned by using Training Cards. These cards will teach you the ability, and can be obtained by completing Missions. There are a wide variety of abilities. Characters may receive the Unthreatening Approach ability at level 1, for example. This ability is based on the Diplomacy skill tree, and will attempt to allow you to approach closer to a monster before drawing their aggression. Later on if that player raises their Diplomacy skill to Above Average or better they could receive an ability that would attempt to make peace with (detaunt) a monster.
The one thing to note here is that special abilities are not obtained automatically when you reach a new skill rank. Instead you must obtain the training card. The cards will only be given to players who have sufficient skill, and certain cards are available from certain mission types. It could take you quite some time to obtain all of the different abilities that you have the skills for, and as a result of the way the system works, two players with the exact same skill levels could have much different abilities deriving from those skills. You train a new ability by double left clicking on the training card.
In addition to the 102 different starting skills, there are three unique advanced skill trees, that must be unlocked. Each of these are significant game-altering trees, and we will not comment on them any further in an effort to maintain their mystique. Access to these trees is something that will happen over months or years, and will slowly introduce itself over time if you meet the qualifications.
You can drag the abilities onto your Action Bar for quick use. It should be noted that our action bars display 40 actions by default, but you will notice a twizzle button next to each specific row. Clicking on that button will toggle to additional pages for that section.
Another thing that should be noted is that skills work on a diminishing returns system. The further you go up in skill, the smaller your returns will be, and it will take you a longer duration of time before you reach the next rank. We hide the actual numbers from players, instead giving you a progress bar and text descriptions, but there are a total of 50,000 maximum skill points in each tree. It would take players a significant amount of time to max each tree, and the returns they get from levels past Teacher will be smaller.
That is counter-acted by the fact that there is no hard skill cap on how many skills you can maximize. The typical approach in skills based games is to give players a hard cap that all of their skills combined can reach. This is done so that players can't become god-characters (tank mages for example in UO). We elected to take a different approach though, and I'll describe that in detail in the next chapter.
In our case, you could feasibly max every skill tree. It would take a very long time though, and the power difference wouldn't be as large as a wide level difference in other games. We achieve that by making certain skills diametrically opposed to others. For example, all combat skill trees other than the two generic lines (Combat Tactics and Defensive Awareness) are linked to a specific type of weapon. Most Pistol Tactics skills will only be usable when you have a pistol equipped, where Swordfighting Tactics would require a sword. We've placed a lot of effort into making sure that each weapon type is a unique experience. For example Axes provide good melee Area of Effect (AoE) damage, where Shotguns provide medium range AoE based on the point of impact, and can sometimes knock your opponents backwards. Sniper Rifles meanwhile are slow firing, heavy hitting long range weapons.
The special abilities in the respective lines fall into those different categories, maximizing the benefits of each weapon. So while you could become a Grandmaster in both Polearm Tactics and Sniper Tactics, you would only be able to use the special abilities of one of those lines at a time. There are exceptions such as the aforementioned Combat Tactics, which has some generic combat abilities, or things such as Ranged Tactics which can have abilities that can be used by any Ranged Weapon, but in general mastering skills gives you more options, but not necessarily more power.
Each skill is also tied into a certain stat. As you increase each skill, those stats will also slowly go up. Doing physical activities will increase your Strength, which will have a minor affect on all strength activities. Survival or other outdoor activities will increase your Constitution, which will result in having more Health to work with, etc.
Stealth is a reflection of your ability to camouflage, hide or otherwise cloak yourself from sight. All players have the ability to sneak at character creation, though that doesn't mean they will be effective in doing so, merely that they are attempting to do so. Attacking or being attacked will drop your stealth.
In order to maximize your stealth ability you will need to use other special abilities or items to reduce your visibility. Silentfire weapons or scouts armor will make it easier for you to remain hidden, while abilities such as camouflage will require an item (such as a Camoflauge kit) but will reduce your visibility after you've used it.
You will have a rough gauge of how effective your stealth is by visually looking at your character. When completely stealthed you will be hidden completely from sight. Your character will be faded to varying degrees based on how well hidden you are otherwise.
Other players and monsters will have a chance to spot you based on their own ability to detect stealthed beings. Sentry alarms and traps are also good ways to detect stealthed players.
Certain combat abilities will only be usable when you are successfully hidden from sight.
In addition to stealth there are a number of other skills which were typically rogue skills in pen and paper games. Our rogue skills include: Stealth, Acrobatics, Asssassination, Balance, Climbing, Acrobatics, Dirty Fighting, Hacking, Disguise, Poisoning, and Trap Knowledge.
Acrobatics allows you to reduce falling damage, and as it increases you can also give you some special abilities such as Roll, which allows you to roll away from danger and gain a defensive bonus for a short time. Balance is similar, but it helps prevent you from being knocked
Assassination is your typical rogue stealthed damage line, and deals in heavy hitting attacks that must be carefully set up. Disguise goes hand in hand with Assassination and lets you disguise your appearance through the use of Disguise Kits. Dirty Fighting is a debuff line which can provide opportunities to make other attacks more effective.
Trap Knowledge and Hacking are combination a combination of rogue and crafting trees. Hacking allows you to hack into security systems and unlock devices using a mini-game style approach. It can also be used to create Hacking Consoles, various type of Software, and to improve weapons.
Trap Knowledge allows you to create, detect, disable and set traps using our trigger object system, which we will cover in the next section. Traps can be detected using the Tracking system, and once they are detected you can attempt to disable them. Failing to do could backfire though and cause them to be triggered.
Trigger objects are objects which players can place into the world using abilities or items. These items will then have a positive or a negative effect on other plyaers who enter into the trigger radius.
Traps are a classic example of Trigger Objects, and there are a variety of different trap types in The Repopulation. Some of the traps in The Repopulation include: Sentry Alarms, Flash Traps, Ankle Wire, Detonation Charges, Net Traps and Chaos Mines. Each of these traps requires an item which can be crafted or purchased from vendors in some cases, and each type has a unique effect.
Traps will remain on the ground for a specific duration, which varies by the trap. They can be destroyed or disarmed by players, though.
Other examples of trigger objects include Camps, which will restore health and energy to allies who sit near them, and walls. Walls were prevalent in pen and paper games, but haven't been used much in MMOGs. For example an Installations crafter could create a Wall and use it to block players out during a siege and attempt to hold them off. Or a skilled flamethrower could lay down a wall of flame which would damage players when they passed through it.
Social skills constitute the following skill trees: Defensive Tactics, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Leadership and Taunting. These skill trees are a mixture of mission altering people handling skills, and combat abilities.
Defensive Tactics allows you to increase the effectiveness of your alliance by instilling them with defensive ideals. It is required for a number of the skills attained through moving up the military ranks.Leadership is similar to Defensive Tactics except that it is more far reaching. Leadership skills allow you to motivate your allies into being more productive offensively or all around.
Diplomacy reflects your ability to deal with other people. In the context of completing missions this allows you to manipulate the NPCs to get desired affects out of them if sucessful. Of course it could also backfire if you fail. In combat terms it is used in a variety of skills that are aimed at reducing a monsters aggression towards you or your allies, or confusing your opponent.
The Intimidation skill tree attempts to bully NPCs or players. In missions this could be use to intimidate a player into doing what you need them to do. In combat terms it could be used to instill fear into an opponent, possibly making them turn tail and run. It could also be used to intimidate an opponent into attacking a differnet character. It can also be used to place yourself ito a state of rage and motivate your allies to go berserk alongside you.
Taunting is your ability to goad an opponent into doing what you want them to do. This is typically an attempt to get them to attack you instead of your allies.
There are three forms of medical skills: First Aid, Combat Healing and Veterinary Medicine.
Veterinary Medicine skills are only usable on pet animals.
First Aid is a true medical skill which has no item requirements. First Aid skills are typically short range and have a long usage time. They are ideal for downtime healing but can also be used during combat.
Combat Healing abilities all require the use of equipment such as Health Stims or Nanos. These items are created by crafters or can be purchased from vendors in some cases. Combat Healing provides fast acting, but short range healing. They are effective, but require you to keep the appropriate items stocked.
Both First Aid and Combat Healing have various types of utility capabilities, as well. For example Combat Healers are adept at dealing with things like extinguishing players who are on fire, or stopping bleeding. First Aid, similar to the healing specializes in longer activities, but can neutralize poisons, diseases or other negative effects.
Several other skill trees such as Meditation and Leadership have one or more forms of limited healing through the form of motivation or concentration. These are few and far between though and are limited forms of healing.
Unlike most modern MMOGs, the Repopulation has a full day and night cycle that includes NPCs shutting down their shops during certain hours, and which features a rather dark night time sky. You'll see noticable differences between night and day, including shop billboards turning and off during certain hours, lights turning on or off, and shadows moving with the sun (in advanced lighting mode).
There are some places which can get quite dark and where you will probably want at least one player carrying a light source to navigate through. This is the case in some dungeons or locations late at night.
I just wanted to make a few notes on our user interface. Most of the windows can be drug and moved around your screen by dragging the top left edge of them and moving. If you close your interface and want to bring it back up, you can do so by hitting the enter key. Hitting the enter key wiill also automatically start typing into your most recently used chat window.
Your status bar is the window on the top left of your screen by default. It has three bars to denote your Health and Morale, your energy (like mana), and the energy level of your shields (if you have an energy tank). You will notice some text that reads Menu on the right hand portion of it. Clicking on the Menu text will drop down a list of all the available windows. Clicking the image for each of this will toggle that window on or off.
The chat window has multiple tabs which can be clicked to filter out different types of information. You can right click on the chat window to select what channels are displayed in your custom tab. The chat window is expandable, meaning you can increase its size if you desire. The tabbed area of the chat bar can also be drug seperately from the actual text display. This allows you to set it into a corner area of your screen and activate it as need be.
The action bar is standard MMOG fare. There are twizzles next to each of the grid sections which allow you to toggle between multiple pages. You can drag an ability or item to the action bar by double clicking on that ability from the ability menu, or by double clicking on the item from your inventory window. You can place usable items on the action bar to easily use them without opening up the inventory screen. Examples of items you may wish to do that for would be Vehicles, Pet Leashes or charged items such as Health Stims.
Above your action bar are quick jump locations to the most often used windows such as Skills, Quests or your PDA. The PDA is a dual-purpose window that allows you to check your email, and browse or post to the auction house. The PDA also allows you to toggle your Looking for Work (LFW), Looking for Group (LFG), Available for Covert Operations (AFC) and Available for Emergency Response (AFE) settings. If Looking for Work is toggled on, you will receive random mission offers in your email. AFC and AFE make you available for Engagements, which we'll cover in detail later. LFG lets other players know that you are looking for a group, and hopefully results in an invite into one. This GUI needs a beautification pass, but is functional as is.
The mini-map can be toggled on or off by pressing the M key, and displays underneath your status bar. The mini-map is important as it denotes the location to find your tracked location, and also can help you find difficult to reach locations. The mini-map has options to zoom in or out, as well as a button which toggles the full-screen map.
The alliance window is used to invite others into your alliance or to join someone elses. It also monitors the health of all members of your alliance, as well as your pet if you have one. You can click the health bars of any of your alliance members to target that player. We'll be giving the alliance window a beautification pass in the future.
The NPC window allows you to trade with NPCs or to select the dialog branches for missions. If an NPC is involved in a mission you are on and is also a vendor you can toggle between the two by clicking the appropriate button on the top of the window. To buy an item you can right click on the item from the window, and to sell an item you would right click on the item to sell from your inventory. Mousing over any item in the NPC Window or in your inventory will pop up a tooltip with information on that item.
You can toggle auto-run by using the V key (by default). This will allow you to run without holding down any button. To exit auto-run you can click the forward or back buttons, or hit V again.
You can begin attacking non-friendly mobs by hitting the Auto-attack button on your Action bar (1 by default) or by double clicking the monster. Their health will appear on the top of their head. During combat any damage done to yourself or your targets will appear on the tops of their heads. Skill ups will also appear on the top of your head.
We'll cover the combat specific windows in the combat section.
One useful skill that every character begins with is Tracking. You can use the Tracking Hotkey or the T key (by default) to start tracking. Tracking will give you a color coded list of targets within tracking range. The range increases as your Tracking increases. Selecting any of the targets and hitting the Track button will create an arrow on your Map that points you in the direction of that NPC. You may only track one target at a time.
If you don't see the Mini Map, hit the M key to bring it up, or expand it from the Status Bar window on the top left side of your screen.
Tracking can also be used to track Points of Interest, such as the location of a city or dungeon. Some points of interest may be hidden from players until they complete a certain mission or accomplishment, and then remain permanently thereafter.