Official Zenith AMA

In case you missed it, Zenith Devs hosted their first AMA today (August 6, 2019). This page will hold all of the pertinent information obtained from the AMA. Information that does not directly correlate to a question will also be added here! As always, keep in mind that Zenith is in its early early early stages of development. All information here is subject to change. So, without further ado:

Combat
Question: How do you plan to combat cheesing combat? Such as rapid fire bow attacks, or rapid fire slashing. I know you have particular swing patterns that must be hit in order for the skill to activate, but do you plan on having any internal cooldowns for those?

Question: How much do you plan on taking inspiration from SAO? Will there be combat bonuses for rotating attacks between party members? AKA the "Swap" mechanic seen in the first arc of SAO.

Answer: Until You Fall is probably a good example of the "type" of gameplay we're going for. Internal cooldowns will be expressed more like "timing" as in you can keep slashing but if you don't time it correctly it'll be negligible

Combat bonuses would be awesome! SAO kind of just ripped that from ff11 back in the day anyways lol. I could definitely see stuff like that, but we are all about balancing the core mechanics before expanding to things like that.

Question: 

So as we saw by the early combat footage, will the combat only be the pattern "beatsaber" based, or can the play freely swing in whichever motion they want and hit the enemy and do damage? It feels a little weird to make it solely patterns and rythm imo.

Answer: 

It won't be beat saber based only -- that was a really early prototype, for the melee combat look at something like "Until You Fall" we had no idea they were doing something similar (but single player) when we started working on this, but that's a much closer comparison

Headset
Question:

Do you plan on adding more headsets as options post launch? I currently have a Samsung Odyssey Plus and last I checked you weren't currently testing for it.

Answer:

We will support SteamVR which theoretically should support your Odyssey Plus -- we just aren't testing on all HMDs.

Crossplay
Question:

Zenith is being built for desktop simultaneously. Do you worry that VR users may feel obliged to play desktop for efficiency reasons?

Answer: 

The Desktop version of the game will be feature different classes.. imagine it as a window into the same world but with different gameplay styles more suited for desktop, instead of a port of the same classes over.

Question:

Assuming that cross-platform play is an option, how will you balance mouse-and-keyboard advantages against VR players, especially in PvP? A M&K player being able to turn 360 with a single flick of the wrist and noscope someone, while a VR player having to physically turn much slower and aim, seems unfair and unbalanced.

Answer:

VR and Desktop play will feature different types of gameplay mechanics so..would not worry too much about competing between the two platforms

Question:

Will there be vr and non vr crossplay? Or only between vr headsets

Answer:

There will be Cross Play between VR and Non VR

Theme
Dev: One thing to note is though we are hugely inspired by anime like SAO, it's not going to be SAO. Zenith will have it's own unique influences from the hundreds of games we've beaten and played over the years, since we were children.

Question: 

Finally, there's been some debate about the general "theme" of the game, since it has been described as "anime-inspired" and "cyberpunk", while incorporating traditional elements like swords and magic. Are there any plans to have themed areas, or places in the world that aren't necessarily high-tech oriented? You've described the world as "Ghibli-inspired", what did you mean by that?

Answer: 

Outside areas will feel more miyazaki-inspired. There will be more pastoral open scenes.

Crafting
Dev: Crafting will be a big component of the game

Question: 

Additionally, there has been a lot of suggestions on the Discord server from the community about a desire to implement interactive crafting and a player-driven economy, with crafts requiring controller motions and players being able to set up shops rather than rely on NPCs and a universal auction house. Are there any existing plans regarding crafting and economy?

Answer: 

I'd love to do a interactive crafting system -- however, I don't want to make any promises there yet. The first and foremost important thing is to create a compelling resource/crafting/recipe loop and then use the physicality and minigames to make it more fun

Question:

Will there be any crafting mechanics in order to create new weapons, for example a craftable item a boss can drop which can then be crafted with another item in order to create a weapon that isn’t available to buy?

Answer:

There will be craftable items in the game that can only be obtained via crafting.

Bosses
Question:

How involved do you foresee the gearing process being? I love that in SAO, Kirito had to face a Dragon in order to craft a sword that would end up lasting him the rest of the game. Will we see epic opportunities such as this in game or do you think you'll take a more traditional approach of X bosses have X loot tables.

Answer:

Bosses will have loot tables for sure, but there might be additional modifications around that that we would announce later on. I would just stayed tuned there

Suggestions
Question: 

Hey, Zenith crew! On the Discord, a lot of the community members have been making suggestions to the game.

How many of those suggestions are you considering for Zenith? Do you happen to have any specific suggestions in mind that you'd want to talk about?

Answer: 

we really love all the activity on suggestions from the community! To be honest, we probably won't implement most of them, but we will read all of them. Ultimately we need to build the game that we believe in (with feedback from the community) but we don't want to throw in the kitchen sink. The more upvotes something gets, the more likely we are to take a look at the ideas more in detail but even that doesn't guarantee anything.

Question: 

Will you be accompanying suggestions made by other Zenitheans? How much have you already add into the "must add" list?

Answer:

That question was answered above, but it really depends on how well the idea jives with our game design. I can say that the modular class system for example was inspired by a Zenithean.

Economy
Question: 

The economy, since we all know that in mmos the economy is one of the biggest interesting factors and could either break the game or keep it stable. Is there any idea for a supply and demand type of economy? Answer: 
 * 1) Will there be limited resources in the world perhaps? or needs to take time to regen?
 * 2) Will players be able to start shops in the world to try to make a in game living for themselves?

There will be resources that take time to regen. Shops depending on how much we can raise from investors and our kickstarter

Housing
Question: 

As another person asked, housing and land. Will players be able to buy property in the game? Answer: 
 * 1) If yes, what will the purpose of these properties be? Private lounge? Storage? Crafting space?
 * 2) Will there be some sort of property that we can buy and perhaps rent out to some other person? Or maybe will we be able to place down some sort of building?

Housing property will eventually be available, however, not necessarily at launch - Private Lounge, Storage and possibly more.

Question:

Will your housing system be in the same style as final fantasy online? With multiple housings some only achievable as a guild house etc?

Answer:

it's way too early for us to comment on the specifics of player housing yet. I can say it will be less static than FFXIV but that's about it.

Locomotion
Question:

Could you shed more light on the locomotion system? How will it function? Is there anything available currently that resembles it?

Answer:

Typical free locomotion you might see for those that don't get VR sickness.And an out of body locomotion system for people that do get sick (kinda like the VR chat version of movement, but with more affordances and based on joystick control)

Monetization
Question:

Would you please describe your current thoughts on monetization strategy in detail?

Answer:

One price at launch -- anyone who backs the kickstarter will get the game free forever, (still might need to buy expansions later on). Later on we might switch to subscription but kickstarter and earlier backers will not have to pay subscription.

We aren't ruling out different monetization strategies however it will NEVER be P2W.

Genders
Question: 

Are the classes in game going to have assigned genders or can you choose the gender?

Answer: 

You can choose.

AI System
Question:

I was wondering with such a small indie team how you plan to implement an ai that allows your offline player to go on quests with other people? Do you have someone dedicated to that or is it just a cross that bridge when we get to there kind of thing.

Answer:

We don't have a team dedicated to that yet -- but the point I want to make here is that I don't anticipate our team staying this small forever.

System Requirements
Question: 

What graphics card will be suggested? The demo seems beautiful!

Answer: 

It should run on a basic graphics card, between 980 to 1060 i would say. The demos you guys are seeing are definitely not optimized yet, but they are running rift and in engine on our development computers.

Classes
Question:

i was wondering if there's gonna be different classes, and what they might be?

Answer:

We recently revealed our first mage class https://mailchi.mp/1344bbb69bfe/introducing-our-first-class-the-essence-mage

We also have a melee class we're prototyping but we haven't talked much about that except for showing the footage

Question: 

I'm interested in how healing/support characters will work. It is my understanding that there will be various classes that can slot skills to take on any role they would like. In general, will healing be the generic "activate skill and everyone nearby gets X healing", or will it be more active and involved than that (which is what I'm hoping for)?

I am a big fan of support classes that aren't necessarily healing as well, giving buffs and debuffs, and generally manipulating the combat to turn in your party's favor, à la Shiroe of Log Horizon. Are there any plans to have this playstyle be available eventually?

Answer:

We definitely want healing to be more of an active effort. One good example of a mechanic we exploring for example is Overwatch's Mercy's healing beam, which forces you stay stay within LOS of the character.

There will probably still be auras and the like that are more passive and easy to activate but that'll be mixed in with more visceral healing abilities

Question:

How much classes do you plan to have in the game?

Answer:

At least 3 classes at launch, but each class will be highly varied based on the loadout you choose for them.

Servers
Question:

i have question for the server plans are they gonna be Na_East, Na_West Eu, etc?

Answer:

It depends on the performance and throughput we can get. As with an MMORPG, its best to have it fit on one massive server, as smaller indies, thats probably what we'll start off with. But as the world grows we'll need to shard the servers

PVP
Question:

Any opportunity for PVP in your game?

Answer:

There will be PVP but probably not at launch, (soon after, though) we haven't announced any of the PVP modes

Release Date
Question:

I know you said very early development, but do you guys have a planned year for the release?

Answer:

sometime in late 2020 is when we plan on going EA