Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Updated Q&A - Character Customization, Roman Gods, and Combat

Most massively multiplayer role-playing games are set in Tolkien-inspired fantasy worlds inhabited by cheery elves, surly dwarves, monstrous orcs, and so on. Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising isn't one of these. The debut game from Perpetual Entertainment is set in the ancient world, and you'll create a Roman character to adventure across a beautiful landscape inhabited by other players and countless enemies. This isn't the familiar ancient world of history as you know it, though, because the world of Rome Rising is full of mythological creatures and the power of the Roman gods themselves. For the latest on Gods & Heroes, we turned to design director Stieg Hedlund. Gods & Heroes is scheduled to launch later this year.

GameSpot: Tell us about character creation in Gods & Heroes. What choices will you have when creating a character? What sort of customization options are there to make sure your character looks unique in an online world populated by thousands of characters?

Stieg Hedlund: There has been a lot of work done on our character creation system lately, and there's a focus on giving the player as few or as many options as they want. When you start the game, you can click through some basic choices and start playing or you can dig down into the advanced options and play with the various sliders to alter everything from height and weight to minute facial features. We'll also be allowing players to pick colors that will appear on tunics and armor. These colors will also affect your minions, appearing on their equipment, as well. So you'll be running around and see someone run by with their squad, and you'll be able to recognize them based on their color schemes.

GS: Give us an overview of the game's six character professions.

SH: The classes are gladiator, mystic, priest, rogue, scout, and soldier. To give some detail, the gladiator is the real hands-on kind of guy. He wants to get out there and kill everything in style, while the soldier is very defensive and focused on outlasting his opponent. Likewise, the scout is your ranged single-target damage dealer, whereas the rogue is like the gladiator's stealthy little brother--get in close and make things bleed. Finally, the priest is your healer and has the ability to curse, while the mystic has the power to just lay down incredible amounts of ranged area damage on targets.

To further augment the classes, they will each have additional feats that allow them to become more specialized in their class. So the gladiator can choose from ropes or fighting gloves to make him more ruthless. The soldier gets shields and two-handed weapons. The rogue gets distance fighting and close fighting. The scout gets infiltration and beast handling. The mystic gets summoning and necromancy. And finally, the priest gets blessing and cursing.

GS: We understand that players will begin as one of the six character classes but can later evolve their characters considerably throughout the course of the game, depending on such factors as which Roman god they follow. Could you give us a specific example of how this will work?

SH: With the way the god system is implemented, players won't be allowed to change their god affiliation. The gods were designed to be a motivation and an unpredictable driving force to both the player and the story of Gods & Heroes. As players progress through the game, they will encounter the god they have chosen to follow and that god will begin to demand certain actions from the player. So if the player chooses to fulfill these requests, then the gods will grant them either an increase in overall favor, give them a new god power, or enhance a known god power. Each god has their own set of powers, and so having two players of the same class but each following a different god in the same party can have very favorable results.

GS: Speaking of the Roman gods, they play a big role in the game, as they grant god powers to those who follow them. How large is the pantheon of Roman gods--how many are in the game? Are all the major gods represented, and are any minor gods in the game?

SH: Gods & Heroes has 12 major gods: Jupiter and Fortuna for the gladiator, Mars and Minerva for the soldier, Apollo and Diana for the scout, Mercury and Nemesis for the rogue, Pluto and Juno for the priest, and Bacchus and Trevia for the mystic. All of the major gods are represented in the game, as well as many of the lesser gods, even if they aren't an option for the player at this point.

GS: What's involved when you level up a character? What kind of skills or abilities can you unlock as you advance? What's the level cap planned to be for Gods & Heroes when it first launches?

SH: Usually when a player levels up a character, they immediately type "Ding!" in the first available chat window to announce their success. Players can reach a maximum of level 50, and they will have a very robust feat tree with a variety of abilities to choose from. Players will be able to upgrade their current feats, choose new ones, or upgrade abilities for their squad. It's also important to point out that new god powers and other goodies can be obtained as players level up.

Carpe Diem

GS: How will the game scale up its difficulty as you become more powerful? And how will it avoid the usual trap of diminishing returns in power against tougher, more-damaging monsters that becomes a tedious "grind"?

SH: This is something we are very conscious of and even more acutely aware of due to the fact that the minion system can easily expand this issue. Recognizing that the group dynamic has evolved significantly and that there will be a lot of players running around with their minions trying to take over the world was key in our design process. We built a world around the minion system, not the other way around. Non-player characters are geared specifically toward the fact that players will either come at them in a full party, or with the maximum number of minions for that area--and often both.

It's not necessarily about dropping tougher monsters in to overwhelm the players, but instead creating different scenarios where the gameplay for players and their minions can be fully realized. A perfect example of this comes in when players start discovering post-50 content. Instead of throwing one enormous boss out there for 40 players to have at, we've created full epic-scale warfare for players to be a part of. Why have all this power and minions and use it to kill one dude? Why not wade into battle and feel like you're defending the greatness of Rome? The trick isn't to just throw the next toughest NPC at the player; it's about creating the most rewarding challenge.

GS: The combat in Gods & Heroes seems unique because it actually looks and feels like real combat, rather than the abstract waving of swords seen in most games in the genre. How does that translate to the controls--do you use various keyboard shortcuts, as in other games? Is your timing a factor?

SH: Timing is definitely a factor, and so is strategy. One of the things we've really focused on with Gods & Heroes was presenting combat as more than just a point-and-click exercise. Combat still works from the traditional keyboard shortcut system, but we've really tried to focus on removing the "punch a button, go get a sandwich" syndrome. We really want players to look at the situation and ask themselves, "Should I send my minions in? Should I use a god power? What moves should I use in this situation?"

The game looks great, and we want that to translate to playing great, as well. A lot of work has gone into tweaking and refining the combat system to make it stand out, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out so far.

GS: We understand that each player can command a party of computer-controlled minions in the game. How does the party system work? How easy is it to manage your party and direct them in combat?

SH: In our eyes, minion control has to be nonintrusive and very intuitive to the player. So we fall back on the same philosophy we used with character creation: Let the player determine his own level of involvement. All minions can be controlled from one control panel for total ease of use. For players who like to be more involved, they can control each of their three units--a functional group of minions, like infantry--individually, issuing different commands to each and controlling how aggressive they are. Minions will require some attention and a little finesse, but directing them in combat can come down to pushing one button and then focusing on your own target. Granted you'll probably lose a minion or two if you just do that, but that option is there.

GS: Finally, how will player-versus-player combat be handled in Gods & Heroes? Will we see large-scale battles between players and all their minions, or will PVP be a smaller-scale affair?

SH: PVP is something that we're looking to really develop after we've launched the game. We do intend to ship with a full PVP server available to the players who really want that play style. As for the normal servers, there will be the ability to duel players and to participate in arena-based combat. We are also trying to implement a tribe-versus-tribe combat system at this time, and as we progress postlaunch, we will be introducing an arena-based ladder system with betting and some other surprises culminating in the eventual launch of total nation-versus-nation warfare.

GS: Thank you.