ZAM sat down with Reality Gap's Mark Hood to discuss Battleswarm: Field of Honor, a free-to-play MMO that combines the FPS and RTS genres.

ZAM: Speaking of items, the game utilizes a consignment system that lets players rent items instead of buying them.  Why go with this system over one that lets players buy their gear outright?

Hood: The problem with letting players keep their items permanently is that players who have been in the game longer lose their incentive to keep playing and earning gold - at some point it might be possible to collect all the content in the game in your inventory which would adversely affect the game economy. If their equipment expires, then there is more motivation to keep playing, earning gold and participating in the game economy, buying used items from other players and trading their own items back into the consignment shop. Take an example from real life - what if everyone bought a single computer and it lasted them forever and they never needed to buy a new one? Then the entire computer economy would shut down and go into stasis, people wouldn't be trading computers or buying/selling them on the fly to the degree that they would when computers wear out, get old or break. Also, like in real life, people rent things that they only want to use for short periods of time - like an apartment or a moving truck. The game has been purposefully constructed so that players' use of equipment is very non-committal and fluid.

ZAM: Getting back to gameplay, have you noticed if players are favoring one side over the other? How do you balance out the humans and bugs?

Hood: I think a lot of our players prefer FPS / blowing things up and the straight action of the Human side but this is balanced by the fact that most maps have more slots for Human players than for Bugs. The balancing act between the Humans and the Bugs is definitely tricky and we have spent a lot of time working on the mechanics of the game. Some of the changes originate from the community and feedback we receive directly, some we get from studying gameplay statistics and others are just from our experience doing online games. It is difficult to please everyone but we do our best. Some maps will always have a slight imbalance toward one side or another, but that keeps things interesting and allows players to try different tactics and have different challenges.

ZAM: Can you give us an overview of the maps in the game?

Hood: We have a lot of different gameplay modes across 20+ different maps – a lot of them you will recognize as traditional online multiplayer FPS/RTS game standards such as "Survivor" and "Capture the Flag," but they all have a unique Battleswarm twist to them. We also have maps on all different scales – for really close, short session fighting games we have a map called "Jungle" where the action gets started really quickly, and then on the other end of the spectrum we have larger maps like "Oasis" and "Ruins" where players get a lot more room to sneak around and try to surprise one another. We even go a step further and allow guilds to fight for possession of a specific map which, if they win it, they can hold and receive a kind of tax or tribute from all games played there.

ZAM: It was just announced on the official forums that you'd like to separate novice and advanced players to give new users a chance to try out the game without being quickly annihilated. Can you give us some more details?

Hood: This is a change we are making to ensure the learning curve for new players isn't too steep, and one way to do that is to keep the new players together so they can practice against other rookies. It's no fun to try a game out and instantly get annihilated by your opponents, so it's important that we keep the world safe for new players to learn and get experience. 

ZAM: Players have complained that the population is too low. Are there any plans in motion to draw players to the game?

Hood: Yes, we have a number of promotions, tournaments and upgrades in the pipeline.

ZAM: Are tournaments going to be a regular feature of the game?

Hood: Our plan is to have some kind of event or tournament every couple of weeks, and we have some big plans for a new kind of tournament within a couple of months. You'll have to stay tuned to the website to see what that is.

ZAM: What can we expect to see in upcoming Battleswarm patches?

Hood: As mentioned earlier, we are working on a new patch to streamline the process of jumping into the game for new users. We wanted to try to lower the learning curve and add more guidance to the interface and tutorial screens so that people who are joining the game will be able to get right into the action as soon as possible. Aside from that you will just have to wait and see.

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff
News Reporter
ZAM.com