Fallen Earth celebrated its one-year anniversary this week, so we sat down with Senior Game Designer Marie Croall to reflect on the past and look toward the future.

ZAM: You unveiled the premium features for the mobile Fallen Earth Companion Application earlier this month. How did you decide which options should be accessible to players from their phones?

Marie Croall: The crafting portion of Fallen Earth's gameplay was the feature that lent itself best to a mobile platform, so we decided to focus on that.  With that in mind, we designed the premium features to support the full crafting lifecycle of buying materials from the Auction House, crafting the item, posting the item to the Auction House and collecting the payment through email — we wanted players to be able to complete that cycle using only their mobile device.

ZAM: Alright, let's get into the next game update. Patch 1.7 attempts to rebalance combat in the game. Can you give us some more details on the improvements to the combat system and how they will continue to be made in future patches?

Marie Croall: Combat re-balance is actually a system we’ve decided to take a deeper look at (and we thank all our players for their feedback from our Public Test Server). It's vitally important that when we start reworking combat we get it correct, so we're not going to release anything until we are completely satisfied with it.

That being said, the combat re-balance will be taking us though several patches. After starting with mitigation and damage we are going to be looking at skills and mutation, weapons and consumables and other crafted items. Our overall goal is to make combat more fast-paced and a bit more dangerous. One of the comments we frequently get is that too much of the game is able to be done solo, we want to modify that and make grouping more important.

ZAM: Veteran Reward Points have also been introduced with patch 1.7. What are some of the items players will be able to buy? What can players who have been with the game for the full year expect to see for sale?

Marie Croall: We are starting with some very cool clothing items. We made some of the Banker's (a NPC faction) gear available as well as a Battle-Scarred LifeNet suit and some customizable shirts and accessories.

ZAM: The Veteran Reward Points are only the first phase of your Customer Rewards Program. Can you give us any details on what else is planned?

Marie Croall: We’ve known for a long time that we want to build in ways to reward players for things like veteran status or being a positive, supportive influence on the community. We have some tentative plans for how we can reward players for their support, but nothing we can announce just yet. Community is huge to us. We are a pretty small company, and staying connected to our player base is important. We are reminded on a daily basis that we are nothing without the support of our fans — and we want to make sure they know how grateful we are for that.

ZAM: The term "post-apocalyptic future" doesn't always scream customization, but players should be happy that new social clothing options are available in patch 1.7. How much further do you plan on taking customization in the game?

Marie Croall: We've planned to add some customizable features to the armor, past that we're still brainstorming where we can go with the system.

ZAM: Players are going to need to wait until early October for Progress Towns, in which they'll literally build a town from the ground up. Can you give us some more details on this feature?

Marie Croall: Progress towns are something I've wanted to do for a while now. With Progress towns, players will be able to take land for their faction by turning in crafted items to support the construction efforts. Once the land has been claimed for the faction, players will be able to buy recipes for different types of buildings and defenses. They will be able to create them and decide where they are placed. From time to time, Raiders will attack the town, so defenses are important – if you lose too many buildings to the Raiders, you will lose control of the land and other factions will be able to take it.

ZAM: What's coming in year two for Fallen Earth?

Marie Croall: More content. We're looking at how soon we can raise the level cap. More combat fixes — there is a lot that goes into the overall balance, mutations, skills, items etc. and we're planning on looking at all of it. More live events—we've gotten a good response from the ones we've done, so we are working on some bigger ones. So in a word — more.

Darryl Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief