Battleswarm: Field of Honor Q&A with Mark Hood

Battleswarm: Field of Honor is a unique free-to-play MMO that combines the first-person shooter and real-time strategy genres by pitting FPS Humans against RTS Bugs. We got the chance to sit down with Reality Gap's Mark Hood to discuss how the team balances these gameplay styles and what the company's MetaTIX virtual currency system means for players.

Hood hints that they have big plans to launch a new type of in-game tournament in a couple months and discusses an upcoming patch that will make it easier for new players to get into the game. You can read all the details after the jump!

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ZAM: Battleswarm: Field of Honor officially launched about two months ago. What have you learned since the release?

Mark Hood: We have learned that balance is an ongoing concern and something that we need to stay focused on all the time. Every time we make a new weapon available in the store, or allow access to a new map, it has a ripple effect through the game and balance needs to be carefully monitored and adjusted. We've also learned, however, that bugs pretty much control the show. Good bug players make for a awesome match, so we've been listening to the bugs players to keep them coming and happy as much as possible without hurting the human game.

ZAM: The game pits FPS humans against RTS bugs. Can you tell us a little about the gameplay and the appeal of combining the first-person shooter and real-time strategy genres?

Hood: Battleswarm is unique because, as you said, we have a group of players looking at the game from a top-down 3D RTS perspective where they command a horde of bugs and control how new bugs get spawned while the Humans are running around on the ground attempting to keep from getting overwhelmed and blasting everything in sight on a more tactical squad-based level. Getting these two game styles to work together was a huge challenge and our developer, GameWorld, put a lot of effort into working out exactly how RTS and FPS could fit together and still be fun. I think the single best way to understand the appeal of putting these two together is to jump in a good game on the Oasis map and see massive hordes of bugs pouring in while the human soldiers are holed up in a bunker unloading flamethrowers while the Bug commanders get their long range artillery in place and start landing bombs – it can get very intense very quickly, and that is where the game is at its best.

ZAM: How exactly do players upgrade their human commandos and bug swarms? How does character advancement in Battleswarm compare to leveling in other MMOs?

Hood: As a free-to-play game, Battleswarm uses a mixture of two game economies. There is a gold currency which players can earn just by playing the game and then spend  to buy most things in the game (with the exception of a few goodies like special treasure boxes that contain mystery items). In addition to gold, we have the MetaTIX virtual currency which can be spent in the MetaTIX shop. In Battleswarm, every player gets both a Bug Commander and Human soldier – both of which have their own stats and level progression. Players can switch between them whenever they like and spend time leveling up either their Human or their Bug. We have a wide range of weapons and armor and, like a lot of MMOs, players will be restricted from using these items until they have achieved a higher level.

ZAM: How do you keep players who buy weapons, treasure boxes and other items with MetaTiX from having an advantage over those who choose to play the game for free and use in-game gold for their purchases?

Hood: As I mentioned above, we have a balance of currency systems. We wanted to make sure that the game was compelling for anyone who wanted to play whether they wanted to purchase MetaTIX or not, so it is possible to acquire nearly all of the same items in the game with Gold as with MetaTIX. However, MetaTIX provide several advantages – they are not expensive to buy ($1 is the equivalent of 100 MetaTIX), they let you purchase items that are newer (otherwise you can purchase most items in the Consign used from other players for Gold), they let players get items when they want them rather than needing to earn Gold to purchase them and they can be spent in other Reality Gap games. We have up to 20 more games coming in the pipeline that will make use of the MetaTIX currency. We have not seen anyone gain any real substantive advantage from using MetaTIX to buy items in the game, they just make it more convenient to get the items more easily.

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.