Agencies and Progression
HM: So you have your main Agency, and you can gain ranks by completing missions for it. Based on what specialty you have you gain titles and skills within those areas. Just using weapons and items within the game, you'll gain proficiencies within those weapon families, which will unlock even more skills. They're inter-related with each other. "I've been using the Desert Eagle for ten years, now I'm going to switch over using this other pistol, and this pistol already has two skills unlocked." Instead of one monolithic ding, players are going to be going for a series of dings all the time.
MW: We really want players to always feel like they're always progressing, always unlocking new operatives, skills, abilities. Very similar to your classic MMOs, you're limited to what you can do, what you can equip; as you gain ranks it unlocks access to skills and abilities, stuff you can do over time.
HM: Influence and access are the two concepts players will get into their heads. I need to generate influence in order to gain access to story, to operatives, to stuff. That's going to be an easily-digestible concept for someone who many hasn't dived into the meta-language of MMOs. One of the things I love about the spy genre is that everyone automatically gets it. I love fantasy, I love sci-fi, I love writing those stories, but whenever I try to describe the game concept I have to go in and back-fill for like ten minutes. "And then Sir Clamdar of Thobordoxy grabbed the Handbag of Doom." Or, "the year was 2753, and the Federation ..." Most people don't care. They just want to jump into the world and know where they stand, as opposed to being dropped into a world completely clueless. That's what's great about the Agency, there's a lot of similarities but our world is so different from the real world that they start to experience the humor and flavor. We do have one sort of philosophical mandate with our design: we tackle no ideological struggles. The real world is a dark place, and to capitalize on that is not fun. We want people to have fun.
You mentioned the achievements you can get from exploding the guys in the mission or playing Qbert; will that have any sort of character impact?
HM: Influence is earned by completing missions, but it's also earned by completing the bonus achievements we've talked about. It means that you know if you just need a little bit of influence to advance the story mission path, you could go play a side mission if you want, or you could go gamble and reach a new level you've never reached before. That ensures there are a bunch of ways to play that aren't all based on combat. Non-combat in an MMO is just as important as the combat it's what keeps the glue of the world living.
MW: The other aspect of that is, maybe you've been stuck for a while, you put an operative on your objective and just log off, and it can work for you to gain influence. We want people to be able to feel like they can advance all the time.
There's PARAGON and UNITE; will we get to pick the bad guys to play?
HM: Not at first. There's so much game to build, I think it's valuable to start with the familiar sides. The best part of PARAGON and UNITE is that they're not diametrically opposed enemies. There are going to be points in the story where PARAGON and UNITE will uncover the 'real' villain will be able to team up and take him on together. I think that's going to be a neat mechanic, where PARAGON has gone through these thrill-junkie Eurotrash guys that have been causing problems and UNITE has been going through these human-trafficking weird goth-dudes and then they all realize the central villain is set up in this fortress so they can join together and take out the threat bigger than themselves. I love that idea of bringing players together.
Operatives
How do you gain operatives?
HM: Basically play the game, complete missions, explore the world, you'll attract guys based on your influence. The max guys you can get are less than the total number in the world, meaning folks will be encouraged to specialize in the types of operatives you collect. They also have storylines that you can work through, with small characters having these minor interactions between each other. The operatives also go the places where you can't, because the Planet Earth is kind of huge.
Are you ever going to be in a place where you can have your operatives collaborate on a project?
MW: Of course. In fact, players are going to build joint agencies (like guilds). You'll be able to add operatives to a project to shorten the timespan, or even complete something that's not possible to do by yourself.
I read something about tie-ins with your cellphone? Does that tie-back into the operative system?
HM: If you opt-in, because everybody hate unsolicited spam, operatives will not only give you updates on how they're doing on their mission (completion, success, failure), they'll also do some two-way communication as well. The example I give over and over again is, I've got one guy who's building a car for me for a vehicle challenge. Another guy is out investigating a gang. I'm sitting in a meeting, far away from my PC, I get a text message from the first guy saying "hey, that car you wanted, it's waiting for you". Gaahh ... I need to see my car. The next message is from the other guy, saying "yeah, I found those guys you wanted. They found me. They're asking for a million dollars or they're going to kill me." Text 1 to send a million dollars, text 2 to let him die. It's all about what kind of agency head do you want to be do you want to be benevolent like M or kind of creepy like the Alias guy?
MW: You can also say "I want to get to that decision when I get back online." It's not that it's going to force you...
HM: We're also never going to put time constraints on you. There's nothing worse than a timer puzzle that you're told is going to happen. That's just cruelty. Everything is on demand. But if the player wants to feel like that's happening ...
MW: Or even if you just want to advance the story, just move the story forward, you can do that. Or you can just say "wait until I get back".
HM: It's a great bridging mechanic, to keep people involved in the world. To give you updates as they're happening. Even if your operatives are just having a personality conflict between themselves. That may lead to a fight, or it may lead to a romance, or ... I love the idea of one of my operatives being unavailable because she got ... well, you know. Each of the operatives have their own personalities, and they increase in rank over time, gaining new specializations and abilities over time, making them more valuable for you to trade them to other players. That's one of the things I love ... when you hit the max rank in our game you'll only be able to have about a quarter of the total number of operatives out there. "I'm going all the weaponry/research route, you're going the vehicle route. I just picked up a guy in my recruit bar, I don't really need him so much but I'll recruit him so I can trade for that dude you don't want." We are going to introduce the concept of rarity to this, and it's going to be particularly interesting. "How the hell did you get the Black Mamba card?" "I got really lucky, I got the gold rating in this mission and she made herself available to be recruited." "Dammit, I got to try that."
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