Super Monday Night Combat interview with Eka

Last time Nighmare Mode had an exchange with Eka, we spoke primarily of the thematic elements in their class-based third person shooter, Monday Night Combat. Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Chandana Ekanayake regarding Uber Entertainment’s followup to MNC, Super Monday Night Combat. This time around, we talk a little bit about everything–from the business model, the design and focus, down to the nitty-gritty details surrounding specific classes.

Don’t be surprised by anything you read here, either. After all: The Rules Have Changed.

Eka and I start talking, and Eka gets pulled away for a moment–he says he’ll be right back. When he returns, he tells me about a new character they’re designing that is ‘going to be sweet.’ Naturally, I inquire about the character.

Eka
We’re talking about a new character. It’s going to be sweet!

Nightmare Mode
Nice! Of your own design, or have you guys started using user suggestions? I noted that you guys have a forum for that sort of thing, now.

Eka
We have a bunch of our own design that we want to get thorugh first. And then we have some “Signature Pros” which are Pros designed in collaboration with other devs which portions of the revenue will go to Child’s Play Charity. First one will be with Penny Arcade.

NM

Ahh, I didn’t know about that. Pretty cool. Actually, I suppose that’s a segway to one of the questions I have here…though, before we get to that I just wanted to thank you for your time today, very excited to talk to you!

Eka
Yeah, np

NM
So, on the note of other developers…you guys have mentioned such ‘partnerships’ before, and I’m curious: how did that happen, where did that idea come from, and what might we expect or see come from these partnerships?

Eka
We love to collaborate and it was an opportunity to work with people we respect and to see what they come up with for SMNC. The idea really came together with a conversation with Jerry Holkins.

NM
So you guys have a close relationship with Penny Arcade, then? We got the Assassin costume based on something with them, and Juicebot, too, no?

Eka
Yeah, they’re local and pretty easy to work with, and we have PAX to thank for our success. It’s our favorite convention and we always have a good time doing tournaments and talking to fans. The first PAX East was when we really came out with MNC and this past PAX Prime we announced Super MNC. Next PAX East should be a good one for Super MNC.

NM
Oh, Nightmare Mode is actually going to be at that PAX…excellent! You’ve mentioned before that the Seattle development community is pretty close…I know you probably can’t speak too specifically to this, but, does this mean we can expect collaborations to be mostly Seattle game development…?

Eka
Some from Seattle, some not. It’s a mixture of devs that we’re friends with…by the way while we’re talking, I’m missing out on a SMNC playtest on a new map. doh! It sounds like they’re enjoying it. Typical day, we throw in new content, playtest, adjust, and repeat

NM
Nerf day, eh? Suppose that brings me to my next question here…we all know that the rules have changed, and so we can’t necessarily expect what we had in MNC to apply to SMNC. Nonetheless, I’m curious–you guys mentioned that you have taken player input/feedback into account. Players complained about nearly every class and their abilities…how did you decide which abilities to ‘nerf’, change, etc?

Eka
It started with a general philosophy change. Which is lower lethality. Once we did that across the board, more health for players, longer life, longer encounters, skills were adjusted for that playstyle. Also the other big change is level progression from level 1 to level 15 over the course of a single game. That affects player move speed, offense, defense, bot lethality from early game to late game, etc. And the skills went from 4 to 5 skills and up to 4 levels. Some skills didnt work as well with the new gameplay style. Some of the skills from the original six changed To new abilities as well as tweaks to existing ones.

NM
So you guys weren’t happy with how pro-killer oriented the game had become? You guys want more teamwork, right?

Eka
Well the original concept of MNC was what if we took a DOTA like game and made a shooter with it. During that process, we simplified it down to something that we thought shooter players would understand. Now that we’ve established our style of gameplay, we want to add depth to it. So yeah, lowering the lethality naturally promotes teamwork. It’s much harder to lone wolf like MNC. One other feature that promotes more teamplay is the Team Vision, essentially a reverse Fog of War. If one of your teammates sees an opponent, you see that opponent as well, through walls. Like a wall hack. It gives you much better idea of your sourroundings, where your teammates are.

NM
Oh wow, that sounds like an interesting ability…is this like ‘spotting’, something that has to be done manually, or does it do it automatically? And everyone can do this?

Eka
Automatically, everyone can do this. There’s some of that in the gameplay video. It works real well.

NM
Will have to rewatch the gameplay video! Well, there was a reason for my asking if you guys wanted to foster more team-work–it seems like many of the changes are meant to foster it, or just happen to be a natural ‘side effect’ of the changes. At the same time, we hear that the way things will work is that only certain classes will be available free of charge on any given week (and these will be rotated). Doesn’t this sort of go against the ideal of team-based play? You might not be able to play what your team needs, but rather what the game has available that week.

Eka
We want to have at least one of each role available for launch. Right now our focus is to get the gameplay ready for beta, the specifics of rotations we’ll experiment with before launch. Cool thing about a service based game is we can try things out and see how the players react to it and adjust accordingly

NM
Very true. Let’s talk about classes for a little bit! There are at least three new classes for SMNC that are currently announced, with more on the way–are some of these classes classes you didn’t get to implement the first time around with MNC?

Eka
Nope, they were all new.Combatgirl came about because fans wanted to play as Pitgirl but we still wanted Pitgirl to have her role in the game, so we came up with a clone of her. ur.. I mean the MNC scientists thought that was the best approach. By the way, every new Pro we add (and existing ones) fit into a specific roles. There are five different roles in SMNC

NM
I was just about to ask something about that– We know that the old classes will work and play different, but the introduction of the new classes makes there seem like there is some overlap between some classes–combat girl seems to have a heal/hurt gun, for example. What’s going on there?

Eka
Combatgirl is a variation on Support and fits that role. Her Heal Pistol can heal multiple teammates and hurt multiple targets. Instead of a single turret, she has up to four Combat Kitties that stick to walls, ceilings or floors. They’re weaker but make it up in quantity. Her other abilities include a Turret Fortify that buffs nearby turrets, and a Combat Laser that she shoots out at a given direction.

NM
That combat laser looks…well, insane. Like a freaking Super in a fighting game

Eka
….so still like a Support but different playstyle. Yep. Veteran is like a Tank. Slow, soaks up lots of damage and can attack mostly at a close to medium range. Instead of Jetgun, he has grapples, a Holo Harpoon Grab that brings opponents into range, and a charge grapple and a grapple throw

NM
Yeah, he looks pretty damned neat. And the Gunslinger brings us a third female to the game, too, I was pleasantly surprised! Still asking about the classes here–feel like I’m asking things in a weird order, apologies. But, I’m curious: is the game set in the future? The tank seems to be…older, now. Or is that just the updated engine bringing in more detail to his model?

Eka
We redid all the models and I did change the Tank’s facial details. He does a look older, it’s been a long season for Tank. As far as the fiction, we’re still working that out, but timewise it’s later than MNC one but not really in the future.I definitly want more female characters in our game and you’ll see more variety over time.

NM
Maybe he’s stressing because Pitgirl is throwing her hat into the ring…dangerous stuff! Heh…as for what you just said–you guys retconning anything in the fiction or was this all a part of the larger ‘plan’ (as I recall, you’ve mentioned having a ‘bible’ before).

Eka
We’re expanding on themes and new characters won’t be just sport related

NM
Thankfully the gunslinger proves that minorities have not disappeared in the future!

Eka
Not at all. The MNC league wants to bring in interesting personalites from the world. They’re all clones so you could see past, present, and ficticious personalities. The three we’re working on right now are VERY different from the existing ones

NM
Ah, I look forward to seeing what this ends up looking like! So, to backtrack a bit here…let’s talk about your business model a bit. On microtransactions–what sort of factors did you have to take into consideration when deciding your pricing scheme? What sort of pricing might we expect on the microtransactions–are we going to have anything that approaches TF2 or EVE pricing for cosmetic items?

Eka
We have some ideas on it but not ready to talk about it just yet. Mostly our focus right now is to deliver a compelling player experience, we want the business model to fit the gameplay experience

NM
So the gameplay and player experience comes first, it sounds like?

Eka
Yep. It’s easy to fall into the trap of making decisions based on microtrans and it ends up hurting the gameplay. We’ve seen it with other titles And we don’t know how well certain things work until we get it in the hands of our fans

NM
Sounds like you guys are very prepared for a possible evolution of SMNC as time goes on. Super Monday Night Combat seems to be following many of the new business mantras floating around–F2P, games as services, what have you. How did you guys decide those models were right for MNC and how does this mesh with what seems to be the bulk of it’s userbase–who are on consoles, which, for the most part do not support these models?

Eka
It’s very risky for us but the idea of putting content out on a regular basis and treating our game as a service matches really well with out development philosophy. And we think the timing is right too. F2P seems to be more accepted than it was even two years ago when we were developing MNC

NM
Unfortunately it seems as if consoles are only barely starting to warm up to the idea, though, say… DUST 514 seems to be taking the jump soon on the PS3…

Eka
We’re hoping the consoles get there. SMNC on consoles would do well we think. Crimson Alliance is sort of doing F2p. But I agree with Ben on some of the implementation is not ideal.

NM
MNC certainly did–hence why I asked…some players seem to be resenting Uber, even though in some ways, it cannot be helped; the infrastructure isn’t really there to move forward with your vision.

Eka
Its unfortunate but we need to be in control of our content. Right now the best place to do that is on PC, especially with a competitive multiplayer game like ours with so many moving parts. There are going to be exploits and we need to be able to react to it in a timely basis. And also holidays, we like doing themed holidays. And adding giant chickens. Also Robohobo, who will make an appearance in Super MNC. He’s completely rad.

NM
Haha! on that note–can we expect any more non-pro characters ala chickey, bullseye?

Eka
Yep, you just learned about Robohobo

NM
Hah, yeah, hit send right as you responded there. Backtracking a little here: what are your long term plans for keeping players engaged? Do you think that you will be successful in maintaing engagement given MNC‘s current PC playerbase?

Eka
MNC is a fairly shallow expereince in the long run. Not enough content or metagame to keep most people entertained. We’ve addressed that with SMNC and will continue to add new content on a fairly regular schedule, wether it be new Pros, customization, maps, game modes, etc

NM
Right on. Given the new business model and the focus on making SMNC more of a MOBA game, do you guys consider yourself to be in direct competition with games like LoL and DOTA2?

Eka
I’m not sure if we’re direct competition given how the player interacts with the world is so different in DOTA vs SMNC. Certain gameplay concepts are similar so we’re hoping for some crossover. We’re fans of shooters and fans of Action RTS games like DOTA and LOL

NM
so, last few questions here…almost done! We saw a volcano in the background of the trailers…will there be any more/new environmental hazards?

Eka
We wanted to theme the natural environment with Hotshots and Icemen so one side has a volcano, darker stone, lava and Hotshot totems while the Icemen side have their own totems, ice, water and more green foliage. As far as hazards, nothing new yet

NM
Ah, well then. Can we expect more subtle social commentary in SMNC?

Eka
Of course. and now we have to do a Yo Dawg variation for Assault. The Rules Have Changed

NM
YES! Haha. Is there still a need for government issued food tubes with so much vegetation around?

Eka
Oh yes, that vegetation is strickly property of the MNC League, not for public consumption. It’s private property. Plus the general population don’t really know what to do with natural vegetation. How does that turn into consumable food with proper labeling?

NM
Hah! Last question, perhaps the silliest of them all! What in the world does ‘From ASHY to CLASSY’ mean!?

Eka
Oh yeah..I asked the Veteran that but all he say is he doesnt want to talk about it. It was something about being in the service and he was drunk on shore leave. He was young

NM
Oh, it’s one of THOSE tattoos

Eka
He was visibly upset and you don’t want to make a man with a belt that big visibily upset. There was sweat and the sweat looked angry

NM
I see! Well, Eka, thanks once again for answering our questions. We look forward to seeing where SMNC goes, I know that a good portion of our readerbase are actually really rabid fans.

Eka
Yeah no problem, we hope our fans like SMNC. Thanks for asking interesting questions, it makes this fun