Etaew
Avarem was over at Gamescom recently and Fuzzy, a long time site friend also attended. We prepared some interview questions thanks to you guys and dispatched her to corner him. Let us know what you think about the interview belong, and a random on-topic commenter will be chosen on Tuesday to receive a Trove Pack.
Report from FuzzyTop ^
Hey guys!
My name is Fuzzy and I have had the chance to meet up with Andy at Gamescom. Etaew asked you to submit questions you would have liked me to ask and I did! There were a lot of questions, so I couldn’t get to all of them, but we talked for about 25 minutes.
I first met up with Andy at the Twitch booth and stayed to watch the livestream. Sadly, you couldn’t understand much because it was super loud in the background. I still got a few good laughs out of it.
Andy is an awesome guy, especially for taking the time to answer that many questions: Thank you for that!
Now to the part you’re most interested in!
New ClasSTop ^
Q: Tell us about the Dino Tamer, what can it do and what makes it unique?
The dino tamer is kind of a pet based class which gets a lot of advantages when things die, it's cooldown based, like the Boomeranger.
Your net has a damage over time effect, and whenever something dies that is affected it you collect meat which resets the cooldown immediately on your Throw Meat ability which spawns a dino! I
f you can kill stuff fast enough, you can get a bunch of dinos out. It kind of depends on situations, really good in groups.
And then your ultimate ability, you ride a dinosaur which shoots acid which also dots things [which when killed also drops meat]. It has powered up versions of the other two abilities, the net and the spawn dinosaurs.
It has 5 dances: There are 3 different dinos you can spawn at random, you dance differently on the ultimate mount and by yourself.
Q: Is there a release date yet for the new biome and the Dino Tamer?
Not yet. We’ve got a few tentative dates, I think we’re going to put it on PTS next week. I can say that, but the rest, I cannot say yet! We want to get some testing first.
Q: How does the Dino Tamer perform in PvP?
Okay, so right now, it’s broken. It’s bad, really bad. The pets die immediately, and we need to figure out why. You need to kill people, and it’s kind of tough.
I think it might be one of the weaker classes in PVP, but we'll be checking it out and will give it a little buff if we need to.
Q: What made you choose a Dinosaur theme?
We look for archetypes, you know like the Neon Ninja stuff, dragons, and things that are just fun. We want fun archetypes.
People ask me “You have candy, why don’t you have vegetables?” Vegetables aren’t fun! Candy is fun! If you can understand that difference, that’s kind of what makes us choose new things to add to the game.
New BiomeTop ^
Q: What world types and level can the new biome spawn in?
Also a good question. I’m not going to talk about that just yet. We’re still tuning it internally. So anything I say could be wrong.
Q: Could you talk about some of the new enemies in the new Biome?
I’ve been kind of out of it on this but there is my favourite, which is the T-Rex.
So this is unique. We normally spawn boss version of things. This is a boss boss. It’s rare and always spawns loot. It’s always dangerous. If you can kill it, you get bonus loot. It’s like a walking dungeon.
Q: Will there be any additional Fish or Crafting Resources in the new Biome?
There will be new crafting resources. As usual, they will mostly be going towards deco.
We want to do a crafting overhaul…. Kind of “soon”. It’s something that’s really on our mind but we want to do a really good job with it and really go in depth with it, so we have sort of been waiting until we have enough time to make it really good.
So it is going to go to mostly deco, there are new crafting materials, and then in the future, it will also get ingrained in the new upgraded crafting system.
Q: Will there be any new Colour Blocks in the new Biome?
There will be new natural type of blocks, like new dirt and stone, stuff like that. There aren’t any new colors yet. It’s something that has come up.
We’re doing kind of a builder orientated update, but we just started working on the major feature that I definitely will not be talking about yet. It’s really cool. We’re talking about adding some smaller builder stuff like new block colors and things like that.
Q: Will the new biome have a terraformer for clubs?
Yes. Of course.
ConsolesTop ^
Q: Could you elaborate on how Trove will function on consoles?
Sure! Mostly in the same way that it does on PC.
We’ve done a lot of the work with the UI. So PC players won't really get to see this. The gameplay is already solid, the combat works on a controller but the UI doesn’t just work on a controller. We had to do a lot of work to make that work. We also added quick chat options because people can’t type all the time.
On top of that we did some optimisations for it, we did add multithreading which we kind of integrated into the game on a version that players can’t get to yet. Recently which caused some problems which I’m sad about but it did. People were “like why did things break when you didn’t do anything”. This is what we did. We started merging it back in and we thought nobody would notice but it was not that way.
We’ll start testing that on PC relatively soon if people are interested in multithreading. That’ll be a difference that both see.
Q: What has been changed in Trove to allow full usage with a controller?
The free mouse UI stuff wasn't great, we added an inventory autosort button because we know people on controller want to move stuff around. It’s been mostly interface.
I don’t know if it’s coming to PC though, we need to figure out if people can swap between control methods. We are working on Steam controller though.
Q: When will Trove be coming to consoles?
This year
Q: What method will be used when purchasing from the Trove Store on consoles?
The usual methods, it’ll go through Sony or Microsoft. So whatever you have set up.
Q: Will you be able to mod Trove on consoles?
Not at launch, if the consoles support a way for us we would love to. There isn’t an obvious route to do so.
Shadow TowersTop ^
Q: Are there plans to add Matchmaking for Shadow Towers
We really want to, we wanted to do it for console we didn’t get to. It could definitely still be something we do, but not in the plans yet.
Shadow Tower would also need some other updates, I think.
Club ChangesTop ^
Q: What is the current plan and status on club changes?
We’ve been talking about club improvements. By and large we’re looking at quality of life improvements. I don’t want to spoil some of our announcements but we are doing a badge type system for clubs, it’s in the works. We are doing the ability to customize club ranks.
ChinaTop ^
Q: What are some of the challenges involved in releasing Trove in China?
It’s pretty straightforward, we have a publishing partner taking care of it. The biggest challenge is boring to anyone but us, they aren’t going to use Glyph, they are going to use their own version, not Glyph not Steam. We are working with them to have it work with their platform.
We’re going to end up building some content, or they are going to end up building some content as well which we’ll see about importing over to our global version.
Q: What changes do you think the game is going to need to adapt to a Chinese audience?
The biggest one from talking to them that they are interested in doing, we might be working on a Tutorial for them or in conjunction with them, they are also using some third party studios to help out.
They are looking at a more handholding tutorial which is something we tried on in early development and people got bored with. Currently in their market people really like handholding tutorials that last for a lot longer.
Some pieces of that may come over, but some may not.
This and console and pc, they are our fans at this point, right. The things we are doing we want to make sure aren’t going to totally distract us from doing PC. If there are cross games we can get working with them, maybe we’ll do a themed biome for example, those are the kind of things we want to be doing.
Q: Are there any plans to add more local adventure world servers for other countries?
Right now no plans, at least we want to do more language support for people.
We'll be looking at the audience that is there once we do the languages and see if it justifies it, along with global currency adjustments.
If we do all that work and we see an increased demand and the fans support it, it’s something we’d end up looking at.
PvPTop ^
Q: Are there any plans for larger pvp arenas or alternate game modes?
No plans for a larger arena, interesting question. If the demand was there we’d look at it but it’s a technical challenge.
We have a lot in terms of game modes that we can do right now that we want to explore but it hasn’t wound it’s way back to supporting doing it again. Supporting builders, adventuring and all of these things. We do have a one hit kill mod, we have the ability to mod our pvp with rulesets, we tried one hit kill, a version where everyone is a skeleton, we have different numbers of people, free for all, deathmatch.
It’s something we’ll do again, we don’t want to do just a little bit in any of those areas we want to build it up, we do building, clubs, pvp to make it exciting when we do it. When we make our way around to it, we have some cool tech in there and some ideas.
Q: Do you feel the the time to obtain Battle Chests is in a good place for casual players?
More people are using Patron now that we buffed it, and Patron does increase the speed to gain them. When we get back to PvP, we are going to look at the rewards system and we may make some adjustments.
FutureTop ^
Q: You are planning to change how mods are distributed and launched in future, could you elaborate on this?
Mods and crafting is an area in the game where we’re working on a long term plan, what a 2 year plan might look like.
We know there is a lot of things that aren’t working super well and the solutions are really big and ambitious, I want to get to a point where people can literally put creations directly into the game.
My dream is to have it so that you can make a mod and maybe it just shows up to people only in your club because it isn’t fully approved but players could actually acquire it ingame, that would be amazing. I say that hypothetically because it’s a big challenge but sounds really cool. We’re never going be able to support all the cool things people can make and we want to get out of the way a little more.
For mods the starting place is to make it so that the format we look at them in from the game side is a single file, so it’s easier to share and goes in a single location and read from a single location locally, so that’s really simple download a file put it in a folder and you’re good to go.
And we want to do a little bit of UI ingame, so you can toggle on off and variety for given amount, make it so that everyone who plays the game, right now there is really good support, Trovesaurus, but it’s still going to an external website finding it. There are a chunk of casual players who are never going to participate. We want to make it so that anyone possible can participate and even add some default mods in the patch that you can turn them on and off if you’d like to try them out.
Q: Could you talk about the future plans to expand the Trove lore or story?
We have said we are working on a narrative lore thread that goes through the game. I don’t want to give any more details right now, that is the next major update to the game.
The Dino Tamer update with the clubs isn’t the mantle of power scale, but we are working on that next one as well. We wanted to release this to get some hype out there and content out there, we are working on the next update and it has a lore focus, we have a small team working on it right now, it’s cool but I can’t talk about it right now. Maybe a little bit of that will sneak out as we go we’ll see.
Q: What is the currently on your priority list outside of the major new items?
The next big update, adventuring power focused. We want to go back to equipment to make it exciting again, gems dominate it now. Add more class gems, more generic, empowered gem types but we’re definitely going to focus on equipment and make equipment drops more exciting. We want to add more to playing different classes, you just want to play your most powerful class to farm. We want to make it a reason to play your classes a little more, and that and lore, and building stuff, all connected.
CommunitYTop ^
Q: You can report spammers in game with right click, how can you report harassment or inappropriate behaviour?
If you use that report function, same thing, it automatically sends information to the CS team including the text sent and recent text. Volume matters so if more people report someone, you can’t use it to harass people as we do look at it.
Q: Are there any plans to accept more community created costumes and have another costume pack?
Really want to, our VFX time has recently been spent on dino tamer and some other projects, we’re going to get back to doing that stuff. She’s been looking at mods, we have some community wings. We saw some really cool costumes, honestly player costumes generally come out better than the ones we create ourselves. I expect we’ll see some Dino Tamer ones we’ll want to get a quick turnaround on.
Q: Are there any plans for a mail system to the game?
So the claims system was originally envisioned to support mail, so possibly. So you could send things to people’s inbox. It would be a fun thing to have but it wouldn’t add as much to the game as some other things, so it’s lower on our priority list.
Q: Could you do another AMA on reddit?
Yeah that’d be fun, I used to do it when servers were down and I felt bad. Whoever is running it these days should get in touch with me and Steve (Fasti) and we can set something up.
Q: Are there any plans to add additional coloured names to players for other tasks?
Maybe, the coloured names don’t stack with each other, and knowing what they mean is important, adding every colour would get kinda confusing. We wanted it to be kinda special if you had one. That said they are cool, I could see us if we had a really good reason to add another one I could see us doing that.
Q: Are there any plans to improve the invite popup box to be less disruptive?
Oh yes. We’ll make them less annoying.
Q: Are there any plans to improve the metaforge?
Right now, no plans. If the demand is there I can see us doing it, also making it more moddable and more usable offline by people would be cool. Separate from Trove might be cool. I’ll have to think about it, interested in feedback.
Q: Are there any plans to indicate why a player has a certain coloured name?
Not right now, there’s so few and that’s part of it. You can sort of learn why.
UnsortedTop ^
Q: What does the Trove team look like at the moment?
Right now, we have 20ish developers on our team. Raw people working on the game, the biggest our team has ever been working on the game.
We also have platform support right now helping us go over to china, we have QA and Customer Service outside of that.
We have some additional people helping us with Console including an outsource studio that is also very large that is working on porting the game to consoles. We’re not doing that work ourselves, we’re doing some of the integration work and fixing some of the bugs which have come up when we add it into our version of the game. We are working with another team, they just posted on twitter, they are called Blind Squirrel.
To compare when we launched we were 13 people.
Q: With the new class will there be an increase in the Mastery Level cap?
Yes, it’s on the plans. I don’t know when exactly, I think we’ll do it as a little update. We will do the rewards for the increase at the same time.
Q: New rarity tiers and at what point does it become silly?
It’s already silly, I have no illusions.
It’s one of those things probably if we were to do it again right now we’d have fewer tiers. We’re in it now. I don’t think we’re adding one with the next power upgrade. We will be doing some other stuff.
We’re not anxious to add more but never say never. Numbers keep getting bigger.
Q: Are there any plans to use Megaflux Tanks as currency on the Marketplace?
No, but this isn't to say it wont be easier to use. There is a very good reason we don’t, you don’t want to have to search as Megaflux and Flux as different currencies. You want to search for Flux, and maybe flux folds into it and maybe it auto converts in some way like if it’s a problem, which it sounds like it’s a sort of thing that people want, so we can solve it but it won’t be it’s own type of currency.
I’d have to think about it a little more, we see the need.
Q: Are there any plans to enhance bag or bank space for personal and clubs?
Yes.
Q: What are some of the wackier class ideas that have never seen the light of day?
We always joke as people always datamine this stuff, that we should add some in there that we are never going to make. Now you’re not going to know next time people datamine if we’re serious or not.
We’ve got some ideas.
GiveawayTop ^
A random on-topic commenter will receive a Trove Pack, 2 other random commenters will receive a Trove Carpet.
Winners will be drawn on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23 (check calendar for specific times).
Winner
- Pack: http://www.trovesaurus.com/comment=3581 by https://www.trovesaurus.com/user=14859/kuanyin
- Carpet: http://www.trovesaurus.com/comment=3514 by https://www.trovesaurus.com/user=12841/error-404-not-found
- Carpet: http://www.trovesaurus.com/comment=3564 by https://www.trovesaurus.com/user=10670/keshavi
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Annihilator_sythWait, fuzzy, the fuzzy i know, or some other fuzzy cause if its the fuzzy i know, that i met on trove, that i added on my steam friends list, awesome...
DovyReally looking forward to Dino Tamer!! So glad i saved a class coin. Keep those awesome updates coming!! Cheers
ListandiraNice interview. I like how we get information about so many topics. Adventuring, crafting, gearing philosophy and much more.
SkyTheVirusInteresting that they are working on the lore for the game. It's about time they started doing that (thank god it's the next big update). I really hope the lore isn't too bland... *crosses fingers* please make it good!
Darkpineapple58
_Inky_
RegMenck
Zoomyman3612
PedroFS
KusokStula
AkiraAyaI'd actually be pretty stoked for a way to use megaflux without having to convert it, it would save me a bit pf inventory and personal chest space, which is always appreciated.
That and this lore update, I would love to see some backstory as to what Trove is, the war with the Fae and whatnot. It'd be really cool to get some canon confirmation on it.
Caslex
SkyStrikeJust a suggestion, maybe there should be links to Trovesaurus or some other website which people can get their fill of rather simple info (e.g. use of dragon souls, how to get shadow equipment, etc.). This prevents players from having to do too much research and lets them get on with the game, s well as not making a fool of themselves asking a stupidly simple question in chat, the answer to which can be found via Google.
MACACO94Hello from Germany . I find 1 mod ore tool for building groups for farming ore to make other things ore a icon in the ui there show who are the guys from my group. is a simple thing but it is really helpfull.
AvianaI still think there should be more "weight" on equip instead of all the PR and the majority of the stats coming from gems. Just feeld kinda bad, when you worked so hard on your Stellar Gear, and still feel weak becouse you had bad RNG on empowered gemboxes like 5 weeks in a row. Hopefully this gets fixed with the huge boost in gembox numbers you can gain per week now. (3 per class at 5k PR + 1 mastery + 1 contest + 1/3/6 DotM clears). Anyway: Another thing i would ask for is more NPC's with maybe even quests. Bosses and raids that are actually mechanically hard and not only "hard" becouse you need more dps, or a decent tank. Story or atleast Bosses with a background/story behind them. (For example: Alien-Invasion were you first fight some low-rank officer and at the end the Alien Queen or stuff, in suiting Arenas/Areas)
1 more big thing i'd wish for: Class-Gems with different Abilitys: Like, Air CG's for SH have this ability, and Fire CG's/Water CG's have this OTHER Ability. They cant stack, only one CG at a time so you cant get 2 or more CG abilitys, but still: diversity. Would kinda work like a skill-tree system and would influence gameplay in the way, that there would be roles defined by item/gemsets and CG's and not by the class itself: For example Dracolyte DPS, Candybarb DPS, Pirate Captain TANK, Fae HEAL, ... Or, if you are already on it, just add a skill-tree system and make people have different playstyles non-defined by class.
And another small, simple thing i really just want: Different coloured names for the clubchat: Leader has a certain namecolour/symbol behind the name, officers get one and Architects get one. Just so you don't always mix up who has which position/ who to contact in which case, if you are in a big club (Im in Legalize Sunlightbulbs). And yes, you can look that up in the club-names list but i takes time, and also my version would prevent people from accidently starting beef with officers, and through this getting kicked when they didn't have bad intentions.
I sincerely hope atleast someone reads this, as most people just seem to want to enter the giveaway, becouse i'd really like to start a discussion here. (Etaew notice me, again!)
Sry for bad english, im german. I tryd my best.
Also: I really like the T-Rex Idea of a world-boss, tho they could push that even further: Why not make SUPER BOSSES spawn in adventure worlds. These could be as strong as a ST boss of that uber lvl, for example worldbosses as strong as Ultra DotM in U9, or as strong as hard spike in U6. Each Uber could have his own, or they could spawn in the middle of big Biomes, just walking their way around. They could be giant, destroy/alter the whole world around them as they fight (eg. Spikewalkers spikes), they would be fear-inducing, especially with growls and crys and high aggro ranges, like: "OH SHIT ITS MEGA T-REX RUN BOYS". You would have to group up through chat to fight them but everyone can join once the fight starts, and they could have rare dropchances of mounts with their skins, even auras/ships/magracers/wings. Also they could have a highly increased chance (based on the Uber your in) of dropping better gear. (For example in U9 cant drop less then Shadow 3, and drops 4+ items)
My Ideas are: The Kraken (Watergemworlds and Treasure Isles biome), Mega-T-Rex, or a T-Rex modifyd and mountet by a squad of humanoids (Jurassic Jungle), An Insectoid Queen, surrounded by a swarm of wasps/bees (Medieval Hills), a Giant Killer-Robot (Neon) or even a really bad-shit crazy one in Shore of everdark. (would give this biome more purpose as just to use CG-keys and Shapers Sar-keys).
What are your ideas for big bosses/their appearel abilitys? Do you like my idea?
technomancer99Oh yay! Most of my questions got answered! Glad to hear that they have plans for a mail system (even though it's in their lower priority list, but it's still something). Nice to read some of the devs' plans for the game.
AJ1AJWoa nice new lore/story will come to give us more fun and i cant wait for the latam server xd, new languages, mods, costumes... there are a lot of things that are working by the trionworlds and trove teams, trove will be more interesting jejeje.
i'm very excited xd
mhepz
Tidas
KuanYin(((The next big update, adventuring power focused. We want to go back to equipment to make it exciting again, gems dominate it now. Add more class gems, more generic, empowered gem types but we’re definitely going to focus on equipment and make equipment drops more exciting. We want to add more to playing different classes, you just want to play your most powerful class to farm. We want to make it a reason to play your classes a little more, and that and lore, and building stuff, all connected.)))
THis is Just what we need. Very excited if this comes true. :)
xN3R0
Carlos_hnc
akram1299
Rhadnar
Layanti
TheEpicDestroyerThe club ranking issues are going to be addressed! That's great!
Hopefully the fixes come sooner rather than later =D
Keshavi
Woo
AndrewthemistI thought all of Avarems answers were good and I like most of them, but I wish he has been more elaborate about how dino tamer will work in shadow towers, because he needs to kill enemies to get dinis, and in spike and dotm there arent too many enemies. That is my only concern.
padman
NiceTrove
Onyot
Dark182
LloydMen
_mafReally hyped for new class/biome and the upcoming backpack/chest enhancement.
Dissapointed by the fact that there wont be a way to report offensive behaviour (which may not always be spammy).
Q: You can report spammers in game with right click, how can you report harassment or inappropriate behaviour?
A: If you use that report function, same thing, it automatically sends information to the CS team including the text sent and recent text. Volume matters so if more people report someone, you can’t use it to harass people as we do look at it.
I've read what Avarem said and i understand that the "report spam" feature can be used to report other rule violations but as i see it it's a false accusation.
So in conclusion, yes there is an already existing system to report those behaviours but i'd rather have a complete one which says what the rule violation is and not leave it on the CS team to guess.
bobfishkins23Looks cool, happy to see taht we are getting customizable club ranks and that gear is seeing the light of day again. hopefully with limited RNG.
XxXPAINKILLERXxXFor me in this interview lacks info about how many classes they're plan to add to game and how long it gonna take it for them to do it. Rest question's are fine but still I think that with this question could be even more interesting.
Jonikalus
Bobybybob
xYorYx
Zeindrik
more bug and inventory space sounds cool,
would like to hear more about the "We want to do a crafting overhaul…. Kind of “soon”."
BElanna"We want to add more to playing different classes, you just want to play your most powerful class to farm. We want to make it a reason to play your classes a little more, and that and lore, and building stuff, all connected."
Interesting. I really hope that whatever they do makes it less of a chore to play more than one class. The grind from 20 to 30, coupled with the insane gem slog, makes it daunting enough that I've barely touched a class other than my main. I miss the days of having all my characters max level and reasonably geared.
Swegboss12This interview really reveals a bunch of stuff about Trove and what goes on behind the scenes! 11/10!
Pfiffel
HumpypantsThanks for including my question in the QA. I just wish Avarem would have actually answered it!
What are some of the wackier class ideas that have never seen the light of day?
I wanted to hear about bards, monks, or something that just throws potatoes
Ixion
SentinelKnifeIt looks like they know that PvP isnt too much fun, and some classes overpower others. I really hope they buff up some classes to make it atleast fair and add in some more content to PvP.
Dnsj
goosebumps912An interested interview. PVP is boring and they know, but they don't want to change. If they can't use well controlers in consoles yetm they have a big problem to have it prepared until the year finishes.
I would also like that you could asked him if radiant souls could be uses as a currency.
Silwerik"Oh yes. We’ll make them less annoying." hopefully this will get adressed soon its been a major issue since forever.
I was hoping to get some answeres to gem related questions in aswell like about the recent change to swapping gems, and diamond dragon egg fragments. but oh well hope to see something change about this soon (for the better!).
Shane