H1Z1 is a zombie survival MMOFPS being developed by a 20 person team at Sony Online Entertainment. It is the next game to be made with SOE's Forgelight engine. The only sources of information so far has been through the H1Z1 reddit and a video interview with SOE president John Smedly. Below is most of that information all thrown together for anyone interested in learning more.
I've become a fan of SOE games starting with Planetside 2. They are one of the only companies that do free to play in a way that I am OK with. They are open in their development and have always been willing to change around priorities based on what the players have wanted. If you have any interest in the growing survival MMO genre this is definitely a game you should keep track of. It will be available on Steam as an early access title for $20. When the game eventually releases it will be free to play for anyone to try out.
What is H1Z1?
By: John Smedley
Hi there,
I wanted to tell you about an exciting new free-to-play game we’ve had under wraps here at SOE for some time. It’s called H1Z1. It’s a massively multiplayer game in which players fight for survival in a world where death is the only sure thing. The H1Z1 virus devastated mankind and left nothing but death and destruction in its wake and a world nearly empty of human life where the remnants of humanity are in a fight against extinction against those infected with the virus. It’s been 15 years since H1Z1 was first encountered and what’s left of the world before is overrun with the Infected. Humanity has been reduced to hiding in the shadows, searching desperately for food and water and anything that can help to survive even for another day. But the Infected aren’t the only dangers in the world. Everyday life in the Apocalypse means dealing with all kinds of wild animals and the brutality of other survivors, as well as finding your next meal and a safe place to sleep. It also means scavenging or crafting anything that can help you live just one more day. In H1Z1 every minute of every day is borrowed time and fearing for your life… unless you are the Danger (talking to you Walter), but life can and will go on… even in circumstances as dire as this. Humanity has not given in to the Infected. There are still pockets of humanity and the fight goes on!
Our vision for this game is very simple but ambitious. We are starting with what I would call “Middle America” – an “anywhere and everywhere” town. The world is massive as you’ve come to expect from our games. Over time we will grow the world until we have our own version of the U.S. after the death and destruction brought on during the H1Z1 epidemic. It will be our own version of America. We’ll have urban cities and desolate wide open places. All connected seamlessly. Our focus is building a sandbox style of gameplay where players can build shelters out of resources in the world. They can even work together to make amazing fortresses complete with weaponry to help defend against both the Infected and other players. Players also have access to a very deep crafting system that can let players make a huge variety of awesome stuff, including weapons (I made a 1911 the other day) and things like Molotov cocktails, explosives.. and other fun surprises.
I will also go right to the heart of the question a lot of players will have – “There are a lot of survival / Zombie games… how is this one going to be any different?”. First off, it’s a persistent MMO that can hold thousands of players on servers we host (yes there will be multiple servers with very different rule sets). Why is that a good thing? It means a thriving economy (oh yes… there’s trading). It also means you have potential allies in the all-out war on the Infected... and many an enemy as well. It uses our proprietary next-gen Forgelight engine and that means we’ve had a lot of really cool technology to work with to make the game we wanted to make. It’s also designed from the ground up for our players to become part of the design process. The Roadmap system that we built for PlanetSide 2 will be used extensively to clearly communicate what features we’re working on and what you can expect and when. You’re also going to be getting awesome access to our developers. We’ll be opening it up for Player Studio creations too so expect player-created items to make their way into the game. The main thing that differentiates H1Z1 from the other great games in the genre is the emphasis we are putting on player ownership and building. We want you to be able to form roving gangs that are headquartered out of an abandoned warehouse that you’ve taken over... or a house you’ve built from scratch after having cut trees down and secured the resources to make it. We are giving players the tools to make their own towns, camps and defenses, and they can decide how to set up their base (which is in the world btw... not instanced). We’re building in all the social features you’ve come to expect from an SOE game (grouping, proximity voice chat, voice chat for your gang, and many other cool social features).
To use a simple reference I’m sure everyone interested in this game will get... we want our players to make Woodbury from The Walking Dead if they want to. Or take over a prison. Or fix an old car so you and your friends (yeah we have multiplayer vehicles) can run zombies and players over mercilessly, and revel in the sheer delight of hearing a zombie scream as you light it on fire, or craft a gun to take down your friends and enemies alike. Our goal here is to provide emergent gameplay that will allow our players to make the world their own the way they want to. One of the best things about H1Z1 being an MMO is the fact that with a lot of people playing, we’re able to see all different kinds of gameplay. If you prefer a quiet life as a farmer raising crops... we’re going to make sure your zombie apocalypse fantasy is complete. If you’re like me and you want nothing more than to kill everything that moves, by all means see how that goes. It’s going to be a blast!
Check out H1Z1.com and the subreddit ( http://reddit.com/r/h1z1 ). We’ll be adding more information in the coming weeks to the website. We’ll also be very openly answering questions in the subreddit.
Next week you can see us do a livestream of the game as we have a playtest. Stay tuned!
Smed
Map Size
By: John Smedley
I've seen a bunch of people asking questions about the Map size. Forgelight is built to handle arbitrarily sized worlds. Our plan is simple - we're building the core of "anywhere USA". When we first open it up to users the map will be huge, but nowhere near as big as it's going to be in short order. Our Map Editing system allows us to quickly add massive areas. We want to make sure we clearly understand how the players are playing the game before we do that. On Planetside 2 we made a mistake by making multiple continents before we had a strong enough idea of what worked and what didn't. This game is different. We're doing it smarter.
When we open up the Early Access there will be a massive map for players to enjoy. Over time (very quickly) they'll magically just be able to keep going further than they've gone before. It's a very unique way of doing it, but we actually think this is a better way to go.
So not to worry. Zombie Apocalypse isn't going to be any fun if it's like Disneyland on Spring Break and super crowded. We want remote.. haunting... being scared when you see someone. Your first instinct needs to be to hide. If there are 20 players in your view it's not a very convincing Apocalypse
So how many players per server? Who knows. As we add more land the number of people we can hold on a server goes way up. So we're excited. We have a ton of zombies for you to fight too. You'll be seeing hordes
oh yes you will.Smed
What We Know So Far
By: RoyAwesome
Gameplay Details
- First Person or Third Person shooter
- Zombie Survival
- Night is dark and full of terrors
- Player versus Player at it's core.
- More than just zombies in the world
- Base Building, Town building, Fortress creation
- Can burn down things others build.
- Lots of crafting. Probably the biggest thing about the game.
- Vehicles are already in. Possibility of aircraft in the future.
- Based off the United States.
- If you die, you lose your gear. It stays on your corpse.
- "No skills or levels".
- "Thousands of players". I'm willing to bet this will be larger, playercount wise, than planetside 2.
- There will be Hunting.
- Horses will be a mode of transportation
- Camping was added recently
- Pets are being considered.
- PC first, PS4 later. "Well, we are Sony" when asked about the PS4 version.
- In terms of cross-platform play, Planetside 2 will not be doing cross platform due to the logistics of updating the game on the PS4 vs the PC. I expect that this has not changed so I don't see cross-platform play happening. SOE has made no comment on this point however, so I could be talking out of my ass.
- "If you can run Planetside 2, you can run H1Z1 better".
- "Orders of magnitude larger than Planetside 2".
- Based of Planetside 2. Shares no tech with Everquest Next (so no Voxels).
- Built in voice chat options.
- Free to play
- Part of the All-Access subscription that SOE is launching this month. $15/mo for premium sub in all SOE games.
- "you seriously don't need to spend a dime. We're still figuring out the monetization but we will telegraph our plans early and let people comment and we'll listen if they don't like something and come to a place where people feel good about it." -Smed
- Early Access ($20ish, on steam) in 4-6 weeks.
- Screenshots will start coming out almost immediately.
- The next playtest will be Live streamed. The livestream will be Thursday.
Summary of whisenhunt interview
By: a_monkie
- When Dying, loot stays at death location.
- They are still figuring out the tech so they dont know how big they can get it.
- They will slowly make the map bigger throughout updates.
- take place in "Anywhere, America" Midwest/East Coast US
- fresh spawns are essentially just civilians
- Combat: a lot like hard recoil - via CS:GO
- reticle/sights will stay where the recoil put them. you have to compensate after every shot.
- FOV slider confirmed
- trying to make sure that aiming is difficult in both first person and third person mode.
- wildlife and hunting confirmed
- Wolves and Deer exist
- they actually have a problem right now where the wolves kept killing all the deer and are trying to find a balance there, so there will be like a circle of life.
- Wildlife and Zombies can interact in the same way, zombies vs wolves naturally
- it will still be alpha when we get into it.
- The alpha will be more of a way to find what will be fun, what to add and stuff, and beta will be where the bug hunt happens.
- server player amounts not determined yet
- types of servers still being determined, as in PvE focused Servers or vice versa
- still playing with loot. doing it like the DayZ mod where it'll respawn in randomish intervals.
- the goal is massive amount of massively sized servers, but will start with a few massive servers
- big issue is how to get around things like stream hunting because there will probably be less servers than most
- going for modern guns, going for realistic gun spawns based on location. some places(the south) could totally have a lot of guns in the houses, where the opposite could be true in other places
- right now there is both med packs and healing based on eating
- working on the bodily harm/injuries system
- crafting bandages can be found and crafted, saline bags were just added
- rust level crafting is "the goal"
- they are working on getting a bow and arrow in there.
- ATM cars are just kind of there in full condition, but they could easily add the "this car is missing ______ component(s)" system
- Character customization is very basic ATM, will expand later, should be easy to expand.
- Anti-Cheat is transferring over from Planetside 2, and is very successful over there.
- Dynamic weather is being added. rain is just getting to the point of actually making the ground wet, character shining a bit, bushes wet, etc.
- containers and inventory system can be complicated: how to present it in the UI, how many default spots on spawn, how many to have on different clothes/gear
- debating how hard it should be to switch guns, ie: carry 3 guns at all times, or multiple clicks and in inventory management just to swap from one gun to another.
- debating on equipment weight being accounted for, can be tricky, must feel right.
- again, fun is a main concern here
- proximity chat confirmed
- has whole Planetside 2 back-end, so they can add components from that very easily
- still debating how playing with friends will work, sending an invite that needs to be confirmed so you can see where our friends are.
- arson is gonna be a thing. needs to be figured out still though.
- Performance is the #2 priority behind fun. Taking it VERY seriously
- not sure if suicide will be an option
- too early to tell if Mac version will be a thing. might make it if there is demand.
- unsure if planting crops is going to be in it.
- feedback will be a huge factor, this sub will be pivotal.
- it is surprising how short the development cycle has been so far.
- micro-transactions will never directly effect PvP combat. probably not even things like bandages will be buy-able.
- craftables/ingredients/anything gatherable will probably not be buy-able.
- biggest thing ATM is just getting the game to a stable, playable state
- micros could be things like boosts in things happening, like in PS2
- definitely working on getting around the combat logging problem
- trees destructible, best tree destruction, ie getting them to fall when chopped down
- live stream of current build next week, possibly monday, the 14th.
- early access via steam roughly 4-6 weeks from now for $20
- small, 20-ish man dev-team
- day night cycle. it is accelerated.
- not sure how climate will be handled when game becomes as big as it could be
- placing items uses physics(PhysX?)
- ragdoll bodies confirmed.
- possible feature: pissing and shitting
- air vehicles are possible(the engine) but not sure if it will be there in the end
- PS4 version is pretty much confirmed.
- official H1Z1 twitter: h1z1game
By: John Smedley
I wanted to take this opportunity to solicit ideas from people interested in H1Z1 regarding how we monetize it. You will be surprised to hear we have intentionally left the decisions about what to monetize until we can hear from you. This isn't some contrived thing.. I'm being serious. It is a nearly blank slate. So the floor is open for ideas. I'm going to have a few simple requests for your thinking process.
1) This will be a F2P game (after early access). During early access it's going to cost $19.99 to play.
2) We are not interested in selling weapons. Weapons are only aquired by crafting or exploring and finding one. We are not selling power.
3) The game at it's core is about survival. Our preference is not to sell ANYTHING that can help with that. If this game is too hard for you play another one. We don't want to give shortcuts for our core mechanic.
4) Wearables - we DO see wearables as an obvious "heck yes" kind of thing. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have most wearables be purchaseable. Of course we will still have plenty to craft, find and wear for free.
5) We made this game because we love making games and entertaining our players is why we exist. That being said, we do need to make money. Your ideas are appreciated greatly but if we can avoid the "hey give us everything for free because you owe it to us since you're a big company and we should get free games" commentary it would help a lot.
So with the above in mind, we welcome a serious dialogue about this. We're listening and if you want to have a say in this, now's the time.
Smed
Sources
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/22nr99/what_weve_learned_now/
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/22r2gi/summary_of_uwhisenhunts_interview_on_liriks_live/
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/22s9k2/answering_questions_about_the_map/
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/22niku/what_is_h1z1/
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/22p8rc/monetization_in_h1z1/
http://1337loungelive.com/GTL/
http://www.h1z1brasil.com.br/2014/04/h1z1-mais-detalhe-sobre-o-jogo-sao.html