I recently had the opportunity to interview Hermann Petersheck producer of Jumpgate Evolution at Netdevil. Being that the inteview was a bit long, this is not a complete word by word transcript, but instead just the juicy parts.

Q: Going back to the original Jumpgate, which used a classic cockpit/first person perspective, what was the reason for changing this to a 3rd person/chase perspective as seen in the recent footage at PAX?

A: We didn’t actually change it, we added that to it. The reasoning was we wanted to appeal to more diverse kinds of players.   There is first person mode in the game right now, but we haven’t done cockpits yet, which we plan on doing it.

Q: Players travel throughout the game by using Jumpgates.  Does this work like StarTrek where I can “jump” my ship from one area to another at anytime or do I have to travel to a designated area to use a physical gate to make jumps?

A: There like portals, you fly to them and you jump to whatever that next area connects to.

Q: So no warp drives?

A: We might do something like that at some point, but it’s always kinda dangerous adding teleports to a MMO because there’s value in travel time.  What I mean by that is if it takes you a while to get somewhere in order to get something of value, if you take that time of travel away you have to make sure that balances against the reward.  We might do something like a warp drive at some point, but it’s not planned right now.

Q: It seems that PvP has made a recent revival with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.  How does your PvP system work?

A: We are planning a couple of different things.  One is where you’re just fighting someone in open space and you gain XP from it.  Then there’s battle space, sort of an arena type system that’s  scenario based where there are clear objectives for the players.  So the first one were working on is with two Capital ships approaching and you have to take out the other person’s Capital ship before they take yours out.  So it allows for huge ships in space to fight each other with huge amount of people on either side.  That’s an instanced space sort of PvP scenario.

The original game had a thing called beacons where you would convert the beacons to your side for your nation and based on that you would get certain benefits.  For example posting auctions would be cheaper or repair costs would be lower based on how much space you controlled.  So that would give people focal points to go after and there’s a sense of owning a certain part of space.  Those might be outposts that are defended, if you own them the defenses would fight for you.

Q: Will there be open PvP servers?

A: We’ve talked about that a lot internally.  Most MMOs do the standard PvE with designated PvP areas then servers that are Open PvP, but we’ve talked about mixing them some way.  Possibly a flag based system where at character creation the player would chose what sort of experience they wanted.  So when you make a character you can choose hardcore mode and you play together with other players with different rules.  I don’t know if it will work on not, we’ll have to see when we test it.

The thing I hate about the PvP server solution is that these kinds of players are over here segregated from these other players and there segregated because they want a different gaming experience. Is it possible to allow the two groups to play with different rules in the same world or is that confusing.  I don’t know the answer to that.  Those are the types of ideas we’ve had.

Q: Scenarios have been a big hit in Warhammer Online allowing gamers to join PvP battles from anywhere on the map.  Does Jumpgate Evo plan on anything similar?

A: They did that so perfect so that is something we would want to do.  Normally you go talk to a guy who represents the PvP arena and you have to get in queue and sit around a wait, that’s boring.  I really like that solution so I plan to do that type of thing.  I love that instant PvP solution.

Q: How does Jumpgate Evo handle player death?  Will there be looting?

A: Right now when you die your stuff is damaged and you go back to the last station you were in where you have to pay to have your ship repaired, but you don’t lose your equipment or ship.  As far as rewards, I like the idea that PvP gives you similar rewards to PvE.  So in other words if I defeat you in battle, I get XP points, maybe a bounty and you can do a loot roll against players and have them drop different stuff.   I think were going to stay away from the, I kill you, you’re going to drop all your stuff and I’m going to pick it up, simply because it’s so fraustrating for the victim.

However as I eluded before we contemplated  the idea of this sort of, hardcore mode sort of thing, so if you play in that mode the rules are different, so then if you do die maybe you’ll lose your stuff or ship, but in exchange you’ll advance more rapidly.  Right now for the normal type of game play, you don’t lose items.

Q: Being a space combat MMO there will obviously be comparisons between Jumpage Evolution and Eve Online.  Is your game better?

A: I don’t like the word better, I’ve played Eve quite a bit and I actually like it, a lot.  I think it’s more like we’re very different.  We’re trying to create a different type of space experience, which is more an action kind of game where you’re flying in your ship, you’re engaging in combat that is skill based, it’s more of an intimate kind of experience.  Were not necessarily trying to beat Eve, were trying to create a different type of experience.