BattleForge Interview: The Novel RTS/Trading Card Hybrid
Date: 12-03-2008
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KeyWord: BattleForge, interview,RTS,card
Summary:With the BattleForge beta currently in full swing, Strategyinformer make an wonderful interview with Sebastien Nell, BattleForge's producer for EA Phenomic, to learn some more about the novel RTS/trading card hybrid.
Recently, attention is being focused on BattleForge, a new fantasy online real-time strategy game. Developed in Ingelheim, Germany, BattleForge is an epic real-time strategy (RTS) fantasy game that combines the elegance of RTS gameplay with the collectability of trading cards in an online environment where friends can play together. BattleForge pioneers strategy gaming with its online multiplayer design and robust community. Players can get in the game by purchasing the title at retail in early 2009 and then take their game online to play with the larger Battleforge community.
With the BattleForge beta currently in full swing, Strategyinformer made an wonderful interview with Sebastien Nell, BattleForge's producer for EA Phenomic, to learn some more about the novel RTS/trading card hybrid.
Q: The last time we saw BattleForge was at EA's European Showcase back in April of this year. How much has the game come along in the few months since?
Sebastien Nell: Very good. Hopefully you'll have had the chance to play the beta for which we've given out roughly 4000 keys for now, and we have about 400 simultaneous users online, which is a great response to the game. All the feedback that we've had so far from the community has been very good. We've had loads of compliments about how good the graphics look, how the gameplay mechanics come together, which is something new in an RTS. And that was mainly our goal with BattleForge, to create something new, by taking the old RTS genre and creating something that hasn't been done before. Our thinking was, let's get the RTS online because the RPG already made that transition a long time a go, which is why the most successful game online is an RPG. We thought, ok, let's do it with an RTS and that's when we created BattleForge.
Q: And I'm right in thinking that the game revolves around using a deck of cards, right?
Sebastien Nell: Purely virtual. The cards represent units, buildings and spells within BattleForge and we decided to go with cards because everybody's used to associating value with cards, like Magic: The Gathering players or even poker players (who) know that each card has a certain value. In BattleForge we use these cards as a transporter for these units, buildings and spells, but instead we could have used runes, which wouldn't have made much sense because - like I said – people are used to playing with cards and since we have a lot of Magic: The Gathering veterans in our team, it was kind of clear that we'd go that route. Also, (there is) all of the community aspects that you have with trading cards.
In our game we fully support everything that you know from offline, real world trading, so we have an auction house, which is like a substitute for eBay when it comes to Magic: The Gathering players. You have in-game mail where you can attach cards as well as direct player trades, and we have trade messages where you can post, 'I'm trading this card,' or ‘I'm searching for that card.' That's what we've created to give the community all the tools that they need to communicate with each other, and it's all built into the game
Fire card: destructive
Q: The RTS is a huge genre, especially on the PC. Do you see BattleForge having enough in the way of unique ideas to really stand out from the crowd?
Sebastien Nell: Definitely. First of all BattleForge is an online only product, so there's no offline component to the game. Even the single-player scenarios would usually have offline or online and there's several reasons for that. Our main focus with BattleForge was to create an RTS that is focused on co-operative gameplay, so PvE (Player versus Enemy), instead of putting the focus on a PvP (Player versus Player) mode, which previous RTS games have delivered very well (already). But it's not very motivating for players that are not very good at PvP to get their ass kicked every time they go online, so we created a great PvE mode, where you can play together with your friends with one player, two player, four player and twelve player scenarios. The twelve player scenarios are what we call raids, like in World Of Warcraft and the content is as hard as the basic forty man dungeons when World Of Warcraft started out, which is pretty cool. During the beta it's nice to see how players already try to tackle the twelve player maps and heartily fail in doing so (laughs). So then they're going back to talk on the forums about strategies and what they're going to do and which cards they're going to take in their deck in order to successfully beat those twelve player maps or other scenarios.
Frost card: defensive
I think that's one of the things we also focused the game around. In a normal RTS you're pretty much bound to a build order in that you have to have a certain building, you have to upgrade it in order to create new units. In BattleForge you have a card collection, where you can see which cards you own and out of your collection you pick twenty cards you want to take into battle with you. This gives you almost infinite options in creating a deck that perfectly fits to the purpose you need it for. We have four powers in BattleForge, Fire, Frost, Shadow and Nature and all these powers stand for a different strategy. So, Fire is very destructive, Frost is more defensive with healing units and Shadow I call the evil paladin, as there's always a downside to playing with a Shadow deck. It's really the depth of strategic thinking that we put into the game – it's just really, really cool. Players are going to choose their power that they like to play with, which is comparable with taking a role in an RPG, but you're not bound to one specific role at a time. You can build as many decks as you want and follow different strategies.
