This past Friday we hosted our second Developer Chat Event. More than 200 Hellgaters joined the IRC server to ask questions and participate. Developers in attendance included Bill Roper, Tyler Thompson, David Glenn, Alan Hu, and Phil Shenk. The chat, originally scheduled to be an hour in length, lasted for nearly two during which over 30 questions were answered.

Many thanks to all Hellgaters who attended this second Developer Chat Event! You can read the entire formatted transcript here:

[Scapes]: It is 4PM here at Flagship Studios and we would like to welcome you all to this Hellgate: London Developer Chat Event! This is the second DevChat we've had and it looks to be a big one!
[Scapes]: We have a host of developers ready to answer your burning questions about Hellgate: London.
[Bill Roper]: Hey everyone! Welcome to the chat!
[Tyler Thompson]: Hey everyone!
[Taylor Balbi]: Hey all :)
[Dave Glenn]: hello all
[Alan Hu]: Hey everyone :]

[InnerVisions]: What happened to the random quests that were planned for the game? Is there any plans to add them in a future update?
[Tyler Thompson]: We've been talking about these more recently. I can't guarantee one way or another, but they definitely on our radar.
[Bill Roper]: We've been looking at a lot of things to get into the game during the upcoming updates, and the re-introduction of random quests is currently in discussion. We know that players want more non-linear content, so we're looking into all sorts of ideas.

[Amarra]: Many single-player users are feeling neglected due to the slow rate of single-player patching and the inability to purchase subscriber content for single-player. Can you tell us anything about your future plans for single-player that might reassure us we're not second-class citizens?
[Bill Roper]: We've been focusing our efforts on the online portion of the game since that is where we see the most players across all of our markets (US/EU/Asia), but some of the work we've done will translate into the singleplayer experience. Unfortunately the time and testing it takes to do a single-player patch is large, and runs counter to the online testing and patching. We've been waiting to batch a larger amount of meaningful SP content into
[Bill Roper]: ...so when we have the next round of Class changes in - for example - we'll schedule out some time to get a patch out that will mean something to our SP gamers.

[Sp3tSnAz]: You have said before that there will be some sort of additional "perks" for the founders. As of yet, we have not seen, nor do we know about any of these perks or of when they are to come. Can you give us some idea on when and if we will be seeing anything, as well as what those perks could be?
[Tyler Thompson]: We have been working on a couple new items for founders. They aren't quite ready yet, but I think that they are pretty cool.
[Tyler Thompson]: I don't have a date for them - we are trying to wait until things are closer to finished before give any dates.

[Sp3tSnAz]: With areas like Stonehenge it is apparent that you are looking more towards the end game players in Hellgate. However Stonehenge as an area was kind of short lived and other than just farming could be completed within days. What sort of areas or ideas are you looking to add in the future particularly regarding the end game portion of Hellgate London to keep players occupied for long periods of time?
[Bill Roper]: We're looking into more non-linear elements that can be enjoyed not only throughout the course of the game play, but also for the end game. PvP is getting a huge amount of attention now since that is something that players love to do well past when they have finished leveling. We've got some other ideas up oyur sleeves that we'll be talking about when we get closer.
[Bill Roper]: So yes - we're working on a lot of things right now - and we aren't ready to talk about all of them. We have learned it is better to wait until we can show you guys things in Test Center (or are close) rather than discuss ideas which then become LAW! ;)

[Lugard]: Are there any plans to allows us to replay quests (without Quest Rewards), so we can fight bosses such as the museum Emporer (Gulkar?) and Sydonia without interrupting the main quest chain, and of course help others with the Wall Quest?
[Tyler Thompson]: In Patch 1.1 we added the ability to replay these boss runs. We haven't been working much on The Wall, but the rest should make for some fun farming.

[[EM]True]: Will a shared stash or a mailing system be implemented soon?
[Bill Roper]: The in-game email system is the top priority of that group right now. We've all been wanting it in for a while as it is also the core of our consignment house / auction system. We'll see this much sooner rather than later - no date, but definitely on the visible horizon.

[Naturzauberer]: The skill descriptions in the game are pretty weak, for example you don't know how strong a fire elemental is, how much damage it does, etc. Same goes for all the other pets. Neither do you know how much damage your evoker foci are doing when casting a spell. And the "rating" of a weapon doesn't really say anything (most players think it's useless and confusing), so why don't you replace it with the actual
[Bill Roper]: The skills descriptions are undergoing a pass to make them more readable and more informative. You'll see our first step towards this with the Marksman skills in the upcoming 1.2 patch when it hits test center. We're also looking at changing the Skill UI to make things much more readable.

[ForgottenSpiral]: Do you have plans to add shrines back into the game?
[Alan Hu]: Shrines are definitely on our list of new additions. However, we're still looking at ways to improve upon the ways in which they'll affect gameplay :)

[Syllvir]: What is your direction and future for HGL. Are you wanting to take it in more a MMORPG route or an ARPG route.
[Tyler Thompson]: Sometimes games don't fit well into the current categories, and that can spark a lot of debate.
[Tyler Thompson]: What are we working on? We are adding new things to the game on many fronts, but we are place a lot of focus on the multiplayer features like e-mail, auctions, PVP, etc...
[Tyler Thompson]: We are also working on new skills, new monsters and new areas... I'm not sure that we are pushing towards a particular genre.

[`Sunar]: Why are people forced to go through normal to get to Elite. Rushing people through normal to get to Elite is very boring for all parties when we just all want to play together on Elite.
[Tyler Thompson]: Anyone who has played Elite knows that it would be pretty brutal for a newbie player. So, we decided to have people earn it. Also, it is one of the few account-wide rewards that we have for beating the game.

[Crysalim]: Currently, if a mob is 10 or more levels above you, it is almost impossible to kill. Is this intended? It is most noticeable in late nightmare.
[Alan Hu]: It isn't intended that the endgame monster's are almost impossible to kill solely due to the level gap, but that isn't to say that endgame monsters shouldn't be very challenging.
[Alan Hu]: I think there's quite a bit of misunderstanding when it comes to what players feel they "should" be fighting comfortably at the later stages of the game. However, we are constantly keeping an eye on tuning the balance of monsters throughout Hellgate.

[Blccdy]: Who is "Psych Mon."? This name is mentioned in about 10 NPC descriptions.
[Scapes]: Psych Mon. is the name of an organization which has profiles on many of the NPCs.
[Scapes]: You can read these profiles by checking out the "gossip" for NPCs via the radial dial menu.

[lpmcraw]: what will be your next move concerning pvp? will you change the characters balance especially for pvp?
[Tyler Thompson]: We are working on some team PvP games. We are still in the early stages of work on this - it something that takes a lot of iteration.
[Tyler Thompson]: As far as character balance... None of us want to see the skills squashed into very boring or bland shapes for PvP. We also don't want to have one or two strategies dominate.
[Tyler Thompson]: We are hoping that the new PvP features won't require much adjustment in the skills, but we will have to see how things play out.

[Syllvir]: What in the game gives you guys the warm fuzzies? What are you most proud of?
[Tyler Thompson]: I really enjoy working on the skills. It is something that I loved in Diablo 2, and it is still my favorite thing in Hellgate: London.

[Loran]: In patch 1.0 the Evoker got a major overhaul. Which class will be worked on next?
[Tyler Thompson]: We have made some very exciting changes to the Marksman. We will be making a post about the specifics soon.
[Tyler Thompson]: Some people saw a little "preview" of when we accidentally patched some strings into Test Center a couple weeks ago.
[Tyler Thompson]: Some highlights: Grenade Synergies and Sniper Mode improvements

[Jindujun]: There has been alot of questions regarding the M rating of the game as alot of players feel it isn't really living up to the M rating when it comes to blood and gore. Are there any plans on increasing the blood and gore in the game? Maybe add some zombified children.
[Dave Glenn]: Ratings are an interesting challenge... we localized to so many countries and it seems every one has it's own ideas on what's offensive.
[Dave Glenn]: Given our history, we like the gritty violence and settings, but not the point of being "shocking" just for the hell of it.
[Dave Glenn]: Zombie children sounds cool though. ;)

[eu_n3cron_hce]: will you add the HELL difficulty?
[Tyler Thompson]: We don't currently have plans to make a Hell difficulty. We've ramped the monster difficulty up to the end of Nightmare and it is already too challenging at the end of that.
[Tyler Thompson]: We are trying to make the end of Nightmare a little more reasonably balanced right now.

[[SF]Ayana]: We missed the x-mas event that we thought was going to happen... What in-game events are planned for this year?
[Tyler Thompson]: As you guys have seen, we have had a real challenge getting holiday events to happen.
[Tyler Thompson]: The difficulty is that it creates a hard deadline when builds have to be completed. Also, it requires that we make a bunch of content that goes away after a couple days.
[Tyler Thompson]: We are trying to stop rushing builds, and we are focusing on content that will stay around for a long time.
[Tyler Thompson]: I feel bad about it. I wish that we had more time and resources to work on it, but I think that it is the best choice right now.

[kazanokizu]: I've read hours and hours and hundreds of pages about the "cow level" and still haven't found a definitive answer as to whether it exists or if there is an analog to it in Hellgate. so is there?
[Dave Glenn]: There is no spoon.
[Taylor Balbi]: Moooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
[Scapes]: Moo.
[Tyler Thompson]: Moomoo
[Scapes]: These are not the droids you are looking for.
[Tyler Thompson]: What does the gem do?

[Sp3tSnAz]: It seems that from the current item levels that you will one day raise the level cap. How will you handle the balance of additional skill points being available for each of the classes and will this mean that down the road we could see a new set of skills available for the existing classes? In regards to this, if ever you did add new skills, how would you go about the balance between subscribers and non subscribers?
[Tyler Thompson]: In our next patch we plan on fixing the fact that several items require over level 50.
[Tyler Thompson]: As far as new skills... We are hoping that when we add new skills it will just present more options to subscribers and not necessarily make them more powerful.
[Tyler Thompson]: Balance, however, is a tricky thing.
[Tyler Thompson]: The goal here is to create more builds for the subscribers.

[PlatinumDevil]: This may anger subscribers, but are there any plans to improve/extend the 'out-of-the-box' game for non-subscribers? Can non-subs expect anything more from HGL?
[Tyler Thompson]: Right now we are working in several directions: we are fixing bugs, we are rebalancing things in the box game and we are adding new features for subscribers.
[Tyler Thompson]: Some things - I'm pretty sure that e-mail is included in this - will be available to non-subscribers.

[Voska]: most people have Most found the recipes for the tranmografire Cube however there are still i believe 6 that are not known is it possible to get some insight as to what these might be or even if they are in the game yet?
[Tyler Thompson]: We are working on some more recipes for the Cube for an upcoming patch. There is still a ton of potential in that magic box.
[Tyler Thompson]: The missing recipes... I don't want to give those away...
[Scapes]: Akusan :asks: With the reworking of the Evoker class, and the feedback based changes in 1.1, I wonder if this is going to become more of the norm in the way of game development. Are you planning on reworking other aspects of the game using similar feedback in the future?
[Tyler Thompson]: We have a nice set of changes coming up for the Marksman. I'm hoping to see these sit in Test Center for a week in order to get feedback and iterate on them before going live with that build.
[Tyler Thompson]: So, yes, we are planning on placing big sets of balance changes out there for you to look at and help us balance them out.

[Huntyre]: Is anything currently in the works to make Hardcore Elite more playable... things like lag spikes have been plaguing the Hardcore community
[Tyler Thompson]: Lag spikes come in many shapes and forms.
[Tyler Thompson]: Some of them are server lag - we've got some solutions for the last few issues that we see with this.
[Tyler Thompson]: Some of them are framerate issues on your machine - we keep optimizing the graphics, but if you are really concerned about this, then you might want to turn down your graphics settings.
[Tyler Thompson]: Sometimes lag comes from a bad connection from you to our servers. I don't have a great answer for this one. I can say that we have many people playing from far, far away from our servers and several have mentioned that they are surprised at how well it works.
[Tyler Thompson]: I hate the Lag Monster too. We will keep trying to squash each form he takes, but it is an ongoing battle.

[Inarai]: When you rebalance the Blademaster, have you considered adding some sort of dodge-based skillset?
[Tyler Thompson]: Hmm... The Guardian really is the King of Survival. We have several cool ideas for improving the Blademaster, but most of them focus on polishing the current skills - much like we did with the Evoker.
[Tyler Thompson]: When it comes to thinking about new skills for this class, I think that we need to stick with the Blademaster's philosophy of: "A good offense is the best defense."

[Demonos]: Is there any chance we'll see some sort of fast melee rogue type of character AKA assassin in D2?
[Tyler Thompson]: Fast melee... sounds a lot like the Blademaster...
[Tyler Thompson]: Maybe we could think of some skills that push him more in that direction, but we have a few other directions that we are considering too.

[Krommie]: are there plans to add ways to clear up some inventory spaces, ie craft bag, consumable bag/belt, essence bags... there are way too much stuff to be carry around these days (if it's bag, please make them equipable)
[Tyler Thompson]: Man, that backpack does fill up with small stuff doesn't it? We are looking at a couple possible solutions. I can't commit to one of them until we agree on one, but we are talking through solutions now.

[Bainek]: any plans to add attribute reassignment (respec) in the future?
[Tyler Thompson]: You've been talking about it recently. We've been talking about it for a long time.
[Tyler Thompson]: We've got it on our list. I think that it would be cool to be able to adjust your stats.
[Tyler Thompson]: It definitely seems to be something that would be important for high level characters.
[Tyler Thompson]: It might also help the feed system pains. Anyway, yes, we are planning on adding it.

[Bubo]: With the current mob designs, there seems to be a lack of insectoid based designs. Is this intentional, and would this be something to see in a future chronicle?
[Bill Roper]: We currently have 4 castes of demons, and we didn't really push any of the artistically towards insectoids. It's a pretty cool idea, though, and would lend it self to some radical new designs. We'll float that one over to the art department!

[Dekar]: Is there any plans to update Acts 1-6 with new tilesets, possibly including some of the things that were originally cut from the game due to time constraints?
[Dave Glenn]: I'm assuming Act 6 is referring to Stonehenge areas... but in a nutshell, yes. We'll be adding some variety to the existing base game as time allows. We put the priority on new content, but some things are relatively easy to go back and add
[Dave Glenn]: Don't expect huge modifications, but we too would like to see more variety for those areas.

[BravenIrish]: Hi guys! Creative members of the community really seem to like "showing off" their characters, making short films, and taking awesome screen shots. Are there plans to add more tools? Such as changing the camera angle and removing the UI?
[Tyler Thompson]: We can add a cheat to turn off the UI. We can also give you a free floating camera. I'll see when we can get that into a build.
[Scapes]: I think I hear some cheering over in #hellgate-chat, heh.

[kazanokizu]: Errgoth was waaay to difficult before you changed his stats but now hes a pushover besides the massive amount of HP he has do you plan on doing anything regarding this?
[Alan Hu]: We certainly do. Balancing and tuning bosses is an ongoing process, and Errgoth (among other bosses) have already been adjusted in our internal builds :)

[Scapes]: Well, Hellgaters, thus ends our second Hellgate: London Developer Chat Event. We've seen over 200 champions of humanity in attendance and have answered more than two dozen questions. Heck, you all got an exclusive scoop on changes to the UI!
[Scapes]: THANK YOU ALL for participating tonight!
[Tyler Thompson]: I'm glad that we have these chats. I'm sorry that we aren't committing to dates on things, but we all agree that it is more important that we don't rush out buggy builds in order to meet dates. I know that this chat has added a few things to our "todo" list and adjusted some priorities. Thanks for participating.
[Scapes]: We'll be opening up the channel to public chat in just a second.
[Bill Roper]: Thanks to everyone for coming out to the chat. We'll do more of these, and hey - you even got some features in from this one! See you online!
[Taylor Balbi]: Thanks guys! Come back for the Third one!
[Scapes]: Thanks again, all! MARCH ON, HELLGATERS!

Many thanks to the irc.ForTheGamers.org staff for their help with this second event!