Q&A with Rise of Legends Executive Producer Tim Train (Part 2)

Microsoft Game Studios: How did you go about balancing RoL? What were the challenges?

TT: When balancing the game, the most important thing is to clear away the distractions and just spend tons of time playing the game. That way, you get a real sense for how the different races play, and it gives you tons of time to work out broken strategies and racial features that might break a given map or scenario type.

Another critical component for the balancing process is the crack team of balance testers that Microsoft maintains. Drawn from the premier ranks of pro players, this group helps us correct the tiny flaws in balance that are magnified by players with unholy skill at RTS games. We’ve had great “pro” testers on this game for many months now, and they also have made several trips to BHG for intensive weeklong balance passes.

The biggest challenge has definitely been balancing three radically asymmetric races. When the playstyles of a race are very different, getting everything in equilibrium can be a real challenge. Changing just one little variable can have far-reaching consequences…which is why we’re glad we’ve been playing the game for almost three years now!

MGS: How do the single-player and multi-player modes differ from those of Rise of Nations?

TT: For the single-player Conquer the World campaign mode, we took the skeleton of what we put together for Rise of Nations and Thrones and Patriots, and then added a wide variety of new systems, content, and storyline in ways that are too numerous to detail but are a lot of fun to play!

For multiplayer, we always felt that the matchmaking on Rise of Nations was not what we wanted it to be, and so on this project we invested a lot of time and energy to deliver a world-class online experience. Once again, the new feature count is too numerous to mention, but broadly speaking we wanted to create a matchmaking tool that allowed for people to get into a game quickly, with little fuss, and yet have the flexibility to encourage games with friends and community-building.

MGS: What were the challenges in developing open-ended campaigns within the framework of a linear narrative?

TT: We were pretty happy with how the campaign game turned out for Rise of Nations. When we started Rise of Legends, we knew we wanted to keep the open-ended strategic decision-making that underpinned the Nations system. However, that led to a whole host of new challenges for the story that has to be the heart and soul of any fantasy setting. Our primary challenge was making a linear story that the player could discover in a somewhat nonlinear fashion.

MGS: Can you tell us something about what goals you set for the depth of gameplay?

TT: This is a hard question to answer—we don’t set out a lot of goals when we start except “be really FUN!” However, early in development we knew we wanted to amp up the intensity of the classic RTS experience, so that a good game between experienced players might run only 20 or 30 minutes.

Mostly, we did this by chopping off some of the boring gameplay bits that had become part of the RTS stereotype. In other games (including Rise of Nations), the first five to ten minutes tends to play out in a very similar fashion. You pursue the same strategies and do the exact same tasks in every game until your economy is set up and running. Your first interesting decision often doesn’t occur until the five-minute mark In Rise of Legends, we want your first interesting decision to occur seconds into the game, when you pick which city district to build.

At the other end of the spectrum, the last five or ten minutes is often about killing every last villager or building that the other team has. At this point the game is over—you are just going through the motions to get a “win.” To avoid this problem, we’ve adapted Nations’ capital victory so that capturing the enemy capital ends the game. This gives you a clear goal to work for, and moves the ending along so you can jump back in for some more quick multiplayer action!

MGS: In what direction do you see the RoN franchise going?

TT: At the tail end of a project, you tend to get tunnel vision because you are so focused on all the cool things you want to jam into the game before release. Every hour you spend thinking about the future is an hour of fun stuff that isn’t going into your current project. So in short, I don’t really have an answer here! We've released a game that we’ve had a blast developing, we’re going to metaphorically go to Disneyland, and then we’ll start dreaming again…

Back to Part 1