You mentioned last week that the current plan is to continue the development of FPS on the Crusader map and when the time is right, enable Star Marine with the FPS feature suite functionality implemented at that time. Could you give us your thoughts on the continued development of Arena Commander? Is the continuation of space flight development shifting to Crusader map from now on as well?asked by Shrike

I best way to think about it, because it does drive me crazy that people keep thinking that Star Marine is a separate game, Arena Commander is a separate game. They are just facets of the overall game, the overall game is essentially what you get when you're flying around Crusader in 2.0/2.1, that we're going to be building on from and that idea was going to be sort of seamless between flying a spaceship, running around on foot whether you're running or just talking to someone.It's all from first person, it's why we call it first person universe. Travels massive distances, millions of kilometers, arrive at your location, get out of your ship, walk around, all going to be seamless. From now on most of the featured development iteration is really focused on the 2.1 sort of Crusader, we're actually shifting it, it's going to be... Crusader's just a small part but really it's the Stanton system. You'll be seeing that in the next, not necessarily 2.2 but 2.3/2.4 onwards, it will be fleshed out to be Stanton and we'll have those distances in there and you'll be able to travel around areas, then eventually go down and land on some of the locations.That is where the core gameplay is really going to be fleshed out because that is the PU experience, you behave quite differently in let's say Arena Commander and you will behave differently in Star Marine then you would in the proper Persistent Universe. Flying around, going from location to location, fighting people because obviously you respawn easily in Arena Commander and you get your ship back. In the real world, or the Persistent Universe, it's not going to be so easy, you're not going to be back in the action quite as well and you got to get your replacement ship and all the rest of the things.So, the whole idea of Arena Commander and the idea of Star Marine was really to sort of test out all the mechanics before we had all these things and been able to in one place but they're all in one place now so really where we want to be doing the mechanics is in the final destination, which is what the Persistent Universe will be. Now that doesn't mean that Arena Commander and when we turn on the Star Marine game mode, those two won't get love because we do understand that it is kinda nice to go in there and just practice your combat skills and don't have to deal with anything else or worry about getting your insurance ship back, reconfiguring your weapons to the way you liked it, flying back.You'll respawn/come to in a medical bay on the last friendly planet you made and that may be quite a distance away from where you died. We understand, Arena Commander you want some fast action, you want to get in there, you want to hone your dogfighting skills, you want to practice that. That's what that's good for, it's the same for Star Marine. That's all really about honing the FPS skills, exactly the same skills you'll be using in the Persistent Universe.That's why when I said last week when we were talking about it, it's no difference, it's FPS is what it is. I think I've seen all this noise about, 'oh, they've just thrown all this stuff out'. No we haven't thrown this stuff out, it's just that we don't want to bring all of the pieces online until they're all sort of... like the animation is properly polished and there's a bunch of little edge cases that had to be dealt with. You know the paradigm in development is, it's fairly easy to get 80% of the way there, it's the last 20% that takes 80% of the time and I would say that a lot of the FPS stuff probably would fall into that category.We just want to make sure that it works smoothly, so grenades and throwing it and gadgets, some of the other stuff we showed before when we did some of the demos is all still in there we just have it disabled at the moment. We need to make sure that they're polished and fully working well with all the other systems because when you're in the overall set up, you're not just doing FPS. We need to make sure it all works and plays well together.It's complicated, it takes more time but it's all happening there. So, the idea is Star Marine and Arena Commander will be both your sort of practice modes and yes, you can have some competitive games, where you might want to test your mettle against someone who's the best fighter pilot, who's the best on ground shooter, that's kind of what they'll be good for. Really they're just practicing for you existing in the Persistent Universe cause that's really where you need to have your skills.So, we'll tweak things, improve some of the game modes, at some point the matchmaking needs to be significantly improved and we'll sort of make all that be better but that's a lower priority to us. Building the PU structure out is sort of important and to be honest with you is actually super cool and super fun, that is an experience you don't get anywhere else where as yes, maybe I can just go dogfight in a bunch of other space sims or maybe I can run a gun in a bunch of other FPS games, but you can't do what you can do now in 2.0/2.1 in any other game.That's what's kinda cool about it. That's where our focus is, like I said Arena Commander, Star Marine, there's is sort of game modes, games within games to help you practice. They will be there and they will supported, they're less important than delivering the main experience which is what you're going to get in the Persistent Universe.