There has been some controversy over the authenticity of the English AMA on reddit yesterday and it has been clarified that the Com2us representatives were fakes. You can read more on the clarifications here.
However guys, fret not. There is a real QnA done by one of Taiwan’s most popular gaming website, directly with the Korean developers and it has been verified on their Facebook page here. I will attempt to translate this with my sub-par Chinese so please bare with me. The producer being interview is called “Min-Young Jung”.
GNN: When did Summoners War started its development and how did the idea/concept come about in the first place?
Min-Young Jung：The whole process of developing the game took about a year and a half. However, the whole concept of the game took an even longer time to process. I am a great fan of RPG games, and I feel that the summoner class is the most fascinating of all. When building your characters, the Warrior, Mage and Cleric class can feel a little too similar. However, summoners are a league by their own. Summoners and their pets have their own unique mental connection and due to my own creative mindset, I love the idea of creating a game based on the Summoner.
GNN: What are the challenges that your team faced during development? Care to share it with our Taiwan players?
Min-Young Jung：The hardest part of development is to make players feel a sense of connection to the game. In the first place, RPG games are not the kind of genre that will give players to form the connection easily. Summoners War includes many different RPG elements thus new players may not be able to pick-up the game easily. These are the challengers faced by our team.
The development team spent a long time testing the game during its beta stage, and with the help of numerous suggestions made by players, the game improved tremendously from its original version. People who played the game will understand that, there is progression in the game and you’ll feel stronger as your team improves. That’s the beauty of the game.
GNN: Are there plans to release a Real-time “Player vs Player” battle instead of the current “Player vs AI”?
Min-Young Jung：It is mine and the development team’s dream to accomplish the real-time model. However, the feature is still early in discussion thus I’m unable to provide any information about it.
GNN: There is a great disadvantage for defenders due to the game’s AI system, especially for Monsters such as Ramagos, decreasing its value on combat capabilities. Are there plans for the development team to rectify this disadvantage?
Min-Young Jung：Improving the AI for Summoners War is one of the top priorities for the development team. In fact, we have previously made changes to the AI settings and will continue to do so to maintain the game’s balance (including Ramagos).
However, there is a limit to the randomness of the AI during attack and defense and is not limited to the game’s AI only. We need to gather more data before coming up with solutions to the problem thus currently, we are unable to provide with a clear solution.
GNN: Currently, there is a certain degree of imbalance with the Rune System (discrepancy between the rarity of the runes where higher level = better stat) , are there plans to make adjustments in the future?
Min-Young Jung：The primary stats on the Runes are fixed while the secondary stats are random. There are many possible combinations of runes that a player can obtain. However, with better quality runes, the cost of leveling them is also increased. Obtaining a high quality rune is a result of the players effort thus we would like to continue with the current system. However, if there is a imbalance in the game’s overall mechanic, we may have to make adjustments in future but not now.
GNN: The game’s RNG in are pretty much decisive of the battle’s results (ie; are you able to CC your opponent in turn 1). We would like to ask if this was taken into consideration during development or will the team make adjustments in the future?
Min-Young Jung：There are monsters with powerful debuffs with low accuracy and high accuracy debuff monsters with average debuff skills. Each monsters has their own uniqueness. The random element is what makes battle interesting.
However, we do agree that battles should not be won based on luck. Thus I promise that we will work hard to make adjustments. Currently, the meta of the game favors monsters that stacks on attack speed. In order to balance the meta and to prevent players from relying overly on Attack Speed, we will make the necessary adjustments to balance up the game.
GNN: Some players feedback that there are too many CC based monsters and certain Leader skills are too power thus overshadowing the rest. Are there plans to balance the skills?
Min-Young Jung：I hope to give the game more variety and allow players to come up with different tactics in battle. Thus we give our monsters different CC skills to encourage players to think out of the box when developing their teams. We will continue to balance the game and tone down the power of certain OP monsters so that there are greater variety in the monsters used in battles.
To be honest, balancing the game is difficult. We do agree that there are certain monsters that are either too weak or too powerful at its current state. However, although there is a need to balance, constant changes may create confusion to the players thus we have to take into consideration of these effects before making changes.
GNN: Currently, some of the tooltips on the monsters can be quite confusing. Are there plans to use actual figures in the tooltip so that players can judge better?
Min-Young Jung：We will continuously strive to improve the description (including actual figures) on the tooltips. However, as these are not ready, we do not have an ETA on its release date.
GNN: Can you discuss what are the latest plans for the game and what are the new features/content that we can expect?
Min-Young Jung：We are currently developing a different kind of dungeon. Due to its difficulty and different tactics involved, the rewards will also be special. New chapters, stories and continent are also in the development stage. We also planned to have Guild battles and more. So stay tuned~
The last question is about hosting an offline event for Taiwan players thus I will not translate it. With that, here’s the end of the QnA.
You can read the original article here
