"If you want to send a message to the IdentityRPG developers, you can can go to http://www.identityrpg.com/ to get all of the social media outlets. Once we get the ball rolling, updates will be weekly. We want to be as transparent as possible, we want to know what people are paying for."
Q - Is $150,000 enough money?
A - We know they can't make a game with $150,000. We are not naive. We wanted to attract investors, and that's already happening. You have the right to be sceptical but we know what we're doing and it will be done.
Q - What about the texture placeholders?
A - Changing a lot of the models, most of them are placeholders.We just wanted to create a basic idea on what the environment would look like.We had to illustrate some of the ideas to get the idea across.Some of the assets will be staying.
Q - How about the prisons and jail sentences?
A - If you don't pay tickets you will do a little bit of time but there is a prison for the big time crimes. There will be minigames in the prison such as building up a small gang, shanking people or claiming areas as your own.
Q - What is the estimated map size?
A - The size of Altis, we plan on having 300-400 players per server. It's a fictitious but based on the North-East United States. There will be forests, one main city and smaller cities, wilderness, etc and other areas to explore. Having 300-400 players on Altis would seem like a crazy idea, but a lot of that space is unusable. We are utilizing that unused space to create a better environment. If we decide to expand the map, the playerbase will be raised.
Q - Do you have an official Reddit post?
A - Someone made a subreddit for the game already. The subreddit is /r/IdentityMMO.
Q - How are the servers going to be set up?
A - There will be official and private servers. There are no RDM and VDM rules, but there will be mechanics to prevent such things. Joining the cops will be automated on public servers. Private server owners will be able to configure a lot of the settings, such as whitelist factions(police and firefighters, etc). They can also control which areas will be considered safe zones. Private servers will appear alongside the official public servers in the server browser.
Q - How will joining factions work?
A - There are no slots in Identity, unlike Altis Life where you had to join BLUFOR/OPFOR/INDEPENDENT to be an officer. To sign in, you have to login as a Civilian, travel to the Police Station and put on your uniform.
Q - What does the passport do for you?
A - The passport is your door into the world. When you purchase the game, you purchase a passport and you download the client. You do not need multiple passport stamps for different characters, you only need another passport stamp to make another account. You do not need to purchase the game to download the client and create a character, you can do all of those but your person will not be allowed in the world unless they have a passport stamp tied to your account. In future expansions, we have the ability request a second(different) passport stamp to get into the new area.
Q - What will the legal careers be like?
A - The game has a strong focus on police activity and gang activity. If you do not want to be a part of police or gangs, you can purue another legal career such as a truck driver(similar to Euro Truck Simulator). People that own business that need to transport goods can request your services, if there are none available, you will be given an automated delivery. There are also government careers such as being a governor or mayor. You have the ability to own a factory and make money through that, or work as a resource miner and delivery the resources to said factories. You could even distill alcohol in your own house and be able to sell it instantly or let it date. You could go as far as grow marijuana in your home legally if the mayor has legalized it. There will be workbenches you will be able to acquire and you will be able to craft wooden furniture and sell it to players for money.
Q - How will the inventory system work?
A - We don't know if you will have to drag items into your hands yet, but the trunk system will work on a grid, and you will have to rotate items to try and get them to fit. The grid will be invisible to you, but you will be able to see the 3D items in the trunk and be able to organize it accordingly.
Q - Will there be any air vehicles?
A - Right now, we're thinking against it because we don't want the world to feel small to you.
Q - How will user-made content be available in stores?
A - User made content, for example furniture, will be available alongside the stock furniture. We are not ready to talk about this yet.
Q - Will the game be moddable?
A - No, it will open doors for hackers. Though, the amount of server settings on private servers will have a wide range of options to make it seem modded. These settings include permadeath, forced first person, no vehicles, etc. It will all be customizable on a simple user-interface. We want to give a lot of freedom but we want to control it to a point so we can keep our vision of what our game was supposed to be. We do not want anything to damage the game and have other people be turned off of the game because of these things.
Q - Will there be pets?
A - For now, we have it so you can have pets inside your house and your apartments. They do not have any features right now, they just walk around and bark/communicate. Expanding on this feature will be a stretch-goal.
Q - What is your target audience?
A - We are hoping for a mature community, we understand that there will be griefers in the public servers, and we will deal with that by giving some incentive to roleplay. Our target market is to get people around the age of twenty. There's going to be some younger games, of course, that are going to come in and play, but we know that the majority of players we have will be in the teens.
Q - What are the parental concerns?
A - You don't see games that have features like drug producing and trafficking, unless there's a mod involved. But you're going to learn about the jail times and punishments involved. We understand that some parents will be mad and upset for allowing their children to do things associated with drugs, but we just want to make it fun for the player. It will be accurate so you know what's going on, but not 100% accurate.
Q - How diverse is the clothing in the stores?
A - You will be able to find a wide range of male and female clothing, with maybe even the ability to cross- dress.
Q - How will renting a server work?
A - We're going to have approved partnered companies with data-centers all over the world where you can handle the server. You will not be able to have the server files, but you will have the ability to edit and change settings using a nice little interface.
Q - How will you be able to have enough slots to keep up with the demand?
A - We can create new servers easily, but we will not be taking servers down or else people will lose their progress. There will be a spike of player activity for the first while, and there will be a queue, but we might bump up the servers capacity for the first spike to let people join in, and lower it back down when the influx of players lowers. It will mostly take care of itself by private servers if we are unable to meet the demand.
Q - Is your estimated delivery realistic?
A - It's a safe bet, it's not set in stone. It's way too early to tell how long this project will take. There are a lot of extra variables in game development that can change things drastically.
Q - Will there be Oculus Rift support?
A - Yes, there will be Oculus Rift support on Day One. We're going to have a special UI for people using it and there will be independent head tracking(like ARMA).
Q - What will the voice quality sound like?
A - The VOIP system uses the same codec as Teamspeak. There's directional sound and reverb, so if someone's off to your right talking, you will hear it in your right speaker.
Q - What illegal activities can I do in my house?
A - You will be limited to what you can do in your house in terms of illegal activities. Making marijuana in your house will be too small to make a living off of it, you will have to go to a field to mass produce it. Police will not be able to enter or raid your house.
Q - Is $1,000 valuable?
A - We want to make $1,000 mean a lot. It is near impossible to mirror the US economy. It will take a casual player around a day to make $1,000. Some things, for gameplay reasons, aren't going to be 100% accurate.
Q - What stages of Alpha/Beta are there?
A - There will be no Open Alpha testing, but there will be a closed beta for the backers. There will be an Open Beta so we may stress test our servers. There will be one Closed Beta phase before it reaches Open Beta. People who pledge will be one of the first to see the game publicly. The Closed Beta is going to be feature complete. We aren't going to have a half-finished product. It's not about how much money we can take from you, it's about creating the best roleplay experience you can get in a videogame.