As many of you looking at my Steam profile will know, for the past few months, I’ve been incredibly smitten by Alliance of Valiant Arms. If you had told me two years ago that I would leave behind a supposedly top-tier, triple-A title like Call of Duty for a free-to-play PVP/PVE, shooter like A.V.A., I would have dismissed you as a rage-quitting noob. But oh, how times have changed.
I can even remember clearly the day I decided to leave the now-frigid womb of Activision’s Call of Duty for the warm embrace of ijji’s MMOFPS. I had been playing, but not necessarily enjoying CoD:BO multiplayer, when my Logitech G5 mouse stopped working. It was like the sign I had been waiting for. A higher power had intervened and smote my mouse and prevented me from playing. ‘No!,’ the voice said. ‘Though shalt not need to wade through the wall bangers and non-player controlled spam. Go forth and multiply your Experience Points.‘ If there was a bush in my computer room, it would have been on fire that day.
Well, I did go forth…right to the local Future Shop and bought me a G500 gaming mouse. Then, I went home and downloaded the free-to-play A.V.A. To my amazement, it had all the characteristics I had been begging for from Treyarch and Infinity Ward. You see, A.V.A.’s developer REDDUCK gave me a game that:
- appealed to competitive gamers.
- strove for balance.
- rewarded skill.
- reduced spammy play.
- was unabashedly hardcore.
- was easy on my shrinking wallet.
Originally influenced by the movie Blackhawk down and by the game Wolfenstein, A.V.A. was under my nose all this time and yet I was too blind to see it. Frankly, I had not given A.V.A. a second chance since I had played it more than a year earlier; however, when I found out that Nabore (ex-captain of CoD’s legendary Team Pandemic) played it regularly, I had to take another look. Am I glad I did.
Sure there are a few issues with the game, but for once, these issues were technical things and not philosophical. While CoD played silky smooth, it was the gameplay that I had issues with. With A.V.A., I love the gameplay and even though it does offer dedicated servers, the game suffers from lag here in North America. To get to the bottom of those issues and to talk about what might be coming down REDDUCK’s productive development pipeline, I recently contacted ijji’s Wook Kim, Project Manager for A.V.A. to both share my enthusiasm with him and to find out more about the game. Here is the interview:
BS: The amount of content (maps, guns, modes) that gets pumped out for A.V.A. is pretty amazing. How many developers does REDDUCK have working on A.V.A.?
WK: It’s hard to say the exact number. There are many different members at REDDUCK that put in much work into creating and developing content for A.V.A. They are now and will continue to develop new content consistently to add in game.
BS: The maps in A.V.A. are very balanced, are they play-tested before they go live?
WK: Yes, they are tested very thoroughly before the maps go live.
BS: Once the maps are released, do the devs ever go back and tweak them?
WK: Once a map is released, the devs may tweak it to balance it for a different game mode.
BS: Who advises the developers on the competitive nature of the game? Do you use A.V.A. players or are all the decisions taken by the devs?
WK: REDDUCK makes the final decision for implementation for development, but IJJI GAMES and feedback from A.V.A players are all heard and highly considered.
BS: A.V.A. has been on Steam for a bit now, how has that worked out? Do you see a change in the player base? Have you had to make any changes to the game as a result of being on Steam?
WK: A.V.A has been on Steam for a little over 4 months now. We do see an increase of player base since being on Steam. We didn’t have to change the game itself, but some integration development was necessary.
BS: Anyone playing on North American ijji servers knows that there is a significant ping differential between players. There seems to be a huge number of Brasilians (and Vietnamese) players causing a lot of this differential. The high ping players really make the game difficult to play. Do you ever foresee A.V.A. getting ping filters to allow games? Do you know whether Brasil will get its own server?
WK: Yes, we are under development for a ping filter option. We were hoping to update this feature in August, but due to development difficulties it was a bit delayed. It should be a part of the November, 2011 update contents. This will allow the low ping players to enjoy a game with only low ping players alike.
BS: I know many eSports fans here in Canada wanting to try and play in A.V.A. tournaments. Do you know whether that will ever be possible? Currently, only America gets represented in Korea every year.
WK: Yes, this is very possible for next year.
BS: Team Defkon went to ieSF this year. I thought they did reasonably well…are you happy with the progress that you see from American A.V.A. players? Do you think they will ever be able to win against the Koreans going forward?
WK: Team DefkoN were the IeSF champions in 2010. Team DefkoN beat Korea’s team Astrick in the Finals. I am pleased that USA got 3rd place, but of course 1st place would be much better. Team USA has already beat team Korea and I think it’s possible to do it again.
BS: Since the patch and content upgrade in October, some players have been reporting a great deal of lag (I have not experienced any lag whatsoever, except for the odd spike). Can you comment if you have heard people talking about lag? What is causing it and is anyone looking into it?
WK: We definitely hear it on the forums as well as in game. We are fully aware that this frame rate drop occurring to some users is causing lag to them. We are working to resolve this issue. We see this as priority #1 and would want to have it fixed right away. But, the issue is that this occurs only in some systems and it is taking much time to narrow down the issue at hand. We look forward to having this issue resolved within the next two weeks.
BS: Is there a difference between A.V.A. being played in Japan and in Korea versus the game being played here in North America?
WK: There are some differences in the different versions. Each version is hosted by a different publisher. Contents in each version is also different because each version was released at a different time. Also, network infrastructure is different compared to Japan and Korea. Japan and Korea tend to have the fastest internet network globally plus their country size is much smaller compared to North America. So, technically they have the upper hand by default in terms of low latency gaming.
BS: Can you give us any insight on what RedDuck is planning in the next few months? Do we have anything to look forward to?
WK: There are good things coming in the next few months. A brand new Sniper only map is being released soon which many people play. A brand new co-op mission is also being released shortly. It has a different concept to what players are used to in A.V.A. And don’t forget the ping filter.
