[h3]Dear Survivors, this is NAKWON Governing Committee.[/h3]
This Q&A list was written based on your questions on Discord.
Visit our
official Discord and join the discussion.
[h3]Q. Will there be a marketplace in which we can trade with other users in the Pre-Alpha Test?[/h3]
A. There won’t be one in this test, but we are planning to develop a marketplace in the future.
[h3]Q. Will there be any bow and arrow weapons in NAKWON?[/h3]
As archery is quite popular in Korea, I think it would be quite a realistic addition and I was curious about what you think.
A. We are planning to develop many different long-ranged weapons but nothing has been discussed in detail yet.
Realism is one thing, but we believe that there should first be a concrete purpose of the weapon, and consider how well it fits in with the gameplay.
While it is one of our very plausible considerations, there is nothing more we can reveal on this matter yet.
[h3]Q. Will there be something like different guilds or camps that we can create to interact with other survivors?[/h3]
A. We haven't discussed community systems yet, but we have a positive stance on it.
We're thinking of an MMO-like structure, where all users can buy and sell items in the trade market, and compete for rankings, achievements, etc.
Another thing in consideration is content that allows like-minded users to band together and play through community systems like guilds. We are planning to create various ways to interact outside of Scouting.
We're still in pre-alpha, so we’ll be able to properly answer this question at a later stage.
[h3]Q. Are you going to implement any kind of leveling or unlocking new abilities to the game in some way?[/h3]
In some other survival/zombie games, as we advance in the game, we can gain levels in some abilities, such as having more stamina, strength, crafting faster, etc.
A. (Please note that the following is subject to change in future development)
We envision a player's development as a combination of the following elements:
- Housing: What you live in and what you place in it.
- ex1. If you live in an expensive house with electricity and place a refrigerator, the shelf life of your food will increase
- ex2. Placing fitness equipment inside your home will allow you to equip a specific skill associated with it
- Achievements: Growth through rewards received for achieving the goals on your achievement list.
- ex. "Fracture immunity" is added to the list of passive skills because you have achieved the achievement "50 fractures"
- Quests: Growth due to rewards received for completing main quests or subquests.
- ex. I completed the main quest this season and received the 'Refrigerator' as a reward)
- Citizen Class: Increase your Citizen Class to unlock more shops and quests.
With these, you can grow the following elements:
- Equipment: You can equip armor and weapons, as well as accessories with multiple functions
- Skills: There are passive and active skill slots, so you can choose which skills to equip and take with you on each scouting.
Of these, we plan to allow several modifications for equipment to add different effects.
For example, you'll be able to modify your baseball bat to make it longer, but it would swing a little slower.
Or you can get an expensive smartwatch and equip it so that the minimap is always visible during the game (among other features, your choice).
We plan to incorporate many of the growth elements of survival games into our game.
We're still in pre-alpha, so we have a long way to go, but we'll keep working on it.
[h3]Q. Question on deactivated health bar[/h3]
I saw this in the video and I was wondering how we can fill up the locked HP. Does it lock automatically if we cannot recover the health in a certain amount of time?
A. If you cannot recover the lost health within a certain amount of time, it will be locked. (During the Pre-Alpha it may be locked automatically, as we are still testing things out.)
You can 'unlock health' by using health items that are 'more advanced' than bandages.
[h3]Q. In Tarkov, it is considered as high risk, high return if users are fully equipped. [/h3]
Even though there is a risk that they may lose everything, just for the sheer excitement of battle, they spend a lot of money to go farming.
I wonder what your take is on this type of behavior.
A. It is the individual’s choice if they wish to bring as much high-quality armor and weapons with them to Scouting (though there may be a limit to the number of bullets they can bring at once in the future).
If you look at this game as a ‘gamble of life and death’, then bringing lots of equipment would mean you are raising the stakes that much more.
It could keep you safe, but there is a higher risk when you do not survive.
The part where we would interfere is matching similar users together.
If there are users who are fully equipped or have similar skills, they should match together.
If this were to be seen as a gamble of life and death, then the stakes should match among people who are playing to be fun.
So, being fully equipped does not matter at all in this game, but in that case, similarly equipped people should be matched in each Scouting.
[h3]Q. Is there a possibility that the minimum requirements for the game would change through future optimization?[/h3]
A. Yes, though it may not be dramatic there is a possibility that it may improve. I am still a bit cautious, though, to confirm this.
For the Pre-Alpha Test, I believe you can play by adjusting the settings. We apologize for the inconvenience.
[h3]Q. Penalty based on escape time[/h3]
To minimize the risk of loss, some users might opt to farm only the locations with key items without carrying anything and quickly escape to the exit.
Is it possible to impose penalties or restrictions on such users?
In similar genres, patches have been applied to limit risk-free high returns.
A. Currently, we don't have plans to impose penalties on that strategy.
We believe that users assume the risk of death since they lack armor, and obtaining only essential items is not as easy as it might seem.
Essential items are mostly located in landmark buildings, and individual keys are required to enter these buildings or open safes.
Moreover, exploring such indoor spaces without armor is very challenging.
While hatchet run is a strategy, it doesn't seem easy to maximize returns, so we plan to observe the test results first.
In the future, we may consider encouraging hatchet runners to match with each other.
[h3]Q. Will the user data be retained after the Pre-Alpha Test?[/h3]
A. It will be erased.
There isn’t a reason for us to hold on to the data.
[h3]Q. Do you have any plans for an offline mode or private game mode?[/h3]
I see the game is pretty heavy on the PvP side of things, but in case users wanted to shoot zombies, survive on their own, and don't have access to the internet.
A. While we only have a PvPvE mode in this pre-alpha, we have plans to support up to 4-player co-op with friends in a PvE mode in the future.
In that mode, you'll be able to scout with your friends only, with no PvP with other players.
However, you will need to be connected to the internet at all times.
The PvE mode will also require an internet connection as you will be searching for and bringing back resources.
[h3]Q. How can the equipment gap between newcomers and veteran players be solved?[/h3]
For example, in Tarkov, armor makes a big difference in survival as a player with no armor may die from one shot.
A. Due to the RPG nature of the Extraction genre, there can be a disparity in equipment between players in PvP situations.
We try to develop the game in such a way that the disparity does not necessarily lead to a one-sided outcome so that anyone can win in the end, although the probability of winning is different depending on the disparity.
To accomplish this, we're considering the following factors:
- Long time to kill
We believe that the shorter the Time to Kill (TTK), the more likely it is that the disparity in equipment will be one-sided rather than probabilistically applied.
This is because, in a situation where the outcome of the game is decided in a split second, it becomes more difficult for a newcomer to react to the actions of a high-ranked player.
If the balance is set so that a newcomer or a high-ranked player can decide each other's fate with a single shot, it becomes pointless to put too much effort into acquiring full equipment.
So our direction is to make the TTK somewhat long, and to make it a game where there are many variables (apart from the disparity in equipment) that can happen during battle,
so that beginners can have opportunities, and veteran players will have to face danger as well.
- The intervention of external factors (Zombies)
The reason we made the Extraction genre PvPvE instead of PvP is because we wanted the intervention of external variables through AI.
This would provide multiple scenarios that can dictate the situation of equipment and the health of all players.
Even a high-ranked player can be in a weak situation at times, and a newcomer can have a chance to beat a high-ranked player.
In other words, no one is always in the best condition, so anyone can die or kill another player if they take advantage of the opportunity or use their head well.
- Always provide the option to run away
The reason the game is set in a city with very little flat ground and tons of cover (vehicles, etc.) everywhere is to allow players to play hide and seek.
In Dead by Daylight, for example, the level design allows players to hide to play hide-and-seek.
We also designed our levels so that players can run and hide from a gun pointed at them at any time. Anyone can turn their back on another player, even in the middle of a fight, and run away into the complex city.
Given that the objective of the game is to loot resources in the city, there are plenty of ways to grow without necessarily fighting other players to death.
This isn't a battle royale where killing your opponent is the only way to end the game, which is why we've provided several different types of escape routes so that you can get out of any situation at any time.
- Matchmaking based on skill and equipment
We want to match players of more or less the same skill level and equipment setup.
However, we were unable to introduce this matchmaking in Pre-Alpha.
[h3]Q. How exactly does food mechanic work?[/h3]
The current explanation makes it sound like the game would be almost unplayable after a certain point.
If you keep dying and are unable to earn any food or money from Scouting wouldn’t that mean you would be stuck in a perpetual state of hunger?
A. When you die, your food gauge decreases, so if you die repeatedly, it will continue to decrease, making it more difficult.
However, we will continue to take care of players who are struggling through randomized events in the game.
Events will continue to occur in the city to provide support for equipment and items.
For example, the NAKWON Committee might send them relief supplies as a form of welfare.
Also, while not in this pre-alpha, in the future we'll be introducing things like an achievement system, which will give you more opportunities to progress even if you keep dying in the game.
[h3]Q. When a Zombie dies you can farm items from it. After that Zombie comes back to life, can we farm from them again?[/h3]
A. No, the items do not regenerate.
[h3]Q. There were a lot of negative opinions on the Zombie sounds in the Pre-Alpha gameplay video. I am curious to know if you have any plans to change the sounds during the test.[/h3]
A. There is nothing we can’t change if needed.
Of course, including the sound effects.
Also, currently for the Pre-Alpha, all motions, sounds, and UI are focused solely on function.
They will be changed and improved, which is when we are planning to focus on quality as well.
Please think of the Pre-Alpha version as a temporary one that we fit to serve its role.
There are a lot of features that we have to develop as right now we are not even at the Alpha stage, it is Pre-Alpha.
This isn’t something of our users’ concern, but we just wanted to tell you that we are a small team and it hasn’t even been a year since we started developing this game.
We will do our best to deliver, and we hope you can understand this as well.
[h3]Q. Will players who die become Zombies?[/h3]
A. A system where players revive as zombies when they die is an idea we discussed early on.
However, after internal testing, we realized that there were two problems with it.
- Looting dead players becomes difficult
Due to the nature of the game, looting other players' corpses is part of the appeal of PvP, but when a dead player is revived as a zombie, it becomes difficult to loot their corpse, which makes the game feel unreasonable.
As seen in our gameplay videos, there are many situations where even if a player does kill another player it is not easy to loot them immediately because of all the zombies around.
In such cases, the dead player's corpse needs to be preserved for a certain amount of time before it can be looted, which means that the dead player has to wait quite a long time to be revived as a zombie.
We felt that there would be many instances where neither the player who killed someone, nor the dead player, would get much enjoyment out of it.
- In most cases, players just want to play the next game as a survivor rather than play a zombie after dying.
If there was no benefit to being revived as a zombie, most people just wanted to get on with the next scouting as a human again, rather than play as a zombie,
because no matter how much they played as a zombie, they were only entertaining the other living players and not themselves.
Conversely, if we gave zombie players an incredibly large advantage (like super strength, or respawning when taking down another player), we expected that people would intentionally die and become zombies to make it easier to slaughter other players.
Either way, it wasn't easy to balance this, and many users would rather play the next session as a survivor than as a zombie, so we decided not to introduce a respawn mechanic.
However, we think the idea of players becoming zombies is always a compelling one, and we'll continue to think about it as we develop further.
[h3]Q. How do you plan to address the issue of game advantage due to gamma settings?[/h3]
A. Initially, we hope to fundamentally make areas that should not be visible in the dark completely invisible through adjustments in either hardware or software.
For areas where light reaches even slightly, we will balance it with the understanding that they may be visible through gamma adjustments in some way.
No matter how much we try to block it with software, gamma adjustment is still possible through various methods in the end.
Therefore, it seems appropriate to design the system considering such extreme situations.
In this pre-alpha, we allowed gamma changes in settings because, depending on the monitor, the game appeared excessively dark on some computers.
Since users will find a way to adjust gamma if they are determined to do so, we didn't want to inconvenience all other users in an attempt to slightly impede it.
We will continue to consider gamma adjustment and its impact on game design.
[h3]Q. Can you show us some behind-the-scenes of creating NAKWON?[/h3]
First of all, I would like to thank you for your continuous efforts to create a good game.
I would love to see any outrageous ideas exchanged within the development team, amusing feedback, glitches encountered, videos of developers enthusiastically playtesting, and perhaps an image of team members comforting a dozing colleague with a baseball bat massage—whether in video, cartoon, or text form, any medium.
I would love to see how the developers work on this project. Do you think you can provide a bit of an inside scoop?
A. I'd prefer the game to be showcased before the development team, so I'll keep it brief through text.
- Quietly works at our desks and disappears after work
- We know what we have to do, but there's always not enough time. (Continuous struggle)
- Strange bugs surfaced in the last patch, abort getting off work!
- Game designers endlessly debate zombie balance, whether to make it easy or hard (originally, they were incredibly smart zombies that pursued players relentlessly, but the director kept cutting down their intelligence.
- We are prepared to face criticism from hardcore users in this test, but if general users also find it too easy and think it ruins the game, the director will apologize and bring back the fierce zombies.
However, for this test, the director believes it should be this easy so that all users can enjoy it. The difficulty will increase based on users’ skill level in the future.)
- We're a small team, and only now has it been a year. Getting compared to AAA-quality games is quite the challenge. We're in the early stages, and we will need to develop motions, sounds, UI, and everything properly later.
- Second guessing our decision to increase the quality this much for a prototype.
- We'll gradually upload test play videos.
- Rejected Ideas: Resurrecting as a zombie upon death, a feature that allows players to block another player's personal escape route (removed during testing because too many people got annoyed), a safe-cracking mini-game (couldn't implement due to time constraints).
[h3]Q. Will there be a pre-download?[/h3]
A. There won’t be, and you can download the game once the test opens on Steam.
[h3]Q. Do you have plans to add a feature that allows players to push back and knock down zombies with a weapon?[/h3]
A. Currently, there is none, but it might be considered in the future.
However, there are no specific details.
We have set only a breakthrough for the active skill (E key) for now, but it could potentially be added as one of the skills in the future.
[h3]Q. What extra measures are you ready to take, beyond regular anti cheat software, to prevent cheaters from ruining the experience for everyone?[/h3]
A. We know that preventing hacks and cheats is very important in this genre of game.
It all comes down to how much money and time you're willing to put into it, and we're not going to spare any expenses here.
We'll keep you posted as we decide on specifics at a later stage of development.
[h3]Q. What would the BM look like for this game?[/h3]
A. The way to maximize revenue in this genre is to make a good game, get a lot of people to play it, and then implement a good BM that people can live with (like Battle Pass without P2W).
We don't want to ruin the game.
We're not at the stage where we're thinking about BM yet, so we don't have anything specific to say, but we're thinking about things like costumes and emotes (motions) that people will find attractive without P2W.
[h3]Q. Are there any other guns besides revolvers in the game? If not, will you add more guns?[/h3]
A. Adding guns would have to be done with caution, as I think the important thing in the extraction genre is to avoid "sudden unexpected death" - if you die, you lose everything you have,
so if the time to kill (TTK) is too short, many players won't be able to adapt and will just keep dying and abandon the game.
To avoid this, the game was designed from the beginning to be as gun-free as possible.
This is also why the game is set in South Korea instead of the United States.
The more powerful guns you add to the game, the harder it is to avoid a quick, unexpected death, so we try to approach adding guns very carefully.
We want the game to be like a thriller, a circus between life and death.
We plan to add weapons and other items to add to this fun.
This could include guns, but also things like bows and slingshots, shields, and cardboard boxes (like the ones in Metal Gear Solid).
We understand the desire to use guns, but we will consider adding them carefully to ensure that they don't detract from the fun of the game.
[h3]Q. Will NAKWON provide Linux/Steam Deck support?[/h3]
A. There are no plans to make the game playable on Steam Deck and Linux at this time, and even if we did, it would be a bit time-consuming (we're still developing the game itself). Sorry about that.
[h3]Q. Is this game a pure extraction-based gameplay loop like Tarkov? Or is it an open world like DayZ (survival/craft/base building)?[/h3]
A. The game has a Tarkov-like extraction-based structure.
We're envisioning a system similar to Tarkov's Hideout but without the ability to build a base in an open-world space like in DayZ or Zomboid.
However, I think the actual feel of the game will be similar to DayZ or Zomboid, except for the base part.
