• The Klang Team

For the final Community Questions of 2019 – and the decade – we discuss stars, trees, weapons, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Want to pose your questions about SEED to Klang? Head on over to the SEED Discord and leave your thoughts!

Jahnri(Lee): Do trees have productivity cycles? Where adult trees produce more seeds, allowing trees to grow after logging, for example.

Mundi: "We really want to be able to simulate millions of trees at any given time and also simulate their life cycle. But with that comes various complexities to the servers and requires heavy optimization.

Having said that, we take climate change seriously and believe that SEED should reflect this. It's something we'll be looking into post-Pioneers."

Mojo Mathys: Is the night sky a static representation of stars that looks the same to all players regardless of time or geolocation? And does it appear to rotate as a result of planetary rotation?

M: "Well, definitely in Pioneers because everyone will be located on one island, Eilo. Going forward, we will work deeper on this concept."

Jahnri(Lee): Will there be rivers?

M: "Not on Eilo specifically, but on Avesta, yeah!"

Mojo Mathys: Do Seedlings have a spoken language? Written language? Can they read narrative writing or only "recognize" symbols and iconography?

M: "We're still in the concept phase around Seedling language. Currently, we're experimenting with them communicating with symbols. We'll be going deeper and deeper down the language rabbit hole in the future, and of course, we will be bringing you with us."

[AR]Dylan75015: Will there be a limit to the number of people with whom we will land directly together on the planet Avesta during the pioneer program?

M: "For Pioneers, yes. In the future, there will be fewer limitations. Of course, we'll eventually have to limit how many people can be at the same place at once, which we are designing around.

But, going back to Pioneers, there will be just a single deployment, with a set number of players allowed to join. We'll let you know nearer the date how many. Exciting!"

[AR]Dylan75015: I know there gonna be some weapons during the alpha. Are we gonna see dangerous native species during the alpha?

M: "Well, that's what the legends say! Us Klangers don't even know. But, we have heard some unearthly sounds on Eilo."

Traveo2343: I was wondering if there will be a full complement of screens or tools to see what the economy of a settlement and the entire planet is at any given time? Or if there will be any type of regular production of economic information, like there is with EVE?

M: "Yes, in the future, we will have profound systems around displaying financial/economic information. We believe that the economy is going to be a significant backbone and driving force of society building.

We've been working with a team of economists around the design of the economy; it's a huge mission to design because it's so massive. It won't be ready in time for Pioneers, but sometime after."

[AR]Dylan75015: Will there be places richer in natural resources than others?

M: "Yeah, absolutely! We want variety. The island of Eilo will be the first test case for this. It'll have pockets of different resources distributed across the land; Eilo is going to be quite large.

Different biomes will have unique resources attributed specifically to them, for example, deserts having sandstone. This will create large-scale trading operations across the planet."

Cult Seedling: Will SEED have islands?

M: "Yes. Pioneers will be based solely on an island."

Lexforge: Will there be things to deal with other than expansion? Like, will groups of players have active duties, or will they mainly just expand until there's no more room?

M: "I think expansion is not necessarily a good thing. It's not always good to just keep expanding as you'll be thinning out your borders. Players will have different roles that they have to fill.

But to run a fully-functioning base, there's a large number of roles that people have to divide and collaborate to ensure that it's operating efficiently. For example, if a farmer doesn't do their job correctly, then the settlement will have lower food supplies. This could then mean fewer supplies for the military, leaving them at a disadvantage when carrying out operations."

Spotty: What is the relevance of player wealth in SEED? Will Seedlings be aware of their own wealth?

M: "There's a bunch of concept work around this topic, which I can't go into right now. They will certainly have some sense of this, but it's hard to say how much precisely at this point."

Roekies: How has Maslow's hierarchy of needs influenced decision-making at Klang, and how is it influencing the direction of the game (if at all)?

M: "It's influencing design and decision-making quite a bit. We're starting with the lowest level of physical needs, and that's what we're trying to cover in Pioneers. And then as we go further and further, we will go up the pyramid of needs, hopefully reaching more and more abstract needs, creating richer and richer characters."

Mojo Mathys: Without having to be specific, can you tell us roughly within what range might be the runtime in Earth days the beginning to the end of Pioneers?

M: "I can't go into that right now as we have a big reveal coming around how Pioneers will work sometime next year. So I don't want to ruin the surprise!"

Lexforge: What kinds of weapons will be used in SEED?

M: "There will be eventually all kinds of weapons, but I don't want to give anything away!"

Spotty: Will a player be able to become a member of multiple groups in SEED?

M: "If you're thinking in terms of joining different countries or holding multiple citizenships, I think this is hard to answer at the moment.

But Groups is an extremely loose term. Groups can be a neighborhood group or a business union. Or something more political and structured. This is one of those systems similar to the scale of our economy design. It's something very complex and takes a lot of time to get right.

We'll start by testing it in Pioneers and then slowly adding features based on the feedback from the community. We have a really big vision for the group system, which stretches to governments and businesses, so it ties everything together nicely!"

A huge thanks to the SEED community for this epic year. Much more to come!

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