Hi guys,
Thanks for the questions. Apologies if we didn't get to answer all of your specific queries. Thanks go to Glen, Matt and Nick for contributing some of these as well.
TVH11 - Do u have any plans in place to update your "shipped squads" to final 30 man squads? (have a feeling this has already been answered)
The rosters we have were our proposed 30 from May when we had to lock content for the game. We were able to make a few last minute changes, but in order to hit a release date of August 26th, we had to submit the game to Microsoft and Sony in June. The notion that we can continue to make changes to a console game within such a short period of release is a misconception. After we lock the game, we send it to QA for final testing, then it goes to MS and Sony into a queue with all of the other games that need to be tested and approved by them. Once it's approved there (a game's achievements magically appear online around this time), it goes into the queue for manufacturing (the duration of this depends on how many other games are coming out at the same time - we were lucky for RWC as the late summer period has been relatively quiet for new releases) and then gets distributed to territories all over the world who then have to get the game on the store shelves for you to be able to buy it. So if you work out the timeline, you'll see it doesn't happen immediately when we stop working on the game and it certainly doesn't happen overnight.
We don’t support DLC for updating the squads as this is a very time consuming feature to develop for functionality that is almost as easily replicated by allowing you to edit the side to update with players who aren't in the default rosters, but who will be on the plane.
How did you and your team decide which player likenesses were more important to "get right".
A lot is driven by our ability to source reference materials for each player.
TRF C A Iversen - I'm sure you guys were aware of quite a demand, but has the level of demand for customisable features been a surprise to HB? If so, will this impact on any future decisions should there be follow-up ***les?
The most important thing for us to get in to the game this year in terms of editing was the ability to edit player attributes. We haven’t been able to do that in any of our previous games. As for whether we expand on this area for future iterations it’s something we will definitely be considering.
raziel-eire - What follow-up support can we expect after the games release? Will bug fixes, rule amendments, gameplay improvements be made available as updates?
We are in the process of submitting a patch to 1st party at both Microsoft and Sony as we speak. We have been reading some of the comments on the forums and are taking on board as much feedback as we can. We hope to have this patch approved ASAP. We will then evaluate issues after release to see whether there is anything else that requires our attention.
hobsonm - How long can we set the length of halves to?
Halves can be set to 5, 10 and 20 minute halves
From what I understand, the official kits will be released as DLC. How long after the release of the game will this occur?
The official kits all come on the disc and are fully accessible upon entering a one-time code during your first boot of the game, or from anytime from the Main Menu. The code will be viewable from the Main Menu if you are connected to Xbox Live or PSN as well as from the Rugby World Cup 2011 game website: www.rwc2011game.com
David Smith - Can you play as more than 1 team in the RWC 11 mode?
Yes, you can have up to as many as 20 human controlled teams playing in the tournament mode. And you can play any match with a max of 4 controllers, which means any combination of 4 player co-op, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 1, 2 vs 1, and so on.
psychic duck - Are the player names for unlicensed teams which neither the RWC game or Jonah Lomu challenge have such as Georgia, Samoa and Fiji real, half real (i.e. S.Masupua or R.Buacaucauni) or totally fictional?
All unlicensed teams in Rugby World Cup 2011 have fictional player names which are based off of names common to that team’s country. For example, the Georgian team player names were selected based off of our research of names which were somewhat common in Georgia. During this process we also must make sure we are not utilizing any names which resemble any real life players (both current and past) which we do not have a license for.
jh95leinster - Thanks for doing this. If the team ratings are based on the world rankings, will their be updates changing the rankings? Ireland are playing England the day after the game is released and whoever wins will probably end up ranked higher. So, if Ireland were ranked 5th and therefore rated worse than England in the game when it's released but then beat England the next day moving them up to 4th would there be an update in the week that changed their respective ratings?
Our Rosters were locked back in late June for Rugby World Cup 2011. There are currently no plans to update the rosters and in turn the rankings which are based on the player’s ratings themselves. Though you are free to adjust player attributes in the player editor as you see fit for offline play, which in-turn also re-adjusts the overall team ratings dynamically.
Scotsman - Do HB intent to do more motion capturing for the next game so it doesn’t look so similar to its predecessors?
Definitely something we will be looking at for further Rugby ***les. There are new animations within our game this year. The challenge of getting this game playing the way it does on the new technology was not inconsiderable, so we actually take all of the "it's like 08" as a compliment actually.
What would the priorities likely to be for the next game? i.e more teams, more tournaments/licenses, improved ruck play, new set plays etc
Once the dust settles on Rugby World Cup we will be looking ahead to the future of Rugby. New Gameplay, Modes, Presentation and Licenses are all very important in the long term as part of anything new that we may release. We have a long list of things we want to do in future rugby games but there is nothing decided at this point.
Butterytingz - In the demo, after a try the ball is set to take the conversion kick and there is no option to move to ball closer or further from the try line. Will we be able to move the ball in the full game? My main reason for asking this because the achievement "Kick with the Wind" is unlocked by "Score a penalty goal or conversion from 55+ metres" so I just thought it would be fun to score under the posts and attempt the conversion from 55m out.
Yes, on Medium and Hard difficulty settings you are able to place the ball for the conversion. On Easy difficulty it is pre-set.
Xander Is Over - How likely is this game to get a sequel and if it does will it be yearly/every two years or will it be tied into the next world cup in 2015?
Future iterations of the game depend on the success of Rugby World Cup 2011. A couple of things that I think folks have slightly lost sight of recently:
joeyboy07 - Are the ball physics from the demo being tweaked?
No.
lionmaull - For the rucking tactics, what is the difference between balanced and forward and first to ball, I know what they mean and seen the explanation on the other thread, But in what scenario is either forward rucking or first to ball rucking the better choice than balanced rucking. Wouldn't balance rucking tactic make the best choice for you, would seem kind of pointless to even use forward or first to ball rucking tactic, if it was that way. In other words what is the risk in using balance over the other two rucking tactics?
Balanced is the default choice as we don’t expect that everyone playing our game will want to use this sort of advanced tactics option. Nearest man is best suited to swinging the ball wide so you can get players out wide into the ruck quicker but the risk is that the players going into the ruck may not be as skilled at rucking but the reward is that you will get players in there quicker. Forward play is best suited for playing close to the ruck, particularly when you are up against it when playing as a lower ranked nation against one of the better teams. Generally the forwards are always going to be the best rucking players in your side so if you wish to play a tight game then the forward strategy will work best. I think you will find particularly on the harder difficulties that the other 2 strategies will become more useful, but we also predict some people won’t be concerned with adjusting strategy in which case Balanced is a good middle ground for everyone.
cimbomjubi82 - Will there be any classic teams/players/kits available in the game, or via later DLC?
Will there be any extra modes available at a later date via DLC? i.e online multiplayer modes.
There is no DLC planned for Rugby World Cup 2011
jack6161 - Does the AI play a kicking game? Unlike for example Rugby 08 where you kick it to them, and they run back at you.
Yes you certainly will see teams utilizing their kicking abilities to gain ground and put the pressure on you in your end, especially on the harder difficulties, and when playing against the top nations with good tactical kickers.
Will it be possible to create your own set plays? (would be amazing to be able to )
Unfortunately no, it wasn’t in the plan for this ***le.
esoj - Is there any chance of a wii version ever coming out?
There have never been plans for a wii version. It's not a big enough market for us and even the biggest selling franchises are starting to see sales drop off on the Wii.
ACT1NUP -Does the AI take into account the score at all when you play them? In other words do they take drop goals/penalties even when 20+ points down.
The AI decision making takes into account such factors as their position on the pitch, the time on the clock and the score in the match and acts accordingly based on the scenario. For example, if the clock is at 78:00 and the AI is down by 6, they will generally play for the try in an attempt to win back the match. This decision making especially towards the end of matches, when the CPU team is down on points, has also been further enhanced in the upcoming patch.
Rugbybrain - Will players get noticeably tired during game play or can you just keep in the sprint button during the whole game?
There is a fatigue system in the game which works similar to other sports ***les. Each player has a sprint bar which drains while the player is sprinting (holding RT/R2). Once the bar is drained they can no longer sprint. Also the more a player sprints or gets involved at breakdowns throughout a match, the quicker that player will get tired and lose energy, this causes the player’s capacity for sprinting to decrease more and more as you get further into the match.
Thanks again for your questions.
Also, wanted to update folks in South Africa, that I'm still awaiting word on the timing of the demo being available in your territory. I suspect many have already found workarounds to the specific issue we were having. Will update when we know more.
We're all very excited about the launch of the game next week and really do appreciate all of the feedback we get on the game and look forward to hearing more from you over the coming months.
Thanks for the questions. Apologies if we didn't get to answer all of your specific queries. Thanks go to Glen, Matt and Nick for contributing some of these as well.
TVH11 - Do u have any plans in place to update your "shipped squads" to final 30 man squads? (have a feeling this has already been answered)
The rosters we have were our proposed 30 from May when we had to lock content for the game. We were able to make a few last minute changes, but in order to hit a release date of August 26th, we had to submit the game to Microsoft and Sony in June. The notion that we can continue to make changes to a console game within such a short period of release is a misconception. After we lock the game, we send it to QA for final testing, then it goes to MS and Sony into a queue with all of the other games that need to be tested and approved by them. Once it's approved there (a game's achievements magically appear online around this time), it goes into the queue for manufacturing (the duration of this depends on how many other games are coming out at the same time - we were lucky for RWC as the late summer period has been relatively quiet for new releases) and then gets distributed to territories all over the world who then have to get the game on the store shelves for you to be able to buy it. So if you work out the timeline, you'll see it doesn't happen immediately when we stop working on the game and it certainly doesn't happen overnight.
We don’t support DLC for updating the squads as this is a very time consuming feature to develop for functionality that is almost as easily replicated by allowing you to edit the side to update with players who aren't in the default rosters, but who will be on the plane.
How did you and your team decide which player likenesses were more important to "get right".
A lot is driven by our ability to source reference materials for each player.
TRF C A Iversen - I'm sure you guys were aware of quite a demand, but has the level of demand for customisable features been a surprise to HB? If so, will this impact on any future decisions should there be follow-up ***les?
The most important thing for us to get in to the game this year in terms of editing was the ability to edit player attributes. We haven’t been able to do that in any of our previous games. As for whether we expand on this area for future iterations it’s something we will definitely be considering.
raziel-eire - What follow-up support can we expect after the games release? Will bug fixes, rule amendments, gameplay improvements be made available as updates?
We are in the process of submitting a patch to 1st party at both Microsoft and Sony as we speak. We have been reading some of the comments on the forums and are taking on board as much feedback as we can. We hope to have this patch approved ASAP. We will then evaluate issues after release to see whether there is anything else that requires our attention.
hobsonm - How long can we set the length of halves to?
Halves can be set to 5, 10 and 20 minute halves
From what I understand, the official kits will be released as DLC. How long after the release of the game will this occur?
The official kits all come on the disc and are fully accessible upon entering a one-time code during your first boot of the game, or from anytime from the Main Menu. The code will be viewable from the Main Menu if you are connected to Xbox Live or PSN as well as from the Rugby World Cup 2011 game website: www.rwc2011game.com
David Smith - Can you play as more than 1 team in the RWC 11 mode?
Yes, you can have up to as many as 20 human controlled teams playing in the tournament mode. And you can play any match with a max of 4 controllers, which means any combination of 4 player co-op, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 1, 2 vs 1, and so on.
psychic duck - Are the player names for unlicensed teams which neither the RWC game or Jonah Lomu challenge have such as Georgia, Samoa and Fiji real, half real (i.e. S.Masupua or R.Buacaucauni) or totally fictional?
All unlicensed teams in Rugby World Cup 2011 have fictional player names which are based off of names common to that team’s country. For example, the Georgian team player names were selected based off of our research of names which were somewhat common in Georgia. During this process we also must make sure we are not utilizing any names which resemble any real life players (both current and past) which we do not have a license for.
jh95leinster - Thanks for doing this. If the team ratings are based on the world rankings, will their be updates changing the rankings? Ireland are playing England the day after the game is released and whoever wins will probably end up ranked higher. So, if Ireland were ranked 5th and therefore rated worse than England in the game when it's released but then beat England the next day moving them up to 4th would there be an update in the week that changed their respective ratings?
Our Rosters were locked back in late June for Rugby World Cup 2011. There are currently no plans to update the rosters and in turn the rankings which are based on the player’s ratings themselves. Though you are free to adjust player attributes in the player editor as you see fit for offline play, which in-turn also re-adjusts the overall team ratings dynamically.
Scotsman - Do HB intent to do more motion capturing for the next game so it doesn’t look so similar to its predecessors?
Definitely something we will be looking at for further Rugby ***les. There are new animations within our game this year. The challenge of getting this game playing the way it does on the new technology was not inconsiderable, so we actually take all of the "it's like 08" as a compliment actually.
What would the priorities likely to be for the next game? i.e more teams, more tournaments/licenses, improved ruck play, new set plays etc
Once the dust settles on Rugby World Cup we will be looking ahead to the future of Rugby. New Gameplay, Modes, Presentation and Licenses are all very important in the long term as part of anything new that we may release. We have a long list of things we want to do in future rugby games but there is nothing decided at this point.
Butterytingz - In the demo, after a try the ball is set to take the conversion kick and there is no option to move to ball closer or further from the try line. Will we be able to move the ball in the full game? My main reason for asking this because the achievement "Kick with the Wind" is unlocked by "Score a penalty goal or conversion from 55+ metres" so I just thought it would be fun to score under the posts and attempt the conversion from 55m out.
Yes, on Medium and Hard difficulty settings you are able to place the ball for the conversion. On Easy difficulty it is pre-set.
Xander Is Over - How likely is this game to get a sequel and if it does will it be yearly/every two years or will it be tied into the next world cup in 2015?
Future iterations of the game depend on the success of Rugby World Cup 2011. A couple of things that I think folks have slightly lost sight of recently:
- This is a game that has been developed and funded independently by HB. We have not had a publisher funding either the development or licensing for this game. This is unprecedented for a sports game with a license of this magnitude.
- We have very clear data on what Rugby games sell in World Cup years and in non-World cup years. While there is a very passionate core audience of Rugby gamers who are fans of the Club game, the commercial success of a ***le depends on engaging with this constituency as well as the wider more casual gamers who engage with Rugby during a world cup year. We've seen the data on our previous games built on the FIFA Engine, with the considerable distribution clout of EA as well as EA's brand and marketing. Rugby's not a game that supports an annual console release at retail.
- As much as you guys would love to see huge budgets being spent on making the ultimate Rugby game (believe me so would I), we won't greenlight a game that has no realistic chance of recouping the development costs, and publishers have a much higher threshold than we do and won't pick up a ***le that has no chance of delivering a significant profit. That's the reality of the games industry.
- That being said, we want to continue to deliver better and better Rugby gameplay experiences to you in the coming years. We don't want to wait another 4 years for the next rugby ***le. What this means is that we have to be more clever and innovative with how we do this. More news on this soon.
- We have very clear data on what Rugby games sell in World Cup years and in non-World cup years. While there is a very passionate core audience of Rugby gamers who are fans of the Club game, the commercial success of a ***le depends on engaging with this constituency as well as the wider more casual gamers who engage with Rugby during a world cup year. We've seen the data on our previous games built on the FIFA Engine, with the considerable distribution clout of EA as well as EA's brand and marketing. Rugby's not a game that supports an annual console release at retail.
- As much as you guys would love to see huge budgets being spent on making the ultimate Rugby game (believe me so would I), we won't greenlight a game that has no realistic chance of recouping the development costs, and publishers have a much higher threshold than we do and won't pick up a ***le that has no chance of delivering a significant profit. That's the reality of the games industry.
- That being said, we want to continue to deliver better and better Rugby gameplay experiences to you in the coming years. We don't want to wait another 4 years for the next rugby ***le. What this means is that we have to be more clever and innovative with how we do this. More news on this soon.
joeyboy07 - Are the ball physics from the demo being tweaked?
No.
lionmaull - For the rucking tactics, what is the difference between balanced and forward and first to ball, I know what they mean and seen the explanation on the other thread, But in what scenario is either forward rucking or first to ball rucking the better choice than balanced rucking. Wouldn't balance rucking tactic make the best choice for you, would seem kind of pointless to even use forward or first to ball rucking tactic, if it was that way. In other words what is the risk in using balance over the other two rucking tactics?
Balanced is the default choice as we don’t expect that everyone playing our game will want to use this sort of advanced tactics option. Nearest man is best suited to swinging the ball wide so you can get players out wide into the ruck quicker but the risk is that the players going into the ruck may not be as skilled at rucking but the reward is that you will get players in there quicker. Forward play is best suited for playing close to the ruck, particularly when you are up against it when playing as a lower ranked nation against one of the better teams. Generally the forwards are always going to be the best rucking players in your side so if you wish to play a tight game then the forward strategy will work best. I think you will find particularly on the harder difficulties that the other 2 strategies will become more useful, but we also predict some people won’t be concerned with adjusting strategy in which case Balanced is a good middle ground for everyone.
cimbomjubi82 - Will there be any classic teams/players/kits available in the game, or via later DLC?
Will there be any extra modes available at a later date via DLC? i.e online multiplayer modes.
There is no DLC planned for Rugby World Cup 2011
jack6161 - Does the AI play a kicking game? Unlike for example Rugby 08 where you kick it to them, and they run back at you.
Yes you certainly will see teams utilizing their kicking abilities to gain ground and put the pressure on you in your end, especially on the harder difficulties, and when playing against the top nations with good tactical kickers.
Will it be possible to create your own set plays? (would be amazing to be able to )
Unfortunately no, it wasn’t in the plan for this ***le.
esoj - Is there any chance of a wii version ever coming out?
There have never been plans for a wii version. It's not a big enough market for us and even the biggest selling franchises are starting to see sales drop off on the Wii.
ACT1NUP -Does the AI take into account the score at all when you play them? In other words do they take drop goals/penalties even when 20+ points down.
The AI decision making takes into account such factors as their position on the pitch, the time on the clock and the score in the match and acts accordingly based on the scenario. For example, if the clock is at 78:00 and the AI is down by 6, they will generally play for the try in an attempt to win back the match. This decision making especially towards the end of matches, when the CPU team is down on points, has also been further enhanced in the upcoming patch.
Rugbybrain - Will players get noticeably tired during game play or can you just keep in the sprint button during the whole game?
There is a fatigue system in the game which works similar to other sports ***les. Each player has a sprint bar which drains while the player is sprinting (holding RT/R2). Once the bar is drained they can no longer sprint. Also the more a player sprints or gets involved at breakdowns throughout a match, the quicker that player will get tired and lose energy, this causes the player’s capacity for sprinting to decrease more and more as you get further into the match.
Thanks again for your questions.
Also, wanted to update folks in South Africa, that I'm still awaiting word on the timing of the demo being available in your territory. I suspect many have already found workarounds to the specific issue we were having. Will update when we know more.
We're all very excited about the launch of the game next week and really do appreciate all of the feedback we get on the game and look forward to hearing more from you over the coming months.
