After last night's H1Z1 livestream, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley hopped onto the game's official subreddit and gave some additional details on the game.
First, he took the wraps off of a newly-announced feature for the game: there will be "player servers," meaning that if there's enough community support for an interesting new playstyle, Sony will build it.
"The idea is simple - If a community of our players wants to host a server with a specific theme or ruleset then we're going to do our best to give it to them," Smedley said in his post. "Players will receive a pledge token for free if they've played more than 5 hours. This pledge token can be used to cast a vote for a server. But use it wisely. You only get one free one per year. Make sure it's a community you believe in and that has a good chance to succeed because we're going to set the bar such that the community can sustain an MMO server (more details will be announced later)."
So you only get one free vote per year... but what about another paid vote?
"If you find yourself dying to vote on another server initiative we'll also sell pledge tokens but you can only use 2 pledge tokens a year max," Smedley continued. "So again, it's up to you but we want to make sure if we build it you're coming. We're also going to refund the station cash you used to buy it to your account if the Player Server Initiative succeeds. The Pledge token also comes with a wearable that's going to look sweet."
Still, two votes a year isn't a ton. It'll be interesting to see what people determine to be important enough to spend their vote on. I could see there possibly being a community-driven "election period," where everyone can have all of their options for the year laid out in front of them to make the most informed voting decision possible.
Then, in another post, Smed took on some of the most burning questions people had from the livestream. He confirmed that there will be first- and third-person viewpoints, but only on foot. Driving, as of right now, will only be in third person. He also confirmed what was already said during the livestream -- the devs put in a lot of materials to show off crafting and whatnot during the livestream, but materials will not be easy to come by in the full game.
And lastly, and perhaps the biggest question on a lot of peoples' minds, Smedley addressed the comparisons of H1Z1 to DayZ. And he didn't sugar coat it either.
"Not going to give some politically correct dodgy b.s. answer," Smedley said. "It is a survival in a Zombie Apocalypse game. So is Day Z. They have made a brilliant game (first I might add). They have a great vision for it and can count myself and most of the people on our team as fans and contributors.
"We're making the game we're making. Long term we plan on making this about a persistent world with a big landscape with thousands of players. The way we would like to see this roll out is much more like players building small enclaves or pockets of territory and hold out against a legitimate zombie threat that's ever present while others go it alone taking their chances.. These player built structures, forts and towns are one of the ways the players try to carve out some small space in a dangerous world."
There's plenty more in his full statements on Reddit, so be sure to check the original posts out. And keep it locked to GameNGuide for all of your H1Z1 needs, because we'll be on top of everything!
