Greetings all. In a bit of a turnaround from normal goings on, instead of us interviewing one of our devs, a community member (he goes by the name of Midbell on Discord and Reddit) dropped some questions about the game for the entire team. Our Lead Game Producer Rafal Nowocien teamed up with Hash Rush co-founder and Creative Director Nathan Ziedonis to provide answers. Marketing Director Craig Ritchie has expanded or filled in the gaps where necessary. Enjoy!
1) Are some planets only claimable by certain factions?
Rafal: We are not planning such restriction. However, if a planet is claimed by Rick’s Ravagers, it will look a bit different than if it were claimed by Elves.
Nathan: For now, we are designing it so that each faction will have their own planet type. But this may possibly change in the future.
2) Are some planets more profitable than others (i.e have more mining/looting potential)?
Rafal: Yes, some planets will have different resource pattern than others.
Nathan: Yes, some planets will have more of some resource, but others will be more scarce.
3) Are all planets the same size?
Nathan: All planets will be randomly generated, that way making the player have to think before acting.
Craig: While the planet surfaces will be different, it’s too early to say whether or not they will have different sizes.
4) Could multiple players be on the same planet, and could a single player own many planets?
Rafal: First question – no; second question – yes.
Nathan: No, players will not be able to go to other players’ planets physically, but will be able to see the players stats in the leader board. Players will be able to have multiple planets.
5) Will there be a day/night cycles?
Rafal: Probably yes, but we not made final decision yet.
Nathan: We’d like there to be day/night cycles and specific seasons for factions.
6) Will there be a player-specific in-game avatar that the player plays through (1st person) or will the player only have an omnipresent, point and click interaction style (3rd person)?
Rafal: It’s a more Starcraft-like game in terms of UI, so players will not have their own personal avatar — rather, they will command different units as colony leader/owner.
Nathan: The player will only see the colony from a 3rd person view.
7) Will certain factions have an innate boon (for example, ernacks having 30% more movement speed, space pirates 20% less chance of being attacked, etc.)?
Rafal: We are thinking about such a feature, however we have not decided yet if it will be natural race ability or whether it will depend on the development of specific race building/structures in the colony.
Nathan: Faction-specific buffs are already in discussion with the development team. More details will follow.
8) Will there be a skill tree system?
Rafal: We are planning to introduce a skills development system, but we're not sure yet in which form.
Nathan: Yes, each role will have a skill tree.
Craig: There’s still plenty of design work being done on roles and skill trees and we will produce a fully detailed article explaining this once the team have confirmed how this will work.
9) Will factions have specific units that can perform functions that units from other factions cannot do (for example, an alchemist that can upgrade some item, but he/she is only available in the Highborn faction)?
Rafal: Yes, but it will mostly be founded on buildings/structures — each faction will have their own specific structure, which gives this faction different buffs/bonuses.
Nathan: Of course — this will make each faction more immersive and unique.
Craig: Again, it’s too early for full details. Balancing the factions is a top priority, and we’re focusing on unique faction-based structures for now. We’ll have more details on the different factions’ units soon.
10) Is a player only able to play as a single faction per account?
Nathan: Yes, a single faction per account.
Craig: Yes, but we’re still working on account-level details. We do want our players to be able to enjoy every faction, and while a few things are still to be determined, you may require multiple accounts via the same email address to do so. Ask again in a few months!
11) Will be there be buyable/lootable items that increase hash power temporarily? How will pay-to-win be avoided if so?
Rafal: Yes, we are planning such feature and working over proper economy balance to avoid such problems.
Nathan: Yes, there will be items for purchase, most of them cosmetic and others will be temporary buffs. Buffs will be balanced across all factions.
Craig: Hash Rush will not be a free-to-play game and is not being designed with any pay-to-win elements. As your actions in the game tie in with real-world hashing power, additional investment to gain additional hashing power will be possible, but the details are still being worked on by our Chief Game Economist.
12) Will there be rare items that can be randomly mined or found?
Rafal: Yes.
Nathan: Yes, and the player will be awarded with them for finishing certain missions.
13) Will there be a player-to-player market where you can buy or trade items with other players?
Rafal: Yes.
Nathan: Yes, there will be such a platform.
Craig: This will be central to the in-game economy, and purchases/trades will happen with Rush Coins. We’ll have much more to reveal on this in the coming months.
14) Will custom skins be available, and if so will the RC market be mostly cosmetic?
Rafal: We are planning to sell very different things, and cosmetics will be important but not sole goods there.
Nathan: Yes, there will be cosmetic items.
Craig: The in-game market will allow purchases and sales of most items in the game. Some special items might not be tradeable at all, but it’s too early to give the details on specific items right now.
15) Will some items have no functional purpose, but be rare due solely to perceived value (for example, Runescape party hats)?
Rafal: Yes, we are going to introduce very rare and useless stuff!
Nathan: Yes, there will be cosmetic/season items that have a solely cosmetic purpose.
16) Will there be daily sign-in rewards or rewards for early players?
Nathan: This is yet to be explained in more detail, but the short answer would be yes.
17) Will there be wait times for buying/upgrading in-game mining buildings? If so, what is the general time frame?
Rafal: Yes, we are going to introduce this solution, but it’s too early to discuss time frames yet.
Nathan: Yes, there will be wait times. They will depend on the level of the building and the complexity of the building (such as which resources it will consume upon completion).
18) Will mining resources need to be repaired/maintained?
Rafal: Yes.
Nathan: Yes, your buildings will have to be maintained to ensure productiveness.
Craig: This will be worked into the game economy and be part of what players will need to manage.
19) Will there be faction-specific buildings?
Rafal: Yes.
Nathan: Of course, we will need to make the factions unique, and specific buildings will not be the only thing that will define the factions.
Craig: Our design team and our artists are producing a range of building types, and while there will be some functional cross-over between factions, many will be completely unique to the Ernacks, the Highborn of Eldaria, or Rick’s Ravagers.
20) Do monsters or natural disasters kill units, or simply slow down progress temporarily? Will there be buildings that lower % probability of being attacked?
Nathan: Units can get injured and will be incapacitated for some time. You will need to heal your units after they are rescued. There will be buildings that have a safety range in which the units feel more safe. Your first planet is relatively "safe", but the other planets you choose to explore things can get more dangerous and unit progression can be lost.
21) Will there be a combat system between player and monster, or will it be based on mathematical probabilities and values?
Rafal: Second option.
Nathan: Yes, there will be NPC that the player must deal with to ensure the colonies safety.
Craig: As Rafal said, it will be more based on mathematical probabilities and values. We’ll have much more details about the combat system soon, but it’s too early to give you specifics at the moment.
22) Is there talk of player to player combat being integrated?
Rafal: Not planned at the moment.
Nathan: We currently have no plans for PVP in the game.
23) Will there be guilds/clans, and what're the benefits of joining one?
Rafal: Yes, we are going to introduce guilds. We cannot reveal all features yet, but the most important and fun one will be a mercenaries trading system: player can ‘sell’ his armed units to the guild, from which other player can ‘hire’ them and attack other players! Such an attack is treated as an AI attack. If attacking another player is successful, he can grab the beaten defender's resources and the guild takes a small fee.
Nathan: This will be a separate feature for the game, which will be introduced further down the road.
Craig: This is the closest we have to what could be considered PVP, and a lot of details still need to be ironed out. We’re taking every care to ensure the game is fair and there’s no way for newcomers to be stomped by more experienced players. One way we might deal with this could be that mercenary contracts might only be allowed to be taken out on players who have also joined a guild, but nothing can be confirmed right now.
24) Will there be global leaderboards?
Rafal: Yes, however we not decided yet if it will be available from game launch day.
Nathan: There will be a leaderboard.
25) Will there be a weather system or season circles? If yes, will this system/circle be the same on all the planets or different planets have their own unique conditions? (This particular question comes from Reddit user YJJ17)
Nathan: Yes, these will be varied for each faction, and different planets will have different weather conditions.
26. "Will there be space travel between planets, or is planet navigation click-based?
Nathan: Planet navigation will be click-based.
27. Will there be more than one solar system or galaxy?
Nathan: The Hermeian solar system will be the only system for now.
28. Will there be suns, moons, black holes, or other celestial bodies?
Craig: A great question, but it’s too early to reveal exactly what makes up the Hermaien system.
29. Will exploration be primarily planet-based or space-based?
Nathan: Planet-based.
Craig: We’re not planning any space exploration at this time. Who knows — maybe a future expansion will allow this, but it’s not being designed for at this time.
30. What is an example of an in-game mission?
Nathan: Some missions will be quite simple like "Build a Blacksmith" and some will be more complex like gather many variants of resources to trade them with the Toad King (for example!).
Craig: And before you all get excited, no we're not yet finished with the Toad King concept! :)
31. How will player-to-player interactions take place?
Nathan: There will be a trading platform where players will be able to trade with in-game assets like cards. Still more to come in this field.
Craig: We also still need to work out the details of guilds and mercenary interactions, as well as how faction-chat will work. For now, you can interact on Discord!
32. Will trades be done between players or in a global exchange?
Nathan: Global exchange. But we are still in discussion about private trading options.
Craig: To be clear, it’s global within the game. The in-game market will be available to all players. If we have any plans for items to be tradeable outside the game, the Hash Rush community will be the first to know!
33. Will there be a global chat? A faction chat?
Nathan: There will be faction chats, because there will be faction goals and each faction must have a united player base to succeed.
34. If a player were to take a break, how long would it be until their hash power decays to 0?
Nathan: Well, this is still up for discussion but there may be account shut downs if players will not be active for, say, 30 or more days in a row.
Craig: Yep, as Nathan says we're looking into it and we've not yet made a decision, so it’s still a bit early to provide a concrete answer to this. Remember, the game is due for launch in Q3 2018 (July, August or September next year) and there’s still a lot to be determined.
35. Is there a story line for each faction that the player experiences as they progress?
Nathan: Yes, there will be some story (lore-based) missions.
Craig: We’re working on each faction’s history and each leader’s backstory. You can read what we’ve published about each faction so far at https://www.hashrush.com/game
36. Is there a God-like character? Or an overarching purpose?
Nathan: Each faction leader is their ‘god’. The player is the ruler of one of the faction leader’s colonies.
And there you have it! Big thanks to Midbell and the rest of the community for questions and ever-fun speculation on our social channels. If you enjoyed this post, please upvote and/or re-steem. For more info, visit the Hash Rush website and take part in our ICO (less than 2 days left!). And we’d love to have you join our community on Discord.