Unofficial Palia #ask-the-team faq

Palia Unofficial #ask-the-team Compilation

The document contains all the responses from the devs in #ask-the-team on the official Palia discord. I categorized them in a way you can easily understand what they are talking about without adding the actual questions. (I removed repetitive answers in favor of more in depth ones)

For the official #FAQ and more info join the official discord at: https://discord.com/invite/playpalia

This document is unofficial and unrelated to the dev team.

If anything needs added/removed/edited you can contact me on discord: Vlad#1560

Italic text is added in by me before the question to make it more clear what it was referring to.

List is color coded by day. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5 & 6 (If you are color blind, contact me on discord for extra info)

Mobile Friendly doc: Mobile Friendly Unofficial Palia #ask-the-team faq

The Q&A is changing into a weekly one. Questions will be gathered on Wednesday and planned to be answered on Thursday. This document will stop being updated since #ask-the-team is closed. Join the official discord(link above) for more info

This needs to be first before anything else:

[S6] Sheevok: just like, a general thing, bear with us devs as we navigate what we can and can't answer on day one of being publicly announced game. We're people, not performers, it's a lot.

[S6] Bourbon: Yeah, it's fan made and a great resource for you all. Just keep in mind nothing in there is official (Regarding this document)

[S6] Bourbon: It's also important to remember that there's over 50 of us here and not everyone may have the exact right information about the entire game down to the details at any one time. We're human too and could be wrong!

Server:

You won't have to choose a server before you're allowed to make a character or anything, we'll let you go to where your friends are. But play between regions may have some restrictions so we can keep our network performance up.
No server selection, hit the big play button and play with friends
Players will be able to self organize more, you aren't tied down to a specific server
Server Size? Can't address it all, but think smaller
Server Size again? I don't think we're currently prepared to say. But if you're selected for pre-alpha, you'll find out. Pre-alpha is to help us test and verify the numbers we're shooting for.
I can't speak exactly to where you are, but expanding servers across the globe should eventually happen as we expand localization support. As long as everything goes well.

Character Creation:

We're trying to avoid male/female. You choose a body type and all the customization options are tailored to fit all body types
You don't choose a gender or pronoun, just a body type

Body Types? To start we have 2, this is a start
1 model for both male and female? I do want to clarify as this is not quite how the customization process works right now. Players have 2 body options to chose from, hairstyles are shared between both. Faces are unique to each. One is more masculine presenting, the other is more feminine.
We haven't built a lot of options yet as we've been working out the pipeline but we have been researching and concepting not just at different skin tones but also a wider variety of facial structures/features.

It is going to be extensive! But it may seem limited at the onset of the Alpha
The Alpha only scratches at the surface here. Lots of customization options coming!
Other races? We're not talking about all of that yet, unfortunately
Unique usernames? Probably not. Will likely do the USERNAME#1234 or similar
Naming? i don't think it's been fully figured out, to be honest
Surnames or titles are a possibility, this may hinge on community feedback
i think you'll be happy with how we do things with customization, especially if you're into colors in hair
We want people to feel they can play the person they want to play. We're investing in lots of body shapes, clothing options, hair styles, etc. All completely mix and matchable
Color wheel or a set palette? Likely to evolve over time. At the moment, some things like hair color are a palette, and other items have authored color variants. That could change tomorrow, that could change a year from now. There are interesting design concerns about absolute freedom to pick any colors whatsoever versus making it hard for people to feel like they're picking an aesthetically pleasing color palette versus candidates for the Monster Factory YouTube channel (is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?
Multiple Characters? Not at Pre-Alpha but the plan is to support multiple characters.

Gear/Equipment:

Yes. You have your cosmetic outfits, of which we already have a dazzling variety. You also have your tools, like pickaxe, fishing rod, butterfly net. These have quality tiers, but you only have one at a time, e.g. a higher-quality axe replaces the lower-tier one, you're not juggling both. There's a huge variety of harvestable and gatherable and craftable items that you can have in your inventory. Tools specifically, we do want it to be as easy and seamless as possible so you're not constantly swapping items and switching to inventory management after every activity.
Outfit Slots? Guaranteed. Why stop at one slot for outfits?

World:

Why the name “Palia?” While I can't say exactly why we settled on "Palia" over others (I wasn't part of that explicit process), I can say that finding a name for a game is really hard! From what I understand we had a long list of names, some lawyers had to check a buuunch of things to make sure there were no IP or copyright issues and just a few made it out of that process. You can't just pick the best name and go with it, unfortunately.
Travel Options? Our world is meant to feel large and have lots of things to do/discover but we don't believe spending an hour to travel between zones is how folks want to spend their time. There's a pretty open fast travel system in the Alpha right now and we're considering all forms of feedback on how to improve it.
How open is the world? Open but Curated. If we go too open you never squash the bugs. We definitely want environment traversal to be super fun though. You saw the glider ya?
We're trying to use real geometry where we can rather than have you running into invisible walls. Our game will feel more curated than open world
We're starting smaller and aiming to grow bigger. For alpha we will certainly have instances of our maps that support so many players, but making sure your group is together and you can visit each other without loading screens and your social experience is smooth is one of our primary goals as a team.
As of right now, all our buildings can be entered! But be understanding that NPC might close the door of their home at certain times of the day (for sleeping!)
Currently 1 IRL hour is 1 in-game day. This might change
Roan#9961: 1 hour of real time = 24 hours in the game. So you'll have 15 minutes of morning, 15 minutes of afternoon, 15 minutes of evening, 15 minutes of night. > Followed up by a confirmation from a dev
Oceans/Islands/Ships/Sea Travel? If I get my way, yes! But the community helps prioritize new features as much as anyone. Fill out surveys when you get them!
Easter Eggs/Pop Culture references in game? 100%
More on Easter Eggs? We like this too and one thing we ask ourselves about when designing spaces is discoverability. We don't want to put a whole wiki inside the game, but we don't want you to feel like you gotta have a wiki open to even play. Exploration will be more about finding whats going on in a world where people and animals have their own thing going on and you're in the mix there.
There's a lot to uncover in the Palia story. You decide your own level of involvement
Weather? We aren't ready to talk about weather specifically right now, sorry. Palia is not a world without weather, I can say that
Portals? Nothing so magic-y as portals, our fast travel system is kindda similar though.

Gameplay:

We're very keen on co-operative features for all of our skills. Can't say anything specific beyond that.
Hunting Skill
How does hunting work? Bow uses a crosshair, and I've said too much
Fishing Skill > Yes, and its more than just cast and RNG
Fishing will be more involved than AC, yes. We're more like Stardew there. (AC = Animal Crossing)
That's a great question! I'm aware of Stardew's infamous fishing difficulty. We are aiming for a similar level of depth but with a gentler difficulty curve. You should be able to succeed at low-level fishing even if you are not good at the mechanic.
We plan on having things like time of day affect fish, yes. Can't say anything specific yet though.
Combat? We're not ready to get into detail on this yet, but we'll have both combat like systems, such as Hunting, and eventually more traditional combat. Like most of our skills, you'll be able to choose your level of participation in it.
Hunting is the most action-oriented skill in the pre-alpha. But you are right - it's NOT combat. We have some really exciting plans in the "action" space for this game, but I can't tell you anything about them right now. Your patience is appreciated here.
Party size is not a set in stone thing. I realize a team member may have given an explicit number based on their understanding at the time, but that kind of info is at best giving a snapshot of the current state of things that absolutely may (or may not) change. I can't elaborate any more than that confidently.
Party size is currently 4 (this might be an error/not an important factor because of the above answer referring to it)
Character death? no death, or health even
Much of the open world activities do not explicitly require a party. Parties make certain things easier but you can still play most of the game just hanging out on voice
We won't have dedicated roles, or roles themed around combat. Hence trying to avoid the traditional RPG vibes
There will be group adventures, maybe dungeon like, but we won't have huge raids that require lots of prep and grinding beforehand
No combat atm, we'll let you know. You can hunt tho
Magic Skill Line? Definitely no 'magic' skill to level up like 'hunting' atm
Progression? Even though we're trying to avoid the typical grind of MMOs, you'll have lots of bars to fill up and levels to grind, yes
Guilds? Our version of guilds in the game are Neighborhoods and yes you will be able to create your own and invite whomever you wish
Difficulty? Different activities/skills are different, its hard to say but people will probably gravitate toward their favorites and specialize that way
Don't worry, the challenge is there for players who want it. But we're not hitting you in the face with it up front
End Game Progression and how it's lacking in Animal Crossing? We've identified that this is a well-known issue about Animal Crossing and fortunately we are not planning to succumb to that same fate.
Our skill system will be sarap AF
Jumping? Yes
Achievements? Systems like these will exist, yes. With consideration for people being able to enjoy the game for it's own sake and not feel obligated to play the game in a way they don't enjoy.
Will there be x skill? There will be a skill, or 3, for everyone. My wife and I already have a plan to diversify our specializations.
Most of our skills are designed to allow you to opt in to the degree you want.
I think it is fair to say the structure of this game will not attempt to mimic that of a "traditional" MMO. That said, MMO is a very broad term that seems to have been forced into a very niche vision by popular "traditional" MMOs.

RP:

I've been making sure to advocate for features like these! (It also helps that I roleplayed in WoW for over a decade and the Executive Producer for the game is also another roleplayer. )
We definitely want players to stand out and feel they can play the person they want to play. We are really excited for things like emotes, titles, etc.

PVP:

Its possible we introduce PvP in small ways in the future. Currently its not.
Competitive activities is higher priority than 'pvp'
If PvP means competitive gameplay then we'll have some
if PVP means duels in the middle of town, nah

Crafting/Gathering:

You'll never be told to pay money, or come back later, just to craft something.
If you have the resources, you craft (I think it was stamina and not time related)
How long will crafting take? No specifics for now! One thing to keep in mind is that we want to make sure there is an element of surprise to the Pre-Alpha. There's something magical from discovering something for the first time, so that's why we're holding our cards close ^^ That said, we are looking for feedback on those times, so we hope our Pre-Alpha testers come with lots of opinions!
You won't be stopped cutting down trees by stamina or similar no. We had it, hated it, its gone from the game
All of our gathering skills will have rare stuff
There will be cooking. Don't want to get into the specifics on how it works just yet, sorry
Infinite/Regrowable/Lumberyards/quarries etc? Yes to all of those, actually, hahahaha
Resource management? We have a unique solution to that but not ready to unveil yet.
All kinds of trees around Palia
Food rot? No to rot
Food made by people who are really good at making food will be better than same food made by bad cook
Fun achievements not to cut 5000 trees? Cut down 5000 Trees, in an interesting way
Why are there different colored ‘deer like animals’ in the trailer? :star_struck: emoji
Bees? Oh sorry, we don't comment on bees right now because we're still very mixed on how stingy to make them
Plant diversity? I think we have some interesting diversity of plant choice already though
No plans for animal husbandry? I'm not sure if that is technically true - there are long-term plans for looooots of things; so many that we'll have to listen to ya'll to figure out where to focus. I think I can state that animal taming and/or husbandry is a common topic for us at the studio.
Yes, safe to say that you will have to go to a variety of places to catch a variety of fish.

Mounts and Pets:

We see these categories as "Fast Travel" and "Pets". Both are in the roadmap in some form

Land/Housing:

Earning the right to your housing plot is between you and the villagers in the quest line
Your home is intended to be your cozy private space but you can have visitors so you can still show off your decor
Instanced Houses? It'll feel a lot like that. Not committing to instanced housing plots atm
Currently our housing is instanced off in private spaces - there will be ways for players to show off their plots but it will not be so free [edit - as running by someone's home]. As such, there is no shortage of real estate for players to have access to housing.
Both outside and inside are instanced, but your friends can easily access your home if you wish for them to come over. There's no loading screen
Its really easy for friends and neighbors to visit and we'll be adding more controls too
Land Share? In the alpha this won't be possible, no. You can visit a friend's plot and help them build their building though.
Open House? We want players to be able to, but we're still exploring different ways of executing on this since there is a lot to consider to make it a good experience for everyone.
Absolutely, we'll be giving you more and more controls over who can do what as time goes on
No, purchasing and selling commodities and/or land isn't a focus of the game
You will have a lot of control over layout of rooms and stuff. Your interior choices are going to be wild.
You attach/rotate rooms to create your own floor plan
Your plot is fairly private but you can put your house anywhere on it with all kinds of configurations
Second Stories and or Basements/Cellars? Could happen, nothing to share on it at this time
House with 1 floor is pretty small? These kinds of things are not set in stone, as you acknowledge. I don't personally feel that a 1 story home is inherently small though, no. I believe that at least most people should feel like they can build a comfy cottagecore home.
Cooperative housing is a huge goal for us
Stealing? No.
There's no terraforming but the customization options for your plot will get very interesting
The house from the trailer is just scratching the surface of what you can do really.

Furniture:

Furniture Interaction? Forgive us on this one for pre-alpha
Furniture positioning? It may not be 100% free so you can't place items inside each other but you can clutter surfaces like tables or shelves with little items so long as they all fit.
Furniture number per room? We have no hard limit on number of items placed in a room, up to you
If you want to put a bed in your kitchen, we will definitively not stop you
Thematic furniture? That is the plan!

Pre-Alpha:

We will send emails to everyone who's accepted, and we will announce that we've sent the emails. So at that point you'll know if you were picked.
Pre-Alpha when? Soon™
Pre-Alpha possible release? It could be month, it might be months. The other two no way (referring to quarters and years)
Super playable, lots to do.
Will be under NDA at least for the beginning
we'll be doing a couple of wipes before our actual launch
Numbers? As many folks as we can get in. The response so far has been overwhelming, which is great! But I fear it means we won't be able to invite enough folks to make EVERYONE happy. Thats why its hard to give definitive details right now.
Diversity? We're figuring this out. Honestly we're trying to get a mix of different people in this iteration of testing. So some will be fans of this game or that game, some will be solo players, some we'll want to bring their friends. So the answer is actually: some might be allowed to bring in friends.
Cash in for alpha? In our case our alpha is 100% not a soft-launch under a weasely title so we can cash in while wanting a pass on all the bugs. We're all old and crusty and old-school (or at least I am), and as far as I'm concerned, alpha is alpha is alpha!
Our hope is that those who do get into pre-alpha are super vocal about the things that they like and the things that they don't like. Our goal at this stage in our development is to really double down on the things that players are loving about the game and fixing things that they see as problematic. Part of the reason why we are having the pre-alpha is so the game can be shaped not only by us, but by players as well.
Duration? Not explicitly known yet - long enough for players to be able to relay feedback and us to test our servers and configurations. When we do announce the actual pre-alpha start date there will be a better approximation, but everything is subject to change.
Will things be faster in pre-alpha(like resource gathering)? We want to understand how players progress through the current content, so accelerating that process would be a bad move for our learning.
(Follow up on the above) It´s not skipping content. It´s skipping resource gathering? Yeah, but the general idea is if our plan is to launch a game with resource gathering, we don't want to pull that out of any tests for convenience as we won't get the signal on if resource gathering is reasonable and at least somewhat fun.

Final Release: (Early Access/Open Beta or Release not Pre-Alpha)

It's a little too early to be talking about early access or release. Right now we're focused on getting as much feedback as possible on our Pre-Alpha so we can build a great game for the community.
Release Date? 5 Years? Ain't nobody got time for that
Like done done? We expect to be a live service game and keep workin on it. If you just want to play its going to be really soon! Really soon!
While I can't give any specific dates, I can assure you that we are much closer than 3 years from launch.

UI:

We're targeting on the simpler side but at the end of the day MMO's with neat social systems require a bit more UI.
Bad UI got me into gaming dev! I'm hoping you guys will enjoy the UI but I can only make educated guesses based on my experience and background. Ya'lls feedback will heavily influence iteration going forward!
Finding Guilds(Neighborhoods)? You'll be able to find 'em! this is a big goal for us
Ultrawide? It already supports ultra wide Some wonky stuff in the UI at those sizes but its still preAlpha
Hide UI? Definitely supporting something like that ,we hope you take alllll the screenshots
We'll have toggles for certain UI elements, yes
Motion Sickness? We have folks on the team that are the same way, they keep us in check on things like camera controls
I think our inventory system does a few things that crafting games should have been doing for a while already
Favorite inventory sorting option? I think for a game like our categorical sorting is most important, but this can often be achieved with filters. Within the list you get a lot of free wins with an alphabetical sort, (works great for most any localization for instance)
We'll roll out various settings to help you customize the UI but no mod support, sorry
Bestiary Catalogue/Tracker? There will be UI for tracking information like what kind of fish you've caught, yes. That feels fairly safe to "leak".

Music:

It is our own music written by our own composer. Stream it!
Music instruments in game? Anything's possible. That's not like a "secret yes" or anything; we're just really open to making the things you want. One struggle is that with latency with audio over the internet it's kind of a difficult problem if you're looking to jam with friends or anything.
Spotify/Youtube? I'm not aware of any plans currently but I would be surprised if we don't accommodate on that front at some point.
Spotify/Youtube(2)? That's actually a great idea! Steffen has been doing an incredible job with the music. On more than one occasion I have loaded up the editor just so I can sit at the inn and listen to the music while I work.
I don't remember who had asked, but we had seen questions about the composer for Palia's music. It's no other than the incredibly talented Steffen Schmidt. He'll be saying hello to everyone in the next few days

(Not confirmed but Steffen Schmidt youtube is: https://www.youtube.com/user/ComposerSchmidt/featured thank you PastelPanda#2567)

Specs:

Min spec not out yet, but its real low
We don't have specific min spec out yet but so far we're running the game on some pretty garbage PCs.

Platforms/Crossplay/Controls:

We are starting on PC and adding more platforms from there. Where crossplay is possible we will push to support it.
We're aiming to release on "most" platforms after PC launch, mobile is a high priority, I don't think I can say more than that right now.
What you are asking about is called cross-progression. That is also a complex subject involving legalities between platform-holders (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc.)
Controller support is planned later, but won't be available for pre-alpha. As someone with RSI in the wrists, controller support is very important to me. I've been playing Palia on a Steam Controller in the mean-time.
VR is already fairly friendly with Unreal, we could look into it. I know we have VR fans on the dev team, I mean, its the only way to play Elite Dangerous

Accessibility:

We intend to include disability options including colorblind options. This is not ready for pre-Alpha
You need the mouse but its more required for the UI than playing the game. Folks with accessibility software and other input devices shouldn't have to worry about clicking in the world to move or anything like that

NPCs/Romance:

We'll have relationships and romance, things like spouses and children could come later
Friends and Romantic partners both. I'm sure you'll find someone to relate to in the village, even if its the mean old mayors wife
Villagers have lives to live as well, so you'll see them all around the world
Romance will be only between players and npc(gender doesn’t matter). Currently no player to player romance but they are looking into it (It was mentioned in one of the house sharing related questions)
Romance multiple npcs? Yes but just like in real life, some people might be upset if they find out
Will Einar (robot) follow us and help or just npc? Einar has his own routine and interests. You'll have to strike up a friendship to learn more
Dialogue with NPCs? Choices
There will be incentives for engaging with NPCs deeply -as to what explicitly, I'll leave that a mystery!

Anti Griefing:

We do have a bit of a troll on the team who actively looks for ways to grief us when we are playtesting so that we can look for ways to mitigate or remove the ability. :smile: I'm sure new ways will be discovered but it's something we do care very much about and pay attention to. We want the existence of other players to be at worst, neutral, and at best, a positive add
Players are really creative when it comes to this stuff. Thankfully we have folks on the team that are really good at making sure we know when stuff isn't up to our standards in that department as well.
We're sensitive to this, believe me. We may not end up supporting private servers but if we don't, you'll have other tools to filter out unwanted players. A huge focus for us is in having some of the best social systems, and that includes not worrying about seeing players you don't like seeing.

Player Trading/Auction House:

I feel like we have a pretty unique approach to how we want to handle the transfer of items between players but it's in early stages so we're not quite ready to talk about it.
Game economy will exist! We aren't sharing a lot about this now but it'll be clear when people get their hands on the alpha

Lore:

Lore is something we're very passionate about and we've been investing in since day 1
You'll be able to do a lot of interacting with the lore. Your character can really become a part of the NPC stories!
Lore Books? Yes :)
Your relationship with an NPC will affect what they're willing to share with you. So your perspective of the story may differ

Localization:

While we know we want to localize to other languages, and we understand how important it is, we haven't decided yet exactly how that will be accomplished.
We're going to localize to as many languages as we can
Hi! I saw that we did get quite a few folks from Brasil. Definitely going to have to start learning Portuguese. We do plan on localizing the game! However the Pre-Alpha will be in English only.

Engine:

UE4
An engine upgrade is never cut and paste, there's always a transition cost. How big the cost is and when do we want to pay it is a huge part of the strategy around doing a potential upgrade from UE4 to UE5
There are a lot of factors that go into selecting a game engine. I'm hoping to one day have some articles on our company site sharing more details about the engineering choices we've made and the tech we use.
A couple of interesting facts: we do have some ex-Epic folks on the dev team and that certainly helps. We're also very interested in UE5 and looking at it closely but have no plans for now.
I wanted to note, and I don't think this is anything secretive: we're only one version behind off from UE5, so we hopefully wouldn't have too many breaking changes if we were to upgrade
API? No plans as of yet.

Team:

3 years, starting with 2 people. Grew to 7 people after 1 year, now at 3 years we're 50~ passionate people
50~ people, with help from 3rd party studios for this and that, and we're still hiring and growing
Who started Singularity6? @[S6] Aidan and Anthony! Whom you can see here: https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2019/aug/13/singularity-six-snags-16-million/

More Info:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HH4ORnzxu1_vTDN7zQ1f_MGKDsTmZfP6eh_uxmkv-1U/edit (Thank you Nilesse#2687)
https://paliapost.com/ (balance#3495 made a nifty website where you can follow every dev post on discord)