Just a quick thread if you don't feel like creating a whole new thread for the thing that you want to ask about :)

Feel free to ask anything about BeastEon here, I will try to reply as soon as possible!

A few questions: will BeastEon be very different from Beastkeeper? The general idea is the same, right? And also, when is this coming out? I would love to play it soon.   

It said you could shape thier personallity right? What if you were really mean to them? Can they hate you? What drawbacks whould that have?

Also, what other pets will be revamped? The new dragon seems to blow them out of the water. To me, the Roc could use a base with individual feathers on his face and body, for example.

Oh, and will there still be custom skins?

Nightstar, BeastEon will be a completely different game with its own unique gameplay. Though it has breeding aspect, it's not the central idea of the game. The focus will be on the individual beasts and their interactions with each other and the world.

Sun_Showers, concerning the negative attitude to the lord, that's a debatable question. We didn't hammered the final mechanics here yet, and probably the final decisions on such things will be made only on beta phase after discussing and testing them with players. The main problem here is finding the point between challenge and frustration which can be different for different players. Taking into account the fact that pets will be a lot more personalized than in BeastKeeper, we expect players to become more attached to them than here. The final mechanics can be anywhere between completely losing your beast and just dropping its mood low so you would need to do something good to make that beast playable again.

Some of the bases will get anatomy improvements but there won't be complete revamps like it happened with the dragon base. Babies will be revamped completely to meet the new art standard.

This sounds like a very ambitious and very exciting concept! Going to dump a bunch of questions I pulled off the top of my head; feel free to answer as many or as few as you'd like.

Does "procedurally generated coat patterns" essentially mean every beast will have a unique appearance? And will this pattern be visible on the baby base?

Will we be able to interact with other players' pets in Explore?

You mentioned the beasts would have free will; in what ways will beasts be able to interact with each other apart from the player's direct action?

What sorts of activities will be available that affect the personalities of the beasts? (In the current Beastkeeper, there isn't much in the way of positive or negative interaction with them.)

In the current Beastkeeper, the gain from Explore is limited by the size of the island. Will we be able to explore indefinitely with the same pet in the new game?

Will there be deviant mutations?

Will there be global events that occur in each eon, effected by the collective player base's decisions in the previous eon? (Or are the changes between eons personal to each account?)

1) Since items will be incorporated into the game- will there be any customizable skins? If no, what role can artists play on the site? 

2) Will the NPS have varying shades of character? Friendly, neutral, loyal, or maybe chaotic?? 

3) I love the new dragon. Will other pets have the same level of detail added to their bases/skins?

4) Are we still on Europa? 

5) How will registration happen? Will it be open or closed? 

6) Do you need mods? Because I'd love to submit an application :)

7) So in regards to this free-will/character on the part of beasts- I'm picturing this like the Sims (if you've played). In this game characters have vastly different levels of personality, needs, goals, relationships with other characters. All of these factors will determine if what you ask of the character is acted upon, recieved well by the other npc, or even a success. For example some options aren't avialable in your interactions with others because you may not yet be friendly enough with that character. Will it be like that for the pets? 

8) Can everyone craft? Or will it be certain people like on Leayph? 

9) Will there be a Facebook page as well? 

10) What will happen to Beastkeeper V1? Will it still exist? Will anything carry over *eyes collection  of Kami*? 

11) OMG I'm super excited.

Thanks Angel!

Just a small remark before I will start answering. All of the mechanics may be changed and will be completely shaped only after extensive testing in alpha and beta and discussion with players.

Sumatra_Echo, your batch is the first :)

Does "procedurally generated coat patterns" essentially mean every beast will have a unique appearance? And will this pattern be visible on the baby base?

Yes, this means that every beast has unique appearance if it has procedural patterns in its phenotype. Not all patterns can be procedural, but such things like different kinds of spots, dots and stripes can be created procedurally. Babies won't have procedural patterns but rather a classical dynamical representation of them (one precreated form for each marking, dynamic coloring). It's hardly technically possible to generate the same procedural pattern on two completely different 2D images - baby and adult - even if we utilize seed generation.

Will we be able to interact with other players' pets in Explore?

Yes! You explore with a party of beasts and can meet other parties. Interactions in the explorable world are different from social interactions happening in the peaceful environment - your party leader won't be asking that cute gryphon girl out for a date when there's a hydra's lair nearby. But interactions that are proper for that environment are possible.

You mentioned the beasts would have free will; in what ways will beasts be able to interact with each other apart from the player's direct action?

The game is split into two big layers - explorable world and the city where most of the social interactions will happen. The city lives its own life and won't have a graphic representation. All things that happen here will result in entries on your social wall, sometimes asking for your action or decision and sometimes just informing you about the things that have happened. Your beasts will naturally interact with other beasts that they meet in the city in different places.

Let me illustrate the concept with an example.

The following situation happens in the background without player control. Your warrior dragon likes grilled steaks and decides to go to a cafe specialized in that type of dishes. There he meets another warrior and they decide to get some food and drinks together. But at a certain moment, something goes wrong: your dragon and his new friend start quarreling because of different political preferences. A fight starts, and the owner of the cafe throws the brawlers out and forbid them to come to this place again. Your dragon is very upset. He loved those stakes and the atmosphere of that cafe.

What you see as a player. An entry appears on your social wall describing the situation: "Your dragon Dragon_name has initiated a fight with Opponent_name in the cafe Cafe_name. The owner of the cafe, Owner_name, has banned your beast from his place. Dragon_name is very upset."

What you can do. The cafe is run by another player. You can try to negotiate with them in order to unban your dragon to make him happy. Most likely the cafe owner will ask you to spend some of your authority points to forbid your dragon to fight in public places, and they also may want some money compensation for the damaged furniture and scared visitors.

What sorts of activities will be available that affect the personalities of the beasts? (In the current Beastkeeper, there isn't much in the way of positive or negative interaction with them.)

Since personality is based on a neural network, it is affected by every small thing that happens with your beast. This includes all background random and not-so-random events. The main aspects of personality are formed while pet is still young. The most effective way to upbring a child is to assign it a mentor. Otherwise it will equally learn from everything that happens around it. 

Direct player actions have an impact as well, but it's not so obvious. Each beastlord has a certain number of authority points that can be spent to ask your pet to do or not to do certain things. However, you can't just tell it to be good or generous. The directions are straight actions (like "don't date with that female" or "go to the library and read books about world history"). Your beast will learn from the situations that your directions have caused, and make the conclusions basing on its current personality, the result of the situation and inborn personality traits.

In the current Beastkeeper, the gain from Explore is limited by the size of the island. Will we be able to explore indefinitely with the same pet in the new game?

Yes, the size of the world itself is infinite and the world continues to add new chunks as players explore. Though beasts are modeling a living organism, so they will need to rest and restore supplies as they explore.

Will there be deviant mutations?

The genetics will be a lot more variable than it is in BeastKeeper. Mutations are possible as well, though most likely we just won't use "deviance" term.

Will there be global events that occur in each eon, effected by the collective player base's decisions in the previous eon? (Or are the changes between eons personal to each account?)

Yes, this is one of the main designations of eons. Each eon will have a global quest with at least two possible outcomes. Depending on the result, the world in the next eon will be formed, and the next global quest may be affected by this result as well.

Wow. So it will be very similar to an adventure/choose your own adventure/roleplay game set in an extensive world. I'm impressed by the level of interactiveness and such. What kind of advertising will be done, if any, to attract new players? 

Nightingale, your batch of questions is second! :)

1) Since items will be incorporated into the game- will there be any customizable skins? If no, what role can artists play on the site?

We want to provide a possibility to customize everything that is possible to customize as long as we can keep the things compatible with each other. Beasts can be customized in a few ways: custom wearable items, fleshcraft (custom body parts), custom haircuts, dyes, tattoos etc. Custom beast bases are not planned because of their incompatibility with all the things above. However rare beasts who become legendary may get completely custom art with a restriction that all their equipment will be locked at the moment of skin submission, and the skin will display all the pet’s markings, colors, modifications and wearables. Further equipment changes can be done only with submission of the updated art.

Beast profile page can also have background and decorative items on the background and foreground that can be custom as well.

Beasts can run their shops like restaurant, flower shop or alchemist’s store. After becoming skilled in their profession, they can make custom recipes and items, so not only wearables but also custom consumables are possible.

If there will be artists who can and want to add custom realistic isometric art, we may also add the possibility to create a player made visualization of the stores.

2) Will the NPS have varying shades of character? Friendly, neutral, loyal, or maybe chaotic??

Yes, NPCs will have their own personalities as well.

3) I love the new dragon. Will other pets have the same level of detail added to their bases/skins?

We don’t plan the full revamp of the old bases, however there will be anatomy and details improvements on some of them. The dragon preview is twice as big in compare with the current bases, and most likely we will need to shrink it as well.

4) Are we still on Europa?

Yes, the setting is the same.

5) How will registration happen? Will it be open or closed?

It will be open. Maybe we will have to put the account limit on the testing phase, but the release version will be open for registration all the time.

6) Do you need mods? Because I'd love to submit an application :)

Definitely, and we will be glad to see you in our staff! :) Although it’s a bit early to look for mods right now, there’s a long time before even alpha release.

7) So in regards to this free-will/character on the part of beasts- I'm picturing this like the Sims (if you've played). In this game characters have vastly different levels of personality, needs, goals, relationships with other characters. All of these factors will determine if what you ask of the character is acted upon, recieved well by the other npc, or even a success. For example some options aren't avialable in your interactions with others because you may not yet be friendly enough with that character. Will it be like that for the pets?

Something similar, though not the same. You won’t be able to play your beast like puppet except explore layer where social interactions are extremely restricted. Direct interactions will happen through social interface which looks more like a social network wall than anything else. We plan 4 types of interactions that may tell your beast to do something with another beast.

• Neutral actions - get your beast familiar with something new and expand the circle of subjects that it will be able to interact with in future. Like get acquainted with a new beast, place, profession, dish etc. These actions don’t affect personality directly and don’t spend anything.
• Order to do something that your beast wasn’t going to do itself. Spends your authority points.
• Order to do something that your beast was going to do already. For example, invite its sweetheart out to a date or cook a delicious dish when hungry.
• Actions that require resources different from authority. For example, a gift will require resources and some money to craft it.

The way how the other beast reacts to a certain action will be decided by a social network that summarizes everything that happened with that beast in its life and its inborn personality traits.

8) Can everyone craft? Or will it be certain people like on Leayph?

I’m not familiar with Leayph crafting system, sorry. Craft is available for everyone, but a lot of the patterns will require your beast to acquire a certain profession and improve its skills. It will make sense to specialize your pets in certain professions depending on their traits, skills and preferences.

9) Will there be a Facebook page as well?

Yes, but closer to the release date. We would like to put more resources in development right now than in promotion.

10) What will happen to Beastkeeper V1? Will it still exist? Will anything carry over *eyes collection  of Kami*?

Most likely BeastKeeper will continue running without updates and will be utilizing only existing event mechanics like tundra and egg hunt. Unfortunately, we can’t transfer anything to BeastEon due to the enormous difference in gameplay and concepts. We plan to provide BeastKeeper players with some bonuses reminding of BeastKeeper basing on the achievements here, but most likely they will look like something similar to unique familiars, resource boost at the start and things like that.

11) What kind of advertising will be done, if any, to attract new players?

We plan to use Google AdWords and a few more targeted sites that offer ad spaces, as well as advertising on forums and in social media.

Wearables for pets?? Hot diggity! *eyes light up*

This sounds fantastic, Angel :)

I have a question: will we be able to capture pets by battling them on the map? Or will it be similar to the "Capture a Wild Pet" map? Because hunting for pets in explore would be kinda fun :)

The thing I like about fighting wild etelia is that they are so hard to beat. It would be nice to find pets on the explore map that are very hard to beat, with nice traits, and you capture them if you defeat them. If you don't, then the pet disappears, forever...

arete, yes, tameable beasts will be found in explore, there won't be a separate map for this. Though we don't have specific battle mechanics, and battles will be replaced by universal mechanics of challenges instead. It is not covered anywhere yet, but we are planning a blog post about its development. Challenges may require different skills from your beasts except battle ones: diplomacy, intelligence, high impression level and other. The same mechanics will be used for quests. 

How long are we going to wait for the game? You've mentioned alpha and beta testing. Will the alpha start sometime this year? or are we looking at a longer wait?

MarsinOz, definitely not this year. There's no set date yet. We're a very small team, and realizing all planned features even for an alpha version requires a lot more of man-hours than we physically have in the next half of the year. We both quit our job to work on BeastEon, and we're already outsourcing everything that can be outsourced to optimize the process, but a lot of the things can't be done by anyone else, and for some of them we simply couldn't hire anyone because it was not possible to find  a specific specialist.

I wish you all of the best with with this venture.

Will we be able to chat in-game with other players? That would be nice.

arete, thank you :) Yes, chat is a necessary feature for the explore where it's possible to interact with players.