Crowfall

Srathor · Mar 22, 2015

Wow that interview was kinda painful. Some more info but the time was not "fun"

Popsicle, yeah you are missing a bit. It breaks down to a variable world the size of one of wow's continents. Randomly made then passed over with ruins, mines, and other raw materials. Mobs and monsters roaming. It is now springtime but winter is coming in the form of "The Hunger". All the mobs and monsters are being corrupted and getting more deadly, undead are starting to be formed out of them, the dead are rising.

You are dropped in (by your choice) along with your buddies to a world either freshly placed in the path of "The Hunger" (read start of the campaign, in springtime) with depending on ruleset chosen a set of rules. Stuff like guild vrs guild. or faction (3 factions good, evil, and balance) or god based, or even the Dregs. Free for all. Everyone is attackable.

Once dropped in you are stuck, unable to really leave without sacrifice (unknown how bad). Anything made or lost is in that campaign till the world ends. (You can log into your Eternal kingdom but it is as if you are separate from your campaign avatar.)

Once in the world there are the ruins and mats and mines and the race is on. Take a keep build it up, scout areas, make friends, help those new friends while reporting to your real guild their strengths, weaknesses and times when the new shiny keep of goodness will be vulnerable. Screw your new friends over at the perfect point and rape the women and take all their shit.

3 months after you have ruined the hopes and dreams of those foolish jackholes and your true guild has caused winter to speed up and allow you to win and drag your ill gotten gains back to your Eternal Kingdom you can show your new online girlfriend your shiny new keep in your plot in the guildleaders kingdom.

Of course the bitch leaves you for the guildleader, you are kicked out of the guild because noone trusts you and you die alone, unfriended on facebook. You poor bastard.

Teekey · Mar 22, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
It's like their pitch is: It's like Rift, but without the PvE world. It's like GW2, ah, but without the PvE world.

Rift and GW2 have open world strategic territory control?

popsicledeath · Mar 22, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
Do you consider EVE a PVP game? And if so, why?

Sure, why not. I wasn't ever really into the spaceship thing enough to play, but the notion that PvP is there, in the world, and in a sense everything you're doing is directly or just as often indirectly contributing to the balance of player power, which is I think how Eve ends up being, makes it more my style of PvP than other games.

I actually really liked Pirates of the Burning Sea in early beta (or at least its ideas) because even playing as a merchant/smuggler/tradesman type of role you were still relevant to the overall fact the world was at war.

Then again, WoW was a PvP game, as was Rift, as was GW2... it's just to varying degrees and styles, and it makes me chuckle when I see something like this pitched as a 'real' PvP game and 'hardcore' PvPers hyping something that seems little more than the same load-a-map style PvP we've been getting for ages.

Thlayli · Mar 22, 2015

I think they'll break $1.5 million, which is probably a good sign. That means close to $2 million when you factor in international contributions. Decent for an indie MMO and their revenue stream will continue if they get good press and word of mouth through beta.

In the end this comes down to the addictiveness of combat, crafting, and basic network infrastructure. If they can get those three things right, everything else will probably fall into place.

So hopefully they spend the rest of this year hyper-focused on that. Save the bells and whistles for open beta.

They have the benefit of beta campaign popularity as a good metric of what players enjoy and what they don't, too. So I'm not too worried there...thanks to their fairly lax NDA policies we'll know in 9 months to a year whether or not the base game is shaping up well.

Draegan_sl · Mar 22, 2015

It's not like a map is loaded. They create a world/continent or whatever you want to call it and play. I assume it's not going to be small. It's going to last multiple month too.

popsicledeath · Mar 22, 2015

Teekey_sl said:
Rift and GW2 have open world strategic territory control?

Crowfall does? You mean on the procedurally generated temporary map?

That's my point. The problem with other games that had lofty promises of 'meaningful' PvP was that they segregated the actual open world from PvP by putting PvP into instanced maps.

Now, Crowfall is promising meaningful PvP, but instead of fixing the problem with other games and de-segregating PvP from the rest of the game/world, they're instead cutting away the persistent, open world..

Is it an improvement from the Battlegrounds system that WoW started? Maybe. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't be a lot happier if instead of cutting out the persistent open world and keeping the instanced PvP maps they did the opposite. Especially when the Crowfall hype is littered with bullshit about shaping the world and players act as rulers and how EK will be massive... yet meanwhile they're going to have a big, pointless trophy room that isn't even as engaging as an PvE open world that's used as a lobby for a procedurally generated map..... oh, but a map that's going to then have a bunch of PvE objectives and dangerous NPCS?

They sound very confused, and like they're hoping the hype train doesn't ask too many questions.

I mean, why bother with some Eternal Kingdom bullshit? Why not just build a game world? Hell, make peoples precious Disney Palaces be safe from destruction! But why try to drum up hype over an "eternal" kingdom, saying it's more than just a lobby, when it's not even going to be the destructible, changeable world they're pitching. Seriously, consider the sad irony with how they're hyping up destroying the environment and shaping the world, and that 'world' they're talking about isn't even the persistent "eternal" aspect of the game. If their world destroying and shaping tech was so fucking intriguing shouldn't they be building a game world that is persistent, so we can truly shape and change over time?

I'll say it again. They're hyping the fact you can destroy, change, shape and rule the world.... and the 'world' they're talking about is a procedurally generated, temporary PvP map.

If their systems were so fucking good, and certainly could be, why not just create a world to let us loose in with more tools than we've had before?

To me, having a persistent world that could be drastically changed and shaped over time sounds much cooler than a procedurally generated PvP map where the reality is you'll be able to break a door down like plenty of other games and we'll be looking back wishing we hadn't been so damn naive.

popsicledeath · Mar 22, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
It's not like a map is loaded. They create a world/continent or whatever you want to call it and play. I assume it's not going to be small. It's going to last multiple month too.

So they have a procedurally generated not-maps that are possible big but are described by the devs as 'zones' that can last as short as a month, and varying campaigns will have varying rules and we may even get a variety of not-maps to choose from in time?

Pretty mappy to me, man.

Maybe people are envisioning a huge, brand new, amazing, beautiful, explorable open world every few months.... where I just see a new Battlegrounds map being generated and patched in every few months, like playing Diablo online, but the maps are created and last months instead of just one session? And you can shape the world!!!! Oh, but the world is temporary... oh, but the world is actually a big lobby where you play house and the actual place you're fighting over things is just a temporary map.

Eh, I just think with the tools and systems they're hyping, their shitting the bed and it'll end up a lobby-load-a-map style PvP that will feel pretty meaningless pretty quick.

Teekey · Mar 22, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
Now, Crowfall is promising meaningful PvP, but instead of fixing the problem with other games and de-segregating PvP from the rest of the game/world, they're instead cutting away the persistent, open world..

No, they're not. Each campaign is it's own persistent open world. They just don't have permanence.

It's more like having servers closed down and new servers created every few months than a Battleground style system.

popsicledeath · Mar 22, 2015

Teekey_sl said:
No, they're not. Each campaign is it's own persistent open world. They just don't have permanence.

It's more like having servers closed down and new servers created every few months than a Battleground style system.

Ah, so non-permanent persistent worlds, not maps, you load from the Eternal Kingdom, not a lobby. And it's not like loading a new map, but logging into a new server.

Thanks, I think I get it now.

Based on your info I've also sent them an email to update the Kickstarter so it no longer says: "Our Campaign maps are procedurally generated" since they don't seem to understand they aren't actually maps, but non-permanent persistent worlds!

WOAH, dudes, I also just read on the KS page how "...the map is wiped and that World goes offline forever...

...but the characters are NEVER wiped."

It's so cool their maps are wiped, but the characters never are! I wish more games were like this, because it sounds awesome to get to keep your characters for the next procedurally generated map... err I mean non-permanent persistent world!

And it's about time we got a seamless blend of an MMO with a large-scale Strategy game! Because that's the exact, precise, focused sort of game I've been looking for, like combining Game of Thrones with Eve, and getting to have an entire soccer season AND get to also play soccer games!!!

Semantics; building up the hopes and dreams of naive gamers everywhere!

This game may still be cool for what it actually is, but it's sure to disappoint for all the things people hope it's going to be, and imo the lost potential in what it could be but clearly isn't.

Palum · Mar 22, 2015

I think my biggest concern is it doesn't have the permanence of a normal mmo and it also doesn't have quite the ephemeral nature of something like DOTA. I'm just not sure how much I'm going to care about the persistence or be engaged by the 'ramp up' style gameplay once the campaigns mature.

Teekey · Mar 22, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
This game may still be cool for what it actually is, but it's sure to disappoint for all the things people hope it's going to be, and imo the lost potential in what it could be but clearly isn't.

The thing is, you're disappointed about the primary selling point of the game (campaigns restarting).

It's fine that you want just one big open world sand box. They've just never tried to sell the game at that. And it's not like that model is completely devoid of problems when it comes to PvP, either.

Edit: And to be honest, a HUGE open world Fantasy-EVE game does still sound very cool to me. I'd play the fuck out of that as well. But that doesn't mean Crowfall campaigns are a bad idea either.

Draegan_sl · Mar 22, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
Crowfall does? You mean on the procedurally generated temporary map?

That's my point. The problem with other games that had lofty promises of 'meaningful' PvP was that they segregated the actual open world from PvP by putting PvP into instanced maps.

Now, Crowfall is promising meaningful PvP, but instead of fixing the problem with other games and de-segregating PvP from the rest of the game/world, they're instead cutting away the persistent, open world..

Is it an improvement from the Battlegrounds system that WoW started? Maybe. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't be a lot happier if instead of cutting out the persistent open world and keeping the instanced PvP maps they did the opposite. Especially when the Crowfall hype is littered with bullshit about shaping the world and players act as rulers and how EK will be massive... yet meanwhile they're going to have a big, pointless trophy room that isn't even as engaging as an PvE open world that's used as a lobby for a procedurally generated map..... oh, but a map that's going to then have a bunch of PvE objectives and dangerous NPCS?

They sound very confused, and like they're hoping the hype train doesn't ask too many questions.

I mean, why bother with some Eternal Kingdom bullshit? Why not just build a game world? Hell, make peoples precious Disney Palaces be safe from destruction! But why try to drum up hype over an "eternal" kingdom, saying it's more than just a lobby, when it's not even going to be the destructible, changeable world they're pitching. Seriously, consider the sad irony with how they're hyping up destroying the environment and shaping the world, and that 'world' they're talking about isn't even the persistent "eternal" aspect of the game. If their world destroying and shaping tech was so fucking intriguing shouldn't they be building a game world that is persistent, so we can truly shape and change over time?

I'll say it again. They're hyping the fact you can destroy, change, shape and rule the world.... and the 'world' they're talking about is a procedurally generated, temporary PvP map.

If their systems were so fucking good, and certainly could be, why not just create a world to let us loose in with more tools than we've had before?

To me, having a persistent world that could be drastically changed and shaped over time sounds much cooler than a procedurally generated PvP map where the reality is you'll be able to break a door down like plenty of other games and we'll be looking back wishing we hadn't been so damn naive.

popsicledeath_sl said:
So they have a procedurally generated not-maps that are possible big but are described by the devs as 'zones' that can last as short as a month, and varying campaigns will have varying rules and we may even get a variety of not-maps to choose from in time?

Pretty mappy to me, man.

Maybe people are envisioning a huge, brand new, amazing, beautiful, explorable open world every few months.... where I just see a new Battlegrounds map being generated and patched in every few months, like playing Diablo online, but the maps are created and last months instead of just one session? And you can shape the world!!!! Oh, but the world is temporary... oh, but the world is actually a big lobby where you play house and the actual place you're fighting over things is just a temporary map.

Eh, I just think with the tools and systems they're hyping, their shitting the bed and it'll end up a lobby-load-a-map style PvP that will feel pretty meaningless pretty quick.

I have no idea if they can pull it off, but it seems like you are being dismissive and have read up on the game. That's fine if that's what you want to do. It's a game that generates a new world for each campaign that has points of interest. Mines/Forests to gain resources, points to build fortifications. PVE elements that give off a survival vibe (not much info on this one though). It's essentially an MMO that lasts a few months where each time you play you get that rush feel to it. If that's just a BG to you, dunno how any video game isn't just a BG.

It's a giant persistent open world... that gets destroyed in some designated set time. Every X months you get to roll up on a new map and rush to glory again except you keep all your trained skills and maybe some stuff (depending on the campaign). You're another person who doesn't even get the Eternal Kingdoms bit. It's a player housing map, that's all. Because they are going the route of not Pay to Win, the only way they can monetize the game long term is selling shit for your house. People love that shit. That's essentially what it is. They did a piss poor job trying to make it sound more than they are designing it for. Part of the hype though. I would basically ignore the EK for the most part.

And to reiterate because you keep bringing it up in your posts, the whole point to destroying the world and not making it last forever is to 1) recreate the MMO rush feel of a new world. 2) give a way for games to reset so they don't become stagnant. I.e. the big bad guild takes over your server and it becomes lopsided and boring. If you're looking for a game that lasts forever, this is certainly not the game for you.

And honestly, if you took out the EK shit, it would be a lobby based game but with huge "maps", "zones" or whatever word you want to use that last for months; or to use their silly analogy a "football season".

I just think you're hungup on a few keywords.

Tuco · Mar 23, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
I wish one of these companies would just create a world, populate it with mobs and loot, turn on pvp, and let players figure it out. Stop being cute and over-designing pvp by trying to create a PvP system and PvP rewards and PvP rankings and all that shit. Players will sort all that out when they're trying to progress in a game and either have to learn to defend themselves or die.

CF's predecessor, Shadowbane, did that. Within a couple weeks all the pre-release alliances that were prepared to fight us were wiped off the map and we had no one to fight. There were two more respectable alliances against us that we actually nurtured so they could build up a force before we fought them. This was true of almost all SB servers. Play 2 Crush.

The way I see it, in any FFA PvP environment that two forces can really destroy each other it's rare for a serious war to last for more than a few weeks. Morale is so fleeting amongst most PvPers when they're losing that usually one weekend of solid victories is enough to crush the morale of a guild so much that a victory is decided. CF builds on this by giving us a Shadowbane like environment to compete in, but resets it once it gets boring.

Palum · Mar 23, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
CF's predecessor, Shadowbane, did that. Within a couple weeks all the pre-release alliances that were prepared to fight us were wiped off the map and we had no one to fight. There were two more respectable alliances against us that we actually nurtured so they could build up a force before we fought them. This was true of almost all SB servers. Play 2 Crush.

The way I see it, in any FFA PvP environment that two forces can really destroy each other it's rare for a serious war to last for more than a few weeks. Morale is so fleeting amongst most PvPers when they're losing that usually one weekend of solid victories is enough to crush the morale of a guild so much that a victory is decided. CF builds on this by giving us a Shadowbane like environment to compete in, but resets it once it gets boring.

That's the biggest potential issue I see with FFA PvP. I mean, sure - the core people will be 'core' but the endless legions will change sides at the tip of a hat or flip of a coin. Should actually make things interesting but also potentially eternally frustrating if things just reward 'being part of the team that takes over mine X' where everyone on the server will band together to kick your organized guild out for their extra 4 nuggets of talcum powder and 3 exp.

Teekey · Mar 23, 2015

Found an interesting article I found about J Todd Coleman talking his experience with MMOs (Particularly Shadowbane and Wizard 101):GDCO 2010: From Shadowbane to Wizard101

This quote though stood out to me, and probably explains why we've been frustrated with the lack of concrete details for Crowfall:

The next aspect of making a game that came into play with the two games was with management. J. Todd Coleman actually started this aspect out with an apology. He said they came into the gaming space with a very poor attitude towards developers. Shadowbane was the first game they ever worked on. They made a few mistakes right at the outset with it. They did no pre-production (where you prototype and test out certain things first to see what is possible). They announced first and delivered later. When they announced Shadowbane, they hadn't even hired anyone. They were underfunded and they overpromised. And the last 18 months of development were a solid crunch, so when the game finally launched, their entire team was burned out.

popsicledeath · Mar 23, 2015

I'm mostly hung up on the people who are taking very early descriptions and keywords and building them up to be yet another second coming.

Like I've said, the actual game, beneath the hype, may in fact be pretty cool and is probably a step up from the current PvE world with PvP battlegrounds tacked on. And I know it's a necessary evil to hype a game by saying dumb shit like referring to your character as a hero. I just hope the hype train that gets the game made isn't also part of its undoing, as we've seen that plenty of times.

I actually do like the idea of a new map/world/campaign that players can rush. I tend to like PvE progression built into my PvP, which requires the long term, but if it doesn't have typical progression rushing new maps is the way to go for short term rush/progression/building/whatever.

I guess I don't mind the notion a guild takes over a server and it becomes boring, because it only usually becomes boring in a battleground style PvP systems where you simply quit if you see the odds stacked against you. In a persistent world/server players tend to rally because they're invested, even stuck, and looking for the long term. Of course, I'm talking days before you just transferred servers at will. But server imbalances in a standard system are no more a risk than people giving up on campaigns because why wouldn't you just try again in a few months or just focus on your characters that are in other campaigns that have better odds? Either way, you need a meaningful reason for those on the bottom to rally and stick it out. So far, the best, most meaningful reasons I've seen in MMO PvP is that it's simply your server and where/how you play the game, so you have to figure something out, or you start over or don't play. We'll see how it works in the middle ground we're getting in Crowfall between instanced matches and fully persistent world.

Game might end up good, but right now the KS could be describing a dozen different games and there's nothing concrete in any of it, despite the game being fully formed in the minds of many on the hype train. Thankfully people like Tuco and Draegan are pretty level headed when it comes to these things, so I'll wait for further review before getting excited.

Harkon · Mar 23, 2015

Sounds like what your looking for is Planetside or Shadowbane. Which are not a bad style of game but have been done before.

This is a new take on how to play these types of PvP games.

It could suck but having semi permanence with eventual resets and fresh map generation seems like a real breath of fresh air to a stale genre to me.

Tuco · Mar 23, 2015

Palum_sl said:
That's the biggest potential issue I see with FFA PvP. I mean, sure - the core people will be 'core' but the endless legions will change sides at the tip of a hat or flip of a coin. Should actually make things interesting but also potentially eternally frustrating if things just reward 'being part of the team that takes over mine X' where everyone on the server will band together to kick your organized guild out for their extra 4 nuggets of talcum powder and 3 exp.

My thought is this: Put a bunch of resource nodes out on the map randomly and have random maximize retrieval rates. These rates have a maximum that doesn't change with the number of people there. If you and your buddy are operating Tinynugget Mine at max capacity and earning a decent income and then a zerg of 20 dudes roll up and start operating the mine, they're wasting their time and could probably earn more money by solo-farming cloth off random NPC spawns or something. And if 20 dudes are roaming around the map PKing groups of 3, they're probably still earning less money than they could soloing low-value NPC.

Teekey · Mar 23, 2015

Pack Pigs unlocked for all backers.

Ukerric · Mar 23, 2015

popsicledeath_sl said:
It doesn't seem like they've created a system for meaningful pvp, but simply cut out the persistent PvE world that other failed PvP efforts have at least had.

The real question is: why do you want a PvE world?

You do realize that, for the vast majority of PvP players in GW2, the "persistent PvE world" is, at best, a Lion Arch-shaped lobby where they log in because you're kicked from the WvW map when you disconnect. The only advantage of mixing a PvE and a PvP world is for the PvE players, not the PvPers. It means the PvE crowd can dip its toes into some PvP from time to time. The PvP-oriented players don't engage in the PvE experience.

So, yea, since it's a PvP game, not a PvE with PvP tacked, there's no large PvE world.

I wish one of these companies would just create a world, populate it with mobs and loot, turn on pvp, and let players figure it out.

The result is simple: you get UO, pre-trammel. You get a game which is designed to attract sheep for wolves to slaughter. Except the sheeps know better after 20 years, and they're not going to touch it.

Serious questions ,because I'm getting a ton of 'dude finally a real pvp game' hype that I just don't see: How is this going to be more 'fun' than the other games when you're still just sparring for no real purpose? Do people still not understand it's not PvP mechanics or systems that make PvP fun, but having real consequences worth fighting over?

The problem of having permanent consequences (worth fighting over) is that, by now, if you lose, you uninstall the game, and move on. There's dozens of games to play. Make losing sting too much and the game loses. That's what doomed the ancestor of Crowall: once you'd lost, it was over, and you most likely canceled your account. Maybe a few would toughen it out, but that didn't make a game viable.

That's what they learned, and why they move to a campaign-based format. Losing doesn't set you back, it means you've not progressed.

Crowfall

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