Crowfall

Convo · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
Not sure what you're saying here but this community really likes forced grouping. In general this community prefers MMOs that require grouping at almost all levels. The basic reasoning being: the only reason we enjoy these games is to play with other people and MMOs that allow everyone to solo hamper that.

An interesting take on it was EQ. When I raided the best solo classes were necro, druid, SK and paladin. And the classes least desired in groups/raids in large numbers were generally necro, druid, SK and paladin. Meanwhile raids were stacked with lots of warriors, clerics, rogues and wizards. So this created a dichotomy where the different classes were more strongly typed than just dps/tank/heals.

Though to be fair to my comparison, wizards could quadkite and DPS in raids and sk/paladins were generally awful all around. Actually my memory of this dynamic is really foggy and I should just abandon this post now.

I totally disagree. I think the people who prefer an old school game like eq are the minority here now a days. Forced grouping has gotten a bad rep. Just my opinion tho. Lots of people want to play a solo game in a mmo universe.

Draegan_sl · Feb 6, 2015

Convo_sl said:
You're a neckbeard... You just don't know it yet..

I find it funny some of you are complaining about the rifts being nerfed. That was forced grouping disguised. Forced grouping really is good

We are complaining that rifts went from large scale group effort events to things that were either ignored or zerged in 10 minutes.

They really took over zones. It was gutted.

And forced grouping sucks. Better options for grouping is better. I want both.

Tuco · Feb 6, 2015

Convo_sl said:
I totally disagree. I think the people who prefer an old school game like eq are the minority here now a days. Forced grouping has gotten a bad rep. Just my opinion tho. Lots of people want to play a solo game in a mmo universe.

Well maybe I'm wrong. Who here likes forced grouping? and by forced grouping I mean that after the newbie or intermediate zones the PVE is difficult enough to require 2-3 people to progress at a good pace.

Convo · Feb 6, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
We are complaining that rifts went from large scale group effort events to things that were either ignored or zerged in 10 minutes.

They really took over zones. It was gutted.

And forced grouping sucks. Better options for grouping is better. I want both.

I can agree with that. I remember being In alpha and just getting shouted down about nerfing rifts. How it was effecting players enjoyment bc they were being forced to group. I think that's a bad tone to set during a beta and it carried over to live with the T1s.

Convo · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
Well maybe I'm wrong. Who here likes forced grouping? and by forced grouping I mean that after the newbie or intermediate zones the PVE is difficult enough to require 2-3 people to progress at a good pace.

Eq was perfect balance for me so I might be a bad person to speak on this. I feel like I'm definitely in the minority.

Abefroman · Feb 6, 2015

The retarded thing about grouping for rifts is you didnt even need to. They had that public group shit or you could just wander in by yourself and pew pew if you wanted. I always thought the stink was because timmah couldn't turn in his quests.

Big Flex · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
paladins were generally awful all around.

and stuns

seeIn Defense of the Paladin - Project 1999

Draegan_sl · Feb 6, 2015

That was the big part of it. Soft grouping like in Rift or GW2 is great imo.

Convo · Feb 6, 2015

Abefroman_sl said:
The retarded thing about grouping for rifts is you didnt even need to. They had that public group shit or you could just wander in by yourself and pew pew if you wanted. I always thought the stink was because timmah couldn't turn in his quests.

That is it..but that person was looking for a solo player experience. The people who enjoyed the challenging content grouped up and just beat the rift then did turn in. it was brutal to see nerfs like that.

Vitality · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
paladins were generally awful all around

You don't know the struggle...

Japanfour_sl · Feb 6, 2015

this game looks interesting. Im really hoping for a game that reinvents the support/heal/tank/dps/utility roles.

Tuco · Feb 6, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
That was the big part of it. Soft grouping like in Rift or GW2 is great imo.

I didn't like grouping in GW2 because it wasn't really cohesive grouping due to not reliance on other characters. The trinity isn't the only way to have a cohesive group but it really does make sense.

Japanfour_sl · Feb 6, 2015

grouping in guild wars 2 was fucked. Its pretty much zerg the shit out of this mob, and dodge the circles.

Tuco · Feb 6, 2015

Back to forced grouping in a game like Crowfall, my thought is this:

I don't think the optimal path should be for players to farm mobs because it's boring and repetitive. Sure they can farm mobs, but once they get situated they should have more dynamic and PVP related ways to farm. For a resource producing player the game should be about investing, managing risk and then profiting on the enterprise. For a PK the game should be about finding players who are overleveraged, PKing them and profiting on their enterprise. In turn most of the lucrative options should be difficult to defend without multiple people.

Ex: Irondick Mine is a resource players can set up an NPC camp with for some nominal amount of resources. Once set up NPCs will do all the back breaking labor and generate iron ore. At some point, automatic or player controlled, enough iron will be generated to be sent via cart to somewhere else to be sold for gold, to feed crafters or to be used directly for whatever. The cart of ore, while in transit, is vulnerable unless protected by players. Once the mine starts progress, NPC bandits should periodically spawn and attack the players and possibly roam looking for carts. Meanwhile PKs at any time can come and raid the camp and either take the camp over or send off a cart of their own with iron to where they want to go.

The key to this is balance. If you have too few people guarding, you'll lose too many camps/resource. If you have too many the resource per person isn't high enough to be better than independently farming mobs/ore like a chump. For the PK side if they have too few people they won't be able to capture a cart/camp. If they have too many the resource per PK won't be high enough to be worth it.

The best ingame implementation I've seen of this is fishing in AA. Large fishing holes would spawn and players would all group up and have a big fish party there. After they caught a fish they then had to transport the fish (either on their back one at a time like a chump or use an expensive boat to transport 5-7 fish at a time) back to a city to trade for gold. Players would be able to PK the players to take their fish or boat and could then travel to the city to trade it for gold. For bad PK/too numerous the reward for taking boats/fish was much less than just fishing themselves. Fishermen, in the meantime, would constantly have to find the balance between being profitability and safety depending on how many PKs were around.

Srathor · Feb 6, 2015

I adored Rift in Beta. The forced grouping was grand. Shit was hard and things changed. You could use a summon and a powerup on a limited basis to clear shit out. If noone was around to help that was a key power and I never ever saw anyone using it but me.

Then the nerfs came, and we advanced to the less done zones where the invasions were not nearly as well scripted and had been broken by the nerfs and it got a lot less fun.

I wish they had a rift tech guru in on something like Archeage. NPC based guilds running packs that could be intercepted, NPC storyline guilds that players could join and fight for as well as PC based guilds to fight for and against them. Keeps, towns and buildings that could be invaded captured and their tethered mines and resources plundered.

Rift having the patrol packs going out and taking land was amazing, having the large scripted invasions happening was some of the most fun in any game I have ever played. But it was only in the first couple of zones that it worked properly. It is a shame that the game was so gutted after release.

Vandyn · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
Well maybe I'm wrong. Who here likes forced grouping? and by forced grouping I mean that after the newbie or intermediate zones the PVE is difficult enough to require 2-3 people to progress at a good pace.

I think there is probably a good amount of people here that still prefer that but that number continues to shrink as time goes on, for a variety of reasons. Some may also say they prefer that but in practice they really don't, at least not for any length of time. I think everyone, including people on this board don't have the kind of patience anymore for dealing with randoms just to level. We've been playing these games for so long that leveling is just this tedious byproduct that one needs to do to get to the real meat of the game. At least that's how I look at it.

Big Flex · Feb 6, 2015

Vandyn_sl said:
I think there is probably a good amount of people here that still prefer that but that number continues to shrink as time goes on, for a variety of reasons. Some may also say they prefer that but in practice they really don't, at least not for any length of time. I think everyone, including people on this board don't have the kind of patience anymore for dealing with randoms just to level. We've been playing these games for so long that leveling is just this tedious byproduct that one needs to do to get to the real meat of the game. At least that's how I look at it.

I have to agree with this. Under ideal conditions I like the rigors of a world designed to need coordinated parties to overcome pve encounters, ala everquest. These days I don't even want to fuck around cobbling together some randoms to grind goblins. Its not that I'm against either of those things, my lifestyle just can't accommodate that like when I was a teenager. I want someone to merge DayZ, Darkfall, UO and EVE with minimum bullshit time sinks. Crowfall's design is about perfect for that.

Vitality · Feb 6, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
Back to forced grouping in a game like Crowfall, my thought is this:

I don't think the optimal path should be for players to farm mobs because it's boring and repetitive. Sure they can farm mobs, but once they get situated they should have more dynamic and PVP related ways to farm. For a resource producing player the game should be about investing, managing risk and then profiting on the enterprise. For a PK the game should be about finding players who are overleveraged, PKing them and profiting on their enterprise. In turn most of the lucrative options should be difficult to defend without multiple people.

Ex: Irondick Mine is a resource players can set up an NPC camp with for some nominal amount of resources. Once set up NPCs will do all the back breaking labor and generate iron ore. At some point, automatic or player controlled, enough iron will be generated to be sent via cart to somewhere else to be sold for gold, to feed crafters or to be used directly for whatever. The cart of ore, while in transit, is vulnerable unless protected by players. Once the mine starts progress, NPC bandits should periodically spawn and attack the players and possibly roam looking for carts. Meanwhile PKs at any time can come and raid the camp and either take the camp over or send off a cart of their own with iron to where they want to go.

The key to this is balance. If you have too few people guarding, you'll lose too many camps/resource. If you have too many the resource per person isn't high enough to be better than independently farming mobs/ore like a chump. For the PK side if they have too few people they won't be able to capture a cart/camp. If they have too many the resource per PK won't be high enough to be worth it.

The best ingame implementation I've seen of this is fishing in AA. Large fishing holes would spawn and players would all group up and have a big fish party there. After they caught a fish they then had to transport the fish (either on their back one at a time like a chump or use an expensive boat to transport 5-7 fish at a time) back to a city to trade for gold. Players would be able to PK the players to take their fish or boat and could then travel to the city to trade it for gold. For bad PK/too numerous the reward for taking boats/fish was much less than just fishing themselves. Fishermen, in the meantime, would constantly have to find the balance between being profitability and safety depending on how many PKs were around.

My idea of this model works a lot like the game Savage:

Each guild controls a general keep area where things can be built, your mine and lumbermill are relatively close to the keep and spawn resources needed to build and upgrade other buildings/npcs.

Players can go out and conquer npc camps for additional resources turned in at the keep to speed up progress. There's contested outposts and mines that can be captured but are in vulnerable locations.

Players can sac other peoples keeps and mines etc.

It'd be neat to make a more prestigous resource available in a more central location that uses GW2's supply donkey mechanic like you're saying tuco.

It'd also be neat to go into your guild rep window and see which players have performed good deeds with your guild (guarding irondick donkeys/helping repair stuff/turning in npc resources)

Maybe even have a guild merchant that sells gears/pots for guild rep. This works to incentivize randoms to do things for your keep and also gives you an idea of which random is legit and which one isnt.

Big Flex · Feb 6, 2015

Gordon Walton

No reason to be concerned. I've probably worked for more game companies than anyone you've ever met (and have done due diligence on many times that number of teams), and in my experience it's rare for production terms such as Alpha and Beta to have the same definition from company to company or even studio to studio. For example, your specific definition of Pre-Alpha I've never personally seen used. I've promised to lay out some of our development processes in the Team Updates so expect to see more about this in those every-other Wednesday updates over the coming months. We actually aren't setting our definition of Alpha firmly until we move from a pre-production state into full production. And in my management process those definitions are codified in conjunction with the team that executes against them, so ours aren't actually set yet!

Grumpus · Feb 6, 2015

What I would like to see is a system like old Runescape pvp. A set area with much better resources but greater risks in the way of tougher npcs and pvp loot mechanics. Winter could cause that area to creep out and effect larger parts of the world randomly.*People's would need to form parties more organically to go in to these areas instead of just joining an arena que.

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