Crowfall

Byr_sl said:

Been told by a friend that some people in the media have had access to a playable version of crowfall and are having a great time with it.

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Byr_sl said:

Been told by a friend that some people in the media have had access to a playable version of crowfall and are having a great time with it.

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Gordon pointed me at this question, so I figured I'd pop in and try to give an answer!

The hard part about designing a game to have a real economy is that it permeates everything about the game. I mean, let's just backtrack it just a little, and you'll see what I mean.

You want crafters to matter. That means that loot can't be dominant over crafted items.
That means that killing monsters can't be the core activity of the game, it needs to support multiple pillars.
This blows up all your spawning system plans from the norm.
That means that your economy needs to support more than a simple faucet of goods and drains of resources.
That means you need decay or damage of some sort.
And potentially a different sort of banking system, potentially insurance, potentially repair...
That means you need item turnover, which means the death system needs to take that into account in terms of looting.
That means the combat system needs to take THAT into account.
That means the advancement system needs to account for the death system being unusual.
It also means the implications of things like soulbinding, level restricted gear, etc, all change.
If you're going to make the crafters matter this way, you need to design the maps around crafting.
Unless you want resource spawn camping, you need a different method for resource spawning.
If you're doing that, you may need entire skill trees, professions or classes built around harvesting.
If you're going to have a data rich environment like that, you may need a different database structure from the typical one for static worlds.
If you're doing a different database structure, are you enabling unique items?
If you are doing a rich environment, you have different kinds of data to hook AI onto.

You get the idea. Basically, it's a lot easier to decide to do this sort of an economic game, and then design everything else on top of it, than it is to try to glue or cgraft one into a traditional quest-and-level sort of approach. It has lots of implications about stuff like item turnover, crafter importance, what your loot tables look like, etc, and it completely changes stuff all the way down the basic data structures of the game.

tldr is, it's hard, and deeply woven in. If you're coming from a Diku-ish background, or just play MMOs of that type, it's pretty alien design work to boot. Very different from setting up static loot tables and spawn tables. You have to work much more in terms of simulation and dynamic data.

Hope that helps give some insight...!

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Tol_sl said:

Man, I finally caught up on this thread and the hopium rush is real. Will the ubiquitous Red Panda Pirate be the next reveal?

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Tuco_sl said:

Probably not, it's too niche to be a savior.

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Tuco_sl said:

And there's a lot more to MMOs than open world pvp.

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Quaid_sl said:

Let's face it gents. The MMORPG horizon is so bleak because everybody knows that by 2018/19 VR will be widely accepted.

Any MMORPG that still exists with 2d monitor based interface is going to tank harder than horse & buggies did after Henry Ford came along. I'm guessing this is (one of the reasons) why we haven't heard anything about WoW 2 yet.

But ya, this looks good if it comes out in the next 18 months.

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Vitality_sl said:

Horse and buggies still sell in Amish territories, Fair grounds and Budweiser commercials.

So that makes us either Amish beard boyz, Carnies, or that one guy at the party that brings Bud Light.

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Quaid_sl said:

Who the fuck still drinks Bud Lite?

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Dumar_sl said:

I think you mean we'll be bringing a vintage fine wine to a party full of people wanting bud light, aka, WoW gamers.

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Dumar_sl said:

I think you mean we'll be bringing a vintage fine wine to a party full of people wanting bud light, aka, WoW gamers.

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