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Crowfall - April Q&A Covers the Vision for the Future - MMORPG.com
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Crowfall - April Q&A Covers the Vision for the Future - MMORPG.com
The latest Crowfall Q&A is now live, this time with J. Todd Coleman and Design Director Thomas Blair speaking to the current state of the game as well as providing viewers with insight about their vision for the future.
Comments
18 months!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Class Imbalance, Gear Imbalance, Level Imbalance, Race Imbalance.. mixed together in a game that focus on PvP, may have worked in 2004, but it will sink like a lead balloon in today's market.
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
I dont really know which one is worse, this or SC. I mean this game has only been in development for 4 years since their KS compared to SC's 8 years (?) but they've already started selling their untested engine (as in testing it in a live environment that handles high degrees of traffic, not the 'beta testing' or whatever its in now). Judgments aside, I think the only way to approach these crowdfunded games anymore is if they come out, they come out and if they dont and you didn't invest, oh well. If they dont and you did invest, consider it your good deed for the year/lifetime.
A lot of what they are doing at this point is just polish.
I'm watching very closely.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For many years people have asked for an EVE online experience in a fantasy world setting, and the designers of Crowfall are doing their best to make that happen for us. Yes, that means it is a game driven by PVP. But it is more than that. EVE is more than the PVP. EVE has players that have had decade long adventures without ever going to war.
Crowfall's designers are however not stuck in the past, they have learned many important lessons from the older games and are doing their very best to counter every problem. Just having temporary computer generated worlds with different levels of PVP risk is huge leap forward in design.
There is going to be difficulty and a learning curve. The systems are much deeper and intricate than most people realize. They will allow you to fail, but make it so that failure is a learning experience that you can build upon. (You might lose your shirt, and your body too, but you should learn something along the way.)
Don't listen to the naysayers talking about class balance. There will forever be complaints about that. A game based on large scale PVP battles over castles and forts will never be 100% perfectly balanced and it doesn't need to be. People have different levels of skill. 49% of people are below average drivers, but very few think they are below average.
Crowfall is a whole new level folks. It will only get better too.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
MurderHerd
in a world where people are not rapists, and not every emotion is measured by how sexual it is... this is what friendship could look like?
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
As someone that backed a decent amount during the kickstarter, follows closely, and logs in regularly, I must assume you are talking about a different game.
Was a good sales pitch and they've delivered in some areas, but in no way is it a whole new level or huge leap forward.
If anything they are going backwards with their dependency on shadowbane features.
They are trying to do what you mention, but they aren't hitting it out of the park. Maybe getting two 2nd base at this point. Hype and big picture ideas and what we've got are not the same thing.
They could launch if they want to have sub 1k users. They are far from the polish stage and say so themselves.
I want them to succeed, I really do - I have been waiting for a spiritual successor to my favorite PVP game of all time - Shadowbane. But I am afraid their trying to do too much without really focusing on the core elements of PVP that they need to succeed.
Combat game play and animations. If their as stiff as I see in the video's and as boring - I am afraid the game will not make it.
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Like, you can see where they have all these points where there should be more, but what they have up to that point, is working.
So they could launch, as in, they could put something out right now, and players could log in and play a game, interact, craft, grind, kill each other in large battles and the like.
Kinda reminds of me of the train wreck game I playing right now, Eternal Crusade, where you can see as you play the game all these ways that the game could grow or they had ideas where this would have been a larger scale thing, but because Bandai Namco kinda forced Behavior to put the game out to meet a deadline, they put out what they had, it tanked hard, and they never got back to getting it done.
Instead of using Pixels and code I am going to use Lego building blocks.
1. A dump truck full of Lego blocks is delivered to my house. (Sucessful Kickstarter.)
2. I spend untold hours making hundreds of characters, buildings, items, tree’s, rocks, everything I need for my game. They are everywhere all over my house. (Creating game assets)
3. I create the game space, the “ground” I am playing the game on. I choose to set everything up on a Ping Pong table. I have to prepare the surface of the table to accept Lego’s or everything will just fall over. (Adapting game engine for game particulars.) So I glue flat Lego sheets all over the table.
4. Now I have to add my creations to the game space one by one, and remember there are thousands. (Adding game assets.) This step will continue through the rest of the process.
5. As I add pieces to the game table, I naturally start testing some of the rules of my game. I want to make sure the pieces are filling the roles I want them to. (Pre alpha testing.) If there are any serious issues with the rules to my game I would like to find them now, because it is easier to make big changes at this point than it will be later.
6. After puttering with the rules of the game some I am satisfied for now and move forward adding more creations to the game table. Now that most everything important is on the game table I want a more rigorous test of my games rules. I invite some friends over to play the first game. (Alpha test.) Still adding game assets.
7. Taking notes from the first game. I make any changes required to the rules and try to make moving the game pieces easier and in general just start to smooth out any rough spots in the game that were discovered in the previous test. I invite more friends over and then play a few more games. (Continued Alpha testing.) Still adding game assets.
8. After fixing any issues that came up in previous testing, I decide my game is ready for more people to try. So I pack everything up and load the game table into my truck and head off to the Game Expo. Where hundreds of people try my game for the first time. (Pre Beta trade show advertising.) There are still a few issues and some things about the game are still a little clunky, but every iteration is getting better. Still adding game assets.
9. After making some tweaks to the game rules, and trying to make everything move and play more smoothly, I set my game up at the local game store to allow even more people to play it. (Beta Test.) Assets are nearly all in game now except for a few fluff pieces I am still working on.
10. Throughout the Beta test, rules tweaks and game play are finalized. After finding out what works and what doesn’t through testing the game is complete and ready for the masses. (Launch day.)
The point of this little exercise is that Crowfall is on about step 5 of the process.
You can’t expect smooth launch quality game play when all of the assets are not even in the game yet.
I’m not trying to belittle game builders by simplifying this down to Lego’s. Obviously a video game is much more technically difficult. I just wanted to show that even with a relatively simple game object, the process is very long and complex.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
I log in regularly so I understand. They have a lot of good ideas and intentions, but so far I'm not overly impressed with what they've created. Not terrible, but not amazing either. Can easily see people trying it and moving on quickly. Now or in the future unless they up their efforts.