Hard Road to Soft Launch

SBFord · August 2016

Hard Road to Soft Launch

This week embedded reporter Timothy Eisen takes a look at Crowfall’s Founders' Update: Milestone Shifts from early August and wonders what it means for the launch date.

Read the full story here

Vrika · August 2016

I'll be happy if they get some version of Throne War released this year, but I'm starting to doubt it.

Ozmodan · August 2016

I am willing to wait and hope they get this game right. We have seen too many hurried launches in the past, I want them to take their time with this game.

Slapshot1188 · August 2016

Big backer of Crowfall but NOT supportive of any silly "Soft Launch" verbiage. My main package gives me 5 or 6 years VIP so its not a financial thing to me, it's simply principle that we have to stop allowing these silly word games with soft launch, early access, early entry...

If you charge for the game and there is no wipe it's LAUNCHED. If you charge for the game and there IS a wipe then it's paid beta testing.

Wizardry · August 2016

Slapshot1188 said:

Big backer of Crowfall but NOT supportive of any silly "Soft Launch" verbiage. My main package gives me 5 or 6 years VIP so its not a financial thing to me, it's simply principle that we have to stop allowing these silly word games with soft launch, early access, early entry...

If you charge for the game and there is no wipe it's LAUNCHED. If you charge for the game and there IS a wipe then it's paid beta testing.

Well said sir,too bad i got literally nothing from this thread,seems more like typical mmorpg.com disguised advertising than anything constructive.

...taps foot,rools eyes,waits for a REAL thread with ....gulp..."Information"!!.

Nemesis7884 · August 2016

not sure i agree - in a combat heavy pvp game combat is the core and key of the game - these mechanics need to be perfect and fun before anything else...i think this is the mistake so many other games made before - they developped anything but didnt perfect combat mechanics - you can have the prettiest game but if combat isnt fun, fast, reactive and impactful its dead in the water

mgilbrtsn · August 2016

Hopefully we've learned one lesson over the years. Better for people to complain about the delay than complain about a rushed launch. I'm a backer, and would much rather wait extra months then to have a failed launch. Games recover a 'delayed launch bad vibe' much better than a 'terrible launch bad vibe.'

Slapshot1188 · August 2016

TimEisen said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Big backer of Crowfall but NOT supportive of any silly "Soft Launch" verbiage. My main package gives me 5 or 6 years VIP so its not a financial thing to me, it's simply principle that we have to stop allowing these silly word games with soft launch, early access, early entry...

If you charge for the game and there is no wipe it's LAUNCHED. If you charge for the game and there IS a wipe then it's paid beta testing.

Can't agree more. I'm really burned out on all the disguised terms being used by developers in all of gaming in order to sell us something. It's become another marketing tool and its been frustrating watching it mess with gamers expectations of those terms. I suppose some of it might be a reaction to people winning court decisions to get refunds from some games. Developers might be looking at their terms and how to protect their interests while retaining funds.

Remember that when your other title (CoE) rolls around to their early entry no wipe 3 month head start for high roller backers. Will be looking forward to the review starting at that point.

Kajidourden · August 2016

I want to back it but that playtest schedule is idiotic. Will definitely be keeping an eye on it though.

[Deleted User] · August 2016

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Lokero · August 2016

TimEisen said:

A balance is needed sure but without the tech to support the PVP the game is broken. The best combat ever made is useless if its unplayable due to server and engine issues.

That's my biggest concern with this particular game. I have doubts about them getting the performance up to a high enough level to pull off their massive PvP fantasies.
As it stands, from what I can tell, they have a long, long road ahead with their performance optimizations.

Everything else is second-row until they get the stability problems conquered -- the entire game being designed around large masses of players together.

There isn't even a game at all until performance is fluid.

YashaX · August 2016

"Supporting dozens of combatants with 30+ FPS - Hurm…30 huh? I’m not a hardcore frames per second guy but I have noted that a game which aims for 60 and dips lower isn’t nearly as noticeable as a game that aims for 30 and dips. I hope that plus sign is a big one! "

That's a good point. Even big companies with relatively massive resources (Zenimax/ArenaNet) had difficulties on that front. Especially in ESO's case early on pvp was basically unplayable due to lag/server issues. Fingers crossed they can produce some magic.

JamesGoblin · August 2016

YashaX said:

"Supporting dozens of combatants with 30+ FPS - Hurm…30 huh? I’m not a hardcore frames per second guy but I have noted that a game which aims for 60 and dips lower isn’t nearly as noticeable as a game that aims for 30 and dips. I hope that plus sign is a big one! "

That's a good point. Even big companies with relatively massive resources (Zenimax/ArenaNet) had difficulties on that front. Especially in ESO's case early on pvp was basically unplayable due to lag/server issues. Fingers crossed they can produce some magic.

I am more worried about the "...dozens..." part...

holyneo · August 2016

BDO is a dead game, Launch this ASAP!!!!

lol

IAmMMO · August 2016

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

YashaX · August 2016

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I found new dawn was lagging even when there were no other players around, the graphics were extremely muddy/bad, the animations stilted, and it was just overall pretty unresponsive. I hope Crowfall is at least better than that!

Ozmodan · August 2016

TimEisen said:

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I was an original Darkfall fan. I've always been impressed with the large battles, especially looking at the age of their tech now. They pulled it off at a time when no one else could. It was a great game but unfortunately it just didn't have enough variety or PVE to keep those players hooked. The PVP drove them out and, as is the case, quickly we got bored as we continued to lose subs. I'm excited to see what the 2 new teams do with it. It looks like one is going for 100% PVP and one is trying to be more like Ultima. Still my favorite MMORPG land mass-the large seemless game world never got its credit either.

Sorry Tim, but DAoC pulled off large battles long before Darkfall was even a thought in someone's mind. That is why this game and Camelot Unchained are on my interest list.

Slapshot1188 · August 2016

Ozmodan said:

TimEisen said:

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I was an original Darkfall fan. I've always been impressed with the large battles, especially looking at the age of their tech now. They pulled it off at a time when no one else could. It was a great game but unfortunately it just didn't have enough variety or PVE to keep those players hooked. The PVP drove them out and, as is the case, quickly we got bored as we continued to lose subs. I'm excited to see what the 2 new teams do with it. It looks like one is going for 100% PVP and one is trying to be more like Ultima. Still my favorite MMORPG land mass-the large seemless game world never got its credit either.

Sorry Tim, but DAoC pulled off large battles long before Darkfall was even a thought in someone's mind. That is why this game and Camelot Unchained are on my interest list.

Vanilla DAoC was the greatest. REALM PRIDE!

In Darkfall I was in a guild of 100+. They were builders... Built a beautiful city (OK it was pretty ugly to be honest). One day that city was sieged during the week at like 10AM when 90% of the clan and allies were working. The folks that sieged it were in another timezone. Wasn't much of a fight.

That night 75% of the clan rage quit. I stuck on for a long long time (and dozens of cities won and lost) but the core fact is that a ton of people were turned off, quit and never came back.

meddyck · August 2016

Wizardry said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Big backer of Crowfall but NOT supportive of any silly "Soft Launch" verbiage. My main package gives me 5 or 6 years VIP so its not a financial thing to me, it's simply principle that we have to stop allowing these silly word games with soft launch, early access, early entry...

If you charge for the game and there is no wipe it's LAUNCHED. If you charge for the game and there IS a wipe then it's paid beta testing.

Well said sir,too bad i got literally nothing from this thread,seems more like typical mmorpg.com disguised advertising than anything constructive.

...taps foot,rools eyes,waits for a REAL thread with ....gulp..."Information"!!.

Columns like this are very useful for people who like me who aren't backers of Crowfall and don't pay attention to every iota of information that comes out about it but are interested in checking in on its progress from time to time. I can understand how it could be an uninteresting read to a hardcore backer of the game though.

Raeshlavik · August 2016

Slapshot1188 said:

Ozmodan said:

TimEisen said:

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I was an original Darkfall fan. I've always been impressed with the large battles, especially looking at the age of their tech now. They pulled it off at a time when no one else could. It was a great game but unfortunately it just didn't have enough variety or PVE to keep those players hooked. The PVP drove them out and, as is the case, quickly we got bored as we continued to lose subs. I'm excited to see what the 2 new teams do with it. It looks like one is going for 100% PVP and one is trying to be more like Ultima. Still my favorite MMORPG land mass-the large seemless game world never got its credit either.

Sorry Tim, but DAoC pulled off large battles long before Darkfall was even a thought in someone's mind. That is why this game and Camelot Unchained are on my interest list.

Vanilla DAoC was the greatest. REALM PRIDE!

In Darkfall I was in a guild of 100+. They were builders... Built a beautiful city (OK it was pretty ugly to be honest). One day that city was sieged during the week at like 10AM when 90% of the clan and allies were working. The folks that sieged it were in another timezone. Wasn't much of a fight.

That night 75% of the clan rage quit. I stuck on for a long long time (and dozens of cities won and lost) but the core fact is that a ton of people were turned off, quit and never came back.

Shadowbane (the spiritual predecessor to Crowfall) had that problem too early on... The 'active at 3am' timezone folks (read: asia) would steamroll undefended cities every morning.

That's when the bane rules went in, which allowed the bane-ee to select a time when they could get forces online to defend.

Kinda surprised Darkfall didn't lift this particular lesson learned.

Sulaa · August 2016

Slapshot1188 said:

Big backer of Crowfall but NOT supportive of any silly "Soft Launch" verbiage.

If you charge for the game and there is no wipe it's LAUNCHED. If you charge for the game and there IS a wipe then it's paid beta testing.

+1

Slapshot1188 · August 2016

Raeshlavik said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Ozmodan said:

TimEisen said:

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I was an original Darkfall fan. I've always been impressed with the large battles, especially looking at the age of their tech now. They pulled it off at a time when no one else could. It was a great game but unfortunately it just didn't have enough variety or PVE to keep those players hooked. The PVP drove them out and, as is the case, quickly we got bored as we continued to lose subs. I'm excited to see what the 2 new teams do with it. It looks like one is going for 100% PVP and one is trying to be more like Ultima. Still my favorite MMORPG land mass-the large seemless game world never got its credit either.

Sorry Tim, but DAoC pulled off large battles long before Darkfall was even a thought in someone's mind. That is why this game and Camelot Unchained are on my interest list.

Vanilla DAoC was the greatest. REALM PRIDE!

In Darkfall I was in a guild of 100+. They were builders... Built a beautiful city (OK it was pretty ugly to be honest). One day that city was sieged during the week at like 10AM when 90% of the clan and allies were working. The folks that sieged it were in another timezone. Wasn't much of a fight.

That night 75% of the clan rage quit. I stuck on for a long long time (and dozens of cities won and lost) but the core fact is that a ton of people were turned off, quit and never came back.

Shadowbane (the spiritual predecessor to Crowfall) had that problem too early on... The 'active at 3am' timezone folks (read: asia) would steamroll undefended cities every morning.

That's when the bane rules went in, which allowed the bane-ee to select a time when they could get forces online to defend.

Kinda surprised Darkfall didn't lift this particular lesson learned.

Yeah I loved Shadowbane too. SB.EXE errors and all...

My favorite part of Shadowbane was the first day of release. It was on the newbie island where you couldn't fight each other. I found a spawn of lizardmen (or something) was gained a few levels to the point I could kill them pretty quickly. Some random guy comes along and starts to try and kill the mobs. I politely ask him to move along as by now the spawn could not sustain 2 people. He told me to F-Off... so I proceeded to tag each mob the second they spawned. He was melee and I was magic. So I would get them all first. He actually had the balls to report me to a GM. The GM appeared.. listened.. and then told him:

"We encourage conflict between players. If this were not the Newbie island he would simply kill you. I suggest you move on to a new spawn. Play 2 Crush!"

From that moment I loved the game... such wonderful memories...

Chain Summoning each other through the sea to get back to the newbie island as a high level character..
Using Leadership formation to move (forced people into a formation) and then going AFK for a minute to answer the phone... while my friend was stuck underwater drowning to death due to the Formation.
Awesome GM run Lore events where the world was invaded by demons and they actually let me RP onto their side.
Checking our town crafting stores every few hours to see what the NPC crafters had created
Playing a Scout and popping out and killing thieves that ever pick pocketing groups who had no idea they were there.

I just hope Crowfall can capture a piece of that magic...

tarzan525 · August 2016

I agree the order in which they did things was very inefficient. They did combat first (and spent time focusing on making mini games basically) and don't even have all the base archetypes yet. Combat is a thing that needs to be tested and balanced and the current system has them just balancing every new archetype they add opposed to doing it all at the end. A soft launch with a "playable campaign" is all people want.

Raeshlavik · August 2016

Slapshot1188 said:

Raeshlavik said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Ozmodan said:

TimEisen said:

IAmMMO said:

Darkfall New Dawn and Darkfall Rise of Agon will walk all over Crowfall when it comes to mass pvp when these two companies reach their live launches. Crowfall will never capture what makes Darkfall combat so fun and fast flowing. Crowfall's engine doesn't measure up to the technology of the Darkfall engine to deliver mass battles in realtime like Darkfall can already. And Darkfall is not dozens per battle it's hundreds.

I was an original Darkfall fan. I've always been impressed with the large battles, especially looking at the age of their tech now. They pulled it off at a time when no one else could. It was a great game but unfortunately it just didn't have enough variety or PVE to keep those players hooked. The PVP drove them out and, as is the case, quickly we got bored as we continued to lose subs. I'm excited to see what the 2 new teams do with it. It looks like one is going for 100% PVP and one is trying to be more like Ultima. Still my favorite MMORPG land mass-the large seemless game world never got its credit either.

Sorry Tim, but DAoC pulled off large battles long before Darkfall was even a thought in someone's mind. That is why this game and Camelot Unchained are on my interest list.

Vanilla DAoC was the greatest. REALM PRIDE!

In Darkfall I was in a guild of 100+. They were builders... Built a beautiful city (OK it was pretty ugly to be honest). One day that city was sieged during the week at like 10AM when 90% of the clan and allies were working. The folks that sieged it were in another timezone. Wasn't much of a fight.

That night 75% of the clan rage quit. I stuck on for a long long time (and dozens of cities won and lost) but the core fact is that a ton of people were turned off, quit and never came back.

Shadowbane (the spiritual predecessor to Crowfall) had that problem too early on... The 'active at 3am' timezone folks (read: asia) would steamroll undefended cities every morning.

That's when the bane rules went in, which allowed the bane-ee to select a time when they could get forces online to defend.

Kinda surprised Darkfall didn't lift this particular lesson learned.

Yeah I loved Shadowbane too. SB.EXE errors and all...

My favorite part of Shadowbane was the first day of release. It was on the newbie island where you couldn't fight each other. I found a spawn of lizardmen (or something) was gained a few levels to the point I could kill them pretty quickly. Some random guy comes along and starts to try and kill the mobs. I politely ask him to move along as by now the spawn could not sustain 2 people. He told me to F-Off... so I proceeded to tag each mob the second they spawned. He was melee and I was magic. So I would get them all first. He actually had the balls to report me to a GM. The GM appeared.. listened.. and then told him:

"We encourage conflict between players. If this were not the Newbie island he would simply kill you. I suggest you move on to a new spawn. Play 2 Crush!"

From that moment I loved the game... such wonderful memories...

Chain Summoning each other through the sea to get back to the newbie island as a high level character..
Using Leadership formation to move (forced people into a formation) and then going AFK for a minute to answer the phone... while my friend was stuck underwater drowning to death due to the Formation.
Awesome GM run Lore events where the world was invaded by demons and they actually let me RP onto their side.
Checking our town crafting stores every few hours to see what the NPC crafters had created
Playing a Scout and popping out and killing thieves that ever pick pocketing groups who had no idea they were there.
I just hope Crowfall can capture a piece of that magic...

J. Todd's recent interview (elsewhere) leads me to believe that mentality is alive and well in the new game.

"True, sometimes these are legitimate cases of imbalance that we need to address in the system (as I said above, it’s probably <5% of the claims) but I don’t see any harm in allowing the Campaign to run the course. Exploring the game system, finding imperfections and creating unique combinations — that’s part of the fun.<br />
…and, honestly, these moments are the ones that we remember years (or decades) later. No one remembers killing their 3,872nd orc in EQ. Everyone remembers the time that Rainz killed Lord British in Ultima Online."

This, and telling folks up-front that they may actually just suck and need to get better at the game, versus balancing out the challenge, warms the small black stone that is my heart.

And speaking of Lore and RP shenanigans... I should go pester someone at ACE for a lore update.

Slapshot1188 · August 2016

TimEisen said:

I was pretty happy when recently Todd said he has continued to think about how to make the Eternal Kingdoms more involved with PVP.

Yes and no... the EK were always promised as kind of having a wall between the regular game. Otherwise the ability to buy your Kingdom becomes P2W.

MaxBacon · August 2016

Crowfall is still very raw, but of when it see Sandboxy MMO's, Procedural and PvP then this is one of the biggest bets to take on, waiting to see if they can get something solid out soon enough.

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