New MMO Crowfall

[Halicia]

While I'm interested in this game, and would definitely check it out if it were released tomorrow, its a *long* ways from seeing the light of day.

In the broad strokes of things, I have a couple reservations.

First, it sounds that as much as they want to call this an MMORPG, its going to play/feel more like a Lobby game lacking the true 'persistent world' necessary to a real MMORPG. While the games are significantly different in other respects, I've played a game that seemed to share fundamentals in their approach to the persistence issue in the past, namely 'keep the heroes, but the games/worlds/scenarios change'.

At first, all that matters is that its a fun game, and developing your hero(s) is fun enough... but eventually there were two issues...

#1 Calling it an MMORPG because it had multiplayer 'games' felt as much like calling CoD an MMOFPS. That's not good or bad to the game itself, but when the designers are trying to force a round peg into a square hole by calling it a square... doesn't make it fit any better.

#2. The heroes eventually got overpowered. RPG's are more welcoming to power disparity, because the world isn't "fair" to newbies so much. If you want to catch up, play more, get stronger, etc... Unfortunately, as this seems to be more of a strategy game, the options for persistent hero growth might be more annoying. Its like playing a game of Risk, but as a new player, you only get to start with one region, but you're facing off against Veterans, so they get to start with 5 regions each. How fun is a game where you have to lose repeatedly ? OK, maybe there's some ways around this, and the player population will be large enough to split things into factions, so that each player isn't fighting it alone... but still... starting as the underdog and having negligable contribution only to receive a "participation trophy" at the end doesn't have that same satisfaction in a Strategy game as winning or losing based entirely on your STRATEGY. I'm not sure why they abandoned the possibility of a 'persistent strategy world', I can see it working out better and being an easier sell as an MMORPG.

[Azezeil]

Kind of reminds me of that thread about Trials of Ascension and their whole thing.

This really isn't a fair comparison. ToA was/is run by people who have no idea what they're doing. Crowfall has quite a few very talented people working on it with a proven track record of releasing some pretty good MMOs.

Now, I don't agree with the whole $600 preorder digital castle, but this is the nature of crowd funding. Kickstarter campaigns do this samething.

[jangkun]

I didn't read all 26pages of comments. Just looked up the crowfunding page and their video. Concept is nice. Evolving environment and everything destructible is really cool. But you know what it reminds me? Everquest Next! you know the promising MMO that was supposed to be released in 2015 but is actually dead now. They also had a nice video showing this. I hope Crowfall will be able to attain their objectives but after Everquest Next..I won't bet on it.

[Eldryth]

While I'm interested in this game, and would definitely check it out if it were released tomorrow, its a *long* ways from seeing the light of day.

In the broad strokes of things, I have a couple reservations.

First, it sounds that as much as they want to call this an MMORPG, its going to play/feel more like a Lobby game lacking the true 'persistent world' necessary to a real MMORPG. While the games are significantly different in other respects, I've played a game that seemed to share fundamentals in their approach to the persistence issue in the past, namely 'keep the heroes, but the games/worlds/scenarios change'.

At first, all that matters is that its a fun game, and developing your hero(s) is fun enough... but eventually there were two issues...

#1 Calling it an MMORPG because it had multiplayer 'games' felt as much like calling CoD an MMOFPS. That's not good or bad to the game itself, but when the designers are trying to force a round peg into a square hole by calling it a square... doesn't make it fit any better.

#2. The heroes eventually got overpowered. RPG's are more welcoming to power disparity, because the world isn't "fair" to newbies so much. If you want to catch up, play more, get stronger, etc... Unfortunately, as this seems to be more of a strategy game, the options for persistent hero growth might be more annoying. Its like playing a game of Risk, but as a new player, you only get to start with one region, but you're facing off against Veterans, so they get to start with 5 regions each. How fun is a game where you have to lose repeatedly ? OK, maybe there's some ways around this, and the player population will be large enough to split things into factions, so that each player isn't fighting it alone... but still... starting as the underdog and having negligable contribution only to receive a "participation trophy" at the end doesn't have that same satisfaction in a Strategy game as winning or losing based entirely on your STRATEGY. I'm not sure why they abandoned the possibility of a 'persistent strategy world', I can see it working out better and being an easier sell as an MMORPG.

Except they don't want to call it a MMORPG. They always make a point to call it a "Massively Multiplayer Thronewar Simulator"- they never once mentioned RPG as far as I've seen. And the power gap is meant to stay small- yes, veteran players will be somewhat stronger, but not too much, and most of that comes from gear that can and will break and need to be replaced.

Anyway, calling it a MMO does fit because it fits the mold well for a certain category of MMOs- that being games centered around faction warfare like DAoC, Warhammer Online, Camelot Unchained, Planetside, or even GW2's WvW or ESO's Cyrodiil. Or in some rulesets, free-for-all PvP sandboxes, which many players have been wanting for a long time. The difference being, it doesn't stick in a point where one faction dominates the others can't fight back- after a few months (or however long that campaign is meant to last), one team wins and everyone gets a fresh world to fight over, so the best part keeps coming back. It's not a lobby game, the worlds will last for a good amount of time, they just won't stay forever and get stagnant.

With that said, it's easy to mistake it for a lobby game at the moment, since that's what they have working right now to test early combat. The Hunger Dome pre-Alpha that's been shown is just that- a pre-Alpha build that only exists to test the core combat systems. The finished game will have long, campaign, with large and long-lived (although not completely permanent) worlds/

[fengosa]

They are definitely not following the standard RPG script. Vessels and campaign worlds mean there's less of a focus on long term character development. On the plus side let's say you have different crafting rule sets in each campaign. Finding mats and discovering recipes becomes more significant then crafting the same stuff you did 3 years ago. Understanding what materials are important and finding a way to access those becomes more important.

[JamesGoblin]

I didn't read all 26pages of comments. Just looked up the crowfunding page and their video. Concept is nice. Evolving environment and everything destructible is really cool. But you know what it reminds me? Everquest Next! you know the promising MMO that was supposed to be released in 2015 but is actually dead now. They also had a nice video showing this. I hope Crowfall will be able to attain their objectives but after Everquest Next..I won't bet on it.

I feel your pain, but...comparing CF and R.I.P. EQ:N is apples and oranges, in almost every possible way. For what it's worth, I never saw EQN as promising, and I took quite some heat trying to explain that to people over last couple years.

[thewallofsleep]

It's kinda hilarious that they actually have tabletop miniatures for a game that isn't even close to being a thing yet.

You can buy an in game castle for the low low price of $599. It's on sale from the usual $800! What a steal!

I obviously don't know for sure (nobody does), but my spider senses are tingling and making me wonder if this whole game is a scam.

[Katchii]

I obviously don't know for sure (nobody does), but my spider senses are tingling and making me wonder if this whole game is a scam.

I don't think it's a scam at all, but they do seem pretty desperate for money. I think they totally intend on putting out this game, it's just about how likely they are to actually get it completed and funded and ultimately released... no dishonesty though.

[JamesGoblin]

I obviously don't know for sure (nobody does), but my spider senses are tingling and making me wonder if this whole game is a scam.

I could count likely 30+ "$800 castle WTF?" debates I saw all around the interwebz - and I expect them to keep on popping up randomly. A couple details:

- One won't be able to import castles in Campaigns (servers / the actual game), furthermore some of the rulesets will "just in case" have zero import, even players will start naked;

- Castles, same as any building or piece of gear, will require resources for repair and taxes, otherwise they will decay into usefulness and/or be kicked out of their Eternal Kingdoms;

- Campaigns will be the main source for resources for paying taxes and maintenance, and these won't be sold in cash shop;

- Players will be able to obtain / build exactly the same castles ingame, both in Campaigns and in EKs;

- Castles will have the capacity for dozens (big ones - likely hundreds) of players - these will likely be funded on the level of guilds/aliances (one man in an empty castle means absolutely nothing, thou I can imagine some freaks doing exactly that) which puts $800 into different perspective;

- TLDR, cash shop castles won't be much more than vanity/cosmetics, but we know too well that people like throwing money at these.

I don't think it's a scam at all, but they do seem pretty desperate for money. I think they totally intend on putting out this game, it's just about how likely they are to actually get it completed and funded and ultimately released... no dishonesty though.

Actually, almost a year ago (even before Kickstarter) Gordon Walton estimated total pre-launch budget ("for the core game") as $6M, and they are already at $6.3M+, with more than a year (my estimate) to launch; With this tempo, they'll end with something between $8M (this is quite pessimistic IMO) and $10M+ till launch.

Unlike almost any other game in development, Crowfall is very transparent with their funding ( I can't post links yet, but it was explained in great detail more than half a year ago in an update named "How can you make Crowfall for less than $10m, and where is that money coming from?" ), or just in case - here is quite rough TLDR of that textwall:

No PvE (this is major moneysaver), procedural terrain generation, classes "locked" under archetypes (and sometimes genders) thus no need to design numerous class/race/gender combos, using commercial engine (Unity 5) together with PhysX and Voxel Farm instead of making their own (plus, there is couple more points inside).

Or, here is TLDR in Gordon's own words:

"Typically even a small MMO is going to take over $10 million to build (and probably closer to $20 million). If the fully-loaded cost of an employee (once you add in the cost of office space, insurance, taxes, etc.) averages about $100k/year, which means a $10m project will buy you 100 man-years of work!

We’re doing a much smaller than normal MMO by choosing to be PvP-focused, doing algorithmic world generation, tight (but effective!) constraints on character customization and heavily reliance on off-the-shelf technologies. Our cost for the core game will be in the $6 million range."

[Katchii]

My verbiage didn't really articulate what I meant to say. I just mean it kind of feels that they're doing these big hyped up reveals in an attempt to get a lot of attention so that people will feel like giving them money. They're not desperate for the money, as I'm aware that they're funding campaign is going well, I just mean it feels like they're "selling" us on their product rather than just providing informational updates. I feel like I'm watching an infomercial rather than the news.

[JamesGoblin]

I agree with that, they are quite "aggressive" with non-stop updates (compared to, say, Camelot Unchained - my other pick) - Massively OP and MMORPG.com sometimes have 2 (!) Crowfall articles/columns daily, and there is lots of coverage elsewhere.

I mean, the fact that you are annoyed with the bombing says a lot about the miraculous job they are doing with their indie (read: zero) advertising budget; In power and effect it is easily equivalent to some AAA ones with millions invested and lots of direct, expensive commercials. We can like or hate it, but it works like charm.

PS Speaking of spam-updats ( lol ) here's couple new 3D Ranger models; The class should be introduced in March test sessions:

[Edge-]

I agree with that, they are quite "aggressive" with non-stop updates (compared to, say, Camelot Unchained - my other pick) - Massively OP and MMORPG.com sometimes have 2 (!) Crowfall articles/columns daily, and there is lots of coverage elsewhere.

I mean, the fact that you are annoyed with the bombing says a lot about the miraculous job they are doing with their indie (read: zero) advertising budget; In power and effect it is easily equivalent to some AAA ones with millions invested and lots of direct, expensive commercials. We can like or hate it, but it works like charm.

It's also driven by clicks. If Crowfall articles weren't getting traffic on those sites, they wouldn't cover them as often. The fact that they're covering so much Crowfall news is an indication that folks on those sites are reading those articles regularly.


Though it's nothing like a AAA marketing job, Crowfall is still almost exclusively covered by MMO sites. It's getting little in the way of articles from large gaming sites that cover more than just the MMO market.

[JamesGoblin]

It's also driven by clicks. If Crowfall articles weren't getting traffic on those sites, they wouldn't cover them as often. The fact that they're covering so much Crowfall news is an indication that folks on those sites are reading those articles regularly.


Though it's nothing like a AAA marketing job, Crowfall is still almost exclusively covered by MMO sites. It's getting little in the way of articles from large gaming sites that cover more than just the MMO market.

True, I went bit overboard with that one - thou big sites are barely covering MMOs anyway; I'd say it's much more likely to hear the word after they confuse and mislabel some popular co-op or multiplayer with MMO, and even that not so often.

[fengosa]

My verbiage didn't really articulate what I meant to say. I just mean it kind of feels that they're doing these big hyped up reveals in an attempt to get a lot of attention so that people will feel like giving them money. They're not desperate for the money, as I'm aware that they're funding campaign is going well, I just mean it feels like they're "selling" us on their product rather than just providing informational updates. I feel like I'm watching an infomercial rather than the news.

It is a crowd funded game but their kickstarter campaign was done last February. I don't see anything in the videos asking for funding. They do have pledge packages available on their website but if you visit their front page it's >90% game info.

[Post]

TLDR, cash shop castles won't be much more than vanity/cosmetics, but we know too well that people like throwing money at these.

I don't think it's a scam, but there's really no excuse that would make the things I listed not ridiculous.

[JamesGoblin]

I don't think it's a scam, but there's really no excuse that would make the things I listed not ridiculous.

Do you find it ridiculous that people are willing to pay $800 for a bunch of pixels, or the fact that developers are selling it? And BTW, would you be selling it if you knew (as we both do) that you can earn lots of money that way? I certainly would.

[Seedia]

Yo howdy everyone! As someone who has personally played the test tons, I have to say Crowfall is an amazing game. I think the whole idea that Crowfall is making something you don't see very often is throwing people off a little. When I first noticed the game, I didn't think it would come very far to be honest but I love the idea of going into long duration of campaigns, fight with different rulesets, different landscape, and different people. Sure I love a good story line but I want something that pvp, not a short match, and crowfall was that to me

[Queen of Hamsters]

Doesn't look the least promising to me at this stage. Actually seeing the gameplay before I'll decide if I like what I see or not.

[RoninaThorstone]

Doesn't look the least promising to me at this stage. Actually seeing the gameplay before I'll decide if I like what I see or not.

There's already prealpha game play video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbxMi74MNJI

[warzerotwo]

I've seen more info about their cash shop than any solid gampelay. No thanks.