Crowfall aka Play2Crush aka Shadowbane II aka Nostalgia Online

[schild]

What does that have anything to do with anything? You just said "make sure you make your game fun at it's core". Bravo. That can be applied to any single conversation about a game. His argument was "we don't need full loot pvp because this shooter fps game over here doesn't have it." Which is stupid.

No, his argument wasn't that.  His argument was that people will PvP even when full loot isn't involved if the combat is good.

So what? I don't see the point. People play games for different reasons and incentives. People play multiple games for different reasons. Some people play both Hearthstone and MTG. Some people play HOTS and LOL. What the fuck does that argument even mean.

Quit it with the pointless fat aggression and hostility, particularly when you're being willfully retarded.

[Typhon]

Ya, combat should be fun, but by how's standards? Twitching McRedbull and Mr. EmpireBuilder probably have different views of what is fun.

So play2crush isn't actually a thing with Crowfall. 100% consensual PvP isn't the answer anymore than 0% is. But at this game won't be DoA.

Combat should be fun by the standards of the game audience you are targeting (or the game you want to play, if you are making the game for yourself).  No sane developer makes a game for both Mr McRedbull and Mr EmpireBuilder unless the game has two intertwined modes of combat which would be orders of magnitude harder than just one mode of combat which already is apparently hard because we have many games but only one or two examples of "good" combat.

[Draegan]

Quit it with the pointless fat aggression and hostility, particularly when you're being willfully retarded.

Isn't this awkward.

What's fat aggression anyway? Are you calling me fat, or are you saying I have a lot of aggression. More so than the normal amount that you find on these message boards?

[Pennilenko]

 

[Merusk]

No sane developer makes a game for both Mr McRedbull and Mr EmpireBuilder ...

Sane or rational, really. Dreamers and True Believers think they can do it all the time.

Which always brings me the joy of watching you guys salivate over yet another doomed-to-fail 'open world' MMO.

[tazelbain]

What's fat aggression anyway? Are you calling me fat, or are you saying I have a lot of aggression. More so than the normal amount that you find on these message boards?

Maybe you are being Cartman-esque?

[Draegan]

Does GW2 count as an open world MMO?

[Draegan]

What's fat aggression anyway? Are you calling me fat, or are you saying I have a lot of aggression. More so than the normal amount that you find on these message boards?

Maybe you are being Cartman-esque?

I'll accept that.

[Kageru]

This should be entertaining to watch. Open world PvP always puts interesting stresses on game balance, mechanics and community.

It may well work if they scale their development costs realistically and evolve the game once it goes live (to keep development costs down) while still having a balanced and fun core they can build on. It would be a pretty impressive achievement if they can pull it off since there's lots of ways it can end badly.

I'm still fairly convinced Eve worked partly because it was launched in a period where expectations were lower and the novelty of online play overcame the tedium of actual game-play. If it launched today it I doubt it would build the core community that sustained it. Also space is cheap to model.

[Typhon]

No sane developer makes a game for both Mr McRedbull and Mr EmpireBuilder ...

Sane or rational, really. Dreamers and True Believers think they can do it all the time.

Which always brings me the joy of watching you guys salivate over yet another doomed-to-fail 'open world' MMO.

No salivating here, there are no concrete details on the combat.  I'm just forum-warrior-ing it at this point.  Open world full loot leaves me cold... unless there is good combat!

[Paelos]

Good combat and good crafting would make me put up with almost anything.

[Ginaz]

Good lord...14 pages for this shit???   This is going to crash and burn just like every other attempt to resurrect the glory days of UO and Shadowbane.  End of story.

[Paelos]

Good lord...14 pages for this shit???   This is going to crash and burn just like every other attempt to resurrect the glory days of UO and Shadowbane.  End of story.

Perhaps I can introduce you to the 102 page TESO thread, a game we declared on page 2 would be shit. http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14548.0

[Hutch]

Good lord...14 pages for this shit???   This is going to crash and burn just like every other attempt to resurrect the glory days of UO and Shadowbane.  End of story.

No. Fourteen pages of talking about Crowfall is impossible.

There is no Crowfall.

We haven't even gotten started yet.

[tmp]

Blade & Soul might have good combat. I am trying it right now and I'll report about it. But I have to say: it probably falls in the same identical package TERA did. In fact, NC sued Bluehole because as far as I know an ex NC soft employee made TERA out of stuff that was supposed to go into NC's next project, originally Lineage 3, then morphed into Blade & Soul. It shouldn't be surprising they are similar.

But since we are on topic, it's important to underline that the best combat in MMOs have been made in South Korea for the last 5 years. See also the upcoming Black Desert. One big difference with Western releases though could be tracked back to the fact that Korean MMOs seem to be mostly client-sided, which leaves lots of holes to hacking but allows to do beautiful responsive combat, while Western releases try to prevent hacking by doing running most of the stuff on the server, which of course slows things down.

If I understand it right, the whole lawyer-fu was more about using the designs and concepts for the game than the combat per se, which is somewhat different and one of contributing reasons why there's two separate games at all -- Lineage devs who left NCSoft and possibly took the code with them wanted the combat be like what the TERA got, while NC had somewhat different Vision(tm) that ended up in BnS. So in this one regard they aren't too much alike.

Re: Korean games in general, it's not like they *need* to do it client-side when the entire country is half the side of Florida and stuffed with high-speed broadbands that mean getting more than 10ms ping is unusual drop in quality of service. So my impression is the client-sided stuff is mostly down to limited skillset and/or not giving a damn beyond getting shit up and running in some most basic way. You can see it with the NA port of TERA breaking in sometimes hilarious manners when things that were taken for granted (the server sitting in the same time zone with all the players, minimal latency etc) are no longer present.

[schild]

Good lord...14 pages for this shit???  This is going to crash and burn just like every other attempt to resurrect the glory days of UO and Shadowbane.  End of story.

Perhaps I can introduce you to the 102 page TESO thread, a game we declared on page 2 would be shit. http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14548.0

And it's not?

[ezrast]

This would be a very quiet subforum if we didn't talk about games that are shit.

[Paelos]

Good lord...14 pages for this shit???  This is going to crash and burn just like every other attempt to resurrect the glory days of UO and Shadowbane.  End of story.

Perhaps I can introduce you to the 102 page TESO thread, a game we declared on page 2 would be shit. http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14548.0

And it's not?

No, it is. My point is we talk about shit a lot.

[Falconeer]

More new concept/design stuff from the Devs.

http://community.crowfall.com/index.php?/topic/1597-020215-hunger-week-its-about-time/

This week they explain why should you want to play Crowfall, and what makes it different from other MMORPGs, specifically other PvP MMORPGs.

Today is the turning point – where we start to separate away from the herd.  Unfortunately (but inevitably) that means we’re going to turn some people off today.  But hopefully those of you who stick around will be here for the long haul.

About a decade ago, I was the creative director on a game called “Shadowbane.”  Shadowbane had a lot of flaws, but the vision is still something that I am very proud of.  The Wolfpack founders (of which I am one) came up with something innovative – really innovative.  It’s surprising how rare that is, even in the game space.
Unfortunately, the vision was also flawed.  SB had tons of technical and operational issues, yes, but that’s not what I am talking about.  I’m talking about the crack in the foundation of the design:
 
At its heart, SB was a strategy game.  And strategy games can’t last forever.

In Shadowbane, I called this phenomenon server stagnation.  The game is incredibly fun – right up until someone wins.  Then, without a server reset, the game stagnates and everyone quits.
 
One of the key elements of strategy games is they have a win condition followed by a board reset.  You start the game, you play the game, someone wins.  You reset the board and start a new game.
One of the key elements of MMOs is that they are persistent.  Actually, that’s not the right word, is it?  They’re permanent.  Players expect to play them over years, and the game world is (generally) static.
 
These two design goals seem diametrically opposed: the game must reset and the game must last forever.
Can they be married together?  I think they can.

What if characters are persistent/permanent – but the Worlds are not?
What if your character exists outside of any given Campaign, and can join new matches once a match is over?

This opens up a whole new world of design possibilities.

- Characters are permanent, and advance over the course of many Campaigns.  This gives you the feeling of persistence that we’ve come to expect from MMOs.
- Campaigns, though, aren’t permanent.  They still be “persistent” between game sessions – but they don’t last forever.
- How long should the last?  As long as the game is still fun!  And they don’t all have to be the same duration.  Some Campaigns could last 1 week, or 1 month.  or 6 months.  or 1 year.
- These Campaigns aren’t just “instances”, though -- they are fully populated, continent-sized, seamless zone MMO servers.  The only thing they have in common with an “instance” is that they are time-limited.
- Because each Campaign is marching towards an end condition, this means that the World doesn’t have to be static anymore. We can break the Campaign into different “phases”, and adjust the rules of the game change during each phase.  We can allow the players to fundamentally change the world, without fear of the long term problems this might create.
- Why not make each Campaign unique?  Why can’t each one have a completely unique world map (mountains, forests, lakes, castles, villages, quarries, mines, mills – you name it)?  The “exploration” phase of the game can be different in each Campaign.  The world will never be stale.
- To that point: since each game is a stand-alone event, we can even change the rules (and win conditions) of each Campaign.  We can experiment with different rules, to see which ones are more popular – and keep the game continually fresh.

So, how do you explain this?
 
The Hunger.  The Hunger is a mysterious, destructive force that spreads from one world to the next, like an infection – twisting and corrupting everything it touches.  Eventually, the Hunger consumes the World itself, and it is destroyed.
 Players take the roles of Divine Champions, immortal participants in the War of the Gods.  They join the Campaigns to scavenge the Dying Worlds for relics, resources and glory.
 
A Campaign might look like this:
 
* Phase 1 is Spring.  The Campaign map is hidden by fog of war.  You are dropped (typically naked) into an unknown, deadly environment.  This world is filled with the ruins of ancient castles, abandoned mines and haunted villages – which you have to explore to scavenge for weapons, tools and the resources to start building fortifications.
 
* Phase 2 is Summer.  The Hunger starts to infect the creatures.  Resources become scarce.  Your team claims an abandoned quarry and must fight to keep it.  You use the stone to build an ancient keep, to use it as staging areas to attack their neighbors.
 
* Phase 3 is Fall.  The creatures become more deadly as the Hunger takes hold.  Resources are heavily contested and transporting them is fraught with peril.  Your guild frantically builds a wall around your city, as the nature of conflict shifts from smaller skirmishes to siege warfare.
 
* Phase 4 is Winter.  The environment is brutal.  Warmth is hard to come by.  Your kingdoms grows in strength; your neighbors falter and you demand that they swear fealty or face complete loss of the Campaign.  Instead, a handful of smaller kingdoms choose to band together against you.
 
* Phase 5 is Victory and Defeat.  The World is destroyed in a cataclysmic event as the Campaign comes to an end.  Your Kingdom emerges victorious, and you return to the Eternal Kingdoms to enjoy the spoils of war.   Your adversaries head home, too -- to lick their wounds.







No one quits.  Instead, both groups strategize on how to dominate the next Campaign.
 
This is the experience we are trying to create.  Even if I lose, it won’t feel hollow.
We saw a similar pattern emerge during the SB beta… by accident, not design.  Occasionally, changes to the game design would require us to wipe the world.  Every time it happened, I was worried that players would quit the game. Instead, we saw incredibly high peak concurrency numbers after each wipe.  Every time.  The “land rush” to grab the key positions in the new world was incredibly alluring.  If the world map was unique, I expect it would have been even more popular.
 
The downside of this approach is that we don’t want the universe to feel too transitory.  That’s why we added the Eternal Kingdoms: super-sized player and guild housing Worlds.  Trophy rooms that you can use as a “lobby” between matches/campaigns.
 (To make sure these Worlds don’t compete with the “main” game, i.e. the Campaign Worlds, we’ve completely stripped them of resource factories and anything but common reagents.  If you want to fill your trophy room, you have to go out and earn it.)
 
This is the foundational change that we’ve made.  Crowfall isn’t an MMO with a “battle ground” strapped to the end of the level treadmill.  Crowfall isn’t a three-way tug of war that never resets.  It’s a real blend of a strategy game and an MMO.
 
There’s more (a LOT more) to come, but it all starts with this basic idea:
 
Eternal Heroes, Dying Worlds.
 
Todd
ACE

This addresses, ON PAPER, many concerns that whoever played these kind of games passionately and long enough had over the years.

- Different servers with different maps and completely different rulesets, ranging from factional three way war, to pure Guild vs Guild, to some other modes that aren't clear yet.
- Every server is a Campaign, that ends after some time cause the whole world gets corrupted. Time of a campaign can vary from weeks to months.
- Approach of the server/campaign to its end is reflected in game with changes to the environment, resources getting scarcer, and mobs getting corrupted and more dangerous.
- Characters DO NOT get reset though, they earn trophies for the Campaign/server they participated on and get to choose a new one. They retain all of their skills and some of the gear, and can get houses and decorate them with trophies in the "Neutral eternal worlds".
- "Neutral eternal worlds" have no resources though, so they are not the Trammel you are looking for.
- Players can change servers, but there are restrictions on the gear they can carry with themselves to the new world-server-campaign.


Naturally, the more they want to innovate, the harder it will be not to mess it up especially because while it is true that players are spasmodically looking for something new that they can't even exactly imagine because it doesn't exist yet, it's not like you can engineer that in a lab. As EVE and DayZ proved, it's a combination of lots of things, including timing and sheer luck. And this is without even getting started on questions like "how much money do they have?" and "how talented are the coders?"

[Malakili]

That's actually amazing news about the win conditions and starting over.  World War II Online has been doing it for years and years now.  I'm surprised no one else has tried it.

[Hutch]

A Tale in the Desert used to reset the entire game every year or two.
I say "used to" because I don't know if that game is still running.

[Rendakor]

Damn them for getting my hopes up, even a little.

[Viin]

I wish the reset was based on a win condition rather than time. Still, sounds interesting.

[Falconeer]

I think resetting the servers is not the major deal here. The difficult task on their hands, and where true innovation could happen, will be finding a way to make it so the campaigns matter, and keep being contested long enough to keep it interesting and eventually make it feel like you had a great run whether you won or lost. This is the big challenge, and probably the one not many felt like undertaking so far because it's so damn hard. Also, making sure that conflict happens and things don't go to sleep as soon as one kingdom has the upper hand, or worse everyone on the server joining the winning faction to get the rewards and then wait until the server dies to reap the rewards and start on a new one. Nothing was worse, both in GW2 and TESO, than being in a losing faction with days until the next reset and knowing there was nothing that could be done to recover. As a result, fighting always really occurred in the first few days of a campaign. Everything else was frustration both on the winning and the losing side.

[Threash]

I wish the reset was based on a win condition rather than time. Still, sounds interesting.

Don't leave important shit up to the players is probably a good lesson to have learned.

[Falconeer]

But he's not wrong. If you make it time based (or create a time frame that is known to players) the players will game the clock as much as possible and very easily make it into a snoozefest as soon as someone gets the upper hand. I know we don't have enough elements to say this, but a time limit sounds great on paper while so far it has been proven really tricky by TESO and GW2.

At the same time though the same can happen if one faction gets closer enough than anyone else to the winning conditions. Everyone else just stops fighting.

Basically, how to design a PvP game where fickle average-lame-players keep fighting until the end of the campaign?

[Hutch]

I wish the reset was based on a win condition rather than time. Still, sounds interesting.

I think resetting the servers is not the major deal here. The difficult task on their hands, and where true innovation could happen, will be finding a way to make it so the campaigns matter, and keep being contested long enough to keep it interesting and eventually make it feel like you had a great run whether you won or lost. This is the big challenge, and probably the one not many felt like undertaking so far because it's so damn hard. Also, making sure that conflict happens and things don't go to sleep as soon as one kingdom has the upper hand, or worse everyone on the server joining the winning faction to get the rewards and then wait until the server dies to reap the rewards and start on a new one. Nothing was worse, both in GW2 and TESO, than being in a losing faction with days until the next reset and knowing there was nothing that could be done to recover. As a result, fighting always really occurred in the first few days of a campaign. Everything else was frustration both on the winning and the losing side.

I think they are looking at having win conditions. They mentioned it a couple of times in the update.
They also mentioned the cataclysmic event, but I bet that just goes off once the win condition is met.
A win condition could very much look like "everyone joined (or knelt to) the winning side." Once that happens, poof. Or boom.

[tazelbain]

Sounds interesting. I know many (like myself) have advocated something like this since Shadowbane. Glad to see someone is going to give it a try.

[Paelos]

He used "The Vision" in the second paragraph.

[Malakili]

Basically, how to design a PvP game where fickle average-lame-players keep fighting until the end of the campaign?

Probably not possible.  If we take World War 2 Online as an example again only after the campaigns looked REALLY lost did the population start to dip a lot in my opinion.  If you were making progress anywhere along the front people would tend to keep playing.  Then again, the way armies worked in that game meant that if you made some good strategic choices even in a losing situation you could do something like cut off a few armies and rout them from the map, giving you a day or so where you could make real progress on the map. 

So I guess I'm saying, make comebacks possible.  People will still play if they think they are losing.  But they will not still play if they think they have lost.

[Threash]

Sure, just make sure they are getting "something" as long as they are playing rather than making it a winner take all at the end kinda thing.  Make losing 100-80 better than losing 100-20.

[Ingmar]

Basically, how to design a PvP game where fickle average-lame-players keep fighting until the end of the campaign?

Unpredictable end times for campaigns maybe? I can see issues with those, but at least it wouldn't let people say 'oh well, with only a day left we don't have time to make up this difference'?

[tazelbain]

I can definitely see an opportunity to make campaigns have various levels of PvP difficulty. Give the player a chance to get bearings in a co-op campaign and then move to progressively more dangerous campaigns. Could be a much better way of handling PvP progression than EvE.

I hope that not only do they vary the maps but also the tech trees. So optimal strategies change with the campaign.

Any word on the business model?

[Falconeer]

The only thing we know is that it's not going to be free to play. We don't know if it's going to be box only, or box+subscription. I would bet on box + smaller than usual subscription. Or box + optional subscription. I would be surprised if there were no sub at all.

And yes, again, the only thing that really worries me and that they have to come up with something really good is how to push people to keep fighting when they are losing and the end is near.

[Hutch]

The only thing we know is that it's not going to be free to play. We don't know if it's going to be box only, or box+subscription. I would bet on box + smaller than usual subscription. Or box + optional subscription. I would be surprised if there were no sub at all.

And yes, again, the only thing that really worries me and that they have to come up with something really good is how to push people to keep fighting when they are losing and the end is near.

When did they say it wasn't going to be free to play? I mean, it makes sense, but I don't remember reading anything official on that topic.