Crowfall aka Play2Crush aka Shadowbane II aka Nostalgia Online

[Pennilenko]

...and Lantyssa performs fatality...

[sam, an eggplant]

You just typed out a page describing market segmentation. Pretty clear from my posts I understand what that is, since I brought it up. Were you replying to someone else who showed they didn't understand market segmentation?

I explained what I would do, if I had a multi hundred million dollar budget and platinum IP-- exactly what ESO did. Well, I would spend dev resources engineering the business model pivot from day 1, preparing for the worst, and switch over after 6 months or so, once it became clear my game wasn't the next WoW. But pretty close.

[Lantyssa]

A little bit of everyone.  I was just expanding on what I was trying to say earlier and your post helped me launch into it.

Like I said, crazy time.  Because I am losing it with my current work project.

[tmp]

Our two models boil down to:

(X)  vs.  (X + Y + Z + W)

Might be worth considering that part of the X group can't stand the "dirty console casual kid peasants" they consider the Y, Z and W to be, and so will refuse to grace with their presence and money establishments which let these groups in. It's pretty likely a small subset, but how it shapes the 'lost opportunity' for both cases, I'm not really sure. It makes the math less clear-cut, in any case.

[Hutch]

Today, two archetypes. The elven frost mage, and the hamster? Badger? Woodchuck? Whatever it is.

Also, a FAQ describing their physics model.

15. Does that mean that I can be hit by friendly fire?

Wherever possible, yes -- but we have to make sure that this is balanced. Some rules sets (like the infected worlds, which are Faction based) divide players automatically into teams. We have to make sure that players can't join teams specifically to take advantage of friendly fire to grief their own "teammates."

Our plan is to try and apply debuffs to players for doing damage to or killing their teammates (the gods curse you for your incompetence). If this proves not to be a good enough deterrent, however, we may have to turn friendly fire off for particular Campaign worlds.

Translation: yes, we'll be turning off friendly fire in certain rulesets. 

[Draegan]

fenrisddevil, on 19 Feb 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:
So we were right, FF is active only on the FFA server. While some debuffs might substitute (or not) friendly fire on carebears shards.

I'm not entirely sure how you can read an FAQ that mentions the possibility of turning off friendly fire on 1 or 2 of the announced rulesets, and to you that translates to "only FFA has friendly fire".
 
Make no mistake, we'll be working and testing this area heavily and we'll find what works best for each campaign ruleset. We might find a way to execute it well on all of them, we may not.
 
It's best not to jump to hyperbolic conclusion's when we're being very forward and open with our thinking with you on this.

http://community.crowfall.com/index.php?/topic/2357-friendly-fire-explained/?p=60671

[Hutch]

I came to the conclusion (that they will turn off friendly fire) by looking into my crystal ball and seeing that the PK crowd will go to any lengths to grief others, even if it means getting a debuff or other punishment as a "deterrent".

Just kidding, I don't have a crystal ball.

[HaemishM]

The ball in this case is going to be the testicles of the PVP crowd you'll get when they drop a fruit basket on your corpse.

[Threash]

Friendly fire would work fine in normal servers like it did in Shadowbane.  It doesn't matter if you can kill your own "side" as long as sides are not predetermined.  I have fond memories of raining AOE death on enemy zergs with my channeler and taking out our entire vanguard in the process, as long as we were the ones standing in the end no one much cared.  If you are going to force sides then no thank you.  Also holy shit i'm going to be a god damn gerbil of doom.

[Falconeer]

Yeah, like Threash said. Friendly Fire was ON for lots of spells in Shadowbane and it kind of worked. There was also self-harming stuff, I fondly remember that class that existed only to run into enemy lines and suicide by self-exploding into some nuclear blast. Glorious.

But physics?  

This alone makes me want to NOT give them any money. All of a sudden it started to sound like Star Citizen-level of bullshit promise.

Has this technology been used before?
Yes. The Voxel Farm technology library has been used by Daybreak Game Company on their titles Landmark and up-coming MMO, EverQuest Next.

In a PVP game?
Also, performance-hog and lag issues all over. Bah.

[Threash]

Yeah, like Threash said. Friendly Fire was ON for lots of spells in Shadowbane and it kind of worked. There was also self-harming stuff, I fondly remember that class that existed only to run into enemy lines and suicide by self-exploding into some nuclear blast. Glorious.

The Sentinel, glorious.  A pack of centaur sentinels suicide bombing a zerg was a joy to behold.

[Draegan]

I'm fully skeptical that they can actually make the game work in any sort of reasonable fashion. That's some really intense server/client resource hog stuff. Collision and Physics. Have fun with that.

But I really hope they can!

[Paelos]

Friendly fire is always dumb in my mind. It's a griefers paradise.

[Threash]

It is only a griefers paradise if you have no control over who is a "friendly".  If you do it is just another tactical consideration.

[Draegan]

Plenty of games without it. I'd like to see  one try. Griefers? Fine with me. I prefer to play on FFA servers anyway.

[Nija]

Griefers? Kill them. Play on a FFA server.

AC/AC2,UO, M59, and others I'm missing had/have friendly fire. It's not a big deal, so long as you don't have some kind of programatic check to see if you can do damage to a person based on him being on your 'side' or in your group or some other nonsense.

[Typhon]

Have the friendly fire damage someone does apply a long lasting, stacking debuff to friendly fire.  If it was a legitimately an accident or unavoidable use of AE, your own team mates probably won't frag you.

[Threash]

It is not something you need to penalize at all as long as you have complete control over who is a friendly.  It was a feature in shadowbane that you simply could not rain down AoE death on the enemy with zero drawbacks.  If you accidentally hit your own side you are already being penalized by hurting your side during a battle, nothing else is needed.

[drogg]

kickstarter launching tomorrow at 8 am CST: http://community.crowfall.com/index.php?/topic/2548-022315-today-and-tomorrow/

[schild]

I'm surprised these dreamers didn't opt for the Chris Roberts style of Kickstarter so they never had to actually produce a game.

Doin it wrong from day 1.

[tmp]

Well, nothing says they have to actually produce the game    SC had the "pre-renderedalpha footage" too.

Of course the idea of maybe selling stuff like a voucher for new game class that currently exists as concept drawing on a napkin, for a thousand bucks... is probably slightly less feasible.

[Paelos]

Depends on how they set it up. And how much money they ask for. I'm really hoping they don't post some stupid amount like $500,000. That will essentially let me know they are bullshitting everyone to try and pull real money into the deal.

[Malakili]

Well, it's up.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crowfall/crowfall-throne-war-pc-mmo

They are asking for $800,000.

[Falconeer]

Interesting stuff on the Winning Conditions of the Campaigns (in the given example, a hardcoded three-factions campaign).

5. Can you describe the Victory Condition rules for a given Campaign?

Sure. Let’s assume that we join a Campaign on the “Infected” Worlds. That means this is a Faction-based Campaign; i.e. the players are broken up into three teams: Order, Balance and Chaos.

Each Campaign has a duration, let’s say its 3 months.

The goal of the ORDER faction is to amass the most Victory Points before the World expires.

The goal of the CHAOS faction is the same.

BALANCE doesn’t gain victory points in this system, however. The goal of the BALANCE faction is to try and end the Campaign with ORDER and CHAOS having roughly the same number of Victory Points; i.e. no clear winner between the other two.

In other words:

[Paelos]

So given what we know they are angling for about $4M minimum to make this happen. I'm pretty sure they can't make the game for that. It's probably why they said CORE over and over.

My guess was closer to $6-8M. Maybe I'm off, I don't know. It all depends on how lean and mean they are running with overhead, and how many appeals to cash they are willing to make. I understand setting the bar lower so they can collect, but I think in reality the KS needs to pull in twice what they are asking for to get good momentum.

[Hawkbit]

Was this Play2Crush or Pay2Alpha?

I like the aesthetics and the world seems kinda neat. The idea of seasons in a persistent game is something I've wished for a long time. I just can't see throwing cash at something that won't come to fruition for nearly two years. This is a weird KS; far too early to be a simple marketing KS yet not nearly enough money to make the game.

I want to like it, though. Looks cool on paper.

[tazelbain]

To me they have to raise 5x that amount just to have a glymer of hope. What 2.7m already and no tech demo? Hex at least showed us a basic semi-functional game.

I see nothing in rewards that makes feel like I can get a good deal for taking a big risk.

Still no carebear/newbie friendly formats. This is huge. No brainier. There needs to be a kiddie pool to help players make the transition from WoW.

[Paelos]

Still no carebear/newbie friendly formats. This is huge. No brainier. There needs to be a kiddie pool to help players make the transition from WoW.

I think eternal kingdoms will provide this. There will be mobs and whatnot for learning. Likely leveling too, probably at a reduced rate. The kingdoms will set their own rules.

[Merusk]

Those pay-to-name tiers looked interesting. They're practically sold-out already. Personal barometer: I was tempted and every game kickstarter I've taken a risk on has been a failure or dragged-on for an eternity. Only my quest to wean myself off of MMOs and computer games entirely kept me from opening my wallet. So my fail-o-meter is high. 

[Threash]

I pledged, i want this game.

[Rendakor]

I pledged too; I assume I'll be able to resell the code during development if I change my mind.

[Malakili]

Tempting, but my only KS back to date has been Hex and even though I am not too disappointed with it, I don't think I would do it again if given the option.  So, I'll wait and see with this one.

[Paelos]

It's funny we don't hear about HEX much anymore after all the bullshit shouting, but that's a side note.

This game looks like something different. However, the money needed to execute strikes me as woefully short. I'm leery of that.

[Malakili]

Well, there is another forum for Hex..

But anyway, I agree, it seems like the project they WANT to do will cost a good deal more than they have, or will have.  But there are probably a dozen MMOs over the years that have talked a similar game and failed or faded into obscurity.  I want to believe, as they say, but I can't help but assume it's going to go the way of all the others in the end.

[Rendakor]

It's funny we don't hear about HEX much anymore after all the bullshit shouting, but that's a side note.

This game looks like something different. However, the money needed to execute strikes me as woefully short. I'm leery of that.

The Hex subforum here is still pretty active; we even have an f13 league.