Thursday, February 19, 2015

Crowfall: Guineceans, Physics

Crowfall released some more information today: a couple of new archetypes and some information about physics.

Guineceans



I've mentioned before that I don't like short races in most MMOs. For some reason, the trend over the last few years has been to make then nasty, evil creatures.

Crowfall unveiled their short race, the Guinecean Duelist, based on guinea pigs, it looks like. I really like the background story they gave them. It makes them almost noble, and genuinely good and fun. More like Reepicheep from Narnia, rather than goblins. This race just felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I don't normally play short races, but I might make an exception for these guys.

Physics

Crowfall also revealed that they are attempting to add real-world physics to the game model. This includes collision, as well as momentum. If they pull this off, it will be very cool. However, it will be interesting to see if they can actually pull this off in a server-based PvP game.

As well, real-world physics has a lot of potential for griefing. The physics model includes projectiles, so it includes the possibility of friendly fire. One thing I do like is that the devs have outlined a plan where they can "fall back" on different options if it turns out that friendly fire causes too much grief. This plan includes turning friendly fire off entirely as the last resort.

5 comments:

  1. In World of Tanks, friendly fire is necessary, yet not really used for griefing. I can remember 1-2 events from thousands of battles.

    The reason for it is that the shooting player has to pay credit compensation to the shot one, so you don't lose on being friendly fired, he loses on it.

    So it will all come down to incentives and consequences.

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  2. Going to go with 'no way in hell' on physics, inertia, projectile drop, collision in a PvP MMO. Pipe dream still. Would love to see it but lag will make all those things impossible in today's internet and hardware architecture.

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  3. @Gevlon, yeah, the current plan is to give a debuff to the player doing the friendly fire. Whether that is enough of a disincentive is an open question. However, the economy set up of Crowfall makes an economic disincentive hard to apply.

    @Unknown, that's how I feel about it too. It would be amazing if they pulled it off, but the technical reality is that it is very, very difficult. (And may even be outright impossible.)

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    1. You know all those things do occur in BF4 now that I think of it. But with maps limited to 32v32. I am guessing siege warfare is not part of the plan

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  4. The guinea pig look super cute!

    (Sorry for the not very constructive comment, but I just had to say that. ^^)

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