First Impressions of Crowfall

Crowfall formally released today. It's been something like six years. I backed it on Kickstarter so long ago. I tried it out in early early alpha, but it was too early for me. So I haven't really looked at it for several years.

In any case, I installed it and gave it a whirl. So far, it's not too bad. The graphics are cartoony and pleasant. There's not a great deal of character customization, though there are quite a lot of races. Some of which are far more unusual than the standard human-type. There are centaurs!

I'm playing a Human Templar, a 2H paladin type, which working out pretty well. There seems to be a big emphasis on harvesting and crafting.

Combat is decent. I'm only in the very early tutorial stages so far. So far it's left-click for your main attack combo, right-click for dodge or a defensive (you can replace the default ability with class abilities) and hot bar abilities with cooldowns. There's also combos and context-specific abilities. For example, my Templar's Parry Defensive combos into a knockdown after the parry.

Classes have a decent size talent tree, and it looks like all your abilities come from that tree. So class customization might be very important. You also get points to improve your stats as you level. Since I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just raising all 5 stats evenly. What's interesting is that some talents you take in the tree also adjust your stats significantly.

If I have any complaint, it's that I think they could have done one more round of simplification, especially in their UI. For example, if you kill a mob, you can loot it with the F key, or full loot with the G key. I'm constantly hitting the wrong button. I think they should have just gone with F key full loots, and maybe bring up the regular loot window if your bags are full. 

A lot of the UI feels like that, just a touch too complex, and one more pass of simplifying would smooth things out.

In any case, I'm rather enjoying this simple part of Crowfall. We'll see what it's like when the PvP games come into play. If you're looking for a new MMO, maybe give it a whirl. It is Buy-2-Play, not Free-2-Play. You can use my account name, "rohanv", as a referral code for a discount or some-such if you want.

One thing to keep in mind, Crowfall uses your account name for all your characters. The actual characters are more like disposable tools, which fits with the game's story. However, this means you should take care with your account name, including capitalization, as I haven't found a way to change it. My account name is "rohanv", because I made it so long ago. I don't really mind using my name, but I would have preferred to have it capitalized in game.

Crowfall and the Metagame

It's been a while since I've written anything about Crowfall. Artcraft looks to be steadily making progress. Unfortunately most of their updates in the last few months have been in video format, so I've pretty much ignored them. Videos just take so long to get through compared to text, and text is so much easier to reread and pull out bits to chew on.

In any case, Artcraft seems to be toying with the idea of promoting a "metagame" as in Eve Online. Where people can be spies and scammers in other guilds, and betray them, etc. It's always a newsworthy part of Eve, so it's not surprising that it would be attractive to someone making another PvP MMO.

However, I think it's a bad idea. To be fair, I think it's a bad idea in Eve Online as well. The culture of spying, betraying, "awoxing", and generally being hard to trust is bad for the game. I think games where trust is easier are a lot more fun. But Eve has its own culture, and the people who play Eve are happy with it.

However, I think the "metagame" is an especially bad fit for Crowfall. Crowfall's signature element is that the game board resets. After a while, the campaign world ends, and players start fresh on a new campaign world.

A strong metagame cuts across that. When the board resets, the alliances and enemies made should also reset. I'm sure we've all played board games with people who hold a grudge from one game to the next. Or two people who will always attack each other. Or people in a relationship, where you can expect one of them to throw away her chance at victory to support her partner. These games are less fun than new games where everyone is attempting to win.

Crowfall will never get rid of all relationships between campaigns. For one thing, guilds will want to play together and support each other. But it's better if the game encourages relationships between guilds to reset, to treat each world as truly new. But that will require discouraging the Eve-style metagame of guild politics.

Are PvE Players Overly Entitled?

I was reading the Crowfall comments on Massively OP, and I was struck by the attitude of the more strident PvE players. There was a lot of complaining that the game was PvP, and it wasn't PvE. At this point, are PvE players becoming overly entitled?

Let's look at the major MMOs currently running:

Primarily PvE - WoW, SWTOR, FFXIV, Rift, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, TSW, EQ2, Neverwinter, LotRO

Primarily PvP - Eve Online

It's not even close. There's one major MMO which is focused on PvP. Pretty much everything else is focused on PvE.  It seems really uncharitable of PvE players to feel aggrieved that a new game is focused on a different audience.

Of course new game devs are going to try and make PvP games. That's the under-served market. It's the market where you don't have to compete with the behemoths.

I'm a primarily PvE player. I have to admit that there's a ton of options for me. My biggest problem is choosing the MMOs I don't want to play.

I kind of feel for the PvP players. If you want an MMO where PvP is more than a sideshow, you're basically limited to Eve. And if spreadsheets in space isn't your thing, you're out of luck.

For PvE players to complain about the current situation is just being churlish.

Crowfall: Kickstarter, More Thoughts

Crowfall announced its Kickstarter today. It is already more than half-way to the goal, which means there's a very strong chance it will be successful. I backed it, as I am always in favor of games that try new things. And Crowfall is especially good in that it is set up to try many new things as new campaigns with new rulesets start up.

The other interesting thing I saw was Crowfall's rules for Faction campaigns. There are three factions: Order, Chaos, and Balance. Very archetypical factions. But the win conditions are amusing. Order and Chaos win if they have the most points at the end. But Balance wins if Order and Chaos have roughly the same amount of points.

It's a very neat way of keeping the factions level, while also adhering to the lore. The only issue I can see is that the equilibrium selects for Balance. If Order or Chaos is dominant, Balance allies with the other. But if Balance is dominant, Order and Chaos cannot ally to defeat Balance. Allying only plays into Balance's goals.

Still, though, we'll have to see how it plays out.

I think Crowfall's Achilles' Heel is going to be performance and responsiveness. I know I harp on this a lot, but in some ways, performance is more important than all the creativity in the rules and game design. Games are a tactile experience, and a successful game must "feel" right when you're playing. You get that wrong, and your game dies.

Also, I think the developers should stop referencing Game of Thrones so much. It's kind of weird, in the "they're going to get sued" sort of vein. I'm not a fan of GoT [1], so it's a turn-off for me.

1. The problem with killing off all the characters the reader cares about, is that the reader is left with a book filled with characters she doesn't care about.

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.

Crowfall: Pricing, Currency

Pricing

Crowfall released its planned pricing scheme. They're planning on Buy-2-Play with a cosmetic cash shop and an optional subscription. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Though the subscription looks really optional. The basic plan allows you train one character, while the subscription allows training for three.

There's also a PLEX-like item that can be traded for a month's subscription. I'm not sure about this. Crowfall's main draw is resetting worlds. Throwing this in the mix seems like it skews the resources on a single world. At least in Eve the universe is permanent.

Currency

The other interesting dev comment I saw was:

We are giving the players the tools of an economy but what becomes the defacto unit for trade will be decided by what people start selling their goods for. Could be wood, ore, ore smelted into coins, if so which ore is the one used? Fun times for sure! 

This strongly implies that there is no default currency like gold, credits, or ISK. Instead the entire game will work on barter. This also implies that there is no automated trade mechanism like an auction house.

This is a pretty interesting system. I have no idea how it will work out.

Crowfall: Eternal Heroes, Dying Worlds

Apropos of the last post [1], Crowfall offers their first look at how they propose to make PvP work:

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.

This is really interesting. In some ways, it's in-between lobby games, and fully persistent MMOs. It's not transient gameplay, because the "Campaigns" last for a long time, maybe even months or years. But it's not fully permanent, either.

The universe is persistent as a whole, but not individual worlds.

In particular, it also gives the devs a lot of leeway to experiment with rulesets and conditions. This part might prove to be unexpectedly powerful. It's entirely possible that the devs could randomly hit upon a new ruleset that becomes very popular and the format for future MMOs.

However, the problem might still be that people will flock to the winning teams. They'll just do so before each Campaign starts. You might be able to do something where people commit to Campaigns at the guild level. I.e. The guild chooses a world, and that's the campaign that people in the guild are committed to until the end. Since it's on a long timescale, new Campaigns can start while previous ones are still in progress, creating new boards where none of the existing "winning" teams can participate. Which will in turn create new winning teams.

Honestly, I have no idea how successful this will be. But it is really exciting to see someone trying something bold. I strongly hope that the Crowfall devs pay as much attention to responsiveness and technical quality as they are to design quality. It would be a terrible waste if this game ended up failing because combat was sluggish or an abundance of bugs.

1. The comments on the last post were just excellent. Well worth reading if you haven't.

Crowfall: More Information on Combat and Worlds

(Sorry if this is turning into All Crowfall All The Time. Not much to write about in my other games, and Crowfall is doing some interesting things.)

Crowfall released some more interesting tidbits. Combat will be less tab-target, and more directional attacks. This sounds like Wildstar. I wasn't a big fan of Wildstar combat, but this is a PvP-focused game, so people are running around in circles anyways.

The other interesting thing is that they are not using the Trinity. But the element they are cutting out is healing. This is very intriguing. For one thing, it makes the game more like FPS games, in a way. Here's what Crowfall has to say on the subject:

We have characters that are more offensive. We have characters that are more defensive. We have characters with support powers. But we made the game purposefully light on in-combat healing, to make it more deadly. ... 

Combat healing effectively adds a multiplier to each combatant’s effective hit points. A defender isn’t just managing one health bar, his “effective” health pool is = his personal health bar * powers driven by the mana pool of every healer actively supporting him. This makes a lot of sense for games that focus around PvE combat where the monsters have thousands of hit points – especially raids.  It makes less sense in a game focused on skill-based player-versus-player combat.

Crowfall is also explicitly ruling out instanced PvE content.  On the one hand, this may turn off a lot of players. But on the other hand, it's good to see the game taking aim at exactly what it wants to be.

They also released more information on the "worlds". It looks like worlds will have different rulesets. On one world, PvP is guild vs guild. On a different world, PvP is faction-based. You can travel from world to world, and there are restrictions on what type of gear you can bring into or out of a specific world. This way you can avoid the styles of PvP that you don't like (for example, Free-for-all) while still dipping into different types every so often.

Some pretty nifty ideas. And there is a nice balance between focusing on exactly what type of game they want, while still offering some variety in rulesets. It's more about gradations of PvP. I think that might prove to be more unifying than the eternal tension between PvE and PvP.

Crowfall: Centaurs Confirmed!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you vital news: Crowfall has centaurs!

Not only centaurs, but centaurs based on the Roman Empire!

The tactic Crowfall is taking towards races is interesting. They look to be tying class and race together. All Knights are human, all Legionnaires are centaur. It's interesting because that means that the races don't need to be necessarily balanced as a baseline, so long as the Race+Class combination is balanced.

According to their FAQ, humanoid classes will allow both genders, while monstrous classes will be single-gendered. I imagine this is to cut down on the amount of time needed. It probably means that there will be a monstrous female class as well, maybe Lamias, Medusas, or Harpies.

The other interesting thing that people noticed earlier was that races had a Hunger Resistance stat. This naturally led into all sorts of speculation about role food would play in the game. Would you have to eat every so often to keep your stats up?

However, the Legionnaire write-up seems to imply that the Hunger are some sort of enemy. So that stat is closer to Demon Resistance, rather something related to food. I found that to be an amusing outcome to the speculation.

Crowfall

I saw some teasers for an upcoming MMO, Crowfall.

It's just the barest of teasers so far, but they look to be creating something in the vein of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Trying to get back to "world" aspect of MMOs.

For example, in an interview at mmorpg.com, they say:

There are a ton of lessons to be learned looking at games like Star Wars Galaxies and EVE Online which had and still have success with their crafting and economic loops. From a very high altitude, crafters need to be able to: craft unique items, explore new recipes and profit from the results of this exploration, and create customized items for all styles of play. Crafters must have an audience to buy their goods. The loop between crafter and combatant has to exist! And, ideally, crafters need to be able to “mark” their product so that they can build a social reputation and a following. 

The very concept that players can and will lose their items at some point is required, otherwise the game loop breaks. It is a very controversial topic for those who don’t like the potential of losing their items, and we understand that.  But sometimes you have to embrace ideas that may not be popular at first glance, because they open up amazing areas of gameplay that are otherwise not accessible.

That's a pretty bold statement, but it might very well be correct. Inconvenience drives sandboxes.

The dev pedigree is also somewhat impressive: J. Todd Coleman, Gordon Walton, Raph Koster. We'll see what they come up. There are many ways an MMO can screw up, and these devs aren't exactly known for prioritizing performance and responsiveness.

Still, I'm kind of interested in Crowfall, and it's mostly because of a single picture:

That Templar just looks good to me. It's clean, attractive, in solid, functional armor that still has a surprising amount of detail. It's stylized, avoiding uncanny valley effects, while still retaining proper human proportions.

I just really like the design intent as exemplified by this Templar. If the rest of the game matches this aesthetic (and performance/responsiveness is strong!), Crowfall just feels like it will be a blast to play.