Crowfall - Throne War MMO Catch All

Gremlin wrote:

I'm finding myself most interested in the kingdom-building aspects of this.

It will likely be done as 1) play tetris ---> 2) submit to them to build the kingdom!? Plus buildings will cost resources both to build and maintain + there will be taxes and so on.

New video with Raph Koster (on social systems):

...and this is the silly side of game development - video outtakes 2015/16:

I'm still crossing my fingers that this will turn out great, but I'll admit it has a huge potential to underdeliver.

Listening to the developers, I sometimes hear the same tones of unrealistic braggadocio that I've heard before in other overly ambitious MMO's that ended up canceled before release, but other times they seem to be very sensible and approaching the project in manageable chunks and gradually iterating up to bigger and bigger systems.

So... I'm cautiously optimistic...

I think my kickstarter gets me in to one of the later Alpha tests, so I'm hoping I'll actually get to play this spring sometime.

chaosmos wrote:

I'm still crossing my fingers that this will turn out great, but I'll admit it has a huge potential to underdeliver.

Listening to the developers, I sometimes hear the same tones of unrealistic braggadocio that I've heard before in other overly ambitious MMO's that ended up canceled before release, but other times they seem to be very sensible and approaching the project in manageable chunks and gradually iterating up to bigger and bigger systems.

So... I'm cautiously optimistic...

I think my kickstarter gets me in to one of the later Alpha tests, so I'm hoping I'll actually get to play this spring sometime.

Speaking of underdelivery, I believe that you will find this interesting. If anything breaks the game, it will be the engine.

Devs hyping and PR talking - well I'd say they are more transparent and honest than great majority of their colleagues, but their hype is sometimes being (a bit more...) aggressive than it would be due to absence of advertising budget and the need to get even more engineers (i.e. money) optimizing the engine - see the link above.

As I already speculated, what will happen finally will be neither failure nor success, but something inbetween - the projected server caps / sizes / durations will take at least a light hit (this is very optimistic!) and the game will land somewhere in the gray area between MMOBA and MMO.

Maybe we will get private or customizeable servers like Shards Online?
If they beta in the next month they could release this year but all we have seen so far is short demos.

fangblackbone wrote:

Maybe we will get private or customizeable servers like Shards Online?
If they beta in the next month they could release this year but all we have seen so far is short demos.

This is their recent announcement about the next major stage in testing. Nothing about a beta that will be happening any time soon.

http://crowfall.com/en/news/pre-alph...

fangblackbone wrote:

Maybe we will get private or customizeable servers like Shards Online?
If they beta in the next month they could release this year but all we have seen so far is short demos.

I expect to have private servers with little "private" wars at some point, but the team is currently focused on classes, combat and voxel building/destruction. To add to what @ranalin said - I expect beta in the autumn, not earlier.

Speaking of game footage, here is confessor playing with couple centaurs:

...and some messy PvP on ranger:

...aaand the very beginning of voxel destruction & sieges, from couple days ago:

PS video above is blocked in some countries, in which case I hope this works (say, some destruction & physics past 44:10).

Couple words on sieges & voxel destruction; first a reminder of how bulding will look like, it's like playing Tetris:

...and then some recent player made footage:

PS next class to be tested is Druid (healer/nuker) and just BTW - access to alpha is kinda expensive, but there will be open beta "this winter", requiring only registration on the site.

They did open up the current testing to folks with Alpha3 tier backing.

http://crowfall.com/en/news/subsiste...

Case in point: food and the warmth/hunger mechanic are making their way to the playtest this week.

The eventual goal of this system is to add some survival elements and make the act of finding, creating, and eating food meaningful. Food mechanics have been in online games for a long time – even DikuMUD had them.

As always, we’ll start by introducing the basics of the system and then build on that foundation over time. In this first version, we will introduce food items as loot (until crafting and harvesting come online) that players can consume to ward off starvation.

Here are the initial rules:

Each character has a pool (similar to health or stamina) that represents the amount of food they have eaten. Minecraft players will find this pretty intuitive – it’s a UI widget near the player unit frame that looks like a stack of chicken wings. (We reserve the right to change this UI later. And I’m going to call it a ‘food pool’ rather than a ‘hunger meter’ to avoid confusion with our universe-threatened force of nature, the Hunger).

Each player starts with a max food pool of 100 points. Various things within the game will cause your food pool to decay:

Every 90 seconds of out of combat time causes 1 point of decay.
Every 30 seconds of in combat time causes 1 point of decay.
Every 200 Stamina used causes 1 point of decay.
Every 10,000 Health damage taken causes 1 point of decay.
Every 5 jumps cause 1 point of decay.
…basically, any physically exerting task causes you to burn your caloric reserve up. Eventually we will modify these numbers for each archetype. (For example, Centaurs will likely require more food to feed two stomachs.)

The best way to get those points back is to eat food!

When the food resource pool hits different thresholds, a variety of things might affect your character which represents their physical state of the vessel they are inhabiting. While Crows are immortal, the vessels they inhabit are not.

Here are the things that affect the character at the various food thresholds:

Over 70% - Everything is normal as the character feels satiated
Less than 70% - natural Health and Mana regeneration turn off
Less than 30% - Stamina regeneration turns off and the player can no longer Sprint
Less than 10% - The player takes damage every 5 seconds until they hit 20% Health. This won’t kill you, but you will be pretty much stuck at 20% Health.
Stay above 70% on your food pool (or "chicken ticker" as Billy G likes to call it) and you’ll be doing great!

Anyone in on the alpha testing on this? Wondering how it's looking. I'm hearing combat's still not so great.

I'm in but not logged in since their last pass at the combat animations

They just introduced Myrmidon/Minotaur - powers and UI explained, and below is cow in action:

Also, some procedural terrain generation "live" (players will use this tool to build personal kingdoms), thou the vid is long and kinda tech heavy:

I've had bad luck a few times recently trying to log into to Alpha. Would wait 10-15 minutes in a queue just to be dumped into a test zone. Too many other games grabbing my attention at the moment.

In "September-October" they're going to start moving into persistence. Should be interesting!

cheeba wrote:

Anyone in on the alpha testing on this? Wondering how it's looking. I'm hearing combat's still not so great.

Nothing unusual for pre-alpha. Anyway, you can make your own conclusion - here's Druid (heal/support/range):

...and Minotaur (berserker / tank):

cheeba wrote:

In "September-October" they're going to start moving into persistence. Should be interesting!

Ah, classical PR optimism. I'd be happy if it happens in November-December.

JamesGoblin wrote:
cheeba wrote:

In "September-October" they're going to start moving into persistence. Should be interesting!

Ah, classical PR optimism. I'd be happy if it happens in November-December.

That's not PR optimism, I'm just quoting them from a recent interview.

I don't think JamesGoblin was doubting that you were quoting them, I think he is referring to the fact that dates given by PR and/or devs are like fairy dust

Squeee! SWG crafting is back!

ranalin wrote:

Squeee! SWG crafting is back!

So I can write a script to do my knitting for me while I play an actual game on another device?

Big world testing started, preview by TheLazyPeon (if you know about the game, skip first ~100 seconds - that's where he introduces his followers to Crowfall):

...and some recent combat footage by ItsZiz:

Mixolyde wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Squeee! SWG crafting is back!

So I can write a script to do my knitting for me while I play an actual game on another device?

Hmm...I hope not!?!

cheeba wrote:
JamesGoblin wrote:
cheeba wrote:

In "September-October" they're going to start moving into persistence. Should be interesting!

Ah, classical PR optimism. I'd be happy if it happens in November-December.

That's not PR optimism, I'm just quoting them from a recent interview.

I know, it's about the quote itself, not you - as Senkrad already explained.

If you're playing this and squeamish about FFA pvp you may want to hold off. It's full loot drop when you die.

It's actually annoying when trying to play with the ranged classes because they dont start with basic weapons so you have to craft them first. Which while getting ganked trying to make said weapons is only for the most patient.

Does that include casters? (druid and confessor)

fangblackbone wrote:

Does that include casters? (druid and confessor)

yea all range

Edit:
The ranger and duelist is a bit of a double whammy because you need to build a melee weapon along with your range weapon for a full kit.

(this is supposed to change eventually)

So the game would be a dream for a D&D style monk class.

I kickstarted this campaign and have absolutely zero interest in in right now. This does NOT have anything to do with what the game is putting out there.

karmajay wrote:

I kickstarted this campaign and have absolutely zero interest in in right now. This does NOT have anything to do with what the game is putting out there.

How so? I admit they're being slow, but they're building toward everything they've talked about so far. The stuff going on now is truly PRE-alpha. Testing and putting systems in place.

What we're playing now in no way represents the actual game, but systems that will be within the game.

I am a little surprised but I guess I shouldn't be that the first play tests will be on a world with open loot rules. It is what the hardest of the hardcore backers want. I just think it is interesting since most of the game world options are not open loot. If I am not getting my games mixed up, there will be only one open loot world and the rest will be 1 item (chance?) in pvp, 1 item (chance?) and no loot on death.
I need to go find that graphic of the regions and the rules associated with them.

edit: looks like there is always 100% inventory drop but depending on which tier you are in, there is 0% to 30% or 50% chance one of your equipped items drops. (1st tier = 0%, 2nd tier = 10%, 3rd tier = 20%, 4th tier = ??%)

One thing i've always found in full loot games is that if you don't join day 1 and play as much as the most eager ganker you're basically s.o.l. , have fun getting perma ganked every which way and moment possible :/

To be fair, that happens to most people who actually DO meet your requirements as well.