Inspired by other games- Crowfall

Is there any games of inspiration that you hope Intrepid is looking at? Steven mainly mentions AA,L2 and has mentioned a few others along the way.

So while not a successful game by any means one thing I keep coming back to while reading about AoC is the similarities between Crowfall and AoC.

I hear Steven talk about Arche Age and Lineage 2 but for me it was Asheron's Call,UO and Crowfall when I think of super engrossing moments. I dabbled in both L2 and AA but nothing substantial.

So just wanted to throw a couple things from Crowfall that I think they did really well.

1) First off I will say most people reading this are not excited enough for Sieges. I am telling you right now that once you are in one, there's is nothing more intense in an MMORPG. Crowfall messed up the server size and created "Zergs". 250 vs 50 fights. Either way It's pure adrenaline and chaos and incredibly fun.

2) Crowd Control : In CF the game had a retaliate function that every player had. Once CCed hard you had one free escape on a cool down. It also allowed you to attack back which created a bit of strategy in applying CC to people. Also didn't feel so limiting and no trinket was required. Some classes had variations to this function as well which added further utility. Not sure what AoCs plan is but I think something like this would be good, at least similar?

Crowfall also had actual blinds in the game,turned your screen black when you were blinded which acted like a Hard CC mechanic, just as a side note.

3). Combat Mechanics. After seeing Mage and Cleric I am happy with how mechanical the skills are and frankly in a PVP game this is the most important.

Crowfall did have Combos, with some skill changing depending on the 2nd and 3rd button used. Which added a nice easy skill check when playing. Maybe Ashes could try dabbling in this a bit?

It also had very mechanical skills. If Crowfall.did anything right it was their class and combat mechanics. So I really hope Intrepid takes a look and uses some inspiration from Crowfall as they develop.the classes and augments because it was definitely a high point for me.

They had one class that was a bit controversial but it was an enrage that once you started you had like 10 seconds, if you missed your window you pretty much died. Either way just pointing out that they tried a lot of very creative combat mechanics and hopefully Steven/Intrepid can use some of it for ideas.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Ludullu

Yes, sieges are very fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1feB1I0ohQ

Fantmx

Asheron's Call,UO and Crowfall

One of these is not like the other.

Fiddlez

Fantmx wrote: »

Asheron's Call,UO and Crowfall

One of these is not like the other.

Yeah I know. I'm old but I was just referring to the games that really were the highest points of gaming that I had.

In UO I was essentially a bounty hunter and had PK hunt me down and set up ambushes. Which escalated in to long days of PVP.

Asheron's Call was actually a big PVP game but was my first experience with large scale PVP and another multiple day PVP created event.

Crowfall I think speaks for itself.

Wow had so.e good moments but the other three definitely come out on top for memorable moments.

Noaani

Fiddlez wrote: »

Crowfall I think speaks for itself.

Indeed it does.

Because of that, imo its best we not speak of it at all.

Fiddlez

Noaani wrote: »

Fiddlez wrote: »

Crowfall I think speaks for itself.

Indeed it does.

Because of that, imo its best we not speak of it at all.

Don't think that's fair, bad oversight doesn't mean everyone else below were bad. Crowfall had amazing PVP. If not some of the best. Someone there had a good idea what to do.

Dygz

What made Crowfall PvP great and... how would that fit into the Ashes game design?

Ashes' A1 Sieges were fun. I'm not aware of A1 players being under-hyped about Sieges.
I think we probably have to have more hands on with all of the Primary and Secondary Archetypes in Ashes before we can meaningfully consider how anything from Crowfall classes could be adopted for Ashes.

Barab

The A1 sieges were non meaningful test fights with testers without their full guilds nor any real in game consequences for results. Of course it's subjective but everyone I fought with in the siege tests had fun and look forward to more siege testing.

In my opinion, Crowfall and AoC share the player driven territory control as well as repercussions of player/guild/alliance/nations actions. Same could be said for Archeage, LL2, Shadowbane, MO2 and others. Words, actions, relationships have more meaning and worth in worlds such as these games.

Personally my guild has always had far more fun in a mmo sandbox like world where players had asset control that could be gained or loss. I really hope the mmo masses that have never experienced large scale pvp give it a chance because it really can be a fun enjoyable experience regardless of the fights outcome in a victory or defeat.

And yes large scale fights over castles, keeps, forts, POIs in Crowfall was a blast just as they were in DAOC, Shadowbane, Archeage etc.

https://youtu.be/POfYBt2mZWA

Veeshan

The best crowfall seige was on UXA castle that had the pre nerfed gaia statue where u zapped any player you were next to. The clump zerg warfare in crowfall was frankly shit the only good seige there was when one side use the gaia statue that punished people for clumping up.
but then the zerg alliance cried on the forums and it got nerfed within a week, unfortuently that one zerg guild kinda ruined crowfall in many regards with there crying and spam posts on the forums where they got all there members saying it a great idea to scew public perspecting of everyone hating it but the one guild who it benfits cause it was a suggestion to make it easier to zerg every time

Spif

Zergs are a necessary part of a large area PvP conflict game because they promote inclusiveness. It allows the less skilled or gear-optimized to participate and win sometimes. Winning sometimes is CRUCIAL. Getting rewards from PvP (without those rewards being participation based rather than win based) is also crucial. Zergs keep the average PvP player from always being beaten by the high-skill/highly-geared set groups. Because once players realizes they're being farmed, they will stop PvPing. Now those top level groups have less people to fight and they get bored.

But at the same time, zerg-busting and zerg avoidance needs to be a thing too. There are many mechanics for this. I can point to ESO (several years ago anyway) as one of the best games for promoting large scale PvP inclusiveness via it's PvP mechanics: 3-sided, small and large group objectives, very large PvP zone, stealth for any class, zerg and counter zerg abilities, PvE-useful rewards from PvPing to go with the usual PvP-useful rewards from PvEing. And the community fought about zerg vs counter-zerg abilities like AE target caps

I'm not sure any of this applies to AoC though. Guild zerg power is an intended mechanic to claim the best farming/leveling spots.

Dygz

Barab wrote: »

In my opinion, Crowfall and AoC share the player driven territory control as well as repercussions of player/guild/alliance/nations actions. Same could be said for Archeage, LL2, Shadowbane, MO2 and others. Words, actions, relationships have more meaning and worth in worlds such as these games.

I disagree, but this pov is exactly what Steven has been stressing for the past year. Yes.

Barab wrote: »

I really hope the mmo masses that have never experienced large scale pvp give it a chance because it really can be a fun enjoyable experience regardless of the fights outcome in a victory or defeat.

Yep. The goal is for large scale PvP to be a fun enjoyable experience regardless of whether the outcome is victory or defeat. And A1 Sieges are all that.
Steven will definitely have hit that nail square in its head.

Sathrago

The problem with crowfall was mostly the massive investment in different character races. Ive done the numbers before, but they had like 15 different races of vastly different models that all had a male and female option and all needed to do their own style of animations for all of the skills across all of their classes. This alone probably devoured their worktime and their wallets. It was a horrible path to go down and in my opinion, is why they never even got to flesh out the rest of the game.

As for learning from crowfall, Repurpose, repurpose, and more repurposing. Recycle everything you can and try to use what you have already created in different ways to save on making another entire system, animation, spell effect, etc.

KingDDD

Sathrago wrote: »

The problem with crowfall was mostly the massive investment in different character races. Ive done the numbers before, but they had like 15 different races of vastly different models that all had a male and female option and all needed to do their own style of animations for all of the skills across all of their classes. This alone probably devoured their worktime and their wallets. It was a horrible path to go down and in my opinion, is why they never even got to flesh out the rest of the game.

As for learning from crowfall, Repurpose, repurpose, and more repurposing. Recycle everything you can and try to use what you have already created in different ways to save on making another entire system, animation, spell effect, etc.

The amount of races didn't help but they wasted a lot of animations in general, for example the basic attacks were 3 separate animations for attacks that really didn't add much.

Every single patch in the game rebalanced systems like crafting which in reality made the systems a complete mess at launch. For a game run by supposed industry vets it was just an all around cluster fuck.

Also the sieges in Crowfall were trash. It was the most one dimensional siege system I've seen, and was worse than something like DAoC from two decades ago.

Dygz

Bwahaha!!!

Fiddlez

Dygz wrote: »

What made Crowfall PvP great and... how would that fit into the Ashes game design?

Ashes' A1 Sieges were fun. I'm not aware of A1 players being under-hyped about Sieges.
I think we probably have to have more hands on with all of the Primary and Secondary Archetypes in Ashes before we can meaningfully consider how anything from Crowfall classes could be adopted for Ashes.

I just haven't heard anyone talking about it much. I wasn't specifically referring to A1 players.

Crowfall PVP was incessant. It was designed as far more of a hardcore PVP game with full drop, inventory and gear. At least in the part that mattered. It was either fighting teams of 25+ forts. 5s for Outposts and then like 100 for Sieges.(very loose numbers obviously). It was a battle for who could get the most points in a season. Which meant if you logged on you were going to get in a fight.(I am not sure how guild wars looks in this game, I know there's a win/loss mechanic but I wouldn't be opposed to a similar version.

Class system was designed around groups heavily. To the point when you made a character you would theory craft your whole group not just your character and people would fill those roles(ideally) Alot of fun for theory crafters.

Combat is the part I think AoC should look closer at though, from what I can tell with new Streams is they are actually more the same then different , hard to tell though .Essentially there were Combos, AAs in alot of cases had Combos, skills were not just 1-10 but would be placed into a set combo you could use, screwing up the combo was punishing. Also, do you pick your damage combo or CC combo.

Class mechanics had things like Storm druid that would leave heal orbs which also exploded for damage when picked up, Vindicator could hold a parry and if attacked would retaliate for big damage, Frost call could leave traps on the ground that if the player hit you could use to combo big damage.

Look Crowfall was definitely a very different type of game in most cases. My point is that development still seems early enough that if these devs had a piece of magic when they made their classes that I am simply hoping the AoC draws on some inspiration from it.

Fiddlez

Veeshan wrote: »

The best crowfall seige was on UXA castle that had the pre nerfed gaia statue where u zapped any player you were next to. The clump zerg warfare in crowfall was frankly shit the only good seige there was when one side use the gaia statue that punished people for clumping up.
but then the zerg alliance cried on the forums and it got nerfed within a week, unfortuently that one zerg guild kinda ruined crowfall in many regards with there crying and spam posts on the forums where they got all there members saying it a great idea to scew public perspecting of everyone hating it but the one guild who it benfits cause it was a suggestion to make it easier to zerg every time

I thought it was decent. If you were organized and skilled you could definitely create a decent tug o war. I know what guild you are talking about though and sad enough to say they were probably the root cause of why the game died in some regards but let's be honest...they took advantage a badly designed system

Fiddlez

KingDDD wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

The problem with crowfall was mostly the massive investment in different character races. Ive done the numbers before, but they had like 15 different races of vastly different models that all had a male and female option and all needed to do their own style of animations for all of the skills across all of their classes. This alone probably devoured their worktime and their wallets. It was a horrible path to go down and in my opinion, is why they never even got to flesh out the rest of the game.

As for learning from crowfall, Repurpose, repurpose, and more repurposing. Recycle everything you can and try to use what you have already created in different ways to save on making another entire system, animation, spell effect, etc.

The amount of races didn't help but they wasted a lot of animations in general, for example the basic attacks were 3 separate animations for attacks that really didn't add much.

Every single patch in the game rebalanced systems like crafting which in reality made the systems a complete mess at launch. For a game run by supposed industry vets it was just an all around cluster fuck.

Also the sieges in Crowfall were trash. It was the most one dimensional siege system I've seen, and was worse than something like DAoC from two decades ago.

Yeah I think management was out to lunch on this one also, though I did enjoy the sieges Pre Launch. The systems were definitely head scratchers though. My favorite part was probably the in-between siege window because of that. I LOVED the smaller scale stuff.

It failed for alot of reasons but I quit when the Alliances just became 300 man Zergs and crashed the servers with 5 minutes of nothing moving. Point is they failed for ALOT of reasons

Dygz

Fiddlez wrote: »

I just haven't heard anyone talking about it much. I wasn't specifically referring to A1 players.

Because there hasn't been any new info about Sieges since A1 closed 2 years ago.

Barab

Dygz wrote: »

Barab wrote: »

In my opinion, Crowfall and AoC share the player driven territory control as well as repercussions of player/guild/alliance/nations actions. Same could be said for Archeage, LL2, Shadowbane, MO2 and others. Words, actions, relationships have more meaning and worth in worlds such as these games.

I disagree, but this pov is exactly what Steven has been stressing for the past year.

Dygz

I am sure similar to yourself we both have been playing MMOS since the 1990’s. Our differences I assume are my guild has not only played the theme park mmos but also the more sandbox territorial conquest pvp mmos as well as the more “faction” based pvp mmos.

Basically, every mmo since The Realm we have alpha and/or beta tested or played as an official chapter.

That being said, I would love to understand why you believe even in a pvx designed mmo such as AoC that individual, guilds, alliances, national node relationships would not have far more worth and meaning than found in a theme park mmo such as WoW or FFIV ? Because from our collective experience we have not found such to be true.

Reputations will matter more so, relationships will matter more so, actions from all functions such as trading to non-aggression pacts between guilds to nation nodes down to individual interactions will have far more value and worth in a player driven content mmo such as @StevenSharif has designed and presented AoC to be.

Correct me if I am wrong, as I mean no disrespect, but I swore I remember you saying on a podcast you wouldn’t play AoC at release due to the threat of pvp anywhere ?

Regardless I really hope you give AoC a good run through a2 testing. Different visions of what is fun in a mmo is healthy for testing feedback.

Fantmx

Crowfall was simply not a fun game.

If it was, it would not have closed down.

Fantmx

Barab wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Barab wrote: »

In my opinion, Crowfall and AoC share the player driven territory control as well as repercussions of player/guild/alliance/nations actions. Same could be said for Archeage, LL2, Shadowbane, MO2 and others. Words, actions, relationships have more meaning and worth in worlds such as these games.

I disagree, but this pov is exactly what Steven has been stressing for the past year.

Dygz

I am sure similar to yourself we both have been playing MMOS since the 1990’s. Our differences I assume are my guild has not only played the theme park mmos but also the more sandbox territorial conquest pvp mmos as well as the more “faction” based pvp mmos.

Basically, every mmo since The Realm we have alpha and/or beta tested or played as an official chapter.

That being said, I would love to understand why you believe even in a pvx designed mmo such as AoC that individual, guilds, alliances, national node relationships would not have far more worth and meaning than found in a theme park mmo such as WoW or FFIV ? Because from our collective experience we have not found such to be true.

Reputations will matter more so, relationships will matter more so, actions from all functions such as trading to non-aggression pacts between guilds to nation nodes down to individual interactions will have far more value and worth in a player driven content mmo such as @StevenSharif has designed and presented AoC to be.

Correct me if I am wrong, as I mean no disrespect, but I swore I remember you saying on a podcast you wouldn’t play AoC at release due to the threat of pvp anywhere ?

Regardless I really hope you give AoC a good run through a2 testing. Different visions of what is fun in a mmo is healthy for testing feedback.

From our experiences come our opinions

Child Item