Crowfall - Throne War - (GoT Meets EvE Online)

Pyre

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MILESTONE 1: COMBAT TESTING
Hey folks,

Things are moving forward nicely on our first major milestone, so let's talk a bit about what we will be testing and when!

Internally, we've divided the features and content into two categories: stuff related to the summer test release, and stuff that we won't be testing this summer but we need to have people working on right now to make our longer-term dates.

The latter set of features is much, much larger than the former. The "future" list includes things like the EK and campaign world building, character creation and advancement, voxelization’ and destruction, guild management, economy, and so forth. It's a big list, and we'll be working on this stuff in the background, and revealing it to you as we get deeper and deeper into development.

That said, the "future" list isn't the most important list. The first and most critical feature that we need to tackle is: COMBAT. Specifically, PvP combat. Combat, as a system, actually encompasses a significant amount of functionality, functionality that we absolutely MUST nail first.

Having a solid combat experience means we have a GREAT foundation on which we can build the rest of the game. The opposite is equally true: If the combat system sucks, then the rest of the game—campaigns, kingdoms, fealty trees, etc.—won't matter because no one will care.
more @ http://crowfall.com/#/news/milestone-1-combat-testing

COIN OF THE REALM
So, here's the deal.

We need some liquid form of currency. Yeah, I know, Blair said he was hoping that we could avoid it, but that's crazy talk. If we don't have SOME kind of transferable currency, it means that everything would have to be bartered -- or, more likely, players would invent their own currencies. That's annoying. No one wants to manage a system where they set their vendors to sell a longsword for X number of chickens or they have to pay their taxes in Y acorns. Could we make that system work? I don't know. Maybe. But it certainly would be less than ideal from a usability perspective.

That said, we can avoid the pitfalls of "common currency" that are typical for a linear PvE game. We can still have the benefits of a player-driven economy, we just need to provide a simple collection of items to facilitate an easy flow of "value" between players.
more @ http://crowfall.com/#/news/coin-of-the-realm

ARCHETYPE UPDATE: THE CENTAUR
http://crowfall.com/#/news/archetype-update-the-centaur
EricCentaur1.jpg


Centaur_lineup_02.jpg
 

Pyre

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Hey gang,

Let’s talk COMBAT.

As you know, we’re going to be inviting our first external testers to explore the combat system late this summer. Today’s update is to talk about where we are going and how we hope to get there.

First, we should answer this question: What is the purpose of the “core combat” milestone?

“Find the Fun.” This is a phrase that game developers use when they talk about building new game systems. When designing a game system, you have to decide how much ‘innovation’ you can afford.

The simple fact is that a lot of ideas sound fun on paper (or a whiteboard) and turn out NOT to be fun in practice. Even worse than that, sometimes ideas that COULD be fun aren’t because implementation issues crop up (bugs, gross imbalance, UI issues, bad framerate, whatever) that effectively ‘hide’ the fun that you should be having.

Why was Tetris fun? It’s hard to put a finger on exactly why this combination of elements was more fun than all of the other ‘falling pieces’ games that came before (or, frankly, since).

Therefore, the chances of your development team finding the fun in any game is, quite often, a function of how many chances you have to iterate on it. You start with a strong suspicion that there is gold right here, and you keep digging until you find it.
http://crowfall.com/?utm_source=ATC...dd16f7-291550061#/news/combat-finding-the-fun
 

Pyre

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The Confessor

...is our first damage-dealing caster. The confessor is all about firepower — both figuratively and literally. Thematically, she fits the "glass cannon" role, and is capable of dealing massive amounts of damage from a (preferably safe) distance. In addition to direct damage, she has a number of tricks and combos that revolve around either damaging her opponent directly, burning them over time, building up "sin" in her opponent (and subsequently “absolving” it through fire), or scorching the earth in a hail of Holy Fire.

The Knight

...is our first heavily armored tank. The knight is a heavily defensive fighter; capable of dealing a lot of damage and absorbing a hell of a lot more. Rather than get out of the way when a big hit or fireball is coming, he plants his feet, throws his shield up and takes it on the chin. The knight's powers and combos typically center on blocking, shield slams, and movement control – but what he gives up in mobility, he makes up for in affecting the mobility of others. Often by killing them.

The Legionnaire

...is our battle commander — making him our first support class. His support powers are geared towards close combat, requiring him to be in the thick of battle to make the best use of them. He can rally his team with increased combat capabilities while using his mighty polearm to lay waste to any enemy foolish enough to stand in his path. His centaur body makes him an interesting mix: He has increased mobility (in both powers and movement speed) that seem at odds with his increased mass (powering his ability to charge, and making it very hard for other players to move him around the board with their physics-based powers).
more @ http://crowfall.com/#/news/meet-the-combatants

FOUNDERS’ UPDATE: BUSINESS STUFF
http://crowfall.com/#/news/founders-update-business-stuff
 
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