Isarii

The Dungeon Crawlers Episode 4: Crowfall – The MMORPG News and Discussion Podcast produced by The Dungeon Crawler Network! Join Aggelos, the Founder of The Dungeon Crawler Network, and his podcast crew as they cast light on the depths of online multiplayer gaming and bring you the latest news, lively genre meta discussions, and heated debates about the RPGs and MMORPGs that we so love! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2ZFtXtQGs This week, the crew is joined by avid fan of MMORPG crafting and economic mechanics and writer over at MMO-Central.com, Anhrez (@anhrez) to discuss the upcoming MMO from Artcraft Entertainment, Crowfall. Show Notes: General Overview of Crowfall State of the Game Crafting Discussion Extravaganza Survival Mechanics Podcast Information: Your Show Hosts: Aggelos (@Aggelos_WoF), Isarii (@ethanmacfie), Taruha (@Taruha_Gaming) Listen to The Dungeon Crawlers Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube Follow The Dungeon Crawlers Podcast: Website, Twitter, Facebook Follow The Dungeon Crawler Network: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Twitch.tv, YouTube If you wish to support The Dungeon Crawlers Podcast and The Dungeon Crawler Network, consider clicking the donate link on the bottom of our website or support us over at our Patreon Page, Patreon.com/DungeonCrawlerNetwork! You can also support us by subscribing to our YouTube channel, leaving us a review on iTunes and Google Play, or by telling a friend about us!

This is why community is important. Killing someone you know is so much more fun than killing some random nameless person.

Your guild is a hard-tie connection. I believe we were talking about weak-tie (or soft-touch) interdependence at that point.

Star Wars Galaxies allowed players to blend resources at a crafting station to average out their stats. A mobile version could make sense for Crowfall, and it would introduce an interesting dynamic for considering whether or not marginal increases in quality are worth the inventory slot.

Don't say horrible things.

I've got to be honest, @courant101, while I normally enjoy your posts, this one seems a lot like you're narrowly focusing on one specific low-to-no context quote from early development, while ignoring everything else they ever said - even from the same time period. Crowfall was never marketed to us as a murderbox where we hop into the campaigns and kill with as little preparation as one would have in games like Call of Duty, which is what the thread title of "skill based no grind" leads me to believe you expected. Many of us wouldn't be here if it had been. Take, for example, Thomas Blair's interview with MMORPG from January 2015. In it, he talks about the systems seen in Star Wars Galaxies (easily one of the grindiest games of all time) and says that "the closest model to ours is probably Eve Online". This is key, because many of your major complaints (those specific to EKs withstanding) are also present in EVE. The role of NPCs as an input faucet to the economy? Check. Stance on RMT? Check (EVE even supports account selling). VIP Ticket concerns? Basically just PLEX. Vessels? They couldn't be more conceptually similar to ships in EVE. When I followed the promise of the game Crowfall was being to developed into, I never saw the economy as anything but front and center, because that's exactly how it was being presented. That focus necessitates a lot of play time spent outside of the murderbox and a lot of weight placed on the value of that time by the designers. From where I'm standing, the reveals that you see as a reversal of course seem perfectly in line with the vision I was presented so long ago.

Surely making more forum posts will help.

Well, they have repeatedly said they're focusing on combat first, so if I had to guess, the reason that we're not getting crafting updates is probably because they're working on combat.

One thing to consider that I'm not seeing mentioned here is that high TTK contributes directly to the prevalence of zerging in PvP, as it lessens the impact of of a coordinated smaller group against a disorganized larger one by making it easier to counter the smaller team's tactic as more time is allowed to do so. Where a surprise coordinated stack of AoEs may have flattened a large portion of a zerg in seconds before, a high TTK would give them a lot more time to regroup and recover, even if they aren't that organized of a group.

This wouldn't work. As timing is key, interrupts need to be quick to fire.