IHeartFargo

I haven’t posted in a long while (been watching quietly from the wings), but I wanted to say this is the best thought experiment I’ve seen posted on these boards in months, and one that I hope has its conclusions thought out seriously.

One of the best Q&As in months. Very interesting question about mobs dropping resources beyond leather. Could see that having great effects if mobs and nodes were places nearby, so harvesters and combat players have more of a reason to be together in the field than just protecting harvesters. Excited for 5.3 and beyond.

Literally never thought I'd see you write this post. We fight almost incessantly whenever we talk, and it usually gets nasty. But I want to say sorry. I couldn't agree with this more, and you did a much better job than I usually do at delivering this. So thank you, @scree.

Just want to chime in that as someone who was a KS backer and has followed this game closely for two years now, I'm exiting. My intention was always to be a gathering main. Crafting doesn't interest me, and neither does combat. I make things for a living and I'll always find better combat outside of MMOs than in them. Gathering in MMOs is why I play them, and clearly it is either not something that's been deeply considered or, and I find this much more likely, it's not valued by design leads of the team. I say this having been an alpha and a friends and family tester for nearly a dozen games across genres, and as someone who works in the industry. This is bad. I hope people who find the game enjoyable continue to do so, that they continue to support ACE financially and otherwise, and that Crowfall has a long life. But I'm out. EDIT: I have a year of VIP to flip. If anyone still finds VIP worthwhile and wants more, message me.

Todd has entered his "Hot Dad" phase of development.

Dude, we almost never see eye-to-eye but I love this idea.

That second part is a pretty big claim. The past few decades are a boneyard of companies dedicated to a vision that seemed sound and profitable. Not say that will be the case with ACE, but I'm also not going to assert that things will just turn out fine if they stay the course. They might, but they also might not. That's why you hedge your bets.

Okay so the claim is that the people who are the target audience are already enough of the mind that the system functions as it should, and get enjoyment from all aspects of that system either as they are or as they are believed to be at launch, that there isn't a need to attract people from outside that niche, at least not to break even consistently? Just checking. I can't refute that claim out of hand. It may be true. But I also don't understand what ACE would lose if they were able to both retain that niche core and attract additional players from outside of it, without diluting what originally enticed that niche core. That's the part I have difficulty understanding. I'm not sure I can debate the practicality of it overall. Funding and time are both very limited, probably more so than most people realize. But I think that many simple and small adjustments would go a long way toward attracting a larger base (again, without alienating the core) at relatively low initial cost and with likely significant monetary gains in time. That's mostly what I'm arguing for when I talk about these things: small, incremental changes that don't dilute the larger vision.

I think you can still have all three of these propositions be true (1] Specialization should be both important and difficult, 2] The early game experience should be seamless enough to entice new players without disrupting the mid- or late-stage economies, and 3] that the game will remain niche and cater primarily to that niche) simultaneously. That may not be true, but what I haven't quite heard from a design standpoint is why that may not be true. I tend to get a lot of heat for asking this question, but mostly it has been of the variety that doesn't actually answer my question. Hence why I keep asking it. That said, I try not to be too aggressive about it. I know that my views aren't commonly held here, and my ultimate interest is always only in getting ACE to a point where CF will start and remain profitable enough to truly grow over time.

When did it become a borderline heretic position to believe that a game can simultaneously gate off expertise and have an enjoyable early-game experience across functions? I'm genuinely interested to learn. Because I never remember this being the case even years ago when hardcore gamers were the average population in MMOs, and as a game designer and developer I just don't see the sense behind it or the evidence for it. What I do see is a position held strongly by a portion of the community that would result in a very ugly business case for any company.

This is why we need to stop maligning gatherer and crafters. They're providing valuable feedback, as valuable as the core PvP folk. We can't afford to not comment on this stuff at this point. Very much looking forward to the article you're writing.

I would much prefer a system whereby you could choose what metals to make items out of but they would each come with both costs and benefits. Iron would be rigid, gold soft, etc., etc. That way there's more real choice about what kind of gear you want to be using at any given time beyond the pretty minor buffs the materials confer. That said, I find the possibility of this so extremely unlikely I don't even hope for it.

This. For all the parallels drawn to EVE to defend the current levels of risk for gatherers, there seems to be a pretty poor understanding of how risk is actually handled in EVE.