vkromas

Hello! Someone gave me a heads up about this thread and I thought it would be a good idea to pop in here and say a few things. The absolute first of which is that, even though Crowfall is currently a live product, it is in no way, shape, or form, completed. I've mentioned this before a few times, but one of the unique attributes of working on a live game is the ability to iterate after a few play cycles. I'm going to use our skill trees as an actual example of this iteration cycle to hopefully paint a bigger picture of how the iteration process on a live product can work. Up until a few cycles ago our talent trees didn't exist and everything was tied to a skill tree, and those trees were really in-depth. After some observation, play testing, and brainstorming, the vessel talent trees were drafted up and added as a way to add a bit more customization without passive training. We have a lot of talks internally about our current systems and how they are affected by learning curves and guild dynamics. We have a laundry list of items we'd like to adjust over time, and adjustments to the crafting system and the general economy are just some of the key items we're always discussing. While I can't say "yay" or "nay" to any suggestions mentioned here, or in other threads, what I can say is that constructive feedback is always welcome and appreciated. Threads like these are always great because it gets a dialog going between community members, and sometimes, developers.

This is all such great info! Thanks for streaming, and as always, I'll try my best to answer any of your questions if you have any related to design.

Hi! I'm going to be skewing your results because I just chose a poll value at random so I could see the results. Sorry about throwing off your poll position! Bookmarking this thread though. Seems like this is an ongoing conversation that's a pretty big topic lately and maybe we can use some of the feedback and ideas that come from these threads in the future.

Thank you! Also, I was able to wrangle Blair into responding to the dev partner forum post here: I'm going to go ahead and close out this thread and direct any other questions you may have to that particular forum. Thanks all!

Morning all, please forgive me, I've been dealing with an awful case of food poisoning and I'm just now able to come up for some air. I meant to follow up on this specific issue yesterday but I was kept from doing so by other forces. Let me rally some folks and I'll pop back in shortly, with some answers.

I also just want to take a moment to reiterate something. I really do appreciate all the engagement taking place, not just here but in other areas like Discord, Twitch, and Twitter. I just hope this doesn't come across as feeling hollow or like I'm just repeating the same phrase, but I legitimately thank you all for your objective comments and questions. Making a game isn't easy, but it definitely helps that you all have as much passion about our game as we do.THANK YOU!

Oh my gosh, I would love this! Let me talk with a few people and see if we can maybe do something along these lines. No promises, but I know I'm personally interested in this!

I think I've mentioned this before, but this is definitely something we're cognizant of in house. We're working on actually playing more like players now rather than game devs. In fact, I just heard someone say "I played this last night and as I player I think it needs tweaking". It's just one of those difficult aspects of game development, but we're working on doing more engagement with our game. Our game is pretty intimidating and we are going to try and make strides to continue to iterate on it. The Advantage/Disadvantage system is something we've talked about and still want to do. It's just a matter of scheduling it and planning for it accordingly. Most of y'all have played live products before so you understand that balancing is an ongoing thing, and it's something we're also aware of. It's an ongoing process that can feel pretty weird from both sides of the fence and we're still trying to find our cadence between balancing what's already in game and what's coming up. Hopefully we can keep making significant and noticeable strides in that regard.

You bring up some good points, especially how we could potentially be overwhelming new players or confusing them. We're in an interesting point in our dev cycle at the moment where we are still trying to create a game loop, entice new players, and also keep our current player base engaged. It's a tough line to toe, in all honesty, and from the sidelines it might seem very confusing, because we have so many irons in the fire. I don't have an easy answer for you with this specific subject because it really isn't an easy subject to tackle. From my understanding the concept of Gods Reach was introduced as a way to introduce new players to our game mechanics while also supplementing them with a new player experience. We're still working on this process and we've got some other things going through the pipe that may also facilitate game play for our more advanced players where what you just said (choices matter) will in fact be present. With all that being said, it's just a matter of time and patience that we're asking for on the part of our players. Our ultimate goal is to make something we can all enjoy and be proud of, but that kind of game play requires some collaboration across the board. I don't know if I've alleviated or increased your concerns, but that's why community engagement is one of our biggest priorities.

It's an interesting thought and I totally understand why someone would want some kind of exchange for their vessel. The concept of exchanging vessels is a notion we've been kicking around, we're just not sure how to go about it with a well thought out system. On top of that, we're also trying to nail down our remaining must have tech asks. Your suggestion is a cool concept for sure, we'll just have to be smart about how we can go about this when we get the ability to get some more tech time. Definitely making a note of this one when we get a bit more bandwidth and time to polish.

Oh, one other thing I touched on earlier; this subject is such a huge topic that I'm going to try and do at least one more followup live stream for this. Hopefully we'll have some more feedback on the leveling curve changes, maybe some more bug fixes with XP amounts with sacrifice items, and an opportunity to answer some of the more advanced questions. It's hard to talk about all of these things in just one live stream, so if I didn't touch on a point you were curious about please know I didn't intentionally ignore it or forget it. I think next stream will also be a bit more organized and may even include even more player feedback. With that said, are there any lingering questions, concerns, or general curiosity that I haven't even touched up that you would like to hear more about? Thanks again for all the quality constructive feedback; it really does help!

Here I go, again not saying everything I should. What can I say, I'm just so excited about this discussion that I'm not painting the full picture. So, an upcoming feature that's currently in the works is introducing an item quality to disciplines which will also require a like quality vessel to slot those disciplines. I'm going to hold off on saying any more about this since Thomas Blair may have a better explanation for it, but hopefully this aspect will still keep some of that Shadowbane feel to it.

I knew some of y'all would call this out and I'm glad you did. I think this leads into an even bigger discussion about retro-fixing things, especially the crafting loop. With our current campaign cadence, time is an extremely high factor in not only leveling a current vessel, but collecting mats, organizing groups to help search for those rare materials and motherlodes, and crafting items. I can definitely see as a player how these specific aspects can compound into an even more stressful experience. I can totally sympathize when you collect these rare items and then get hit with a FLAWED assembly; it can be pretty disheartening and frustrating. Let me look at how our current recipes are set up and see what things we can do to help mitigate that problem. I can't make any promises on specific items just yet, but I'm all about looking at things as they are and seeing if there is something we can do to help alleviate some of the big pitfalls.

This vendor might not make it into our next Live update, but he should be visible within the 5.90 release cycle. I'll make sure to call it out in the patch notes.

This is a fantastic question that I'm not quite sure how to answer since we're still trying to find that balance between level curves, adding more ways to gain XP, and facilitating a better flow. Unfortunately, this specific issue is not going to be an easy fix, and it's going to take some time and collaboration with you all to figure out where our major holes are and how we can adjust accordingly.