Crowfall: Play2Crush Clarified; New City Siege Concept Art and Character Creation Screenshot
So it would seem that ArtCraft Entertainment bent a few noses out of joint with the rather bombastic language employed on the Play2Crush website.
Were you put off by Crowfall’s hardcore “play2crush” reveal just before Christmas? You weren’t alone. One player told studio ArtCraft that the original announcement “felt a little too political attack ad” — and he got an official response on the game’s new forums.
That response read thusly:
You know, that original play2crush site wasn’t meant to be “everyone else sucks.” It was a mea culpa. We’re the guys who make these games. The first line was “where did WE go wrong?” “We” didn’t mean everyone else, it meant us. It meant me. I wrote that because I feel like I have let you down… by not pushing myself to innovate.
The language at Play2Crush doesn’t seem particularly self-referential at first glance, but…eh, I do think there was some merit to what they were claiming. The message at Play2Crush speaks to the hardcore PvP mentality more than anything else, and it wouldn’t be incorrect to observe that the gaming industry has shied away from that particular MMORPG “feature” (I use the term somewhat loosely) over the last decade or so. Not without reason, of course…but there are still players who long for the sort of free-for-all PvP experience offered by e.g. Ultima Online in its earliest incarnation.
As well, the ArtCraft team released concept art of a city under siege, which can be seen above. They also released the first screenshot from the game, which showcases the character creation process:
Why show character creation first? A few reasons:
– This a functional prototype of character creation (with actual 2D and 3D game assets), not just a mockup. The character (the Knight archetype) is a fully modeled and animated avatar.
– That character will give you a small taste of the Character art style. Compare this character to our concepts, you can see that we’re shooting for a fairly literal translation of the style.
– This shot shows off the initial class (archetype) selection options, exposing the wide array of base characters (archetypes)
– It also provides solid hints at the inner working of a handful of core systems: Combat, movement, skills, advancement and (of course) character creation / customization
– It showcases the user interface style. As you can see, we’re going for a streamlined and modern look — emphasizing quick access to game information over the standard “parchment and leather” fare.
I’ll admit to finding the character art style rather appealing. The Steam-like user interface? Not as much.
Sometimes I think there is a disease that only affects the minds of game developers and whose symptoms including making bold statements and proceeding to directly contradict them through cookie cutter design decisions. So far innovation seems defined by a spreadsheet-like grid of statistics with hard numbers and a RUNIC FUCKING CIRCLE. Texturing a quad with a runic circle should be made a crime against humanity, punishable by death via the Hague in the Netherlands. I made that point (using different language of course) to Richard Garriott and I’ll be damned if he didn’t actually modify SotA’s [N]PC highlighting to use an outline instead of a glowing circle. I guess after playing enough RPG’s and MMO’s and having runic circles burned into your mind and out through the back of your skull you begin to think there’s a universal law that runic circles are an integral component of game design, but for Christ’s sake they are not innovative.
Rant over, here’s to hoping this game will in fact be innovative, even if that innovation is simply to bring an MMO back to something like Ultima Online but with lessons learned. As it stands Crowfall’s got sweaty palms and two strikes against it. Take a step back guys and consider what you’re doing at a fundamental level. Assume nothing and look upon the world you’re creating with the eyes of a child. Build small-scale systems and allow them to interact naturally; larger-scale systems will emerge from these with minimal prodding. Let the players discover these interactions on their own like peeling back the layers of an onion. The joys of intuitive and logical interactions between multiple small systems progress from discovery to creative experimentation to mastery; that’s what makes a game like Ultima great. And avoid cliches…like runic circles.
Crowfall seems to have attracted a small fanbase already, largely comprised of hardcore PvPers looking for another “no restrictions”-type free-for-all…in a fantasy setting, at least. Rust exists, but it’s just not the same (or so I gather).
Hmm. I read the short Wikipedia article about Rust and it sounds interesting though it didn’t mention any mechanics other than the immediately physical. It sounds more like deathmatch with crafting and housing.
Hopefully the Crowfall devs, if they’re going for unrestricted PvP, will figure out how to balance the obvious results of that with mechanics that don’t include “invisible walls”, or “bandaids” as I like to call them. The problem with games so far that try to implement unrestricted PvP is they don’t consider all the other mechanics necessary to properly balance its consequences. The game is either a deathmatch nightmare or ends up being nerfed with invisible wall-style rules and/or heavily policed by GMs with godlike powers of banning. Nothing like being banned by a GM to break immersion…
Simply put, every action needs a counter or defensive action that can be used to mitigate or negate it. If you can loot someone’s house, there needs to be a way to lock the doors and windows, for example. If you can pick a lock, there needs to be a way to bar the door from the inside. If you can break down wooden doors, there needs to be an option to have metal doors. Set things on fire, douse burning things with buckets of water. Harvest crops, plant seeds. Break a bone, set a cast. It’s not rocket science, just common sense and implementing unobtrusive systems and interfaces to support it. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.