Crowfall

Draegan_sl · Feb 17, 2015

The whole point is for the game not to get stagnant. There is plenty of data out there both anecdotal and hard evidence that more people play and enjoy the beginning of games/expansions. You'll also see that most popular games see a tick up of popularity/activity right before an expansion drops as they prepare characters. This aspect is held by carryover and permanent character advancement.

Plus this is a pure PVP game. Stagnation creates shitty games. The people on the losing side need to be able to start off from square one so they can enjoy playing again.

The best part is the landrush stage. I love that part of any game and here you can do that weekly or monthly or whatever they come up with. Assuming the game works and they don't have severe technical glitches and the game actually launches, it should be fun.

Nija · Feb 17, 2015

UO's inventory was awesome. Recall that you could do targeted pickpocketing in that game. Early in the game (the first two years or so) the item weight limit to stealing was such that if someone disarmed their crossbox (or even a greater crossbow) you could steal it out of their inventory.

Also people who were returning to the battles often didn't have time to set up a perfect arrangement on their inventory with trapped pouches and everything, so you could actually shut someone down by stealing all of their pearl.

I know, I know, nobody cares about features like this anymore - give me a dungeon finder and and a never ending WvW PVP playground with no meaning to it at all. Way of the road, boys.

etchazz · Feb 17, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
The whole point is for the game not to get stagnant. There is plenty of data out there both anecdotal and hard evidence that more people play and enjoy the beginning of games/expansions. You'll also see that most popular games see a tick up of popularity/activity right before an expansion drops as they prepare characters. This aspect is held by carryover and permanent character advancement.

Plus this is a pure PVP game. Stagnation creates shitty games. The people on the losing side need to be able to start off from square one so they can enjoy playing again.

The best part is the landrush stage. I love that part of any game and here you can do that weekly or monthly or whatever they come up with. Assuming the game works and they don't have severe technical glitches and the game actually launches, it should be fun.

I'm taking it you never watched the movie "Groundhog Day." You should watch it. Reliving the exact same day over and over again ad nauseam is my idea of hell, not a great video game.

Lasch · Feb 17, 2015

Resetting gear and levels over and over again ad nauseam is an mmo.

Draegan_sl · Feb 17, 2015

Why don't you just save your time and effort and just say you don't like PVP games and don't bother posting in this thread again? FPS and MOBA games have these same exact elements and their maps never change. The changing element to this game is the changing rulesets and the added human factor. Not sure how you don't mentally grasp that.

Tearofsoul · Feb 17, 2015

So, 2nd voxel MMO after EQN, and this one may come out 1st.

Big Flex · Feb 17, 2015

etchazz_sl said:
I'm taking it you never watched the movie "Groundhog Day." You should watch it. Reliving the exact same day over and over again ad nauseam is my idea of hell, not a great video game.

We get it. You crave the new, fresh sensation of clearing through Sol. B again.

Draegan_sl said:
Why don't you just save your time and effort and just say you don't like PVP games and don't bother posting in this thread again? FPS and MOBA games have these same exact elements and their maps never change. The changing element to this game is the changing rulesets and the added human factor. Not sure how you don't mentally grasp that.

ty

etchazz · Feb 17, 2015

Draegan_sl said:
Why don't you just save your time and effort and just say you don't like PVP games and don't bother posting in this thread again? FPS and MOBA games have these same exact elements and their maps never change. The changing element to this game is the changing rulesets and the added human factor. Not sure how you don't mentally grasp that.

FPS aren't MMO's. Why can't you grasp that? Making a hard restart every few weeks isn't going to give players that feeling of newness that you get the first time you play a video game. If the human psyche actually worked like that, married couples could just get remarried every month or so and never get bored with one another.

Big Flex · Feb 17, 2015

From Dev ThomasB:

Our goal with voxels is much more of the destructive nature, blowing up walls, digging, creating really big holes, resource gathering. Yes there will be some placing of structures but not to the degree of a game like Landmark. We aren't too keen on seeing recreations of the Battle of Hoth, giant Doctor Who Tardis, or massive starships like the Galactica all next to each other in a fantasy setting.

another weird quote

We will be using physics. Moving a rock that size would take... considerable force and not really possible by a single character.

Except me probably. I could move it.

and some Q&A stuff

Q: What kind of performance issues do expect with using voxels?

A:

Our voxel implementation is primarily a CPU bound activity and benefits greatly from multi-core systems. The resulting geometry can be customized and optimized which actually helps in a lot of ways to alleviate GPU pressure. Because the vast majority of the world is dynamically meshed based on voxel data, things like LOD (Level of Detail) and culling (the world is already stored in a spatial tree) can become much more intuitive than dealing with a traditionally fixed and baked world.

Q: wonder if players will be able to access the Voxel system to build the castles during gameplay, though I'm leaning towards the "I hope not" side of the equation.

A:

Building DURING a siege? That would be absurd! It's unlikely we would allow that.

etchazz · Feb 17, 2015

Big Flex_sl said:
We get it. You crave the new, fresh sensation of clearing through Sol. B again.

ty

Has nothing to do with that, Big Flex. If the game could be permanently changed by PvP, that would be an amazing game. If your guild could take over a city and control it and change the dynamics of an entire area (resources, currency, factions, etc.) that would be epic. But to do it for a weekend only to have the server restart on Monday so you can try and do it again sounds awful. That's my only point. If there is going to be change in the game, it should be done through PvP, not someone restarting the game so everyone can be on a level playing field every week.

Draegan_sl · Feb 17, 2015

etchazz_sl said:
FPS aren't MMO's. Why can't you grasp that? Making a hard restart every few weeks isn't going to give players that feeling of newness that you get the first time you play a video game. If the human psyche actually worked like that, married couples could just get remarried every month or so and never get bored with one another.

You are some strange kind of dumb. A post that makes no sense and basically ignores common sense, you actually toss in a terrible fucking analogy. Congrats.

MMOs aren't some kind of special snowflake genre where they are all the same kind of game. They never were. I don't know why you seem to think that.

Nija · Feb 17, 2015

Ladder resets is a good feature on a MMO. It's time to try it, at least. Lord knows I'm sick of everything else. Hell, I'm thinking about re-installing D3, at this second, specifically because of the new season.

Harkon · Feb 17, 2015

etchazz_sl said:
I don't like what I'm reading about hard resets. If the game was continually changing/evolving permanently that would be awesome. But the thought of running a marathon, just so you can start back at the beginning to run it again reminds me of Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

Its not really any different then when themepark MMO's release xpacs and the resulting gear resets from that. Except that it *may* occur more frequently.

Big Flex · Feb 17, 2015

Some key points from the voxel FAQ and from the ongoing dev Q&A

Q: In this regard, does that mean all/most of the terrain will be voxel driven? It'd be easier to really dig holes in voxel terrain than traditional mesh terrain.

A:

Correct. That doesn't mean that the world will be constantly full of huge holes, however. We're thinking ahead with Terrain healing (And specific ways to prevent terrain healing, when required). It's top priority that the world still is playable, while allowing the freedom of exploration and destruction. This technology offers us so much potential, it's important that we use it correctly!

"Blast holes in walls. Collapse towers on your opponent. Dig a tunnel beneath a castle wall, so that you can dig your way up into the courtyard and siege from within."

"On the Eternal Kingdoms, the technology gives you the ability to customize your Kingdom or province in unique and interesting ways: construct a blacksmith shop, design a marketplace, build walls and towers and design a Castle.All of this is possible -- provided, of course, that you win enough materials in the Campaign Worlds, first."

and this part specifically for etchazz:

"You know that feeling you get, the first time you log in to a new game - that rush of exploration and mystery? The sense of excitement that comes during first turn of a game like Civilization - the urgency to explore, to expand, to conquer? that's the emotion that we want, every time you enter a new Campaign World. One of the things that can make a strategy game grow stale is knowledge of the game board. If players learn that the key to winning is to always "take control of point A" and "avoid the choke point at B," it makes subsequent games less interesting. By using an algorithmic approach to create new game Worlds at the "push of a button," Crowfall can keep the players constantly guessing and keep the game feeling new."

Sounds cool as fuck.

Abefroman · Feb 17, 2015

World artists have been using their own procedures to build worlds anyway so I have no problem with this. Invisible wall here, mountains here to block player, random lakes, rivers and oceans to transition to another biosphere. This will save a fuck ton of time.

Big Flex · Feb 17, 2015

what engines can support voxel farm? Is unity3d still a among the top engines speculated given this reveal?

Morphyous · Feb 17, 2015

etchazz_sl said:
I don't like what I'm reading about hard resets. If the game was continually changing/evolving permanently that would be awesome. But the thought of running a marathon, just so you can start back at the beginning to run it again reminds me of Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

Don't forget your character inventory/talent points are permanent. None of us know the time frame or win conditions that will determine how long a campaign will last. While you could be a powerful caster in the previous campaign because of a huge early advantage, you might try being a stealthy rogue in the next campaign because you started later. It opens the possibilities to try new builds and tactics with the same character as well.

Big Flex · Feb 17, 2015

Q: So does this mean we'll also be able to damage enemy terrain or resource nodes to temporarily slow their progress or whatever good it'll do? Collapse a mine burn a forest etc.?

A:

Those all sound like great possibilities to me

Q: Not sure what kind of world limitations you are considering for implementation, but having that many voxels (which will be needed to order to achieve any level of decent MMO detail) will require a lot of processing power. Since everything is rendered as triangles, the voxels need to be converted first, adding a layer of complexity and computation on top of the necessary voxel lighting/ray tracing/whatever.

A:

So you touch upon several interesting issues here. The first is actually the data storage, access, and modification of voxel data - which are all key points for evaluating performance bottle necks. I wish I could completely nerd out here about some of the approaches we have to addressing this, but suffice it to say we are on the ball with this one. You are also absolutely correct that there is a new step required for meshing this voxel data to be rendered by modern GPUs , but this process boils down to a number of fixed calculations that our computers are already optimized to perform. The meshing process actually ends up taking a much smaller time slice of the rendering process than you might intuitively expect. Our lighting, shading, and rasterization happen in a traditional way, post mesh-creation. In this way we get the best of both worlds, and in some ways - since we are generating these meshes anyway - we can leverage this phase to make things even more optimal for your graphics card.

Q: Have you all done massive tests yet with the pre-alpha ingame? Rendering 100 avatars together with buildings at a good detail level? I seriously worry about performance. Something will have to give with this model. It'll either be LOD or culling, I suspect. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of dynamic environments and destructibles and the like. But from a physics perspective, I think we'd rather have native destructible meshes than voxel cubes being destroyed in boxy XYZ space (voxels are notorious for animation complexity, hence why they are used for terrain, mostly)

A:

Again, very well put. You are correct that in many ways the characters themselves can be more computationally expensive than the voxel world, but fortunately these problems are well known and we benefit from our experience in dealing with this in other games to help make this a reality. As in all modern 3d games, especially MMOs, it would be a safe bet to assume that LOD, and culling unnecessary geometry will be an aspect of how we address render performance, but you might be excited to see what new tools this paradigm shift gives us in solving this problem. You might also be surprised at how pre-fractured destructible stateful meshes are not necessarily a silver bullet when dealing with large scale destruction, but it's also worth noting that the two systems don't have to be mutually exclusive either.

Q: Unless you plan on using Voxel Farm to handle build creation and are working with Miguel on a custom solution to turn the voxels into destructible meshes?

A:

Miguel is great.

Tuco · Feb 17, 2015

Voxel based MMO?

The biggest risk with that is even though the hopium they're peddling makes it sound easy to create randomly generated worlds players find interesting, it's not. Anyone who has played Minecraft extensively knows that once you've seen a few chasms, nether forts, abandoned mines etc you've seen them all. After the 10th Daggerfall dungeon the feeling of exploration is basically gone. And because Crowfall will likely be a small outfit making a lower budget MMO I really don't want them solving the very real world-building problem that comes with using randomization. I want them making a coherent PvP game with good combat mechanics and excellent PvP rulesets.

All that being said, I think randomization is a great component to sandbox games, and any player control is a critical component to sandbox games so I'm glad to see they're pushing that frontier.

Tuco · Feb 17, 2015

mkopec_sl said:
Yeah i mean its the future of games. Take minecraft, refine that shit so it looks good with real physics and you have voxel farm. The thing that intrigues me about it is the procedural stuff they are doing with it. As the dude in that website above says, you dont need programmers to pull this stuff off. He has a architect on his staff that does all the procedural building stuff.

mkopec_sl said:
Yeah even of you do 90% of the landscape and structures procedurally, and ad that extra 10% hand crafted stuff/structures to flesh it out, you are way better off.

Don't be so quick to believe that. Creating art assets with a voxel based game is very non-trivial, even if all they're doing is creating a templates for a randomization engine. Those templates are expensive as is modifying the randomization engine.

Draegan_sl said:
Procedural content is the wave of the future. Like that FAQ said it takes a ton of time and money to craft a world but if you can do it procedurally or at least segments done procedurally, then you'll be able to make games faster and cheaper.

Really depends on the people making it whether or not it looks like crap.

I wouldn't call procedural content the future, in fact it's the past. The first RPG I played was rogue. Daggerfall was an incredible game. All randomized content. I'd say the future of MMOs is randomized content being given to players to modify and control. I don't know how much control will be given to player to create customize buildings and landscape in Crowfall, but having different changes to the world everytime you log in is very compelling.

Draegan_sl said:
Why don't you just save your time and effort and just say you don't like PVP games and don't bother posting in this thread again? FPS and MOBA games have these same exact elements and their maps never change. The changing element to this game is the changing rulesets and the added human factor. Not sure how you don't mentally grasp that.

There's no need to be hostile here and etchazz is welcome to post his opinion here. He touches on a very serious problem that will be very difficult for Crowfall to address. The question you have to ask yourself is why do MMO gamers enjoy the early game so much? Is it really that much fun to log into a newly released game and grind bear ass quests for 40 hours straight to hit the max level? Do I really enjoy farming mobs/resource nodes ad nauseum to get my epic mount? Do I enjoy going to level 12 in minecraft and start a grid pattern of mining to get diamonds? Did I enjoy mining resources for days to build our castle in Shadowbane, Age of Conan and ArcheAge? No, the act was not fun but it was enjoyable because I was making permanent gains to my character that would enable me to do the shit I want, likely to kill other players. If you turn those permanent gains into temporary gains that effect decreases, and now I have to look more closely at whether I actually enjoy the leveling/gearing process. This introspection is not one that many MMO gamers can walk away from with the desire to keep playing.

What's the solution to this?

1. You need a fun combat engine that is intrinsically fun to participate in. This is very difficult to do in MMOs for a variety of reasons, especially ones with large pvp fights.
2. You need to have PvP at almost all levels of the game. The resource generation has to involve risk that allows PKs to capitalize on. You never want it to be common to find Irondick Mine, set up shop and mine it in peace, because after the 5th iteration of a campaign, Johnny Headshot is wondering what he's doing with his life and why he's sitting there watching progress bars. Johnny Headshot needs to be able to make gains from going out and PKing fools and taking their ore. Meanwhile Timmy needs to be able to make gains from mining whilst simultaneously fighting off Johnny Headshot.
3. You need some way to make permanent gains within campaigns that extend past them, this is likely their target for their eternal kingdom.

Those three things are somewhat obvious and from their words they are thinking about it, but all three are very non-trivial to implement. #1 especially in an MMO, #2 especially in a randomly generated game and #3 especially in a game with resets that have to count.

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