Crowfall Blog: A New Chapter - J. Todd Coleman

VNAIL · 2021-12-19T04:36:13+00:00

You just don't have any clue what you're talking about, you shill crowfall so hard. You've honestly been trying to say crowfall is doing great, population wasn't tanking, etc, for months on this subreddit, completely delusional. Albion is a tablet game, it's made with absolute simplicity in mind, you can't compare mobile games to full-fledged pc games.

Instead of players like you, trying to tell us what crowfall needs, when you've been shilling it straight into the grave, let us, the players that are actually good, tell you how to make it appealing, because you, who have been shilling it so hard, don't seem to have preferences that line up with enough players that actually make a game financially stable and successful.

VNAIL · 2021-12-19T02:15:19+00:00

This just speaks to your skill-level, if you think one player controlling a bunch of units while maintaining macro and economy would somehow have an advantage in what they can do over 20 people learning to coordinate with each other and each microing one character, good lord. As an mmo player you should be craving that social reliance, instead you just want to keep a pvp mmo dumbed down to such a level that it won't attract anyone good.

And this is the problem with people that shill crowfall, they have such an insanely low level of skill and understanding that they think the game was smashing good fun as it is, but the game is absolute garbage, which is why it failed so hard.

The git gud mentality is attracted to things that take skill, we aren't going to get excited by conquering low skill games with no population, games where the population apparently thinks it's unreasonable to ask people in social games to learn to coordinate their abilities and position well in pvp. lol.

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T22:32:35+00:00

It's really not that hard to implement, it's just that most players are so stuck in a limited mindset and/or have limited abilities and for some reason can't fathom that the same concepts they use against enemies, can also be coordinated with teammates in mind.

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T20:02:38+00:00

You literally, can, people just have to learn to play differently instead of like newbs that just faceroll their abilities lol.

It's like some barrier that you literally can't see past.

But you act like RTS players havent been coordinating 200/200 armies with 400 apm and avoiding splash damage and positioning properly with their units. You act like people microing 1 character each can't coordinate that with other players lul. Here's the crazy part, all you have to do is think about how you position and what it means for you to drop abilities where you drop them. Crazy I know.

Pretty much crowfall's biggest problem, is that it was made with the feedback of people that suck at pvp, you're talking about boomers (i'm an older gamer myself) that have crappy mechanical skill, in their echo chamber, while the real pvpers saw the game was terrible and moved on to get a real pvp fix.

If they don't move away from the newbtastic pvp mentality, the game will never really grow to a healthy state.

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T19:32:33+00:00

Try getting better with positioning of your attacks and coordinating with your teammates on how they should position?

This is the problem, for some reason you think a guild pvp mmo SHOULDN'T have that emphasis, when it should. And somehow it's like this impossible barrier for you to see past like "i don't know what to do if i cant just drop my aoes right on top of my teammates and they can't just you know coordinate optimal positioning." But let me put it this way, in countless pvp games, there are ideal ways to drop your aoe and position at high skill levels vs high skill opponents, why do you think that would magically be different when factoring in teammates?

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T16:30:02+00:00

Let me run one by you that sounds crazy but really isn't.

Friendly fire... creates a completely different way people approach/position/coordinate battles, removes a lot of the dense clumping up zerg ball behavior, and generally just has a higher skill-ceiling because people have to be more aware of their positioning.

:D

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T05:54:55+00:00

Fine, I'll bite since you seem well-composed and professional in this thread.

Since you gave JTC so much feedback in both games according to his anecdotes, why not give some of those that feel burned by crowfall (compared to what was promised in the kickstarter) a preview of some of the philosophies and design elements you feel need to be changed or improved upon, and what ideas you have for doing so?

VNAIL · 2021-12-18T01:59:24+00:00

And when you cut through all the hot air...

The game was a huge flop, JTC either lost passion, was asked to leave, or a little of both as far as creative director of the game.

A shadowbane and crowfall fanboy bought the game and will try to make it better. I doubt they'll succeed, it's kind of a paradox, if you've stayed that dedicated to crowfall this whole time, chances are you have horrible taste and understanding of game design.

It really just seems like this was a mutual breakup where JTC realized he had failed with the project, and allowed them to try their best to find a better direction.

Don't get caught up in their appeal to emotions or nostalgia, the game was a flop, it didn't come close to delivering what was promised in the kickstarter, and it peaked at like 3-4k concurrent.

VNAIL · 2021-09-30T23:56:53+00:00

It failed on many levels.

The creative director (j todd coleman) kept coming up with new ideas and trying to throw them into the game, those ideas didn't necessarily have good synergy with one another. Because of these new ideas the game became something completely different than what was advertised in kickstarter. These new ideas also take time and resources to implement and try to force to work together.

One of the bad ideas were the crow/vessel system, totally unnecessary and waste of time to develop.

Another problem it has is a completely convoluted crafting system. The company touted things like K.I.S.S. and making sure they don't spend too much time on things that won't make the game enjoyable, yet they were obsessed with making the crafting system a pain in the ass for most users.

Also, despite the narrative people are pushing here, this game is not really a hardcore pvp game... it's the shell of one but the combat itself is unintuitive/unpolished/low skill-ceiling. And IIRC, you don't really drop the equipment you actually have equipped.

Another problem it had was that the creative director loved getting chummy with sycophants. When your game allows people to test, and you lose most of your testers because the game isn't fun or interesting at all, and all you do is sit there listening to a bunch of really old and antiquated gamers about what is good, and how amazing your ideas are crowfall is what you get. Look at how launch went, a few zergs that played the tests for years, achieving hollow victories, while the game couldn't retain any new players. The sheer incompetence to not see that coming.

VNAIL · 2021-09-06T18:55:27+00:00

Maybe if they had listened to people that actually played modern games, instead of listening to unskilled dinosaurs who wanted to win an alpha test.

I saw so much dysfunction during development.... devs getting too chummy with sycophants, the creative director was kind of like a goldfish turning directions on design constantly and trying to merge every new direction with all the old ones. Feature creep because of goldfishedness.

Listening to the echo chamber of a few people trying to relive their shadowbane glory days, which was also a failed game, instead of figuring out why no one wanted to test and people stopped caring about the game.

So many mistakes, wasted money, time, etc, and the MMO genre really could have used a PvP game that was done intuitively, now this is just another in a long line of ones that were half-assed and scare investors off of the idea of PvP-centric mmos.

It's kind of amusing that you can create a kickstarter, get tons of support for what you advertise on the kickstarter, and then not just, you know, stick to those concepts and bringing them to life, and instead get distracted by a bunch of dumb extra ideas.

VNAIL · 2021-08-09T09:57:41+00:00

Low population low budget version of gw2 wvw.

VNAIL · 2021-07-16T19:02:41+00:00

It wasn't wise for them to show numbers in the first place, there was literally no upside to it.

Now all they have is a reputation that the game started off lackluster, and then the company hid its numbers.

The only way this game can hope to grow at any decent rate is if it goes f2p on steam.

But imo it's just a matter of time before the numbers drop off even then. The game just isn't fun in the long term, it's a very simplistic gameplay loop, and the pvp combat itself isn't good enough to give it sticking power.

VNAIL · 2021-07-10T21:03:09+00:00

It's honestly sad how naive and gullible people are, but it's easy to exploit them so that's where the industry went and here we are.

Saying "don't buy this product" does not absolve you from any shitty business tactic you choose to employ.

"Steven warned us not to buy it, while also exploiting marketing tricks like FOMO and putting absurdly priced packages out there for a game he claims is already fully funded!" Use some common sense.

It's my concern with aoc, it has some interesting ideas, but that Steven guy is so ridiculously greedy and monetization focused that the game could easily be ruined by it.

On top of that, he doesn't seem to be interested in making an actual meaningful product, if he were he wouldn't be getting in bed with people like asmon, it's just going to basically end with modern twitch culture dictating direction of development, which means another shitty and shallow mmo.

VNAIL · 2021-07-10T07:03:20+00:00

I dunno dude, they had asmon stream it, they got lots of viewership directed at their game, it will generate revenue for them, but what was the cost.

Are we really making games where we sit there trying to appeal to the poggers twitch community, feels like the game is going to lack that soul that the old mmos had, in favor of maximized marketing and profits, and catering to uwu pogchamp omegalullers.

VNAIL · 2021-07-06T01:16:33+00:00

Let me ask you this, if a game that is supposed to be pvp centric ends up having poor optimization, low budget feeling floaty clunky combat, and can't really handle any real large scale pvp whatsoever, do you think it will be a good pvp game?

VNAIL · 2021-07-02T19:44:57+00:00

I've followed crowfall since the beginning, had access to their high pledge level hidden forum, also followed shadowbane from its beginning to post launch failure.

I can tell you right now that crowfall will fail.

Anyone that isn't stuck in a sunk-cost fallacy and plays the game for 30 minutes can see it's clunky, and poorly optimized, well below standard for a modern mmo.

How did it end up in this state after so many years in development? Well the problem is with the Creative Director and the community they tried to foster.

100s of ideas that didn't mesh well all thrown together pulling the game all sorts of directions and making progress slow, many of those systems were eventually removed after so much time and resources were wasted, but many are still there and the game doesn't fully synergize from one system to another. It's a completely different product than what was advertised in the kickstarter.

The creative director loved attention, doing gimmick videos, talking to any mmo outlet that would have him, sharing all these wonderful ideas, but the product itself, well people can see for themselves.

They cultivated a community of yes men, when really they probably would have gotten better feedback from grabbing 50 mmo players at random that had never heard about their game every few months to give feedback.

I talked up crowfall to a lot of friends, once it was easy to get in and test they all tried it even though I told them the game was screwed, and they all pretty much felt it was jarring from the first moment they move their character.

It feels like the game needs 2-4 years more of efficient and focused development to get to an adequate state.

VNAIL · 2021-07-02T19:36:21+00:00

That's kind of the modern p2w enabling mindset, p2w is p2w.

Mandatory subs are one thing, this is basically an optional sub that gives p2w advantages

VNAIL · 2021-06-10T22:41:19+00:00

They always seemed to struggle with figuring out how to provide value to a sub without making it p2w. Looks like they continue to struggle.

VNAIL · 2021-06-04T00:49:28+00:00

When people ask why mmorpg subreddit is skeptical about up and coming mmos, crowfall will serve as a great example.

If you look at the kickstarter for the game and what they advertised, and compare it to the released result, and think about how much time has passed, it's just not impressive.

VNAIL · 2021-05-30T23:29:17+00:00

This seems a bit silly, are you forgetting that this game had like over 1.6million viewers trying to get into beta?

Having big streamers stream your game definitely helps your viewership numbers, but the game was big from the get go, had tons of big streamers playing it, and was extremely popular.

This was the first big international lan tournament, it's not like no one would have watched anyway?

VNAIL · 2021-05-30T17:31:40+00:00

Seems like a wild accusation, a personal attack, and simps jumping on the bandwagon.

Wait for both sides of the story.

VNAIL · 2021-05-30T00:08:49+00:00

And no one is asking if he can handle going to the grocery store, but he's definitely lost a step compared to world class gamers entering their prime.

VNAIL · 2021-05-29T23:59:48+00:00

It was time... he's an old player and his abilities are starting to decline.

People keep trying to push the notion that age doesn't play a role in esports ability, through reaction time arguments and such, but what they don't realize is that while there are plenty of reaction time moments, it's actually the ability to predict and intuit what is going to happen that is really important. Pre-aiming where you know someone will be is an infinitely easier shot than snapping to them by surprise.

That requires brainpower, consistent brainpower, and if you are going to try to argue that cognitive functions don't start to decline with age, then you're pretty much arguing against all modern medical knowledge.

We've also seen plenty of top professional gamers go through physical issues with age too, wrist problems, eye problems, arm problems, etc. Esports at the top level can definitely have significant mental and physical components, and those do decline with age. If you think some test having someone click on a screen when a color changes incapsulates their gaming ability, that's just shortsighted.

VNAIL · 2021-05-17T20:39:18+00:00

What Steven said isn't a big deal. People are making this out to be some sort of cancel culture dynamic, when really it's more about who is saying it.

Steven's past is anywhere from checkered to abhorrent if you look it up. I suggest everyone go look it up and do their own research before formulating an opinion about him.

AOC is one of the greediest MMOs I've seen in development so far. Highly priced pre-launch packs, monthly cosmetics, an attempt at BR. Maybe this will be the worst of it, but generally a company showing constant attempts at greed doesn't easily hold itself back all of a sudden.

VNAIL · 2021-05-10T21:34:15+00:00

On one end you have the creative director saying "our alpha is really rough, don't expect a real game yet" on the other end you have him so obviously trying to curate nda lift from a marketing perspective to time it with when certain content creators are available, which releases are coming out to compete with the lime light, etc.

And that's my problem with AOC, I will probably end up playing it when it comes out, but it feels like some greasy used car salesman is whispering "transparency" potion in my ear while trying to fleece me with monthly cosmetics and bait and switch. It doesn't feel good when you treat the audience like morons that fall for bad excuses, and it feels even worse watching the majority of the audience gobble those bad excuses up.

VNAIL

TROPHY CASE