They don't seem to even be launching with an actual RvR (faction) mode. God's Reach is tutorial world and training wheel RvR without any point.
For those that want to GvG and zerg a scoreboard in a battleground, this is the game for them. Anyone that wants a competitive game where skill and strategy rule, this isn't that game.
Not sure why there are no campaigns active yet (is that what you meant?) but faction warfare seems to be accounted for at least:
Will try to post more if I find more info.
There will be no proper RvR server available on launch- the main focus of the game has always been GvG and that is among the many reasons why it is so ridiculous to see people claim that this is a good RvR game.
There is also a lot of other misleading info being posted on these forums, like the game having low gear gaps or being quick to level to "max". Here is a good summary of some of the issues from a recent post on the CF forums:
- Game feels like it still have like 1+ year of development left to be completed
- Siege timers are still going to MURDER player retention. Example: ever since the NPE rolled out there are two forts I've wanted to take but they only become siege available once a day for 1 hour and I can't plan my entire life around your stupid timers. People looking for PVP and given no real reason to PVP either log off or go gank people farming and progressing because they're bored....which is not ideal for either party.
- High geared/vesseled people in God's Reach is still quite a significant issue as they are so powerful relative to the average god's reach player they can easily take on multiple players at once.
- Speaking of the difference between a fresh 30 and a geared 33+ in general is insane. Large power gaps is anathema to PVP because the core conceit of PVP is that skill matters. When someone is literally powerful enough to take on multiple normal players skill does not matter.
- Despite this being a PVP first game theoretically all progression is actually PVE centric. With no PVP rewards and lucrative PVE rewards the optimal way to play will always be to avoid PVP as much as possible so you can PVE your way through progression.
- The PVE progression curve grind is long so your average player upon release is going to take multiple months of PVE grinding before they are competitive. Only no-lifers (of which I qualify) will progress quickly through the ranks. This means with the large power gaps provided by that grind the game quickly becomes a case of haves an have nots. Either you have stupid amounts of time to dump into the game or you will be significantly less powerful than someone else. While some of this will even out after launch amongst whatever population stays via suvivorship bias it also becomes more and more oppressive to any new players/guilds that show themselves after the launch rush since they'll be entering a world of primarily geared/vesseled players and that is a truly dergsty experience.
- Skypoint is now just a harvesting location thanks to the gold drop changes. Alot of people have moved out of Skypoint because it's more effective to gold farm elsewhere. The need to constantly deposit to limit your risk and the occassional gank lowers your effective gold per hour significantly. This is only going to get worse with more population and more players competing for the same amount of resources.
- The current war tribe camps and harvesting nodes allows slow but consistent progress to the current population. It cannot handle a massively increased population. If the game actually gets a significant burst of new people then there will be too few resources spread too thin amongst too many players.
- There are still significant coverage gaps for people who enjoy the dregs ruleset resulting in them being bored for sometimes days at a time. Meanwhile people who prefer the Shadow ruleset are completely SOL since god's reach offers a severely reduced, nuetered, and inconsequential faction PVP experience. No rewards, no goals, half the actual keep/etc mechanics, and all timers preventing you from actually playing the PVP.
- Load times after the last major patch took a big hit and that needs to be cleaned up still. I went and fixed myself a sandwich and came back and it was still loading on an SSD. That's not great.
- Many more things . Man, I know yall have to release eventually and I'm guessing your running out of runway (ability to cover operational costs) but man this is going to be a really rough release even by MMORPG standards.
- Many more things . Man, I know yall have to release eventually and I'm guessing your running out of runway (ability to cover operational costs) but man this is going to be a really rough release even by MMORPG standards.
Day one, playing EQ, my Bother opted to play a Necro, when they used their abilty to trade life for mana, their was a bug, that made their pet perceive it as an Attack, and Pet Proceeded to beat my brothers Necro dead, as we all stood around helpless, because it was still a Pet and we could not attack it.
With that in mind.. I am sure this launch will be better than that.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
There will be no proper RvR server available on launch- the main focus of the game has always been GvG and that is among the many reasons why it is so ridiculous to see people claim that this is a good RvR game.
And to me THIS is a killer. During Kickstarter we were told that there would be:
3 faction RvR (God's Reach)The proving grounds for Order, Balance, and Chaos. Players join one of three divine Factions and battle for control of the World. The goal for Order and Chaos is to capture as much territory as possible before the World is destroyed. The goal for Balance is to ensure there in no clear victor between Order and Chaos.
The GodsReach they now have is just some newbie zone...
6-12 Faction RvR (The Infected) These Worlds are more deadly and the stakes are higher. The alliances of the Gods hold no sway here. The followers of the twelve Gods vie individually for the Throne.
It was bad enough when they turned the 12 faction one into 5 man teams for Battle Royale, but to take away any real and meaningful RvR is a stake through the heart for me. That is where my guys planned to spend our time.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Allein said: Have you been playing during alpha/beta? The frames reference was a bit dated.
Good chunk of those logging in are still the same players and guilds that have been around for years. At least the names and heralds I've seen when I log in the last few days.
Considering how complex people claim this game is, learning prior to launch seems like a absolutely great reason to log in and play. Maybe not doing 40 hours a week taking it serious, but logging in all the same. Popping in to check out the UI or run through the NPE isn't going to give much insight into the actual game and systems. Which has been a common topic of issue brought up about how unfriendly the game is to new players once they do the initial tutorial run.
If I am using a dated references, obviously I was playing during Alpha and Beta. I have also been a member of my guild for years, so there is that as well.
Also keep in mind, unlike a lot of other games, Crowfall has been alive and active since it's early Alpha days, so hopping in on Beta to get that Head start that many other games have done. As you so clearly pointed out, people have been playing for years, there is nothing special about jumping into the Beta now, so it simply does not have that draw like how other games have treated Beta's, most of the people that wanted to be in there early, all half a million of them, are already members.
The reference you made was from maybe 2018 so was curious how recent you've played.
With your logic, there has almost never been draw to this game because the numbers have hovered about the same for years.
True this thing is doing it a bit differently then in the past but still seems odd that so few have and are showing interest overall.
Regardless, it will soon no longer be a question. I hope it turns out well for Artcraft despite not liking how the game ended up.
Game is flat and boring and will go F2P inside a year
Whatever the back and forth being discussed in this thread about the deets won't matter in a few months cause they need to improve on the game tremendously like Albion did AFTER launch. All the talk about DOA is nonsense cause the devs + investors aren't about to walk away from 15mil + 7 years of their lives because they didn't get a million players on launch day UNLESS they are just sick of it all and use that as an excuse.
These assholes are at least LAUNCHING in a working playable state without P2W
Albion improved on a game that was already subjectively better long before launch in comparison. It had a lot of issues as well, but it wasn't missing or half complete in certain areas like Crowfall.
I agree that it is doubtful it will be DOA or they'll just let it die, but the same names behind it that receive praise for their past work have also made some questionable decisions as well. Anything could happen.
As for the P2W, entirely subjective as well, but the VIP montly sub is providing what they said they wouldn't do. No one is going to win a campaign with the cash shop but it isn't only cosmetics like they said. They've also lowered the game price before launch. Lower game cost, selling advantage perks, this story has been told before.
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Good point. @Ungood What guild are you in? I have not seen ANY guilds with more than a handful of players on, and I have popped through most servers at various times. Just curious what happened to those 400 plus a few hundred more returning players? 500 on the battlefield at the same time (at launch...)?
The biggest fight I have had was 12 or 15 on 12 or so and that was 3 guilds on my side and 2 on theirs.
Maybe the population of 100 across all the servers for the weeks before launch was actually the canary in the coalmine after all?
The sad part is that I am actually enjoying myself. The not so great part is that I'm in the minority of my gaming group. Last night we were down to 2... Maybe it picks up this weekend. We will see.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Truth be told, I would like to log in sometime as well.. trying to get in has been a shit fest, and I am livid about this, but don't feel the need to get too upset yet, as normally games take a week to get their shit straight anyway.
But while my guild does have 493 members, we only field between 75 to 100 players in the game at any given time.
So, it's not like we are thousands strong here, even if we got everyone to log in at once that would still only be about 400 extra people in the game for a few hours, and that would not be some massive shift from the 3,000 already playing.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Why would someone claiming to be a PvP guy list off UO as a 24 year hobby? If you liked PvP you should have quit UO sometime right after Tram. Poser.
Why would real PVP'ers leave UO just because the newbs and low levels got a safe zone? Some gankers got there feeling hurt because they couldn't kill newbs anymore?
PVP was the same after UO Tram the only difference was it was against other skilled PVPers, instead of newbs.
Crowfall is going to be the same way, because there is not much PVE the player base is going to be mostly other PVPers. We will see what kind of Market there is for that.
Why would someone claiming to be a PvP guy list off UO as a 24 year hobby? If you liked PvP you should have quit UO sometime right after Tram. Poser.
Why would real PVP'ers leave UO just because the newbs and low levels got a safe zone? Some gankers got there feeling hurt because they couldn't kill newbs anymore?
PVP was the same after UO Tram the only difference was it was against other skilled PVPers, instead of newbs.
Crowfall is going to be the same way, because there is not much PVE the player base is going to be mostly other PVPers. We will see what kind of Market there is for that.
I probably spend over half my time in Felluca with Guild doing maps , fighting Reds etc..
Resources/Fame are Dbl there skill gains are faster if you are leveling a fighter/alt..
Trikery is welcome to come on Atlantic and we can talk in Fel if he likes ..
Or maybe his fingers are writing checks his pixels cant cash
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Good point. I have not seen ANY guilds with more than a handful of players on, and I have popped through most servers at various times. Just curious what happened to those 400 plus a few hundred more returning players? 500 on the battlefield at the same time (at launch...)?
The biggest fight I have had was 12 or 15 on 12 or so and that was 3 guilds on my side and 2 on theirs.
Maybe the population of 100 across all the servers for the weeks before launch was actually the canary in the coalmine after all?
The sad part is that I am actually enjoying myself. The not so great part is that I'm in the minority of my gaming group. Last night we were down to 2... Maybe it picks up this weekend. We will see.
My guild currently has 81 active users on, and we have 493 total members, that have had to be active within the month before launch. We have been active since day 1 live and long before.
Now, If you had some inane idea that all 493 of us would be playing endlessly 24/7 since launch you are some serious disconnect with reality.
Even if we were all in the same timezone, that would only be like 500 of us on for what? a few hours, that's worse than 75 of us being on consistently, anyone who plays Throne War games will tell you that coverage is king.
As for me personally.. my Graphic Card is taking a dump with the live game, played great on the Beta, and then they want and uppied the graphic req and now.. it seems I will need to upgrade my graphics card.. which, thanks to Bitfuckingcoin, is expensive.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Truth be told, I would like to log in sometime as well.. trying to get in has been a shit fest, and I am livid about this, but don't feel the need to get too upset yet, as normally games take a week to get their shit straight anyway.
But while my guild does have 493 members, we only field between 75 to 100 players in the game at any given time.
So, it's not like we are thousands strong here, even if we got everyone to log in at once that would still only be about 400 extra people in the game for a few hours, and that would not be some massive shift from the 3,000 already playing.
Are there still log in issues? Seemed like that was day 1 only. DDoS attack maybe?
Haven't had any issues since then. Just logged in/out without any problem and haven't had any last 3 days.
Interesting that your previous comment came off like your guild of hundreds would be playing at launch and now it's you might have a some playing at some point. Assuming none of your guild was part of the current 3k population, all of you logging in would be a 16% jump. That is relatively nice increase in total players.
You weren't alone in claiming you have a guild with hundreds waiting for launch, but so far none seem to have bothered to field their armies. Still early for sure, but is odd that all the beta pop is low, wait to see the tons at launch claims not reflect reality.
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Truth be told, I would like to log in sometime as well.. trying to get in has been a shit fest, and I am livid about this, but don't feel the need to get too upset yet, as normally games take a week to get their shit straight anyway.
But while my guild does have 493 members, we only field between 75 to 100 players in the game at any given time.
So, it's not like we are thousands strong here, even if we got everyone to log in at once that would still only be about 400 extra people in the game for a few hours, and that would not be some massive shift from the 3,000 already playing.
Are there still log in issues? Seemed like that was day 1 only. DDoS attack maybe?
Haven't had any issues since then. Just logged in/out without any problem and haven't had any last 3 days.
Interesting that your previous comment came off like your guild of hundreds would be playing at launch and now it's you might have a some playing at some point. Assuming none of your guild was part of the current 3k population, all of you logging in would be a 16% jump. That is relatively nice increase in total players.
You weren't alone in claiming you have a guild with hundreds waiting for launch, but so far none seem to have bothered to field their armies. Still early for sure, but is odd that all the beta pop is low, wait to see the tons at launch claims not reflect reality.
Well, I just tried to log in, and I was lagging like a MFer in the Tutorial Zone, and crashed several times trying to get in the last few days, been pissing me off big time.
I just logged in and played for like 10 min before crashing again, but, I saw a lot of new people around me, so, there was no missing out on the feeling that others were playing.
I think it might be a graphic card issue however, because they really upped the graphics since beta (NGL, I do not like the new graphics), and I could play great in the more simplistic Claymation style graphics in Beta, but now I am lagging like I am playing portals with random holes.
As far as my guild goes, We have been playing since Launch, in fact, when I was just playing, we had 81 active players, and I get constant updates on our progress and what we have done in the discord.
Wish is even more irritating that I can seem to log in.
Now, If the problem is on my end with the graphics card, I am pretty much screwed till the end of the month and have enough money to buy a new card, but, AFIK, with the Bitcoin going big time that might really set back what I can get for the dollars I can put in.. I'll see what happens with that when that happens.
Gonna go talk with this my guild about this now.. just frustrated at this point.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I'm wondering why the game hasn't built up a strong following at all. Given that the game has been in alpha/beta for years, would you expect a community build-up?
There have historically always been two patterns of player retention: you have typical launch games where there is a massive spike at launch, a drop off by months 2-3 and then a decrease until an expansion. Usually the launch spike is massive enough to at least partially fund the development of the next title. And then you have community-based games (e.g. EVE) where you have a slow increase in player numbers and a long plateau.
All these Early Access games seem to be somewhere in between. You give access to people, collect some additional money along the way, but you never have this massive launch. If we were making the argument there is a developing community in Crowfall, I'd expect to see at least 5k concurrent users (possibly a lot more) by now. And if we are making the argument that people are just waiting for launch, we need to see massive numbers show up.
I'm also very puzzled as why have a community tournament with prize money 2 months before launch. You have 20 - 50 concurrent users. You probably don't care about turning 50 players into 1000 players at that point - it's either a massive launch or bust. Unless you are essentially just collecting telemetrics for launch (saying you'll throw away prize money to know how to do it at launch), it's a confusing strategy.
Not shitting on the game - I think the team has interesting ideas, have backed the game years ago and been occasionally following it. I'm just curious what people's take is on the lack of community. Is it that the market for this game is tiny? Is it that the Early Access model is outdated? Is the game design not retaining people?
Ok. Just to give you an idea. The guild I am in, which has 400+ active users, and our discord just exploded with a few hundred more returning players (Like myself), and by returning, I mean, joined the guild years ago, went inactive, and are suddenly piping up on discord and talking again (Like myself).
Most of these people (like myself) are not playing right now, we are on discord catching up, and doing the whole L2P moment, sure we are downloading the game, and spending a little bit of time looking over the controls, and seeing what got changed, upgraded, etc, but of our hundreds of members, I wager we don't more than maybe 10 of us at any given time in the game.
Now, sure, that is just my guild, of a few hundred people, not a big sampling by any means, but keep in mind on launch day, we are expecting to field near to 500 members on the battlefield by ourselves, and we are not the only guild like us out there.
I am sure there will be a reckoning going on that first week, with blood, spit and ass flying everywhere, as everyone who has been waiting expectantly for that final wipe and launch jumps back in looking to do some serious ass kicking.
So.. for me, I am not worried.
As I see it, all these discussions go like this:
The Game will never Happen!
The Game will stay in Development Hell Forever to take Advantage of People.
Alpha is Meaningless
Beta is Meaningless
It's Never gonna Launch.
It's Launching?
The Game is gonna fail after Launch.
10 years Later: Just a matter of time now, the Game is Gonna Die.
(If the game dies) Cry Sob, it was the bet game ever made, nothing will ever match it again!
3k prime time concurrent players after launch.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
Truth be told, I would like to log in sometime as well.. trying to get in has been a shit fest, and I am livid about this, but don't feel the need to get too upset yet, as normally games take a week to get their shit straight anyway.
But while my guild does have 493 members, we only field between 75 to 100 players in the game at any given time.
So, it's not like we are thousands strong here, even if we got everyone to log in at once that would still only be about 400 extra people in the game for a few hours, and that would not be some massive shift from the 3,000 already playing.
Are there still log in issues? Seemed like that was day 1 only. DDoS attack maybe?
Haven't had any issues since then. Just logged in/out without any problem and haven't had any last 3 days.
Interesting that your previous comment came off like your guild of hundreds would be playing at launch and now it's you might have a some playing at some point. Assuming none of your guild was part of the current 3k population, all of you logging in would be a 16% jump. That is relatively nice increase in total players.
You weren't alone in claiming you have a guild with hundreds waiting for launch, but so far none seem to have bothered to field their armies. Still early for sure, but is odd that all the beta pop is low, wait to see the tons at launch claims not reflect reality.
Well, I just tried to log in, and I was lagging like a MFer in the Tutorial Zone, and crashed several times trying to get in the last few days, been pissing me off big time.
I just logged in and played for like 10 min before crashing again, but, I saw a lot of new people around me, so, there was no missing out on the feeling that others were playing.
I think it might be a graphic card issue however, because they really upped the graphics since beta (NGL, I do not like the new graphics), and I could play great in the more simplistic Claymation style graphics in Beta, but now I am lagging like I am playing portals with random holes.
As far as my guild goes, We have been playing since Launch, in fact, when I was just playing, we had 81 active players, and I get constant updates on our progress and what we have done in the discord.
Wish is even more irritating that I can seem to log in.
Now, If the problem is on my end with the graphics card, I am pretty much screwed till the end of the month and have enough money to buy a new card, but, AFIK, with the Bitcoin going big time that might really set back what I can get for the dollars I can put in.. I'll see what happens with that when that happens.
Gonna go talk with this my guild about this now.. just frustrated at this point.
Unfortunately game can run like poo even with a decent machine. Performance has improved A LOT but still suboptimal.
5600x, 32gb ram, Rtx 3070 and it still doesn't run entirely smoothly for me once a few groups are on screen, fighting or standing around. Not super laggy or anything, but poor FPS and some issues here and there.
I'm not going to pay thousands more in the hopes it runs better when every other game (much better looking) runs great.
Some of the streamers are getting <20 FPS in crowds with what I assume are good gaming/streaming machines better then my okay one.
Interesting that your previous comment came off like your guild of hundreds would be playing at launch and now it's you might have a some playing at some point. Assuming none of your guild was part of the current 3k population, all of you logging in would be a 16% jump. That is relatively nice increase in total players.
That assumes that the whole guild logs in at once. 3k in Crowfall is concurrent players. I have been in a fairly active guild of 500 in another game in the past, our "concurrency" was usually around 30-50.
Add to that the launch issues...
No doubt, but at that point it becomes rather meaningless to flaunt numbers when a 1000 member guild only fields 20 and a 50 player guild fields 50.
No matter how you slice it, concurrent and active (based on Coleman's comments) aren't exactly great for a newly launched game that plenty have claimed they were waiting for be it themselves or their guilds of various sizes. Along with the actual copies already sold that go beyond empty claims.
There might be some legitimate reasons for the low population, but all of the previous excuses seem to have run out.
Comments
There is also a lot of other misleading info being posted on these forums, like the game having low gear gaps or being quick to level to "max". Here is a good summary of some of the issues from a recent post on the CF forums:
- Game feels like it still have like 1+ year of development left to be completed
- Siege timers are still going to MURDER player retention. Example: ever since the NPE rolled out there are two forts I've wanted to take but they only become siege available once a day for 1 hour and I can't plan my entire life around your stupid timers. People looking for PVP and given no real reason to PVP either log off or go gank people farming and progressing because they're bored....which is not ideal for either party.
- High geared/vesseled people in God's Reach is still quite a significant issue as they are so powerful relative to the average god's reach player they can easily take on multiple players at once.
- Speaking of the difference between a fresh 30 and a geared 33+ in general is insane. Large power gaps is anathema to PVP because the core conceit of PVP is that skill matters. When someone is literally powerful enough to take on multiple normal players skill does not matter.
- Despite this being a PVP first game theoretically all progression is actually PVE centric. With no PVP rewards and lucrative PVE rewards the optimal way to play will always be to avoid PVP as much as possible so you can PVE your way through progression.
- The PVE progression curve grind is long so your average player upon release is going to take multiple months of PVE grinding before they are competitive. Only no-lifers (of which I qualify) will progress quickly through the ranks. This means with the large power gaps provided by that grind the game quickly becomes a case of haves an have nots. Either you have stupid amounts of time to dump into the game or you will be significantly less powerful than someone else. While some of this will even out after launch amongst whatever population stays via suvivorship bias it also becomes more and more oppressive to any new players/guilds that show themselves after the launch rush since they'll be entering a world of primarily geared/vesseled players and that is a truly dergsty experience.
- Skypoint is now just a harvesting location thanks to the gold drop changes. Alot of people have moved out of Skypoint because it's more effective to gold farm elsewhere. The need to constantly deposit to limit your risk and the occassional gank lowers your effective gold per hour significantly. This is only going to get worse with more population and more players competing for the same amount of resources.
- The current war tribe camps and harvesting nodes allows slow but consistent progress to the current population. It cannot handle a massively increased population. If the game actually gets a significant burst of new people then there will be too few resources spread too thin amongst too many players.
- There are still significant coverage gaps for people who enjoy the dregs ruleset resulting in them being bored for sometimes days at a time. Meanwhile people who prefer the Shadow ruleset are completely SOL since god's reach offers a severely reduced, nuetered, and inconsequential faction PVP experience. No rewards, no goals, half the actual keep/etc mechanics, and all timers preventing you from actually playing the PVP.
- Load times after the last major patch took a big hit and that needs to be cleaned up still. I went and fixed myself a sandwich and came back and it was still loading on an SSD. That's not great.
- Many more things . Man, I know yall have to release eventually and I'm guessing your running out of runway (ability to cover operational costs) but man this is going to be a really rough release even by MMORPG standards.
https://community.crowfall.com/topic/31012-crowfall-is-shipping-july-6/
With that in mind.. I am sure this launch will be better than that.
3 faction RvR (God's Reach)The proving grounds for Order, Balance, and Chaos. Players join one of three divine Factions and battle for control of the World. The goal for Order and Chaos is to capture as much territory as possible before the World is destroyed. The goal for Balance is to ensure there in no clear victor between Order and Chaos.
The GodsReach they now have is just some newbie zone...
6-12 Faction RvR (The Infected) These Worlds are more deadly and the stakes are higher. The alliances of the Gods hold no sway here. The followers of the twelve Gods vie individually for the Throne.
It was bad enough when they turned the 12 faction one into 5 man teams for Battle Royale, but to take away any real and meaningful RvR is a stake through the heart for me. That is where my guys planned to spend our time.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
With your logic, there has almost never been draw to this game because the numbers have hovered about the same for years.
True this thing is doing it a bit differently then in the past but still seems odd that so few have and are showing interest overall.
Regardless, it will soon no longer be a question. I hope it turns out well for Artcraft despite not liking how the game ended up.
I agree that it is doubtful it will be DOA or they'll just let it die, but the same names behind it that receive praise for their past work have also made some questionable decisions as well. Anything could happen.
As for the P2W, entirely subjective as well, but the VIP montly sub is providing what they said they wouldn't do. No one is going to win a campaign with the cash shop but it isn't only cosmetics like they said. They've also lowered the game price before launch. Lower game cost, selling advantage perks, this story has been told before.
Hope guilds with hundreds like yours decide to log in at some point...
@Ungood What guild are you in? I have not seen ANY guilds with more than a handful of players on, and I have popped through most servers at various times. Just curious what happened to those 400 plus a few hundred more returning players? 500 on the battlefield at the same time (at launch...)?
The biggest fight I have had was 12 or 15 on 12 or so and that was 3 guilds on my side and 2 on theirs.
Maybe the population of 100 across all the servers for the weeks before launch was actually the canary in the coalmine after all?
The sad part is that I am actually enjoying myself. The not so great part is that I'm in the minority of my gaming group. Last night we were down to 2... Maybe it picks up this weekend. We will see.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
But while my guild does have 493 members, we only field between 75 to 100 players in the game at any given time.
So, it's not like we are thousands strong here, even if we got everyone to log in at once that would still only be about 400 extra people in the game for a few hours, and that would not be some massive shift from the 3,000 already playing.
Why would real PVP'ers leave UO just because the newbs and low levels got a safe zone?
Some gankers got there feeling hurt because they couldn't kill newbs anymore?
PVP was the same after UO Tram the only difference was it was against other skilled PVPers, instead of newbs.
Crowfall is going to be the same way, because there is not much PVE the player base is going to be mostly other PVPers. We will see what kind of Market there is for that.
Now, If you had some inane idea that all 493 of us would be playing endlessly 24/7 since launch you are some serious disconnect with reality.
Even if we were all in the same timezone, that would only be like 500 of us on for what? a few hours, that's worse than 75 of us being on consistently, anyone who plays Throne War games will tell you that coverage is king.
As for me personally.. my Graphic Card is taking a dump with the live game, played great on the Beta, and then they want and uppied the graphic req and now.. it seems I will need to upgrade my graphics card.. which, thanks to Bitfuckingcoin, is expensive.
Haven't had any issues since then. Just logged in/out without any problem and haven't had any last 3 days.
Interesting that your previous comment came off like your guild of hundreds would be playing at launch and now it's you might have a some playing at some point. Assuming none of your guild was part of the current 3k population, all of you logging in would be a 16% jump. That is relatively nice increase in total players.
You weren't alone in claiming you have a guild with hundreds waiting for launch, but so far none seem to have bothered to field their armies. Still early for sure, but is odd that all the beta pop is low, wait to see the tons at launch claims not reflect reality.
I just logged in and played for like 10 min before crashing again, but, I saw a lot of new people around me, so, there was no missing out on the feeling that others were playing.
I think it might be a graphic card issue however, because they really upped the graphics since beta (NGL, I do not like the new graphics), and I could play great in the more simplistic Claymation style graphics in Beta, but now I am lagging like I am playing portals with random holes.
As far as my guild goes, We have been playing since Launch, in fact, when I was just playing, we had 81 active players, and I get constant updates on our progress and what we have done in the discord.
Wish is even more irritating that I can seem to log in.
Now, If the problem is on my end with the graphics card, I am pretty much screwed till the end of the month and have enough money to buy a new card, but, AFIK, with the Bitcoin going big time that might really set back what I can get for the dollars I can put in.. I'll see what happens with that when that happens.
Gonna go talk with this my guild about this now.. just frustrated at this point.
5600x, 32gb ram, Rtx 3070 and it still doesn't run entirely smoothly for me once a few groups are on screen, fighting or standing around. Not super laggy or anything, but poor FPS and some issues here and there.
I'm not going to pay thousands more in the hopes it runs better when every other game (much better looking) runs great.
Some of the streamers are getting <20 FPS in crowds with what I assume are good gaming/streaming machines better then my okay one.
No matter how you slice it, concurrent and active (based on Coleman's comments) aren't exactly great for a newly launched game that plenty have claimed they were waiting for be it themselves or their guilds of various sizes. Along with the actual copies already sold that go beyond empty claims.
There might be some legitimate reasons for the low population, but all of the previous excuses seem to have run out.