Anyone who’s been following Crowfall over the years since its original Kickstarter has likely at one point or another felt like the game’s development was dragging out to infinity – pre-alpha seemed to have no ending. So a couple weeks ago when ArtCraft pulled the trigger and opened up its beta to the masses (well, to many of its registered players), it felt like finding water in a desert. Yet to the many players who backed the game and have been playing for years already, this was simply the next step towards the game they’ve been ready to experience with the rest of the world.
Let the bodies hit the servers
One of the most important parts of a PvP game is actually having other players to PvP against. It doesn’t matter how great your game is; without a critical mass of players, it’s going to flop. Now, what that critical mass of players is will be different from game to game. When I first began writing about Crowfall, I struggled to find anyone else to fight. However, over the last year and a half, that experience has improved tremendously, up to the point we are at now.
There is a whole new air about the game’s worlds. Compared to the alpha and pre-alpha level of engagement, the game feels so alive. Whether you are rolling a new character in the God’s Reach or joining the Infected or campaign server, there are other players all around. Admittedly, this isn’t WoW Classic newly come online with everybody lined up to level, but it is still fantastic to see.
Even when you are playing through the tutorial, it feels so much more like an actual, live MMORPG with other players around doing similar tasks as you. Seeing players in the map chat asking and answering questions – it’s just a joy. You can honestly see the game that so many players backed years ago, now coming to life.
Grappling with the concept of the crow and vessel
There is one core game aspect of Crowfall that I’ve never put much thought into previously that I would like to discuss: the crow and the vessel. I’ve understood it well enough, but now that the game is really coming together and there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve begun to give it more attention.
The long and short of it is that when you play Crowfall, you are technically a crow, which is some sort of undead spirit. When you create a character, you (the crow) actually inhabit that body (a vessel). So in parallel with a typical game, you might consider having a dozen alts as a dozen different player characters. Here, however, each is actually just a different body that you, the crow, temporarily control. So far, I can dig it – it seems like any other game with a different coat of paint.
But Crowfall takes this concept a step further with its necromancy system: literally a crafting system for digging up body parts and building a new vessel. When you’ve crafted (or purchased from a crafter) a new vessel you will then be able to use that for your next character. The point of this whole crafting system is that you could create a vessel that is a higher-tier than the starting vessels. In other words, your vessels, your characters, are just like gear. You start with weak ones and later on you’ll be able to upgrade to better ones. Are you seeing where I’m going yet?
This is the point where I begin to grapple mentally with the system. Again, this is all cool and makes a lot of sense. However, I’m not really the type of MMORPG player who keeps a bunch of alts. I create a main, and I play my games 90% with my main. Before I start to dive into a game headfirst, I do research and check out character calculators and any tools that I can find. I look at what class offers the gameplay I like the most. I find which skill tree will be my favorite. And then, after the research is done, I create my main. I play and maximize my main as fast as I can so that I can start to be competitive with it. Only then, after I’ve felt like I’ve mastered this character and this playstyle, will I begin to consider some alts.
I guess you could say my main is the driver of my engagement in the game. Honestly, I still play the main I created with the two- or three-day head start for Guild Wars 2. However, that is not an option with Crowfall. Not practically. Not if I want to be competitive – which I always am.
Playing through the God’s Reach zones, I’ll see players ask in chat, “What’s the best class for stealth?” “If I want to have ranged DPS spells, which is better Frostweaver or a Confessor?” But as a new player, there is almost no reason to care or become invested in your character because it feels rather disposable. I almost want to tell those newbies that it doesn’t matter what they pick because it’s going to be weak as a beginner vessel. That is something I am still struggling with.
I understand what many other long-time players are surely thinking: that I could always do the same routine, then when it comes time to upgrade to a better vessel I could simply make it the same race and class as my original one. I just have to level up again. And levels are just a number, and there isn’t anything stopping me from getting all the same skills. After that, just do the same thing anytime I upgrade my vessel. Level up again, re-learn the skills. This is likely what I will do. Yet it still feels weird. The character I start the game with isn’t going to be the same one I play a year or two down the road. It doesn’t matter what I start with – it’s going to be weak. To me, that is just weird, and I haven’t fully come to terms with it.
So, crows, have you had a chance to get into the game’s beta yet? I’d be interested in knowing what players who hadn’t played in the alphas thought of it overall, from gameplay to population. I’d also like to get your input on the vessel system. I’m by no means arguing against it, but it is a different concept – for me at least! Let me know in the comments!
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
You really skimmed over the fact that is been 5+ yrs and this game is still in the state of an alpha. For a pvp game, combat should be fun and responsive. As it stands now, I have no idea what’s going on battle to battle.
I mean, I don’t think the combat seems too unresponsive. Maybe in the zerg vs zerg stuff the lag might bog you down. In some regular combat though it seems fine to me.
Overcomplicated method for what is basically FF14/Skyforge class system. Altho in their case, it’s not just a class change, but a character change. It’s basically an alt.
Maybe? I don’t know anything about FF14, being a sub only game, and Skyforge never caught my attention. Skyforge something you’d recommend?
Legit never knew about the crow/vessel system and…I quite dig it. I’ll need to look more into the granular mechanics, but it’s a neat as hell concept at the very least.
I will say though that I’ve been seeing some of the game lately and…it doesn’t look good? Like, maybe people are playing on the lowest settings but it looks like…pretty bad. Washed out colors, super low res textures and low poly models, it looks like a low budget MMO from the late 2000’s more often than not. Which is weird, because it’s generally looked quite slick from what I’ve seen of the trailers/screenshots with its stylized art direction. I’m hoping this isn’t how the final product will look, especially given how poor it seems to perform.
Still keeping my eye on this.
Right, that’s why I wanted to bring it up! I’d known about how it works mechanically for a while but I don’t think it something that a player who isn’t super familiar with Crowfall would really think about.
As far as res and game lag, I believe it is something they are working in significantly now. I wouldn’t expect the current experience regarding that to be the same as in release. I would expect that to be much more polished later on, so don’t let that discourage you from checking it out more yet. Remember that testing the servers was part of the reason for expanding the player base with the beta.
I don’t mind the initial leveling process for the first character/vessel as a tutorial, but the idea that I’m going to have to repeat it again and again is just fucking awful. It’s “only” a couple hours for each vessel, but I’ve done it twice and it already feels like a chore i never want to repeat. Combined with the inability to re-spec your talent points, and one screw-up means you’re spending another few hours doing the exact same thing unless you want to keep your broken build. This completely removes the incentive for people to experiment and figure out builds on their own, since you’re basically being punished for making newcomer mistakes.
After the first one, all your vessels should just start at level 30. There’s absolutely nothing challenging or interesting about leveling up multiple vessels through the same content again and again. They might as well just put in a mechanic where you can only create a new max level vessel once every 2 hours, it would have the exact same effect.
Later in the game most players will level Vessels by making offerings to the gods.
You can only export so many items from a campaign.(Good Vessels probably being a priority.) So whatever gear is left over near the end of the campaign could be used for leveling those Vessels for the next campaign.
It is part of the gear/gold sink, just like everything breaking eventually.
Beat me by 5 seconds.
You know, I’ve had similar thoughts about leveling. Now I think the normal responses you will get would be that once you’re leveled and you’ve played a bit, then you will have a lot of extra sacrifice loot. So, when you level in the future, you won’t need to actually do the leveling manually, instead you’ll just dump a ton of sacrifice loot. Again, it’s kind of a gating mechanism but I think it’ll take more long term play through to really get a feel for whether it is a problem or if it is fine.
I also am a huge proponent of build experimentation. In GW2, I’ll go to the HotM and play with different skills, traits, etc and see what is popping the most dps. Just seeing how skills interact with each other, cool downs and all, is also important for experimentation. And it is unfortunate that you can’t really do here. I would think the respec isn’t as needed since vessels are disposable but, who knows. This will be another case where I can understand players who say just get a new vessel, your build decisions should be permanent so they are impactful, but I personally love playing with builds.
As you get higher tiered vessels you have to sacrifice higher tiered sacrifice items. Those sacrifice items are also valued a lot less on higher tiered vessels. The experience needed to level also goes up with each higher tier of vessel.
The total EXP to hit level 30 on a white vessel is about the same EXP you need to hit level 15 on a Purple vessel. Then a Gold vessel is even worse.
So you will not have nearly enough sacrifice items to get to level 30 on the higher tiered vessels without months of farming. Even still you need a ton more gold because of how the disciplines work, so you will be grinding regardless to slot your disciplines. You have to have the same quality discipline for the same quality vessel. Purple to purple. Gold to Gold. Blue to blue etc. Its a very costly endeavor.
Also build experimentation in CF is alright, but its not nearly as good as something like GW2 or GW1. CF has a lot of stat weighting so the build you created on a beginner vessel, even if it seemed to work really well, could be extremely useless on a higher tiered vessel because of the way stats line up.
On a beginner vessel you may take Plague Lord discipline for the added 100 attack power and you think awesome this is working good I pushed my attack power up with this and now I have Plague Lord to hamper healers. Doesn’t work well on higher vessels because healers are over support power cap so the debuffs on Plague Lord aren’t actually doing anything to their Support Power and you are already attack power capped on a blue vessel.
As a long time CF player – been playing for 5 years. Respecing is desperately needed. Vessels are not disposable later on for reasons I mentioned above.
Interesting insight. Glad there’s more who would like repecing!
I love the Crow/Vessel system in theory. The Beta test environment just does a poor job of implementing it at this point.
The players should start the game as a Crow, get to fly around a bit, then be led to a graveyard to pick out a Vessel to use. Then lead to the create character screen. The game should explain this basic poor quality Vessel is temporary and throw away, just like the lousy weapon you start with.
Instead the test environment just starts off like a typical MMO and even has a limit to the number of characters you can make.
Having a good amount of Vessels leveled up and ready to play is going to be an important part of playing on the most dangerous worlds where other players can actually steal your vessel if you die.
I expected a LOT more interaction between hopping from Crow to Vessel to Crow to a different Vessel. Instead there is a much more typical MMO style where you have to log in and out to play different characters.
They talk about “Deep Crafting”, but I don’t see it. Most of the crafting trees are just the same couple upgrades over and over and over. That is not depth.
The crafting itself comes down to an”Experimentation” mini-game where random numbers, modified by the skill trees, determine how good the added bonuses on the item are. It’s all very hands off. That is not depth.
There are only 6 types of Ore, that ain’t really that deep either.
Speaking of the time based skill tree’s, they are way too generic overall and need to be more specific, and broken down into many more categories. It should take time and specific study to make the best swords, mail, shields ect.
Instead anyone who follows the Blacksmithing tree can make all of those items equally well as anyone else that just fills in the generic tree.
I understand there must be an end to skill ups at some point, but it should be a few months to make the best swords, a few months to make the best axes, a few months more to learn to make the best shields ect, to allow some specialization for the populace.
The weapon and armor options are way too limited as well. Many classes have only ONE usable weapon and ONE armor choice. Barely any have a choice to use shields. Hardly the “Deep Systems” I was expecting from a PVP game that isn’t creating PVE content.
It’s nice that they have things in a testable/playable form, but the game still needs a very large amount of fleshing out. All of the major systems need a quality/content pass.
It needs more time in the oven, it’s not done yet. If they are planning on launching soon, it will not end well.
Good thoughts Koss. I think you make some good points.
This is kind of a cool thought, even doing this one time to begin the game might be enough to get the idea across.
I’ll be sure to mention it in my feedback letter to Artcraft.
They did this before. Didn’t work well.
You started as a Crow, flew over to a statue representing whatever class and inhabited that vessel. The problem comes from how they do character creation. Before you didn’t choose your race or gender. They were locked based on the class.
Also, your vessel can never be stolen.
So you touch the statue and go to the character create screen.
I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.
They might have changed their minds, but I am certain they said in the past that on the most dangerous campaigns Vessels could be looted.
Otherwise why bother making them equipment? Just make the leveling curve longer and control all the growth with disciplines if Vessels can’t be looted.
I am unhappy about character slots. I expected vessels to work like ships in EVE, anything less is stupid. I want to be able to swap into a cheaper vessel if the tactics call for it, but the way you describe it, upgrading a Vessel is a one way street.
Not being able to have an army of vessels, each set up for specific situations, is a terrible plan!
I appreciate your wisdom, I’m not disagreeing with you. It is currently not the way they have explained it in the past.
I expected after a large battle there would be broken vessels lying all over the battlefield. Then, if you recovered yours, the Necro’s would patch them up and get them back into fighting shape.
So far I am disappoint.
The crow thing is a really good idea. I think it would be a great way to introduce new players to the concept of crows and vessels. Artcraft just doesn’t have the talent to pull it off in a good way.
As for vessel looting they ditched that idea a long time ago. Along with many other things. If you go back and look at their original Kickstarter design for how Crowfall was going to be and how it is now, it is a very different game.
Some of those changes were for the better Archetypes being nixed for a more traditional race/class creation.
Many more were changes for the worse, removal of voxels and destructible environments. 100s of planned disciplines, we have about 20 and most are worthless. They had plans for boons and banes on character creation where you would choose positives and negatives on creation. Nixed.
ArtCraft unfortunately just isn’t super talented or they made really bad decisions early on that has very negatively impacted how they can develop the game now (keeping Passive Training in the game for example). Unity I think is a major hurdle for them also.
Haha, I think this was the last test I was in. I like the concept, but I’m quite over unpaid testing at this point in my life, except for personal/friends’ work.
The crafting is decently deep with tons of stats. You are actually on the wrong track with CF. It takes months to make the best of anything in CF. This is the major barrier that hinders CF the most. Its a very time gated thing with the passives. You can’t actively train yourself to be better at any harvesting or crafting. This is the biggest downfall of CF.
Example. New player to the game joins a guild and wants to be a weaponsmith. The guild already has a weaponsmith. The new player has zero benefit to the guild until their passives are trained and on par with the veteran player because they will never make anything even close to as valuable as the veteran. It takes months for those passives to be trained to be on par. Giving any materials to the new crafter even white or green materials is a net loss for that guild.
Then you think okay, well they can make white or green gear to sell or join a newer guild. Not gonna work. Veteran players are already going to be doing that with their lower quality materials and selling them because there is no use for those materials in a guild. Even if they join a new guild those materials are wasted on them because that guild will get better gear from wartribes and stockpiling the materials they have for crafting later on makes more sense.
This is even worse for harvesting.
In CF atm you can’t even harvest any materials on the campaign worlds because the harvesting nodes are to high level. Nobody can do any damage to them.
As far as specialization on crafting in the blacksmith tree, its partially true. But not exactly. If you are a weaponsmith you will never make the best armor and vice versa. If you are an Armorsmith you will never make the best weapons without significant gold investment. There are specific items that crafters have to slot that gives them access to new parts of specific recipes, opening up new customization options. They are rare and hard to come by unless you have a decent sized guild that knows how to get those items and where to get them from.
Also, your vessel can never be stolen. The only time it could potentially be stolen is right after you craft it and you haven’t created that vessel in character creation and it was in your inventory and you died. If you have made the character it can not be stolen, ever.
Very good insight on crafting!
I have been playing CF since it was in gray box. Hunger Dome, so I have a lot of experience with the game through just about all its phases. I have a lot of knowledge on the intricacies of mechanics and systems and how they work or don’t work. What they are planning on doing to fix things and just overall CF knowledge.
There is definitely a lot of contention over the state of CF and what people think it should be or should have been. Just after the Dregs update 5.110 one of the biggest guilds and motivators in the game and long time Shadowbane guild quit for the direction CF took. A lot of veteran players to the game feel the same way.
There are a lot of great things to like about CF, but there are a lot of things to really dislike as well. Especially when having years of experience with specific mechanics in the game and seeing how they don’t work or flow correctly with the overall progression of the game and as individual players.
If you have any questions about something deeper game that you likely won’t see for months because of how progression works in the game or anything. I’m always willing to give insight on it. Cheers for the article, it was well written.
Thanks Vunak! I’ll keep you in mind.
I appreciate all the info, and I believe what you are saying.
I am just pointing out that my expectations do not match the reality.
Weaponsmith or armorsmith are still too broad of categories.
You pointed it out yourself, a guild only needs one weaponsmith, any of lesser skill are useless. That does not bode well for a social game.
New player wants to be a crafter, new player gets told he can never be good enough, new player quits.
Blacksmithing also has the most items available. Yes, there are alloys to be made and stats to be added, but it’s really not all that deep even for blacksmithing. Basic physical/elemental damage boosts or resistances are all I see from making combines. A fire boost is only useful to a class that uses fire.
There are no discipline runes for splitting Woodworking or Alchemy into separate classes, and there are not enough items to make in those categories any case.
The harvesting rules don’t make a whole lot of sense either. If they are trying to keep people from stockpiling top tier ingredients, it will only work for the first couple of campaigns unless they plan on resetting harvesting every campaign. Eventually people with the skill are going to enter a new campaign and go straight for the good stuff. So, I don’t really see the point.
They really have a lot of work to do yet.
I like the creativity of the crow/vessel idea, it’s truly novel….but maybe I’m missing something, but especially in a PVP game doesn’t this just cement early-player advantages even MORESO than say, EVE (where’s it’s vast amounts of wealth)?
EVE is already fairly prohibitive for nubs, you leave the station in your snazzy frigate looking for another frigate to fight mano a mano … just to get ROASTED by the guy sweeping past with a tech2 Frigate and faction fit, etc?
Will CF end up the same? *sproing* new fresh server starts and I jump into my new body …and get ROASTED by the guy who’s been playing for a year who starts the game with a vastly more powerful body?
Or am I totally misunderstanding?
Yeah, so that is one of the reasons I struggle a bit with the system. It does sort of become a divider between the haves and the have-nots. There is also some debate about the time gate for the necromancy system. Currently it is kind of deep in the passive training trees. I haven’t messed with it myself (really this column was a first deep thought on it) but I believe you have to begin passive training. Let time accumulate points. Spend those points in the tree and eventually you’ll unlock necromancy… I think.
I wouldn’t be surprised if campaigns can also be set to only allow fresh bodies or even only allow high end ones. So it may not be a problem at release. But yeah, your concern is potentially a problem.
It’s also possible the trading system in the long term is robust enough that it isn’t an issue to buy a higher tier body when you need one.
So, I think you are understanding correctly. It is a cool, but potentially gated system. But, that’s why it’s still in beta and you can voice your concerns!
That’s because the system is an extremely vertical progression system. I can tell you now as a long time CF player that beginner vessels are absolute dog @#$% garbage in comparison to even a rare vessel (blue). Then Blue is mediocre in comparison to Epic (purple) and then again with Gold. A beginner vessel stands 0 chance against someone in an epic vessel. Vessels are not limited by campaign rules. You will not even come close to killing a purple vessel player if you are on beginner vessel. That’s not taking into account gear that purple vessel player likely has crafted or passives trained.
Something else that is really frustrating is that as a new player you are coming up with a build that might work REALLY well But if you try to do the same thing with a blue or purple vessel it might be absolute garbage because of how stats weight in CF, you will see a lot of redundant stats. Its very difficult as new players to go into CF and understand what is going to be useful later on. Which can waste a ton of valuable resources gathered over months.
You can also get crafted a really poor vessel that is marginally better than your beginner vessel.
The leveling process on blue vessels and up is much much longer. The total experience you need to get to level 30 on a beginner vessel is about the same experience you need for say level 15-16 on a purple vessel.
So the person above saying you will sacrifice your way on new vessels. You will, but only if you have stockpiled weeks- months worth of sacrifice items. More often than not you will be grinding mobs for awhile and trying to kill captains and kings for gold and experience. You also have to use sacrifice items of the same quality. Purple sacrifice items for purple vessels etc. You can use any grade up to a certain level, but after level 10 you have to use higher quality sacrifice items.
You also need a ton more gold because you have to slot the same color discipline into your vessel. So purple disciplines into Purple Vessels. You cant slot white disciplines into a purple vessel for example. Its a very grueling and cumbersome system.
All of it is completely overshadowed by the horribly implemented Passive training system and creating way more disparity between new players and veteran players with it. You might as well just afk for a few months before even trying to do anything in CF.
Yeah, just YIKES!
They need much better implementation of the Vessel system.
If a player is at a huge advantage in a gold Vessel, and can never lose that Vessel, why even bother having other equipment in the game at all.
It would be like EVE if you got to the largest ship and then were un-blow-up-able and never had any chance of losing that ship. It would suck.
When a new server (campaign world) launches, everyone will have the same entry restrictions. The wealthy player will have more choices to make.
A player with more time in and more wealth should and will be at an advantage, but it will not be an insurmountable advantage. Depending on the danger level of the new campaign, that player risks losing everything he brings in.
While a newer player will have less to risk, they can potentially gain more too. It will just start out as an uphill fight.
They claim there will be a catch up mechanic for new players added at some point, so that they don’t fall too far behind the power curve. Time will tell on that.
On the question of the crow/vessel, frankly I’m loving it so far! Its different and deeply enjoyable for one who has a long history of alt-itis. Also it does a great job narratively of addressing Crowfall as an MMO rather than just an RPG, a regular rubbing point for me in most MMOs of the post-WoW era.
Sadly I have never played on anything but a basic vessel, but also really love the idea that via my guild’s necromancers I’ll eventually have access to a stronger “vessel” its a really clever alternative approach to progress.
I agree it is different but a very cool concept. In the long term it probably doesn’t make a big difference from your normal games (because you’ll eventually hit a top tier vessel) but starting out is kind of different.
I’m super-impressed with the improvements to Crowfall over the last few months. From the addition of the New Player Experience, to the volume of new players hitting the Infected and Dregs campaigns. Interestingly I think that in many ways the game has already achieved its original vision/goal of producing an updated version of Shadowbane, a game with living and dying worlds represented through the campaigns and a PvP experience that can differ significantly from day to day or month to month. Certainly it isn’t a game for everyone, but for the PvP crowd (not even just the “hardcore” crowd) Crowfall is very clearly not a game to miss at this point :)