Paragon: The Overprime is coming to PC and returning to the Epic Games store in early 2023! Be sure to check out the early access on Epic Games and Steam here: ntiny.link/_nhZT
You should cover Video Horror Society soon. It went from being considered by many in the asymmetrical community to be a serious competitor to Dead by Daylight to now only having 120 players at peak and dying more and more each day.
@Jim Jones I understand there are things out of Hellbent's control, like the DDOS, but they have themselves to blame in many other ways: -Keeping the game offline way too long for nothing to be changed when it came back -making people wait AGAIN for keys after they came back online -not listening to feedback from the community about aspects of the game that were not fun or balanced -hiring community managers that preferred to silence criticism than foster discussion Hellbent became the living embodiment of that cartoon dog in the room on fire saying "This is fine," and sadly they still are as their game continues to lose more players daily.
I'm not defending the game at all but they specifically said they spent 0 dollars on advertising when it launched into early access which will last a year and said they will spend a lot when it fully releases. Seems like a super weird choice but that's what they said so maybe wait until it really comes out
@@Leaf__22 Yeah, no. That's ballocks and anyone who has even a tiny inkling of understanding of the nature of the industry will tell you that's them trying to cover their asses knowing the writing on the wall. You don't release a game into a playable state with a fully functional in-game store with purchasable cosmetics, and then intentionally not attract players to spend on said store. At the rate things are going the playerbase will be null before they get to the so-called "full release" (A game is released the moment they ask money for it btw. Period. No exceptions. The idea that games can ask for money and still be in a pre-release state is a comical joke and it's absurd so many gamers fall for such bullshit), and no amount of advertising is going to bring in players to the degree to save the game, when the bulk and share of them are going to look at it, see the community is functionally already dead, and not waste their time on it.
The writing on the wall happened for me when Dave Greco, the original Art Director for Crowfall, left development to become a freelance artist and content creator. You don't leave a position like that if you have faith in the project. He's now a Senior Artist at Blizzard. Really love his work.
I waited years for Crowfall, even though I wasn't a backer and didn't start playing until launch. I was pretty much sold on the game after the dev team did their video about the Uncle Bob Problem, AKA what drives players away from EVE Online: the way fighting for world domination is fun as hell, but someone holding absolute control of the world isn't even fun for the ones who have it. I'm normally not a PvPer at all, but the ideas here sounded cool enough that I'd make an exception. At launch, I found an amazingly good economic/crafting group, the Lion Forge Guild, and found that even the resource gathering had in-depth mechanics that meant a good team was valuable when you were just wandering around collecting metal. We went in hard, and somehow, our economic guild ended up controlling 80% of the map in the first Shadows campaign. The single deadliest PvPer in the game requested to join us after that, which was a weird feeling. This was the guy whose gameplay made the devs disable the ability to stealth in enemy forts just to put a stop to his tactics, and we'd conquered enough of the world for him to join us?! We had some extremely high-end and dedicated gatherers and crafters, grouped up with other guilds that focused on logistics, and took chunks of the map in the next couple of Shadows and the first Dregs campaign. Next campaign, though, we were forced off the map on the first day and didn't have territory to build up and defend... and suddenly, the rest of the guild's resolve just crumbled. Many of the group switched over to New World for some reason, and despite the fact that I wanted to keep playing, it wasn't the same at all without the guild's support, and I wasn't willing to ditch them to find a more active one. I occasionally pestered the other guildies to get back in game, but the shutdown announcement happened before I succeeded at that.
Very accurate video. I could write a book about this project.. but alas... pretty spot on with almost all the information. I will say though that the Hunger Dome version was a concept used near launch to test things... before any battle royal stuff even came about. it was LONG before fortnite thats for sure. A lot of us on the team wanted to just go that direction but wasn't looked at seriously from the higher ups. Moral of the story.. if you have a small team.. know your budget and what you can actually do. Keep it simple. Love the videos.
Personally, i never tried crowfall precisely because of my bad experiences with Shadowbane. When i found out the same guy was making crowfall, i avoided it like the plague.
Shadowbane was good. Too good. I am Shadowbane player. This crowfal, was shit from beginning. I only saw it, few animations and videos, and I knew, I would rather play Shadowbane again, with original graphics, than this. Most people didn't handled harsh PvP system though.
Shadowbane was a pretty success though. It was my most favorite mmo. Loved what kind of sick fucking different builds you could make. None were the same. I have yet to recall a game where you can go full wizard meele style
@@owneddiagonal You could go Diablo II melee sorceress, they were quite suprisingly good builds. Using enchant weapon, warmth, energy shield, thunderbolt and teleport. for bosses you could use static field, and finish them melee way quite quickly.
@@owneddiagonal Guild Wars 2 has melee options for all the spellcasters, I loved playing a Dagger/Dagger Elementalist. But I also feel your pain as I haven't found something that scratches the same itch since then.
Yeah picking that as part of your game's name is starting to feel a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I guess Titanfall is a pretty good counter-example though.
@@Nirual86 although Titanfall as a game is much better than the rest on the list, it was still horribly maintained, and mismanaged into a painful and unnecessary death. They havent bothered fixing TF|1 in years, and TF|2 only works if the stars align.
I will say one of the things that literally led to the death of the game was the devs near reliance to never listen to player feedback. Some of the classes were broken, not op but literally broken and unplayable for sometimes up to a year, and there would be no mention of it. The community also ate it's self.
Yes and way to much drama from constant guild flops. also some classes were way to powerful, the highest damage mage having instant vanish multiple times....
I don't think your statement is wrong about listening but I think your example about classes is unrelated. They had too many classes/paths to take classes and not enough development time to make them all work. That isn't about listening; that is just about the situation they were in. They had to launch and had to go with the game as it was. Then dev cycles had to go to keeping the lights on trying to save the sinking ship instead of being able to work on stuff like reworking classes.
@@inaliFTW That was sort of by design though when they crowd funded the game and stated all long they were building it for one specific audience. That audience is just not very big and crowd funding was well short of what was needed to make this thing happen, but they never took focus away from the small crowd funding voices.
One of the biggest things about Crowfall was that they made it seem that the world would populate itself. As in settlements would grow as you did things around the area. One of the greatest community events in MMO history was the opening of Ahn'Kiraj where everyone, both crafters and fighters were contributing resources to open up the gates. Why not have a similar system for Crowofall? where your character can go around cutting lumber and submitting shipments of materials from the location to grow the settlement. There's a mine down the hill but it has giant spiders? why not recruit a raid party of players to go deal with it? That kind of content. Then as "the world would be coming to an end" have the zombie apocalypse mechanic start creeping in and slowly corrupt towns. Players can then choose to defend those or focus on fighting the other 2 factions for resources. This was what seemed to be the initial vision for the game and honestly would be the basis for an incredible mmorpg.
That was basically how Eternal Kingdoms (EKs) worked (go out and get stuff, make EK better), but three issues with it: 1. The resources required to make stuff was astronomical 2. The majority of players were backers so had a bunch of freebies for their EK which meant they didn't have to work towards building a mega castle; they just plopped down their backer reward. Also they were selling EK improvements in the shop. 3. There was no point to the EK other than it looking cool or having a player owned shop. You weren't getting anything out of it whether you placed stuff for free or worked to get it the hard way. With that said I still think the EK system was the one possible bright spots of the game. If they could have figured out a game loop for your average player to go into a campaign, get something, and then improve their EK (or contribute to one they were a citizen of) it may have hooked more players. Instead campaigns were really just about the top guilds who could best abuse the system and the rewards were really just focused on player power creep vs bragging right stuff in EKs.
@@heartless_gamer I mean it wouldn't be too hard to implement. Foxhole is a assymetric top down ww1/2 sim where two factions fight for dominance in the map. Certain zones have certain resources required for you to make better gear and win. What Crowfall could've done was open a few "campaign" servers, pick the same system so people would fight over specific zones, have certain small outposts strewn out in the world and make upgrading them a feasible thing. I'm not saying turning a two man tent with a vendor into a area covering fortress with npc garrisons after an hour of cutting trees but go from a small outpost, to a bigger one with a few defensive npcs, into one with a few fortifications and a minor resource gatherer, basically more tiers of fortification so that even if you only want to go around the realm and build up villages and the less important outposts you could do so, while giving bigger guilds and parties something to do in the larger projects/pve events. Eventually the zombie event starts kicking in halfway through the month and would progressively get worse. This is where minor fortification efforts by singleplayer players could come in handy as they could help defend against a pve horde by fortifying preentively. Come the end of the month, a winner would be chosen and the game world would reset. Your character would be saved and given xp depending on performance and you could go back in with your character and its unlocked traits. As for gear, I'd suggest making them akin to dnd where an enchanted sword still works very much like a sword but has an added effect, so that returning players aren't overwhelmingly more powerful as well as have a robust transmogrification system to kit out your character's look.
@@heartless_gamer I think the EK was a great idea but like all of CF's great ideas it was implemented extremely poorly. The EK solved one of the main flaws of SB, which was the inevitability that a single mega nation would eventually have a complete stranglehold on a server which made further meaningful action impossible. This would kill the server and it would have to be wiped. CF implemented the periodic wipes as part of its design which I think is instrumental in keeping a throne-war simulator healthy. The EK just didn't have the appropriate carrot. Maybe tying it to elite transmogs, which MMO players can't get enough of.
One thing you didn't mention much is that the game's development was constantly going through core design changes, either because they couldn't make it work or just felt like what was implemented wasn't working at all. Two big ones: Voxels were ditched early; and in-campaign building became templated and barely configurable. It would have released a year sooner than it did at minimum if they could have stayed focused on what they originally envisioned. They also ditched the combat system they needed with the pre-alpha Hunger Dome instead of iterating on it which was closer to Tera with animation locking. They decided to go with something like Elder Scroll Online's wet noodle ice rink combat and somehow managed to have a lower skill ceiling for their efforts. SO many good ideas they either didn't implement or executed poorly. It deserved so much better.
I know I would rather tab-target in Shadowbane where the focus was more on strategy, tactics, and information about your enemy than whatever horrid mess they came up with in CF. Too many abilities, too many status effects, too much aoe, and the GCD was way too fast. It feels way better to hit a strong ability at JUST the right moment than spam a weaker version of that same ability 10x in a row.
Back in April 2021, Coleman also attempted to sue KingsIsle for "potential fraud in the sale of a stock transaction," in which KI responded stating that his actions were "a fishing expedition aimed at trying to cash in on the company's recent success." The writing was definitely on the wall at a certain point for Crowfall's future.
I think I heard someone describe these PVP-first focused MMOs best "Not nearly as many people want a PVP-focused MMO as it may seem. It's good to have the option to PVP in your MMO, but focusing on it to the point you prioritize it over PvE is just folly" or something to that effect. Doubly so, if you punish players by making them lose progress or drop their items.
One thing I always notice with these failed MMOs or MOs is that they have so many style changes until they finally have a soft launch. Seems like graphics should be the last things to focus on. Getting the core gameplay, connection issues, and finally interesting bulding/crafting/gathering. You can still make it look pretty afterwards. Or don't make it look pretty. Something haveing a lower poly look is also cool.
I think part of the issue is that producing stellar looking art and assets and iterating over a game's look has become the easier part of gamedev. The industry has become very good at attracting great artists, writers and composers and modern engines support many looks and high poly counts. Ironically, many players still seem to be easily wowed by great looks so developers, especially those reliant on crowdfunding, gravitate towards showcasing art and visual updates. What's still just as hard as ever, and the secret sauce of gamedev, is actually turning a good concept into fun and compelling gameplay. Aint no easy way to achieve that. Iterating on player feedback and killing your darlings if some things don't work out is the only way.
In case it's the first time it gets mentionned, the diablo-like arpg Wolcen would probably be an amazing flop that had a lot of potential. I think they now to their 3rd official release and still don't see much traction. I know I'd love to hear your analysis on this. Keep up the good work! I appreciate you're in depth analysis a lot. Much love.
If he does a video on it, I'll be miffed if he doesn't mention them turning down my application to write item lore for them as a reason for their failure.
Oooh. I'm excited to watch this one. It's near and dear to my heart that this game failed. I was one of the people who was excited and tested it extensively, and they kept making poor choices. I'd make posts about how the path their going down is awful and will kill their game, but they didn't listen to us. This is the awful awful result. You may not find any joy in games failing, but for this specific one? Oh yeah, I take a lot of joy in it. Even though I liked shadowbane and wish it didn't die.
Yeah for the original hype, especially with some of those big, experienced names involved, and those choices that just made people go, what? why? over and over again
Man, I really wanted to see this one succeed. However, just from watching the dev updates and other MMO youtubers covering the game, it was pretty easy to spot a lot of the issues you brought up here, even just looking in from the outside. Thankfully, when Crowfall caught my attention, I had just recently been burned on Star Citizen and had started to realize the risk of games not delivering or being stuck in development hell for all eternity. So I never ended up putting money into Crowfall (or any other crowdfunded game ever again). Interestingly, it seems Ashes of Creation is going to be avoiding a lot of the bad design decisions (like no persistent world to care about, bad/unreadable combat, uninspired marketing, chasing industry design trends and never developing a strong identity) and also looks much more technically impressive already (making full use of UE5s incredible capabilities). So as far as upcoming PvP-hybrid MMOs that's the one I'm keeping a close eye on. We'll see if in 4 years time I'll write another disillusioned comment under your video covering that game's eventual failure... ^^
CDPR just announced that development for GWENT: The Witcher Card game, stops in 2023 (a.k.a. maintenance mode). I remember posting a comment on here, predicting it not a year ago. I'd say it's a curious case, because it's a game that I think died because it was TOO f2p friendly. No incentive to buy booster packs and waaay overpriced cosmetics. I hope you'll check it out!
IMO it mainly died due to having a constant identity crisis. The game kept changing and changing to the point that no one who was a fan of the earlier versions of it or original gwent mini game was interested in it anymore.
Great video. I think the limited-time worlds thing was a great idea that addressed one (of the many) fundamental flaws of Shadowbane: the inevitability that one mega-nation would eventually control all resources and points on a map. This created such a huge numerical and economic stranglehold that no meaningful action could take place, and the server had to be wiped. This happened several times during SB's life cycle. And every time a fresh server cropped up the game was fun again for a number of months. Unfortunately for CF, it failed in every other aspect even though this is a good idea.
This is actually just called life. And it's supposed to work that way. Some will always dominate and rise to the top the job of the developers is to keep it dynamic ..not give up.
As a Bartle 'Explorer' what attracted me to the game was the procedurally generated worlds and the expectation that 'cartography' would be a core profession. That sounded fun! Also, I think 'procedurally generated material worlds that die/spirit worlds where permanent progression happens' is an interesting, underexplored design space for MMOs. Think Realm of the Mad God. Anyway I had an argument with J. Todd Coleman on the forum when he completely removed cartography. He said that cartography had to be removed because the 'fog of war' detracted from the core PVP experience he was trying to create. I replied with 'you can find compromises' and suggested one such compromise, but never got a response. I really like the idea of player driven worlds with loads of drama and intrigue. The main reason I dabble in this genre is to watch social chaos unfold before me. It's just very disappointing that the main people interested in these kinds of worlds are chiefly focused on exclusively making them war simulators. War occupies a very small percentage of our lives here in the real world. Most people are not interested in war-sims. If you want to make a vibrant and dynamic world you need to attract loads of different people, not just sweaty tryhards. Here's an idea: A sandbox mmo where combat is literally just one dice roll, a fun animation, and the survivor is badly injured and needs a player doctor. There, now you can focus the majority of your game mechanics on making an interesting player-driven world that might actually attract people.
I had never heard of the game until today, but the idea of a world that is generated, dies, and a new one is made sounds like a fantastic idea. Maybe not for an MMO, but I could see it working well elsewhere, especially with how extensive procedural generation has become in the last five years. I just don't see why they needed to throw a PVP focus on top of that. A love the idea of explorers going through these lands, recording things for others, and sharing that information. That information would then be usable for a couple weeks, a month, and then the process could start anew, with those that ventured deep in the previous world having some unique relic that showed their time in that particular world.
That was one of Shadowbane's enduring good ideas that I've yet to see another MMO capture effectively, the value of reconnaissance and intelligence which is crucial in actual war. SB had the Scout class specifically for this, and entire sieges were won and lost based on information your scouts were able to relay about the enemy composition and location. And that's if they survived long enough to do it as there was entire counterplay revolving around screening your forces from the eyes of the enemy.
All I remember from this game is a did a two-part video of the game giving my honest opinion, It was an average-tier game and I made that clear in the videos... I played for around 6-7 hours because they offered a free trial. I had a random 'fan' or at least I thought they were a fan telling me I didn't play enough of the game and that my opinion wasn't valid unless I play the end game. I was like okay, I get that I can not comment on end-game content, but the start of any game should be appealing enough to hook in an audience, and if your beginning sucks don't expect people to stay to the end... I am still unclear if it was a passionate fan of a fairly unknown game or one of the creators disliking my opinion... After playing the game it went onto a 'Probably not going to play it' shelf... it seemed to stray from the original idea they pitched.
PPP funding depended on changes in revenue on a year by year or quarter by quarter comparison basis. Since most of their 'revenue' would have been crowdfunding and very little of it during 2019 or 2020, qualifying for a PPP loan is very likely. It doesn't say anything about outside investment or how well/poorly development is going.
I'm only a marketing student (albeit one who's played MMOs for like 15 years) and I could have immediately told them that is an objectively terrible ad. Even the name is weird to me because a name is so important to, well, anything. The name does not evoke thoughts of an online game, a PVP game, and certainly not a war sim thing. When I first heard of it I thought it was a single player game where you're a crow like Deaths Door or something.
Its extremely petty but i stopped playing and forgot about the game when they switched the druid staff to a tiny sickle, I’m all about the aesthetic and I’ll be damn if I'm geared like gardener in a game
I love this channel and these videos. Even though I do often feel sad, especially when it comes to older MMORPGs which either were great or had serious potential, these videos are always entertaining and well made.
Why do you need 30 status effects? Burn, freeze, shock, wet, poison, bleeding, stun, root, slow, cripple, knockdown - it's 11 plus maybe I missed a few but not 30!
Just found out via a Facebook post that new content for the game version of the Witcher card game Gwent is stopping. So. There's a suggestion I now have for something to cover on Death Of A Game in the future.
Love the videos, this one is great as ever! You're probably overwhelmed with game suggestions, but have you ever looked into TTRPGs? I know MMOs are your niche, but covering the weird death of D&D 4e before it became the behemoth that is D&D 5e today would be SICK.
I was a heavy crowfall player, and this video is pretty on point. There was a lot of inefficiencies in terms of developer resources put into things that were not the strong suites of the product (My suspicion is that the game showed promise in areas outside of what the devs initially aimed for, and they were not willing to sacrifice their vision for what was actually working). "Marketing" efforts were worse than amateurish, it seemed like they asked an intern to take care of it, and they cobbled something together at the last minute, to say that they did something. We would also come to know that the internal codebase was of extremely poor quality, making development to salvage the title practically impossible. That being said, I still enjoyed my time playing the game, and I built amazing memories with the folks I played with, to a greater extent than I have in my past 20 years playing video games. The crafting and gather systems were extremely interesting, even if the specific number tuning missed the mark. The character build customization options were deeper than some of the offerings from current top tier MMOs, and had a lot of room for even more growth if the project had been in a better state. While the combat might seem floaty at first, I think that is just a matter of getting accustomed to how hits work in the game. The combat is actually fairly responsive, as you can see from some of the clips where the players are pulling off 4-6 key combos in short succession. The floaty feeling just comes with the territory of a lower budget imo. All in all, I had a blast in this game, but I knew very well it would eventually fail, and I am fine with that. Games being a forever thing is a rather recent concept that I don't subscribe to. Not only were there failures of leadership, but also it was trying to target a niche within a niche that paradoxically requires a critical mass of players while at the same time being known for cannibalizing its own player base. It was going to require many miracles, and unseen revolutionary design decisions to change CF's fate from the get go.
No offense but your suspicion is completely unfounded and based on this weird perspective people have where suddenly nobody wants to play a good pvp MMO. It wasn't even a good game for what it wanted to do, appealing to a broader audience doesn't change that. Appreciate your perspective.
@nerdSlayer Studios i think you must've misunderstood something in my reply, because I cannot parse your comment with any of what I was trying to convey. I was agreeing with the video for the most part. I never imply that the source of failure was "people not wanting to play a good pvp mmo".
@nerdSlayer Studios if you are referring to "(My suspicion... )" side comment, there may be a misunderstanding of what I meant by that. That side comment is referring to development time over the still-active periods going to features outside of what the current players were finding most enjoyable about the game. Meaning instead of leaning into the good parts of the game and making sure those were as good as they could be, they were working on dev items that didn't have much guaranteed payoff simply because they wanted to chase their vision instead of focusing on what had higher chance of positive results.
Ppl always talk about "putting power in the hands of the players" and when devs actually do it, they either dont play the fuggin game or RQ when you get your ass kicked.
As someone that had access to the higher tier backer developer forum, I can say that this game was comically bad in development. J Todd Coleman was like a goldfish changing his philosophies constantly and trying to plug every new idea he had into the game whether it actually fit with other systems or not. It was also amusing watching how horrible the game was, while seeing the few guilds that stuck with it trying to win at alpha and beta, push ideas that they thought would keep them on top, as opposed to pushing ideas that would actually make the game appealing to more than a hundred people. The 2 main issues with the game were the creative director and his lack of consistent vision and focus, and the fact that the devs did not know what would make for a good pvp game in modern times, and then the only advice they were actively getting was from the small population of testers that remained, who themselves were antiquated gamers with no significant experience with modern pvp games.
All true points. These hardcore PvP types are some of the most closed-off, hostile, and unhelpful communities out there. I know because I used to be one. I realized that my behavior was self-defeating. If I was a jerk to everyone I saw then I would eventually run out of people to play with. These hardcore CF backers were saying that the game is fine and you all just need to git gud right up until the day they pulled the plug.
Hah, I backed this game on kickstarter and I didn't even know it had released. My life also looks rather different in 2021 when compared to 2015, so, yeah, I just considered the money lost at some point and put the game out of my mind. So, yeah, good to hear about the release of the game in a Death of a Game video XD
This was a game I was interested in and backed. I feel like I was stuck in the middle with it the entire time. I wanted the crafting sanbox aspect and cared little for pvp, I would of been happy just building weapons and armor for guildies. But nothing ever happened to support that and the sandbox aspect was apperently dropped.
This might be a rehash, but could you do a video on the game "Fault"? It's a remake of Paragon using the assets but died. Would you loom into it? PS: the Sponsor is one of those paragon remakes as well as Fault and Predecessor
Foxhole honestly proved that this premise can exist, but in a format that takes out alot of the MMO systems (like level progression and gear progression) and innovate it.
Funny,just yesterday i watched the vid about shadowfall and wondered what happened to the announced crowfall. Somehow i felt you got a video about it x)
I loved Shadowbane. This was supposed to be its successor, but instead of listening to the PvP crowd, the developers ignored player feedback and focused on all the wrong things. I remember playing pre-alpha and everyone being on the crafting PvE server, instead of focusing on combat and balance. The PvP was always secondary in a PvP themed game. Also, you have Gordon Walton who killed Ultima Online.
Yeah I still remember this coming out on pc, me barely playing due to the issues. Which is tough. Supposedly this was years in the making. At least Paragon is technically back. kinda.
Crazy thing is in my 20 years of playing mmos, as bad as crowfall was, it was still some of my most memorable and best mmo gaming experiences. Such a weird feeling. Because it had so many flaws and it was so bad yet the uniqueness of the game set it apart and still today I’d play it over any other mmo. 😂
Weirdly, I played Crowfall for a few weeks at most but it left an itch that I haven't quite been able to scratch since. There was a special feeling about it that I haven't quite been able to replicate with other games. Yet, there was a reason I stopped playing and would not really want to go back to it if I could. I'm hoping a game like Ashes will eventually scratch the itch.
Wow. I've played GW2 since launch and have always found it to have a bit too much visual noise, even after it was "fixed". But at least I could get the general idea of what is happening in massive WvW battles and could interrupt heals & rezzes in 5v5s. Yet in Crowfall I struggle to tell what is happening, no matter the scale of PvP combat.
I love you so creative content I don’t know how that’s placing control back into players hands but what I will say is, does a fine line between letting players somewhat modify content, and just letting player, create the content free of charge while you make money
21:17 small editing mistake of doubling your first 2 words of the sentence. 10/10 video overall though, very in-depth and informative of the game overall. Great work and keep it up brudda!
With this theme of failed m(m)orpgs it would be amazing if you covered the death of Bless Unleashed, that game closed on consoles on November and it's pc version allegedly is going to turn into an NFT game and had a really interesting story about all the negligence from the devs, seem like they never listened to the players lol and basically remade the game after the first year of released and that only pissed the players even more lol
I don't know how I missed this when it was but I was a huge Shadowbane fan so I jumped on crowfall early made a couple videos but when it went live I played for less than 2 hours.
Any thoughts on a "rebirth of a game" series? Talk about things definitely looked dead but ended up coming back from the stinky depths? Things like cyberpunk and whatnot
"You can win" It would be difficult to come up with a more pointless, more generic statement to add to a promotional video than "you can win". Wtf does that even mean and why should I care.
Speaking of the advertising and marketing for Crowfall, once upon a time I was hyped for the game because Game Informer magazine and random people on youtube did a great job building excitement and interest for the game, but the actual developers themselves did a terrible job on Crowfall's own youtube channel. Really the creators of Crowfall themselves killed the hype I had for their game.
Persistent war online games can work. Foxhole hit 1.0 this year. Even Planetside 2 is still alive well over a decade after launch. It’s a hell of a niche market though. Players have to be more dedicated to meta elements like guilds or PvP than any character investment.
Paragon: The overprime? I havent heard about that name since your "Death of a game: Paragon". I hope they learned their lesson and make it the Shooter/MOBA hybrid we deserve, because the basis of a great title are there.
Major Red Flags when seeing new MMO projects. 1) Kickstarter; 2) Hyping noteworthy devs and their past projects; 3) ''The beta for the pre-alpha demo is almost ready!"
23:00 I'm playing LOTRO while watching this video on my other screen so the music from the LOTRO soundtrack that kicked in here threw me way off. "Huh, this music sounds awfully cheerful for Angmar...."
I don't know what this says about me or the game but as someone who backed this title quite early on in it's campaign, this is how I learnt about it being shut down. Honestly I agree with your point. I jumped into the game every year or so since the alpha open to backers and everytime I hoped that they would smoothe out the combat. I found the lack of lore not as damning as you did since it was supposed to be player driven and people will make their own stories but not all systems for player freedom were there yet. Crafting and Gathering still felt lackluster by the end and slightly tedious with managing the various tools. I hope they make the developed part opem source so people can pick up some part for future projects. I do still see a place for a short term campaign style game with some long term aspect to it. Seasonal titles like most BRs are insanely successful and playing a BDO seasonal character is a fun time as well. While a title like this has no real chance of becoming a main title for someone it will always be a good secondary title to have for when the main game is slowing down for a bit.
WOOW outriders is next? now THAT hurts since i still play it, but feel the game is marred by trying hard to not go into a live service direction when it definitely should have, and also marred by many technical issues
This was a dodged bullet for me. I remember coming across this game when it was first pitched. I was so tempted to buy in, but luckily I had already been burned by a few projects before then which led me to be super cautious of buying early. Such a pity that this didn't pan out though. It had a cool concept.
I remember a friend showing the kickstarter for this. I had funded a few projects (MN9, yooka-laylee, cough), so he thought I'd be interested. This one seemed overambitious to the point of dubiousness, especially after hearing the stories around star citizen. I decided to pass, but checked it out every few years. Until I saw this video, I had no idea it even came out. I was sure it was still stuck in the "half-baked backer only" alpha phase. Anyway, it seems I dodged a bullet on this one. I'm almost certain em8er will follow the same fate.
Shadowbane was awesome because while the art and graphics were janky as hell, the classes and world interactions were top notch, and the game really incentivized community building. And the game was pretty easy to understand while having enooooormous depth at the same time. I had trouble wrapping my head around crowfall, every time I tried to dip my toes into it where to go or what to do was not even vaguely there, and the in game community was - crazy as it sounds considering how ganking murder happy shadowbane was - not nearly as welcoming as Shadowbane had been. I backed the game early because of my Shadowbane memories, and sadly I really did feel disappointed. It saddens me that they lost the plot and maybe wasted a lot of resources on graphics bling that ultimately didn't work, when all the people that stuck around the original shadowbane did it for the character building and warfare and fighting, not for graphics bling. The idea of Shadowbane is still one that could make for a compelling game play someday, I think. We've seen pieces of it even in games like Valheim and others in the recent survival builder genres. Its just nothing has succeeded at anything to the scope of Shadowbane.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss It's funny, like 2 hours before I posted this, my friend was talking about the game, which I have never played. She seemed to like it a lot.
I was a backer of the game, sadly I enjoyed the beta/ptr more than the live version. In addition to that at the time of launch of the game it was poorly optimized and most people's computers just couldn't handle it, afterwards I saved up for a new computer but when I got back a few months later the game was completely dead. What a sad end to a game that I never even got to play at the peak of its prime.
I've had Crowfall's newsletter in my mail for years, not actually checking them but not unsubscribing either. I completely misremember the game and thought it was another one. And if you wonder why I don't unsubscribe: I just wait for bigger announcement like Beta or official release and such.
I feel like Crowfall tried to do something Albion Online pulled off, for the simple fact that it's a lot simpler overall. The combat is very straightforward, with few abilities, yet it allows for a lot of skill expression.
Paragon reminds me of Warframe a little bit. 🤔 As for Crowfall. It’s a shame and a bit ironic, that the first time I hear about it is when it’s nearing its ending. 😅
