Resource gathering in MMORPGs is considered too boring and not dangerous enough. Artcraft wants to change that with Crowfall now!
Aside from a few small bits of information, for example regarding siege weapons, it has been quite quiet about Crowfall recently. This changed in the past weeks when the developers at Artcraft gave us a deeper insight into the upcoming crafting system .
While combat is what most players are likely to be excited about, Crowfall aims to present a harvesting and crafting system that will make the world much more interactive and lively. To ensure that players enjoy their experience and do not lose interest in the game, the devs want to make the system appropriately challenging and rewarding at the same time.
There will be resource nodes and monsters in 10 different rarity or quality levels that automatically adjust to the rank of the parcel they are located on, which in turn adjusts automatically to the difficulty of the campaign (world band). Here it’s risk vs. reward, as where better resources can be found, more dangerous monsters will await.
Additionally, the resource nodes have their own hit points and drop resources at 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0% remaining HP. What and how much exactly is harvested is determined by the system using a loot table, introducing an element of chance into the game.
Another interesting, but for many probably also controversial point is that players are limited to training only one general skill at a time.
We want it to be an experience that players find so entertaining that some will dedicate themselves solely to it, while others will invest in their skill training – even if their play style is usually combat-centric.
Players will thus be ‘forced’ to make a choice about how they want to develop their character: very good in combat, or very good in resource gathering, managing both at a high level will be difficult.
But that’s far from the biggest innovation that the developers have conjured up.
“As previously mentioned, one of the goals we aim to achieve with this design is to encourage group play during resource gathering. Well, not just during gathering, but really in all activities revolving around resources, including discovery, mining, collecting, transporting, and protecting resources.”
You heard it right: multiplayer resource gathering! And it’s not just that. Group play is not only more social but also more productive, as the results can be increased through group play, for example, if the group leader has trained harvesting skills in the skill tree. Additionally, the loot table will be tailored to the group member with the highest value.
In addition to promoting group play in resource gathering, another resulting gameplay element will encourage more interaction. For group work, caravans of pack animals will be needed to haul everything:
“You can collaborate with your friends at the more challenging resource nodes to destroy them faster. The fact is […] that we are giving space for the idea of caravan expeditions as an emerging behavior that we want to promote – that we are even experimenting with having stronger nodes that require multiple players to destroy them.”
The developers’ goal is to further drive interactions between players. Therefore, the game will draw attention to collectors from other nearby players – often also enemies. To reduce the resulting danger, you will always want to have a few friendly players on hand to defend the caravan if it should be attacked by players or NPCs.
Matthias thinks: The big question now is, will this resonate with players later on, or will solo players be deterred by the many advantages of group play? What do you think of Crowfall’s ideas?
Get a glimpse into the design process of Crowfall’s harvesting system:
