CrimeCraft Executive Producer Matt McEnerney recently sat down with the good folks at WarCry to talk about topics ranging from Banned in Australia to the grind in an MMOFPS vs. a traditional MMO. He even drops a few hints about the future of CrimeCraft!

"Gangs are our version of Guilds so instead of Raids we have lots of plans to expand the CC end-game in Gang focused ways."

You can read the full interview here.

Greetings, everybody. I wish I was writing this post to inform you we broke the alltime CCU record or another issue we could all rejoice about, but unfortunately I have to address a slightly more serious topic: the lost character progress from Monday this week.

For anybody that doesn't know, we had a server crash in the early afternoon (Pacific Time) on Monday, and players that were logged in a few hours prior to, and up until, the crash lost their progress. I hope this goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway: We're incredibly sorry for the lost information that our users put time and effort into.

Before we go any futher, I want to stress that the underlying issue was identified, addressed, and fixed on the same day the crash occurred.

But that's small consolation for the people that saw their data disappear into the ether, so we're also going to be compensating players from Monday. If you were one of the unfortunate players that lost progress, in the very near future your account will change in two ways:

1) You will find yourself 20 GBs richer.

2) You will have an extra day (24 hours) of Premium access added to your subscription.

The first one is self-explanatory, but the second point requires some explanation depending on the current level of your account.

If you currently have a Premium subscription, you'll have one day added onto the end of your current subscription time. This includes people on recurring subscription plans; if your recurring subscription was set to renew on the 15th, for example, it will now renew on the 16th.

If you're on a Standard of Free Trial account, you'll still be getting a day of Premium access, but we wanted the reward to be a little more immediate than sticking a day or Premium onto the end of your subscription, a date which probably doesn't stick out for everybody and may pass without your knowledge. So for anybody that was under the Standard or Free-Trial account, this Saturday is what will be henceforth known as Premium Saturday. For one day, from 12:00am to 11:59pm Pacific Time, any Standard of Free Trial users that lost data due to the crash will have all the perks and benefits that Premium users have. At the end of Saturday, your account will return to its previous status. We encourage you to take advantage of the extra features!

Good luck, and see you in Sunrise City!

Hey guys,

It took a little longer than we expected, but the scores have been adjusted and the servers are up.

--KevinB

Hey Guys,

We'll be taking the server down for maintenance today at about 11 a.m. EST, 8 a.m. PST, 5 p.m. CET for maintenance and to adjust the PvP scores to the new scale.

--KevinB

Hi everyone,

My name is Daniel Prousline and I’m the Vice President of Product Development for Vogster. I wanted to take a moment this holiday season to say a few words about the state of the game and Vogster’s company outlook.

First and foremost: The CrimeCraft team is very grateful to our players for showing their support and sticking with the game in this initial difficult period. We know that our population numbers need to grow and the game needs to keep improving for people to continue playing. These are absolutely our two most important goals.

We are very glad to have you with us! Your continuing support gives us hope of eventual success. I want to assure you that we are listening to what you are saying and all feedback is being carefully analyzed and considered. We want to address the issues raised by our community as much as we can and as quickly as we can. Vogster does not have the abundant resources of an EA or Activision, we are a small, independent publisher dedicated to its fan base and this product. We do have an advantage over the “big” companies because we are small, agile and we listen to our community. Every post, every e-mail is read and passed onto our development team. We hear you loud and clear and are developing new features based on your input. We consider CrimeCraft your game and you are helping shape and design it.

Right now our primary goal is to improve the player experience for both new and existing players – this includes improved match matching and providing a better experience to new players, as well as pushing significant additional content. The other important aspect of this work is improving client stability and resolving technical glitches as quickly as possible. It is important to understand that all of these fixes and improvements take time to develop, test and roll out. The development team is doing as much as possible to make this process quick and smooth.

We also are working on creating new content and tuning the existing game and its business model to provide new and existing players with a more satisfying experience. Among our key goals are expanding the item mall and providing better support for our international players. We are thinking long term and starting to build game play that will sustain people over many months. This includes competitive tournaments with tangible rewards, as well as the ability to own and customize in-game possessions.
I also wanted to share a few thoughts on the new PvP ranking system. We implemented this system for one reason and one reason only, to make the game friendlier for new players. Our statistical data shows that new players leave a game after a few matches against high level players (50 percent of new players leave the game within an hour). So without the better balancing elements of the new PvP ranking system, we are never going to increase our population, which is what everyone wants. The more players we have in the game, the more fun everyone will have.

My promise to you is that over the next 6 months we will be able to really give you a sense of solid progress and clear direction of where the game is going. Honestly, we can’t wait to share our excitement about it. We will be rolling details out to you over the next few weeks. Your thoughts and feedback are critical to help guide us in our decision making. Some of these features include:

• Daily Tournaments with rewards
• Gang War Tournaments
• Improved and more robust free to play model
• Ability to own and customize night clubs within Gang Halls
• 32 Player matches
• Improved PvE matches

We have the confidence and the support of our investors to continue to operate and improve the game over the long term. We also appreciate and rely on the support of our player community to make this possible over the months and years to come.

Thank you for your continuing support and stay tuned!

Daniel

Hey guys,

I promised a little more detail on the new PvP ranking system and here it is. Just to recap, the old Rep system was based partly on game performance and partly on time spent in game. The new system is purely a reflection of player skill and performance.

The old ranking system ranged up to 99,500. The new system caps at 13,000.
In those 13,000 points there are 12 ranks, ranging from Newbie to the Most Wanted. The basics of the system haven't changed. You get a kill, you gain points, you get killed, you lose points. These points are modified based on the rank of the killer and the killed. If a Newbie kills one of the Most Wanted, the Most Wanted loses more points than if the roles are reversed.

This means it's easier for the Newbie to gain points than it is for the Most Wanted, but as players climb through the ranks, it gets harder and harder to advance. Only the most skilled players will be able to achieve and hang on to the rank of the Most Wanted! As players climb, their score will settle in to their "natural" skill number and will hover around that number unless their skill level improves or declines.

The system we have now may need a few tweaks as our population fluctuates, so expect some refinements as we move forward!

--KevinB