This is our second in the Dev Blog series by Lead Game Designer Alexandr Soloveyko:
Hi guys,
This post is #2 in our developer diary series and we have a lot of interesting information to share with you. Our previous post contained mostly general information and you guys said, “damn, that’s cool but we need something more specific!” And you are 100 percent right, so now we are going to share more details with you.
Over time, we have found that it’s hard for many shooter players to find the most effective combinations of weapons, abilities and boosts. This drove us to the idea of “build recommendations” – that players should see some recommended solutions and be able to choose between using them or experimenting and creating their own builds. Secondly, we found that it’s too hard for many shooter players to get the equipment they want. Finally we came to the fact that we really need to provide players with a much simpler way of getting equipment and keeping it up-to-date. Third, a lot of casual players don’t use boosts or ammo just because they expire. Casual players see that those items expire really fast – it’s a waste of cash in their eyes.
On the other hand, Indura LiquidStone dramatically increases character survivability, adding ammo for a Hargan Mastiff will increase damage a lot, etc. You guys will agree that using consumables is critical for your combat performance and players who don’t use them will likely fail and eventually quit.
All this led us to take another look at the Doppelganger sets – they provide the player with the recommended abilities, their boost slots are locked so the player doesn’t have to worry about boosts and their expiration, they provide the player with the clothes and all clothes stats are kept up-to-level automatically. At the same time the players still have to choose weapons and replace ammo and the ability AUG. On top of that, getting these sets is not easy. But we had a strong feeling that the Doppelganger sets are a step in the right direction. We decided to further develop this idea and balance the game taking into account that a lot of players will use this feature.
I just want to let you guys know that we won’t change the Doppelganger sets – they will remain as they are now. What we are going to do is to add a new feature in the game. So assuming that the Doppelganger sets are the first iteration and focusing on the goal to make these sets suitable for the most casual players we concluded that we have to do the following:
First of all, the sets should be as simple and easy to understand as possible. So they should include all elements of player equipment – clothes, weapons, ammo, abilities, boosts and ability AUG – everything that makes a difference in combat. You choose and equip one set and you get everything.
Secondly, the sets should be iconic and easy to understand for any shooter player who hasn’t played CrimeCraft yet – the sniper, the miner, the stealth guy are simple and obvious.
Third, the player shouldn’t be able to break the class – so everything is locked and there is no way to customize the set. If you want to customize something – than you should do it separately the same way that any player can do it right now.
Fourth, the set should remain with you forever – boosts, ammo and ability AUGs won’t expire. Yes, you guys read that right – they will provide infinite use of boosts and other consumable items!
Moving this way we found that we actually introduced classes to CrimeCraft – the old well known classes any RPG player knows about. Moreover, many shooters like, let say, Team Fortress, use this approach as well. So guys, be ready to meet classes in CrimeCraft soon! “But I like the current flexible system, when you can combine and create any build”, many of you guys might say. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to kill any of the existing features – any player will be able to choose between the custom builds or the predefined classes or even use both approaches for different profiles.
And one last thing, classes should be as easy to access as possible. And the easiest way is to provide the players with the ability to get any of them in a few mouse clicks, he just needs enough cash in his pocket. After purchasing the class the only thing a player should care about is keeping it up to level – make several clicks, spend some cash and the class equipment and abilities upgrade every time the character reaches the next level threshold.
You are probably curious about the prices, so here is our answer and it’s in line with our philosophy for the whole game. The player has a choice between several awesome classes and other features – the average player will have enough in-game cash to get and keep up to level any one of them. But if he wants to get many of them and use their maximum power – then gold bars is the way to go.
When looking back in the past I remember the time before CrimeCraft launched. At that moment the team believed that a fully customizable system that allowed players to create any build was the way to go – it would be one of the game’s coolest features, it would make CrimeCraft look different from anything else on the market and it would be interesting and deep. Now we understand that all that is true, but such a system is hardcore and distracts a lot of great shooter players from the game. What we are going to have now is a mix that should accommodate both casual and hardcore players (at least we are doing our best to achieve this goal).
Some of you may think that this is unfair. Why should a player who creates his own build constantly pay the upkeep cost to have ammo and boosts in order to use the full power of his equipment when the players who use the classes don’t? Why should a player who creates his own build spend a lot of time looking for the gun he dreamed about when the classes are going to be much easier to access? We understand all these problems and it was a huge challenge for us to balance this aspect of the game.
The first thing we needed to balance is the cash-in and cash-out balance. The player who uses the class should get as much cash from the instance as the player who uses the custom profile minus the amount of cash this player should pay to renew his boosts, ammo and the durability of his clothes and weapons. Not that hard in theory, but it appeared almost impossible to achieve when we tried to implement it. The reason is simple and all you guys know it – the upkeep cost for the high level consumables are higher than the instance rewards. But we still had to balance this aspect so we made the following decision –classes won’t use the top level boosts and top quality ammo. It sounds unfair, but the reality is that now most players don’t use top level consumables in the game in regular matches. So after thinking about it, we found that this approach is the way to go – the cash-in and cash-out will be balanced, and on the other hand the players who use classes will be equal to the majority of the players who use custom profiles.
“But if I like classes and I want to win a tournament,I need the best boosts for that!” one might say. And our answer is pretty simple – if you want to be the best – then you have reached the moment when you have to master all aspects of the game. Be ready to improve your build and create a custom profile item by item and be ready to work hard to constantly pay for the best consumables.
To close this diary, I would like to share a bit of information about one of the classes that will be available for mid-level players. The information below is not final; we still balance and tune the classes so everything could be changed. But now we believe that we are somewhere close to what we will have in the game at the moment of release.
The class name: Kamikaze.
The idea: This class serves well for the players who like using melee attacks to finish their opponents. Bess or Shock will help you to reach them, knife will kill them and Collector will heal you.
Primary weapon: Hargan Bulldog.
Abilities: Shock Grenade, Direct Injection System, Collector.
Boosts: Chemtech RenewX, Bess.
Ability AUG: Shock Grenade SHG-21.
“Why would they use Chemtech RenewX, it sucks,” you might ask. You’re right – it sucks now. But it won’t suck anymore. Stay with us and we will let you know about other improvements we are working on. Also, please excuse our typos in the screenshot, this is a very early draft and we’ll be cleaning up the copy before release.
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"Conman"
"April Fool"
This is our second in the Dev Blog series by Lead Game Designer Alexandr Soloveyko:
Hi guys,
This post is #2 in our developer diary series and we have a lot of interesting information to share with you. Our previous post contained mostly general information and you guys said, “damn, that’s cool but we need something more specific!” And you are 100 percent right, so now we are going to share more details with you.
Over time, we have found that it’s hard for many shooter players to find the most effective combinations of weapons, abilities and boosts. This drove us to the idea of “build recommendations” – that players should see some recommended solutions and be able to choose between using them or experimenting and creating their own builds. Secondly, we found that it’s too hard for many shooter players to get the equipment they want. Finally we came to the fact that we really need to provide players with a much simpler way of getting equipment and keeping it up-to-date. Third, a lot of casual players don’t use boosts or ammo just because they expire. Casual players see that those items expire really fast – it’s a waste of cash in their eyes.
On the other hand, Indura LiquidStone dramatically increases character survivability, adding ammo for a Hargan Mastiff will increase damage a lot, etc. You guys will agree that using consumables is critical for your combat performance and players who don’t use them will likely fail and eventually quit.
All this led us to take another look at the Doppelganger sets – they provide the player with the recommended abilities, their boost slots are locked so the player doesn’t have to worry about boosts and their expiration, they provide the player with the clothes and all clothes stats are kept up-to-level automatically. At the same time the players still have to choose weapons and replace ammo and the ability AUG. On top of that, getting these sets is not easy. But we had a strong feeling that the Doppelganger sets are a step in the right direction. We decided to further develop this idea and balance the game taking into account that a lot of players will use this feature.
I just want to let you guys know that we won’t change the Doppelganger sets – they will remain as they are now. What we are going to do is to add a new feature in the game. So assuming that the Doppelganger sets are the first iteration and focusing on the goal to make these sets suitable for the most casual players we concluded that we have to do the following:
First of all, the sets should be as simple and easy to understand as possible. So they should include all elements of player equipment – clothes, weapons, ammo, abilities, boosts and ability AUG – everything that makes a difference in combat. You choose and equip one set and you get everything.
Secondly, the sets should be iconic and easy to understand for any shooter player who hasn’t played CrimeCraft yet – the sniper, the miner, the stealth guy are simple and obvious.
Third, the player shouldn’t be able to break the class – so everything is locked and there is no way to customize the set. If you want to customize something – than you should do it separately the same way that any player can do it right now.
Fourth, the set should remain with you forever – boosts, ammo and ability AUGs won’t expire. Yes, you guys read that right – they will provide infinite use of boosts and other consumable items!
Moving this way we found that we actually introduced classes to CrimeCraft – the old well known classes any RPG player knows about. Moreover, many shooters like, let say, Team Fortress, use this approach as well. So guys, be ready to meet classes in CrimeCraft soon! “But I like the current flexible system, when you can combine and create any build”, many of you guys might say. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to kill any of the existing features – any player will be able to choose between the custom builds or the predefined classes or even use both approaches for different profiles.
And one last thing, classes should be as easy to access as possible. And the easiest way is to provide the players with the ability to get any of them in a few mouse clicks, he just needs enough cash in his pocket. After purchasing the class the only thing a player should care about is keeping it up to level – make several clicks, spend some cash and the class equipment and abilities upgrade every time the character reaches the next level threshold.
You are probably curious about the prices, so here is our answer and it’s in line with our philosophy for the whole game. The player has a choice between several awesome classes and other features – the average player will have enough in-game cash to get and keep up to level any one of them. But if he wants to get many of them and use their maximum power – then gold bars is the way to go.
When looking back in the past I remember the time before CrimeCraft launched. At that moment the team believed that a fully customizable system that allowed players to create any build was the way to go – it would be one of the game’s coolest features, it would make CrimeCraft look different from anything else on the market and it would be interesting and deep. Now we understand that all that is true, but such a system is hardcore and distracts a lot of great shooter players from the game. What we are going to have now is a mix that should accommodate both casual and hardcore players (at least we are doing our best to achieve this goal).
Some of you may think that this is unfair. Why should a player who creates his own build constantly pay the upkeep cost to have ammo and boosts in order to use the full power of his equipment when the players who use the classes don’t? Why should a player who creates his own build spend a lot of time looking for the gun he dreamed about when the classes are going to be much easier to access? We understand all these problems and it was a huge challenge for us to balance this aspect of the game.
The first thing we needed to balance is the cash-in and cash-out balance. The player who uses the class should get as much cash from the instance as the player who uses the custom profile minus the amount of cash this player should pay to renew his boosts, ammo and the durability of his clothes and weapons. Not that hard in theory, but it appeared almost impossible to achieve when we tried to implement it. The reason is simple and all you guys know it – the upkeep cost for the high level consumables are higher than the instance rewards. But we still had to balance this aspect so we made the following decision –classes won’t use the top level boosts and top quality ammo. It sounds unfair, but the reality is that now most players don’t use top level consumables in the game in regular matches. So after thinking about it, we found that this approach is the way to go – the cash-in and cash-out will be balanced, and on the other hand the players who use classes will be equal to the majority of the players who use custom profiles.
“But if I like classes and I want to win a tournament,I need the best boosts for that!” one might say. And our answer is pretty simple – if you want to be the best – then you have reached the moment when you have to master all aspects of the game. Be ready to improve your build and create a custom profile item by item and be ready to work hard to constantly pay for the best consumables.
To close this diary, I would like to share a bit of information about one of the classes that will be available for mid-level players. The information below is not final; we still balance and tune the classes so everything could be changed. But now we believe that we are somewhere close to what we will have in the game at the moment of release.
The class name: Kamikaze.
The idea: This class serves well for the players who like using melee attacks to finish their opponents. Bess or Shock will help you to reach them, knife will kill them and Collector will heal you.
Primary weapon: Hargan Bulldog.
Abilities: Shock Grenade, Direct Injection System, Collector.
Boosts: Chemtech RenewX, Bess.
Ability AUG: Shock Grenade SHG-21.
“Why would they use Chemtech RenewX, it sucks,” you might ask. You’re right – it sucks now. But it won’t suck anymore. Stay with us and we will let you know about other improvements we are working on. Also, please excuse our typos in the screenshot, this is a very early draft and we’ll be cleaning up the copy before release.