Death of a Game: Crowfall

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

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

[@Verisi1]

Death of a Game sneak peek?

[@munchijackson386]

The game is alot of fun

[@sunyavadin]

Oh hey, Outriders, my friends and I are having a buncha fun in that, the endgame buildcrafting is so much wacky fun.

[@CarlosDiaz-vg7tj]

There is a sound mistake at 21:15. The dialogue repeats itself.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

@@Verisi1 Did you know I already did a DOAG on Paragon??

[@CarlolucaS]

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.

[@donmarelio]

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.

[@radleybuttons7830]

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.

[@jimjones9631]

It's such a tragedy what happened with it

[@radleybuttons7830]

@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.

[@Leaf__22]

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

[@Exotac]

​@@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.

[@zardify_]

Never heard about it.

[@DaveGreco]

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.

[@tripplejaz]

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.

[@TheNeoVid]

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.

[@mediocrestreams3284]

Crow fall Godfall Greedfall Babylons fall Starting to see a pattern here

[@Destinywings]

Yeah, they were all in a comment by youtube user mediocre streams. Don't name anymore games, please!

[@Nirual86]

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.

[@Ronbotnik]

@@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.

[@Mad_Possum]

How can you forget Darkfall

[@niwatorimeat]

Firefall too! (I did enjoy it for a bit while it was alive, but it never truly grasped me)

[@undraxis]

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.

[@warrax111]

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.

[@owneddiagonal]

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

[@warrax111]

@@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.

[@Tafah_0]

@@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.

[@Luxt3r]

Wait what?? I've never even heard it got released in the first place lmao Talk about no ad campaign

[@alturial9021]

Just finished watching the ad. It's so weird to see what's basically the remake of a game being advertised on a series that covered the death of the previous one.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I don't think it's weird at all. I think it makes a lot of sense, especially when it's a game I like

[@alturial9021]

​@@nerdSlayerstudioss Not bad weird. More so that it's like a ghost that's come to haunt you but is more of a bro if anything.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Fair enough, it's topical at the very least :)

[@Dr_Puppeh]

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.

[@inaliFTW]

They listened to all the wrong people.

[@zachell1991]

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....

[@heartless_gamer]

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.

[@heartless_gamer]

@@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.

[@swaggames_]

@@inaliFTW this 100%

[@ayuvir]

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.

[@heartless_gamer]

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.

[@ayuvir]

@@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.

[@57precision]

@@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.

[@aperturealpha6760]

i played Crowfall for 3 days and never figured out what the heck i was supposed to be doing.

[@caffynated552]

It was basically an MMORPG version of Rust or Ark. You punch trees, build bases, craft equipment and fight other players over territory and resources.

[@TheNightquaker]

Paragon: The Overprime's name is kinda funny, 'cause if its microtransactions will be too expensive, we could call it Paragon: The Overpriced, lol.

[@mechanomics2649]

Well, it's Netmarble so that's a given.

[@Deioth]

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.

[@57precision]

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.

[@lathamtk]

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.

[@EviLLivEClan]

I think it was Josh Strife hayes

[@Alphastaire]

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.

[@DmytroBogdan]

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!

[@Roghax]

There is a certain type of irony having an ad about a game that was shut down and now has multiple different relaunch and attempts of relaunch be part of video from a series discussing how a game dies

[@sasaki8765]

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.

[@Darkatron]

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

[@Samaritain314]

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.

[@antoineguerrier2965]

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.

[@donmarelio]

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... ^^

[@denisskenderovic3707]

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!

[@Warcrafter4]

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.

[@Ghangis24]

My friends never wanted to play Hearthstone with me because they swore that Gwent was superior. They were also big Witcher 3 fans. Jokes on them!

[@VonKuro]

Only game and one of only two projects where I paid in the crowdfunding. I was sold the Idea of becoming a valuable and specialised craftsman. That I could spend all my time crafting/experimenting and contribute to a war effort that restart every month. Instead I only gotten fighting gameplay and more fighting gameplay, a pinch of exploration in a lagging environment. Then I noticed how so fucking long they timegaped any craft beyond bare bones. And when, as a good beta tester, I reported that crafters need to wait 3 month after their purchase before having any fun... Which is a absolutely a problem. They replied: it is normal and it will stay like this. In resume, I was sold a crafting game and got a game that punish crafters.

[@ursadabear2810]

Long live the Guinea Pig people. They were the best fantasy race ever devised for an MMO and I will always miss them.

[@briochie]

I literally had no idea this even came out. This sounds like it could have been my jam.

[@mrk0per]

I know, right?! It loos pretty neat

[@Dark6997]

I was a backer and I only realized it released like two weeks after the fact

[@ArkhBaegor]

It was clunky as hell, it felt absolutely terrible. Also you spent most of your time crafting with a garbage crafting system

[@strgnv]

Ngl Paragon game looks like it will be covered in Death of a Game series not long after it releases

[@GatorRay]

There's already an episode on the original release.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Rofl

[@OminousToast]

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.

[@OminousToast]

@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT I felt like I had to qualify my statement lol, I guess it is that obvious!

[@alessandrolira4035]

​@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT😊😊

[@frequentsee3815]

Marketing student aka soulless leech

[@jiladoper2]

13:32 "Scavenge dying world" ... Yep looks accurate

[@CoconutmilkFilms]

Another great video! "We're making something completely different" doesn't sound like a very convincing endeavor for such a small studio. Additionally, as you pointed out, the financials also caused them to kinda pivot to whatever trend was currently at the top, unable to form a strong identity for the game.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Glad somebody remembered me hinting at that early on :)

[@kirchhoff7049]

As one of the original backers who played hundreds of hours in the "alpha" stages, I think that the core problem as that they could never get combat right. For literal years the lag was nearly unplayable when you got more than 10 people near each other. Additionally, as you mentioned, the combat was always "janky", floaty, buggy, etc. I don't think they thought they would struggle with it as much as they did and that led to constant delays of everything else and eventually led to them "giving up". Additionally, the lack of PvE content (and I mean like basics, they literally had 0 quests and even mobs for a very long time) was a poor choice in this day and age. Once they moved to Beta, they tacked on all kinds of strange character advancement as a last gasp to try and have some kind of progression in the game. I could go on for hours about the issues this game had, but I honestly think that had they have nailed, and I mean NAILED, combat...none of that would have mattered. People would have paid and played and then they would have had a chance to fix everything else. In fairness though, this game had some really ground breaking design features that will 100% influence future games in the genre. The gathering system in this game is by far the best I have ever seen in any game I have played. The interactive mini-game of the weak-point system was awesome. It was a skill based system that let you improve efficiency by being better (but you could also ignore it and just go slower). Additionally, there were gathering "skills" that almost created a "rotation" to optimize the process. Motherlode nodes that required multiple people to gather (as well as the need for "bodyguards") were an incredible choice in a world that was supposed to be driven by player to player interactions. The character statistics for gathering were incredibly deep and rewarding when you advanced them (getting a critical gather on a motherlode with maxed stats was a serious shot of dopamine). Beyond that, they inter-connectivity of all the crafting and gather skills has been mirrored by games like New World and will become the standard for modern MMO's (at least ones that rely on player driven economy). Sad to see it go. I know there is hope for a return (as this was a shut-down to re-boot I guess), but the reality is that in the age of UE5 this game has no hope anymore. A 5 man team in a garage can make a more appealing game at this point. Such is the way of technology and the biggest problem with making MMO's (they take so long to make that they are already out of date when they release). Just waiting for someone to solve that problem.

[@57precision]

I too can't believe they messed up combat this badly. There are many excellent examples of fun and snappy combat to copy (GW2, WoW). Hell, if all they did was make Shadowbane Remastered with a modern version of the Unreal Engine it would have been a better success than whatever horrid mess they ended up with.

[@Shabanezloth]

"PvP MMO" Ah, the only clue I needed.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I really hope you don't allow your mind to be so simple.

[@Shabanezloth]

I was mostly being sarcastic, but I guess that doesn't translate well into text form.

[@antoineguerrier2965]

​@@Shabanezloth Being sarcastic doesn't mean you're wrong though. Non-optional / heavily incentivized PvP seems to be a huge turn-off for a lot of people. Which would explain how the biggest titles are focused around PvE and social activities.

[@57precision]

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.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

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.

[@tootzy-the-roll]

What I get from the leaders are a bunch of people who are good at starting games but bad at making them last.

[@coetzeediedericks3304]

This game should have been f2p, especially since it was crowd funded.

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

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.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Glad you like them!

[@Dae-D-Ellis]

Man this is probably one of the more personally devastating ones to me. I remember finding this by sheer luck before I heard it talked about by the MMOTubers I watch. I closely followed it, missed my chance to back, signed up for the closed beta or alpha (IDR which was available), got a limited time access for like two weeks, only got to play like 2 days of those weeks. Shortly after it had its full release and I didn't hear anything about it. And now its dead. Feels bad, man.

[@justinc8195]

I'm waiting for "Death of a Game, Camelot Unchained." All born in the same era.

[@edgarlozada3858]

Damn, this one released súper fast! Hasn't been that long since the last one. Not complaining, though.

[@Skrain]

I played in one of those test things and I enjoyed what was there, and I just heard nothing about the game after that, its kinda sad I was looking forward to Crowfall.

[@JerichoScale]

One of the very few games where you could play as a centaur. RIPeroni.

[@TheGreaterGrog]

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.

[@purpearlsc2562]

So, i was a player during most the pre-alpha until Launch. I quit the game during the end of july, 1 month after launch or a bit more. I really enjoyed the video and helped me remember the time i spent playing the game during the Pre-alpha until launch. And I think there would be a 2 or 3 hour essai on what went wrong in great details TBH, coming more from the inside of the community : I think the idea that Crowfall had "no competition" at all is... incorrect, for the little that matter ? Crowfall was a PvP MMO at it's core. And New World launched 3 monther after Crowfall and had two betas between the launch of crowfall and it's own launch. And these betas did not helped at all. part of my guild stopped playing in favor of New World's beta. and most competiting guild in the campaign we were did so too. It did not help with the population of the game when it was so little to begin with. (Not the biggest problem for sure) Also beyond combat bneing cluky, there was two issues i think that led me, and the rest of the guild to stop : The first one being the META philisophy that led to the number of player on the field being the most important factor. Not skill, not gear. Just bring more player on your side and it will help tremendously. Probably that skill could help, but the outskill needed to win a 10vs20 or 20vs40 was... not worth it. And the consequence of that is basically a snowball. Guild vs Guild was there, in the game. But to win, the best way to do that was to ally yourself with as much guild as possible in order to literally zerg your opponent. And... That's not really interesting gameplay. And also, in a guild vs guild setting, allying yourself with another guild means that it's one less opponent, which brings me to my second point. The number of fights in an evening the game could give was abysmally low. While in ESO and GW2, one could expect around 10 fights for the evening, or more, having 5 fights for the night could be considered a very very eventfull day. Because the game had little population at launch, (but my feeling is, that at the same time, it had probably as much people and guild running around than a Gw2 WvW matchup) and the META being centered around 1 big zerg fighting another did not help. And also the death & rez mechanic being punishing and would need you to take a quarter an hour to come back to where you were or rejoin your group did not help. Also on the marketing and communication part : The problem for me, was appart from the kickstarter, there never was any form of hype going around with the game at all, be it, with the Alpha, or the beta or the launch. And that is, to me du in part with the excessive communication from Artcraft during devellopement. For the first year of the game which was great from the inside. But from the outisde i think made people interested tired of hearing about the game. There was news about it twice a week, about anything, relevant or not, Q&A every month, then streams. And the game being online 24/7 year 2 or 3 into developement did not help either. people were used to hear about the game, then when finally some big news hit, like alpha or beta, people don't care, because it's another news outlet from that game that do not have a release date. To the point of missing the release date. And also the marketing part, where you basically hit the nail just right. It's not good. Finally a bit of a think-piece : From the outside, and especially outside from the official forums, i do believe the game suffered from way too much player feedback. It was constant, and often contradictory and you could feel the dev listenning to them. The main problem that i had, is that most players, coming from other old MMO wanted Crowfall to be more like that one MMO they like. Instead of letting Crowfall being Crowfall. There was exception to it. ( the card per season to win campaign was a great exemple. Crowfall had the old holdtheforttoearnpoint system a la GW2/ESO or basically every RvR MMO out there, and the global player feedback was just : it's old and not really interesting in an only PvP world. And the dev found something that suited the game perfectly and made it so much more interesting ) But I think that in the long run, players feedback did more wrong than good for the game.

[@Friendly_Newb]

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.

[@PhantomHalf]

I loved paragon so fucking much seeing it come back in an official capacity makes me so happy. I can’t wait to play morigesh again.

[@micaiahstevens8840]

A year or two ago, for some reason I was dreading this day. And here it is.

[@VikingNail-hb1mm]

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.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Completely agree

[@57precision]

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.

[@cubandarknez]

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.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

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.

[@cubandarknez]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss which of the suspicions?

[@cubandarknez]

@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".

[@cubandarknez]

@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.

[@apex_xd8907]

Ahh paragon, I remember looking at the amazing revenant skins while listening to the amazing background music, what an amazing game....I hope they can restore it to it's former glory

[@diegowushu]

This sort of factional combat works for something like Planetside2, which is an FPS and moment to moment combat is the whole deal, you don't need a deeper reason to fight than "my platoon leader is directing us there". Idk how they thought it could work for an MMORPG.

[@neliaironwood7573]

Outriders was next. That was one of my spectulated frontrunners. Seeing news about the Witcher card game Gwent shutting down, I think that is also one of our frontrunners in the future. My predictions include Jump Force, the anime crossover that tried but failed, Overkill's The Walking Dead, and Umbrella Corps in terms of live service games.

[@bread_dawg]

21:15 the DJ went crazy on this one

[@palamedes4740]

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

[@Yianni-GR]

Druid always used the staff if you were healing, the DPS Druid used the sickle

[@unhaix707]

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.

[@Flash33c]

I tried once to play Crowfall in beta (I wasn't a backer) but my PC at the time couldn't run it properly (it was lagging badly at the main menu) so I stopped trying. I thought about giving it another shot but considering all the other games I was playing at the time (including Wizard101 & Pirate101, both of which are still around today) and seeing this video it seems I wasn't missing much. Unfortunate but this is what can happen when you don't listen to proper feedback from or effectively communicate with players.

[@johnoneil9188]

A streaner I follow always used to list Crowfall as one of the big new MMOs that he is looking forward to together with Camelot Unchained but as time went on news of this one became kind of spare and then disappered all together. It was only when the game got called off was when I heard of it again.

[@CarlosDiaz-vg7tj]

There is an audio mistake at 21:15. The dialogue repeats itself.

[@VonKuro]

The crafting side of crowfall was so mistreated that even Nerdslayer does not seem to know it was advertised as a core gameplay on the same ground than combat and gathering ressources !!!

[@GatorRay]

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.

[@patrickmulder2450]

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

[@ryuno2097]

Why do I feel a sense of dejavu , it's like I've already seen you do a video on the Death of a Game of Crowfall.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

You are a 5 year subscriber who saw the future

[@Gamerznation704]

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.

[@georgeblair3894]

Might as well do 'Death of a game - Pantheon' and get it over with.

[@WESTMPLS]

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.

[@victorzheng8042]

Already? Jesus, hasn’t it only been like a year or something when Crowfall released? Oof

[@WadeGb]

Wild watching a DOAG with a sponsor that just ended service a couple days ago.

[@SomeRandomDevOpsGuy]

I didn't know that was made by the same developer as Shadowbane. That was one of my favorite MMOs of all time!! Such a shame

[@thomas.r344]

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!"

[@spahghettiboi4150]

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.

[@lisner15]

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

[@michaelmoore2679]

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.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Last bit isn't true

[@stinkbanana2522]

Wow, they just picked up their shit and left? Didn't even try to go F2P? Just "fuck it we're done". Should have at least tried and if it drew people in add cosmetics microtransactions.

[@Master10k2]

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.

[@Chocoboranger]

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.

[@duukn]

Do Paragon: Overprime next

[@BenjermanKulandaisamy]

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

[@martyrofgrenth2136]

That LOTRO music in the background made me think it's a hint for the next video...But the outro for this video doesn't seem like it. It's such good music though :'c

[@Infamous_wu13]

im still waiting for my 1500$ castle i pledged when i was 13

[@darudesandstorm7251]

I'm literally finding out about this game's existence because I bought the collectors edition of this game from a 99 cent shop for $1.99

[@K9Tvz]

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. 😂

[@MinaeVain]

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.

[@dracotoy]

A fun game to cover would be Ascend, Hand of Kul, as after years of being dead modders have officially revived it, even getting an official steam page

[@hellblazer2296]

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!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Thanks for that!

[@bechtholdillustrator9378]

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)

[@vlavla4467]

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.

[@ChrisMortJr.]

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

[@richardgrayson432]

PVP focused mmos never last.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

UO was the first title to be coined MMORPG, and is still in existence today 23 years later. EVE came out in 2003.

[@ArkhBaegor]

It's more that they are RARELY good enough. The only one to succeed recently is Albion Online. They also need some good gameplay outside of PvP (see EVE and AO)

[@JDubbHawks]

As hyped as we were about this when it was announced, can't believe it has ended up here. Wow. This and wolcen

[@Atandat]

Ah finally! I was waiting for this since the first week of the game's release. I'm having a big told-you-so moment with my buds, sadly.

[@Nightwolf6662]

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.

[@hellglaser3450]

Jokes on them...I didn't carve the pumpkin that won me the pumpkin carving contest

[@The_raTex]

i love how i hear about a game from the "death of a game" series. If they had a good media presense , maybe people like me would have played. Oh well.

[@N12015]

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.

[@Eamil]

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...."

[@MrKiar1611]

I was a backer but sadly i was a solo player in crowfall, the biggest problem to me is lack of purposes. The game is like an onion EK-> god's reach(faction v faction) -> the infected(was disabled) -> GvG -> Dreg (most hardcore part) basically there is nothing to do in EK instead of open for shop, the dev promised that we can let people take a rent but it was never delievered. The FvF map was okayish, but it was domainated by big guilds. There is no restriction on faction switching nor team balancing. Oh right, it was called FvF but the reward were registered by guild. Which means it doesn't matter if you are on winning team or the losing team, your contribution is worthless if you are not in their guild. (At least that was what I found on its first month.) Since there wasnt many players in my time zone, there is no guild for me. So I had no business in GvG. Same goes to Dreg, because it was also guild oriented. All it left to me were crafting and farming, but all of higher level resource was in guild oriented region or locked behind campaign rewards, which required to be in a guild.

[@winns35]

Has anyone ever seen Coleman and Mark Cuban in the same place at the same time?

[@HalfTangible]

I remember looking at this game years ago... I didn't even know it'd been released

[@kakkershaw]

Man a lot to mention with this one. I played a good bit. One of the original 3500 that tried playing on launch, I just love pvp mmos... I hope they eventually make something out of this failed project. The day we tried to have a 90 person battle and it crashed miserably & repeatedly, I knew it was over. Rip.

[@papasalvo]

Oh don't mind me just doing my duty of leaving a comment for the KZbin algorithm and making a request for a death of a game of Puzzle Pirates

[@FrostyThundertrod]

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.

[@kaiserhs6275]

I remember signing up for emails for this game around closed / open alpha beta idk but early in the process while a kid playing w101 never actually downloaded anything for it. It is a shame what happened to it for the people that actually enjoyed it or financially backed it heavily expecting more from it.