Community Manager Newsletter - July 2010

[GM Syrius]

One month has passed since the opening of the official server of Craft of Gods. In some respects it seems like an eternity, but actually it's just a short time.

During this period the team has been primarily focused on the fastest possible resolution of bugs, some well-known and on the right track to be resolved, while others emerged only after launch. Like it often happens, the arrival of more players unveils problems which are difficult to detect during testing.

Now we are also focusing on some balancing issues, not so much concerning skills but mainly about experience given by quests and items in reward. Above all, our main goal is to make the gaming experience as intense as possible.

We're officially positioning ourselves in the market for the first time. For independent Companies as we are, both developer and publisher, the real challenge is the official launch. I'd like to start with a premise: many here at Kalicanthus and Cyberdemons have been and still are MMORPGs players, so somehow we know the dynamics. We are all long-time players, some of us have started from Ultima Online and then moved on to Dark Age of Camelot, and we also tried out many current generation MMORPGs. That been said, we're all definitely attached to a way of playing and experiencing MMOs that can be defined as "old one", and starting from this propensity we built the design of Craft of Gods. We consider COG an "Old style" MMORPG which is inspired by that atmosphere you could feel in the first MMORPGs that showed up on the market.

This means a great challenge for us: COG is a matter of love or hate. It is not a game you can enjoy just a little bit, you have to fall in love with it, and this always takes a little more time. Time that many current players have not, even thanks to the great range of products that now the market offers.

We're also a bit surprised at some reviews received by industry leading magazines. We are well aware that it's almost impossible to review an MMORPG on the whole, due to the fact that no journalist could ever spend 2 months trying out deeply an MMORPG, but we expect that a review is at least a test of the game with awareness of which are the main goals of those who launched the game.

Craft of Gods is not perfect, it has flaws that we ourselves can list, and as mentioned above it is not even a game for everyone, but it is aimed at a very clear target audience. However, what we see is that it has been criticized for things that have nothing to do with the game, and we would like to respond to that.

Many have pointed out the lack of guidance in our game as a major issue, guidance that basically means an oversimplification for beginners mainly related to a complete explanation of quests. Instead, what we chose was due to a conscious decision that follows the initial target. What is often missing in the latest MMORPGs is freedom to do what you want. But much freedom means no guidance. Not that this is better or worse, but those who want to play an old-style MMORPG want also to find out on their own just how to do things, how to understand quests, and possibly they are also willing to read them (which is something players do less and less lately). Above all, those are players who want to share with others their own discoveries. What the word "multiplayer" should really mean is not only something related to grouping with others in order to speed up the experience, instead it should involve social interaction inside and outside the game.

We read reviews by journalists who voted down the game considering it wrong or crazy only because they were not able to immediately perform something specific, just like if CoG were a single-player game that follows a linear path.

Incidentally, some of the questions they have not been able to dispel are already discussed and explained on our forum, or they could have just asked in game chat.

Another decision we've been criticized for (and which in some cases has determined a bad assessment of the game, as if that had anything to do with the game itself) is the choice we made to run the trial server separate from the official one. The choice may be criticized (though it’s highly appreciated by the players on the official server) and maybe one day we will change that, but we believe that this has nothing to do with the game itself. Anyway, we decided to change the system, and the trial players will play on official server soon.

Now let's talk about the future.

We realized that the game has some shortages, shortages that prevent it from being attractive to many players, and we are already working on that.

Overall, we are now working in four directions.

The first one is the resolution of certain structural bugs that are affecting us for a long time. The main ones are: the warp of mobs (including the fact that sometime mobs attack from distance), the regeneration bug, the marks on the map that sometime disappear, still some bugs on housing and others perhaps less important but pretty relevant to players. We plan to resolve all these major problems in 2-3 weeks.

The second one is the balance of experience and ease in killing mobs. We realized that, especially in the early levels, the experience available through quests is not sufficient, so on the one hand we are increasing the experience already in the game and on the other hand we are increasing the exp you can get by mobs themselves (also to facilitate farming of mobs, now almost useless) and moreover we're going to introduce new quests. In addition, we will introduce a group exp bonus so that players will be encouraged to group together. Finally, we'll balance the game so that a level X player can kill a level X+5 mob soloing, but beyond that level he needs a group to kill it.

The third one is the introduction of a guide in the game, although a light one, which includes the rebuilding of the starting location in regard to quests, the incorporation of migration quests, that lead players among the various areas, the inclusion of exploration quests and of quests that show and explain many of the features of the game now less understood. In the near future we'll also introduce PVP quests, an epic quest that will follow the players throughout their path, as well as quests which require players to find and kill named mobs. Other named mobs will also be introduced in each map, mobs you can kill for drop or money. Instead, some of the current quests (usually the last one in a chain) will be modified to be carried out in group only. Finally, we'll introduce also quests for crafting and we will change the cave along the maps making them possible to explore for group quests. We are also doing an analysis on levels of quests and rewards in terms of items in order to make them more balanced.

The fourth and last direction is about the introduction of new content. It will not be something that we will introduce forthwith, but Atlantis is coming.

We are aware of the difficulties in terms of number of players in this period. But as soon as we introduce these novelties, which will occur within 2-3 weeks, we will make a gift to all players, both to apologize for some problems about the bugs we have had recently, and to allow you to check the hopefully positive changes that we'll bring to Craft of Gods.

Obviously I'm here also to answer to any of your questions

Community Manager Craft of Gods.

[Deimos]

Hi,

all very nice but, whence avoid misunderstandings would be better translate in all other laguages your letter.

Maybe not everyone can fully understand ( me too ) all that you wrote.

and than I ask you what you think to do for people coming ( back ) here.

Preorders are due to expire and even though I will renew, would be nice not to be the only one

I hope next time can answer you in my language ( Italian ) on my forum or here If you want.

Thanks

[unreal2]

Hi, I just have a question.
I have not read a balance between the various skills that differentiate the melee with ranged.
Then I ask you, will be modified in short time or the game will continue to take the direction of the "all warrior"?
Thz

[GM Syrius]

Originally Posted by Deimos

Hi,

all very nice but, whence avoid misunderstandings would be better translate in all other laguages your letter.

Maybe not everyone can fully understand ( me too ) all that you wrote.

and than I ask you what you think to do for people coming ( back ) here.

Preorders are due to expire and even though I will renew, would be nice not to be the only one

I hope next time can answer you in my language ( Italian ) on my forum or here If you want.

Thanks

I'll ask to other languages GM to translate the letter and to post on the forum.

Originally Posted by unreal2

Hi, I just have a question.
I have not read a balance between the various skills that differentiate the melee with ranged.
Then I ask you, will be modified in short time or the game will continue to take the direction of the "all warrior"?
Thz

Yes we are planning some modifications on melee resistance to increase the effectiveness of spells compared to melee
This is a thing that we can do fast, then surely we can do a check on all the spells but this will be done later on

[Inham]

And the Russian GM has not translated this post yet...