Crowfall Campaign Test Incoming

Crowfall, an ambitious MMO currently in Early Access, is about to launch its first campaign test where players will join one of the three existing factions and fight the other two for dominance over the world map. They will do so by claiming, rebuilding, and sieging strongholds, as well as other points of interest. This test comes with a warning that features may not work and bugs may be plentiful, so those interested in participating should keep that in mind. From the looks of it, this test will launch on Friday, June 30th and last throughout the weekend. Here’s what you can expect to see there:

Test Campaign Overview

The basic structure of this test campaign is a three-faction ruleset with a simple – but novel — win condition. Players will pick one of the three factions on first login (Order-Balance-Chaos) and are locked to that faction for the duration of the campaign.

You will initially spawn at a…

Temple

Most of you are familiar with this already. You appear as a crow soul, and then need to create a character to explore the area and harvest materials for basic tools.

This is the part of the update where, normally, we would show you a map of the world. Not this time, however! That would defeat the purpose of…

Fog of War

Hit ‘M’ to open the world map. (Oh yeah! Did I fail to mention that we now have a World Map? We do!)

Initially, the map will only show the faction temple where you logged in… the rest of the world will be a mystery until you explore it.

[…]

Forts and Keeps

Around the world, you will find abandoned strongholds that can be useful to you.

Forts are fortified wooden structures that factions can claim. These were designed to change hands constantly; you don’t have to siege them. You claim a fort simply by locating its dragon statue and using F to interact to claim it on behalf of your faction.

Of course, that will claim the statue, but not protect it. Other factions can do the same thing, so the only way to make the change stick is to clear the area of enemy combatants, and then keep them away from the statue.

Once captured for your faction, this fort will offer you a temporary base of operations: you can respawn here, access personal and faction containers and organize and craft in (relative) safety.

(Note: there are also crafting stations in each fort, but these are currently disabled. We’ll turn them on soon and move most of the Campaign World advanced crafting functionality to these locations.)

Keeps are larger fortifications, primarily made of stone, that can be claimed by planting a Tree of Life safely within their confines. They offer all of the benefits of forts, but with more permanence and better defenses.

Once claimed by a faction, these strongholds can only be taken through a siege, which is in an event similar to our Siege Perilous testing last year. (More details on how we adapted that system over to this campaign will be following shortly.)

ALL of these derelict strongholds will require some repair. Walls may be pristine, towers may be under construction, gatehouses could be in a complete state of disrepair. None of them will offer full protection without effort.

[…]

Control the Map

There is a “Score Indicator” at the top of the screen that shows you which faction (Order, Balance or Chaos) is currently winning the campaign.

As I mentioned earlier, the scoring mechanic for this campaign is a bit novel. It’s an experiment, really. We could have gone with something more traditional, but the nature of our design–which was built to allow us to do unique maps and rules–made us think, “What the hell, let’s try something different!”

After all, if we don’t like it, we’ll change it.

We call this ruleset “Tug of War”. The basic idea is that there is a…

Conquest Slider

There is only one “score” for the world, and it is mapped as a spectrum – a horizontal line divided into three segments.

• The left-most segment represents CHAOS.
• The right segment is ORDER.
• BALANCE fills out the middle.

The slider starts in the middle of the line. As factions gain and lose territory (i.e. gain and lose forts and keeps), that slider will move to the left and right.

• When CHAOS captures a stronghold, it moves to the left.
• When ORDER claims one, it moves to the right.
• When BALANCE wins or loses, the slider can move in either direction, depending on which faction captured it.

At the end of the campaign, the winner will depend on the…

Victory Conditions

• CHAOS wins by ending the game with as many strongholds as possible.
• ORDER wins by ending the game with as many strongholds as possible.
• BALANCE wins by ensuring there is no clear winner between ORDER and CHAOS.

To facilitate this idea (that Balance constantly shifts alliances), we set it up such that when one side takes the lead, BALANCE is automatically considered an “ally” to the losing faction in terms of both targeting and friendly fire.