Civcraft - a new sandbox game

Hi



CivCraft - Legends of Ellaria is a first person adventure (and role playing) game where you can also build your own kingdom and fight epic battles. The world around you changes depending on your decisions, and it's up to you to decide how how rule your kingdom. You can command armies and build cities, or go and explore the land by yourself.

CivCraft - Legends of Ellaria's concept is similar to an advanced version of Mount & Blade series, or a combination between Skyrim and Total war, but over the past three years we've created a unique concept and game play that is more than just combining two genres.

you are more then welcome to visit our website
http://www.civcraftgame.com

where you can find our gameplay videos and Trailers.

we would like to hear your opinion towards our Kickstarter, which will start at 9th of August.

I see the problem in what you would probably consider your strength: Combining lots of things together to one game.
RTS+FPS+RPG+Sandbox

Now this doesn't necessarily mean that it appeals to fans of any of those 4 genres. It rather means that anyone loving RPGs might be put off because it has FPS elements or because he hates RTS. So if anything of that is optional, I would clearly point that out.

Also my impression is that the game doesn't really excell on any of the aspects. The movement and fight look rather stiff, and I cant really imagine that the strategic combat is on par with real RTS games. It's rather unclear what the highlight of this game is. Is it the story telling? Just being a combination of 4 things is imho not a viable highlight.
Mount and Blade for example has RPG and Strategy elements. But the highlight of the game is clearly it's combat.
Imho it's important to clearly communicate the highlight. Not just to attract people for that, but also to not set wrong expectations. You don't want thousands of backers who at release or early access write bad reviews because the game does not offer the story or the RTS focus they were expecting.

PS: Also the name sounds really generic...

Hi Kordanor,

We have considered the gameplay and playability right from the start, and have spent time to make all the genres work together.

The main gameplay of CivCraft - Legends of Ellaria is a first person RPG, and the RTS is there to add things that are not available in other games. In fact, one of the early versions will allow your cities to expand without your intervention.

As we are an indie company with an early access model, we constantly improve our sound and graphics, as you can see in our gameplay demos. Our goal is to focus on a unique game with features you don’t see every day. You can expect more gameplay examples that will show that it’s not just a combination between multiple genres.

So, is it like Spellforce?

I’m not sure if you can command armies in Spellforce, but CivCraft is an RPG game, where you can fight monsters and explore a vast world.

In addition, your cities and empire expands over time and you fight large scale battles against other clans

vidder said:

So, is it like Spellforce?

Click to expand...

At first the best comparison coming to my mind would rather be something like the old 1997 Sierra's Birthright. From what is shown in the trailer I fear this game will suffer the same excess of ambition, in terms of gameplay but if it's somehow slightly playable that'll be a nice addition to a would be genre

Ahhh Birthright had so much promise but they did not pull it all together. Plus it was real buggy. I still have fond memories of the game and liked the realm it was in.

Loved Birthright, was a favorite back in the day, a modern day version would be interesting to see.

Welcome to the Watch, ArikHelman

Thanks

I have been watching this game ever since Couch announced it here at RPGwatch last year. This will be the second Kickstarter I believe.

I hope you can pull it off. I think it is perfectly fine to have a big vision. Negativity is also fine if you can make your product better and pay attention to your fans. Yes, you can command armies in Spellforce also and it remains a great game in spite of being more then one type of genre. Maybe you should play it to see what so many people liked about it. Computers have a lot more power then they did in 1997.

I think it is amazing you kept working on it and didn't listen to the naysayers of doom. I will be watching and waiting for purchase date.

Cheers!

Thanks, we'll check it out. we've been playing other games, like NWN, and have many ideas and inspiration from them

How complicated is combat in this game?
I could not get into Mount and Blade because I don't enjoy Dark Souls like combat, I like more the stat based combat of real RPGs.

Our combat system is similar to Skyrim, where your defence and attacks depend on timing and skills.

I just checked out the gameplay video on your site and the game does look interesting, like Fallout 4 but better
I don't mind the older graphics and the combat seemed OK and I loved how the fireball actually destroyed the tower, nice touch there.

But the video has very choppy gameplay. For a game that mostly depends on fast player inputs the game needs to run silky smoothe. I looked how you can get the game but it seems you are going to KS fairly soon.

If you can improve the framerate and reduce choppiness this would be a game I would be interested in. I always wanted to try a RPG that has good Stronghold mechanics that are not scripted (unlike NWN2) or just terrible (like PoE) or not used well/pointless (DAI).
Is there a merchant/trading system in the game as well?

I hope the story will be OK and there will be some reactivity in the game (in Skyrim you join one side but the other side does not care or nobody cares you are at top of some guild LOL).

Thanks. We are on Alpha and are constantly working to improve CivCraft. You can see an improvement in frame rate in GreenSide village over Illadar mines, as we upgraded to Unity 5, improved our game mechanics and our graphic cost.

We have a good in game story, and our main goal is to make the perfect FPS/RTS. Although the main focus is on the first person part, we’re actually surprised by how real time strategy improves your sandbox world

And yes, you have merchants in your kingdom, as well as trade routes between clans. You can either mass - buy weapons for your soldiers, or unique artifacts for you

Is there some politics in the game and a way to influence others? Diplomacy of any kind?
Or quests that will deal with diplomacy, spying and such?

Also I did watch the mines video. Even there you can see the problems with FPS or something. Character turns jerky, there are moments where FPS seems low and when you got into RTS camera at the end and try to do marque selection there is a delay to it.

Good luck with your second kickstarter launch in August ArikHelman.

Yes, Illadar Mines is the old demo before we upgraded to Unity 5 and solved these issues.
You should check out this newer demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn7huWlTXZs

CivCraft will have diplomacy and espionage, where you hire agents in taverns and send them for missions.

You citizens are influenced by happiness, but you also have an alignment system, that influence how your kingdom views you. For instance, if you are an evil warlord, you need to scare your citizens rather than make them happy.

And Couchpotato, Thank you

In the new video at 0:47 you can still see the choppiness or low FPS (there are more later but this is first I noticed it in this video).
Then at 1:01 when you switch into RTS view and try to rotate the camera that experience is not nearly as smooth as it should be. I know this might sound petty but I am a RTS player (RTS and RPG are my two favorite genres) and I cannot stand RTS that does not play smoothly and I am sure other RTS players are the same.
After that while the building is being built, the camera turns by itself. I hope that is for demo purposes because taking control away from players is the biggest mistake to do in RTS.
Why is battle that starts at 2:53 more black than shown in the video? Also the game needs blood and some weapon hit effects like blood, sparks and such.
The battle for the castle that starts in later part of video, is there also a proper castle siege gameplay, where you don't defend with open doors but enemy need to scale the walls?
The mass melee combat looked cool but troops on both sides looked the same at start (later you figure out once one side is dead that the shields are different). I loved how at 6:56 you see a shield fly up into the air
The troops running animations at 7:15 looked really bad (that is when I noticed it).

FPS parts need to run at 60 fps because that is felt in FPS gameplay.
RTS parts need to be silky smooth and totally in player control. Player has to have total control of camera 100% of the time, no rotating or jumping around without player giving that command ever. Ever. I didn't really see camera jump around in the game but I know some people make this mistake and it needs to be said.
I hope you are going to make a better video for the KS.
I don't see any problems with the core game, the technical parts needs to be "perfect".

I might have analyzed the video more than you wanted but I was doing it in good faith, I hope some of my comments help you in finishing the game and making it the best it can be. I also wish you best of luck in the KS campaign, this game deserves to be made and finished.