Camelot Unchained Dragon Con 2016 Trailer and Coverage
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City State Entertainment's ambitious MMORPG Camelot Unchained, which you may recall is a spiritual successor to Dark Age of Camelot, is continuing to shape up nicely and appears to be drawing closer to a beta standpoint as demonstrated by the following promotional trailer from last week's Dragon Con.
Thanks to the game's appearance at Dragon Con, we also have a new article-style interview with Mark Jacobs on MassivelyOP covering "trolls, subscriptions, and Camelot Unchained"...
Camelot Unchained fans who have bought into (literally or not) the vision of the game can count on this fact: The game will never be free-to-play. Jacobs said point blank, “There is zero chance of going free-to-play.” In fact, he takes his comment further by saying he’d shut the game down before he’d make it free-to-play. Jacobs simply doesn’t believe in that payment model. There will be free trials to sample the game in the future, but definitely no move to F2P.
Not cashing in with free-to-play also is like a sign of respect to players; CSE thinks of them as players, not walking wallets. Jacobs feels the best payment models are buy-to-play or subscriptions — have the devs provide great content and have the players just pay without worrying about being nickle-and-dimed on everything. “It is the model I have always believed in,” he explained, “not just because it can be a successful one but because it is the most honest one.” He continued, “We’re not trying to find ways to take more money out of your pocket.” Why spend so much time and effort trying to monetize when you could be more devoted to making the game great? He also doesn’t believe that the F2P model is sustainable long-term.
Jacobs also dislikes free-to-play because it cheapens the industry. “It cheapens all of us at the end of the day. It cheapens the devs, it cheapens the designers who want to do the right thing.” And he has zero sympathy for the folks who will be sad they can no longer play games for free.
...another interview with Mark on MassivelyOP covering "abilities and RvR realm rewards"...
Jacobs emphasized that that only way to level in Camelot Unchained is through RvR. That does not mean that is all there is to do (we’ll get to that in a bit), but it is the way to advance; there is no experience gained for killing mobs in this game. So how does one gain experience if not through questing or from mobs? For that answer, think back to tabletop pen and paper campaigns.
Jacobs explained how experience will be distributed via realm rewards. You know how the DM would tally up experience at the end of a gaming session or campaign and dole it out? That’s exactly what Camelot Unchained is going to do. At the end of every day, the realm rewards will be totaled up and disseminated via a letter from your king.
As the name implies, the rewards are earned as a realm, so how your faction does impacts your reward just as your own personal contributions do. The letter from the king will detail all of your rewards. Jacobs noted, “You can get rewards that don’t even seem to apply [to your actions], but when you think about it, they actually make sense.” He explained that perhaps if while you were out doing your activities, your realm captured some mines or other valuable assets, you will get a cut. Of course, using your own weapon or magic will also allow you to level, but you are also connected to your realm and benefit directly from that association.
Another benefit of realm rewards is offering reward even when you don’t win as opposed to people giving up and leaving. It rewards players for trying to play smart and for trying things even if they actually lose. “At least here, when you try, even if you lose, you are still being rewarded by your king because you tried,” he explained. When an engagement is 3v1, the three will actually be penalized a bit for winning as they had the distinct advantage by outnumbering the one.
...and a post-mortem/development status report on the official website:
And now, let’s get to what the vast majority of you have been waiting for, the Top Ten’ish List from the past few weeks.
Top Ten’ish:
1. No major bugs or server crashes reported this week. While we know there are some smaller client-based ones, the servers have remained rock-solid and our efforts on the client have paid off even as we work to add more functionality across the board.
2. First pass of skill timing added. This still needs more work but is a big piece of re-abilitation functionality.
3. Added more functionality to archery abilities by adding “Aim” and “Target” parts to ability network. These allow our archer classes to not only use specific class abilities but target specific body parts to apply those effects to.
4. We’ve added in periodic effects – Damage over time, healing over time, or in the case of the stone healer, dropping a rock on the ground to do periodic effects. All fun stuff!
5. Buildings can now be damaged with the new ability system.
6. Armor now works on sub body parts.
7. Tag support added to skill nodes. – “if this is tagged as fire, do X to them.”
8. Added the ability to modify resources – Add or subtract from a resource pool such as stamina when being affected by an ability.
9. We’ve re-added stability when using an ability. This stat will allow us to “disrupt” an ability in progress by things such as movement or being attacked.
10. Scripts can now pull stats from weapons, allowing things such as “Apply two times the base damage of a weapon when ‘X’ occurs.
11. Stonehealers: Lots of work has been done to support the ability functionality needed for Stonehealers. Projectiles, such as thrown stones, will leave behind a stone on the ground after colliding with something. These then are tracked for abilities such as “Blood from Stone” and “Terrestrial Transference.” Dropped stones will also be destroyed during the use of “Blood from Stone.”
12. Work continues on conditionals and requirements for abilities. This includes things like needing a weapon equipped when using a weapon based ability.
13. First pass testing of multi-island/multi-server integration happened just yesterday. We’re currently working to add more features, such as abilities passing between servers/islands. Think of that for a moment? Players will be able to cast abilities, use siege engines, etc. between totally different servers and zones. Not too many MMORPGs can claim that. This will allow us not only to bring about the moving islands, but also to add entirely different and unique situations for RvR.
14. Tyler finished up an initial pass of the “Autumn fantasy biome” right before hopping into a car to drive to Dragon Con. The great part was not only was it pretty, but ran really well, 60fps on Mark’s computer during initial testing. This will get a second pass over the next week to improve and finish it off, at least for now.
15. We revealed our new logo and title treatment. We’re all very excited to share this with you. Check it out on our Patcher!
