GDC 2009 Crimecraft Impressions

Vogster Entertainment gave us an early peek at their persistent third-person shooter Crimecraft, and we thought we’d pass it along to you. If you’re not already acquainted, the game is set in a post global warming world where civilization seems atavistic and the rule of law has given way to the wild west with cooler guns. Players affiliate with gangs and then duke it out in traditional FPS game types for reputation and experience.

The shooting gameplay breaks down into PvP and PvE, both of which are instanced content. The PvP game types are pretty much what you’d expect from the FPS genre (capture the flag, deathmatch, etc.), but with a crime theme. So, instead of capture the flag, you’re robbing safes, and it’s not king of the hill so much as it is a turf war. We mostly saw the turf war gameplay: the crime themes don’t add much beyond flavor, but cohesive themes are hardly a bad thing.

More interesting was a status indicator that lets you know how close a control point is to capture. If you’ve ever sprinted out of cover just in time to watch your hill be taken and catch a face full of lead for your trouble, you’ll probably appreciate the tactical boost that the indicators offer. The games are 8v8 players too, so it’ll be nice to avoid wasting your limited forces on lost causes.

PvE games fit the massively multiplayer mold more snugly, with your team facing off against an instance full of computer-driven enemies for glory and loot. Each PvE instance comes with a selectable difficulty level, with harder games yielding better rewards. These games reportedly culminate in a boss fight, though details did not emerge about how these fights would play out.

When you’re not actively shooting someone in the face, you hang out in the game’s hub, Sunrise City. It’s a dingy ghetto, but home is where your persistent world gameplay is. Here you can customize your avatar, join gangs, craft items, and take on missions and jobs that send you back to the instanced content.

Kill enough people, and one day
all this will be yours.

Customization is at the heart of Crimecraft‘s persistant world. The developers have devoted a lot of energy to fashion and cosmetic weapon mods, and the result is a wide array of aesthetic mixes to make your character look unique. You can’t modify your body shape as with City of Heroes, but that’s more a concession to the shooting gameplay than anything else. If you could customize your avatar’s body, the game world would be populated entirely by felonious midgets–hard to hit and harder to take seriously.

Cosmetic tweaks aren’t everything though, and Crimecraft offers gameplay customization as well. The game uses an experience system reminiscent of Call of Duty, which is to say that you gain experience and levels in PvP and PvE that translate into perks. Perks will come in active and passive flavors. Active perks are something you intentionally use, like knowing how to make and throw molotov cocktails, whereas passive perks represent more fundamental changes, like health boosts. You’ll be able to pick some of the game’s 40 perks on your way to the 50 level cap, but there are three levels of each perk, so you won’t get all of them. Don’t worry too much though, capricious players will be able to respec their perk builds for a price.

Experience advancement also encourages losing players to fight to the bitter end of PvP matches. Win or lose, you always gain experience, so there’s always something to gain by finishing a fight. You can join multiplayer games on the fly by accessing the in-game menu as well, so Crimecraft tears down most of the barriers between you and the game’s action core. Isn’t it nice to see a MMO game that doesn’t waste your time?

Of course, why bother trying to win if you can get credit for just showing up? Crimecraft will also come equipped with a reputation system to reward the winning teams. Reputation grants access to better equipment, as well as a monthly leaderboard for bragging rights. The mix of the reputation system with the absence of a substantial advantage for levels gained leads to a gameplay balance that favors skilled gamers–skilled gamers get better equipment that makes it easier to win–so keep that in mind when deciding if this is a game you’ll want to try.

There’s also a crafting system, and much of the game’s PvE loot consists of raw materials that support crafting. Crimecraft is an uncommon MMO because your craft skills are determined by your gang affiliation, which means that you won’t be able to rely on your friends to cover your crafting diversity for you. The idea is to encourage use of the auction house and mutually beneficial gang alliances. Sadly, the game won’t be moddable out of the box, so auction ~~whores~~ aficionados will have to wait for an auctioneer-like mod if one ever exists at all.

Vogster hasn’t nailed down a pricing scheme yet, but are leaning away from the free-to-play model. The developers report that there’s room for microtransactions with limited edition cosmetic mods, though there won’t be anything of the sort for equipment. However Vogster ends up paying for their game, Crimecraft is rapidly approaching the closed beta stage, which means it is well on its way to hitting store shelves.