Skyforge MMORPG, co-developed by Obsidian

[Duraframe300]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/is-skyforge-the-next-big-online-rpg/1100-6418531/

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Lol, look at the pillar.

The game isn't out yet and it already shows signs of being yet another piece of shit and russian lazyness.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Destructoid thinks Skyforge could be the next big MMO

http://www.destructoid.com/skyforge-has-the-potential-to-be-the-next-big-mmo-272289.phtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: Destructoid (Destructoid)

Yeah they were the same site all over TOR so I think I'll hold my breath.

 

[Disgruntled]

Allods was a fairy fun mmo which was killed by Russian tier pay2win.
I could see myself getting into Skyforge if its a subscirption and the world is kept interesting.

An action based combat system is already a big plus. I simply cant into tab-targeting this day and age.

 

[Kane]

I've now spend a total of 5 minutes reading up on OE's newest crime http://sf.my.com/:

• Expect no Oculus Rift or gamepad support at launch.
• The game will not force players to participate in PvE or PvP. In fact, "with both types of activity you gain the same resources for character development."
• The optional PvP will have a mild death penalty: "By MMO standards, it is practically non-existent."
• The gameworld is made up of both large open spaces and small instances. It is not seamless, but it will encourage exploration. At one point during development, "the total area exceeded 50 square kilometers."
• The team is planning large guild battles of "at least 100 players."
• Flying and crafting are both in. Housing is a maybe: The "gods have their own piece of 'property' and it's larger than a hut."

In case the gentlemen above did drive the point home:




FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LEAVE THIS GENRE ALONE. GO THE FUCK AWAY. You do not understand how MMORPGs work and you do not want to make one.

Their partners in crime are the guys who made Allods Online (who? Some russians known for making a shit MMO).

 

[Random]

Obsidian is ogre.

 

[Angthoron]

Raw news is a little late, it seems.

 

[Kane]

Raw news is a little late, it seems.

indeed, wasn't on my radar at all.

now i wish it never went on it in the first place

 

[Duraframe300]

Raw news is a little late, it seems.

indeed, wasn't on my radar at all.

now i wish it never went on it in the first place

While lol, be aware that Allods is by far the main dev here. Obs only began helping out as of a year ago (with dev starting back in '10) and the team at Obsidian for this game will never exceed ten people, some who work on other projects as well.

So, its more an Allods games with a bit of input and some content by Obsidian. Also westernization, whateverthefuck that means.

 

[WygadanyCygan]

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Duraframe300]

Video Interview with Eric DeMilt (F2 producer back in the day)

 

[Xenich]

I wish to hear more about the monetary path of development! The one where I can pay real money and buy my way to glory in a video game! Please tell me more!!!!! /sarc

 

[Blaine]

I wish to hear more about the monetary path of development! The one where I can pay real money and buy my way to glory in a video game! Please tell me more!!!!! /sarc

 

[Duraframe300]

Eric will have a Live Q&A at noon cdt on gamepedia.

 

[Duraframe300]

It's time to continue the journey through the world of Skyforge! Today we are revealing one of the most significant features of our game, the Divine Observatory.

For the residents of Aelion, the Divine Observatory is a global surveillance and warning system. Its task is to monitor and display the pleas for help of Aelion's mortals and send immortals to their aid.

For players, it is a single point of entry into all sorts of adventures!

The Divine Observatory, as well as special Access points located throughout the whole planet, will quickly take you to where your help is needed most.

When you first begin your journey from immortal to godhood only a few adventures will be open but more and more will become available to you as you progress. During the first hundred hours of play time, the immortal heroes of Aelion will participate in more than 40 exciting solo and group PvE-adventures. There are also five different types of PvP competitions for PvP fans and ten vast open world locations that can be explored for hours and hours.

There are a multitude of activities open to players in the Divine Observatory, and your choice is not limited in any way. It’s up to you to decide whether you would like to develop your character for PvP or PvE and then quickly jump into the content you prefer.

A normal adventure can be completed in an average of 15-25 minutes, while open world locations can take hours and hours to explore.

The Divine Observatory is updated every 40 minutes. Any changes in the adventures open to you or their rewards will be immediately displayed on the globe, a miniature projection of the planet. The system updates the list of “hot spots”, allowing players to easily see and participate in all cur-rently active events.

Open adventures and their rewards are updated every 40 minutes.

You are free to replay specific individual and group PvE-missions you enjoy again and again, and their rewards grow as your prestige grows, so they remain useful to your development and progression. After repeating an adventure several times, the difficulty will increase, and so will the amount and value of the rewards. Of course, other types of content also remain relevant to you as you grow as well. For example, the matchmaking system always tries to find the most suitable opponents when it picks players for PvP battles.

From the Divine Observatory you can enter the queue to participate in a group adventure and then go to one of the open world locations to continue completing simple tasks while the system is looking for a suitable group.

There are also additional recommended events which will appear in the Divine Observatory from time-to-time (adventure of the day, week and month). These recommended events are a great way to test your characters progression or try a different class. Sometimes the reward for the recommended event is so high that even an avid PvP player may decide to participate in a PvE adventure, or a confirmed Paladin will set off for Factory 501 as a Cryomancer.

The Divine Observatory also displays upcoming adventures that will soon become available.

The number you see in this picture above is Prestige - the main indicator of character development. It is affected by new unlocked classes, abilities, talents, equipment upgrades and many other things. When you reach a certain amount, new adventure and content are automatically unlocked.

Over time, there will be there will be a growing array of adventures and content available to you.

As heroes complete PvE and PvP adventures, they receive rewards including; Credits, the most common money on Aelion. Gems of Insight, which are used to develop your characters skills and talents, unlocking new classes and characteristics, and Exotic Currencies, which can be used to buy new outfits, customizing the look of your character.

As your prestige grows, the list of rewards expands. While at the first the characters receive only Gems of Insight, later their adventures will earn them other new and valuable resources. Over time, more and more difficult tasks will become available to you, including massive guild activities with their own rules and prizes, but that’s a topic for another day.


Let us know what you think of the Divine Observatory! If you want the chance to see if it for yourself make sure you

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-02-from-russia-with-obsidianobsidians-skyforge-mmo

From Russia with Obsidian: What's going on with Skyforge?
What it is, how Obsidian's helping and when it's coming out.

What's Obsidian Entertainment - the respected single-player role-playing game maker - doing dabbling in Russian free-to-play MMOs?

There's Skyforge, a fantasy MMO, and there's Armored Warfare, a tank MMO. And both are partnerships with powerful Russian online company Mail.ru.

Skyforge was announced first in May 2013, and Armored Warfare roughly a year later. But it was actually out of Armored Warfare that the Skyforge deal came about.

"Mail.ru and Obsidian had a working relationship around Armored Warfare ... that relationship was up and running. And it was out of that relationship and that discussion that the idea of collaborating on more than just the one project came about," Eric DeMilt told me - he being Skyforge development director at Obsidian.

He joined Obsidian from WildStar developer Carbine about a year ago, though he knows Obsidian leader Feargus Urquhart from high school, "a million years" ago, he joked. DeMilt helms the Skyforge project from Obsidian's end.

But whereas Armored Warfare is a game developed at Obsidian (bizarrely enough), Skyforge is a game developed in Russia by Allods Team - the studio that made the big budget and shimmering but shallow Allods Online (see our review).

"We want to make sure we're accurately representing our role on the project," stated DeMilt. "[Skyforge is] being developed by the Allods Team. They're the primary developers, they're doing the heavy lifting. It's definitely an Allods Team game in collaboration with Obsidian."

So what's Obsidian doing for Skyforge?
Three things: providing a gateway to the American public and industry; helping Westernise the game; and creating actual game content.

"When you invest this much in developing titles you want them to be a success worldwide," DeMilt said. "You can't just look at your home territory and say 'this is all we're doing'. Allods was a huge success for Mail.ru and the Allods Team in Russia, and in many other territories, but it wasn't the success they'd hoped it would be in the West.

"There were a lot of factors for that, some of them to do with development culturalisation; some of them to do with miss-steps on the publishing side. So when they were looking at doing this new project, they wanted to take steps to ensure it would be a success worldwide."

That world is Obsidian, gateway to the West.

Being a gateway means leveraging the decades of accrued experience the Obsidian team has, and using that to hook Allods Team up with US talent, or to advise the team about what kind of game content works in the US. Having those culturalisation conversations early in development is far easier than when the game is proverbially boxed and ready for export.

The five people in-house at Obsidian are also helping build extra game glasses and instanced content as well. The rest of the Obsidian studio is there for occasional feedback and to bounce ideas off, too. "It's not like we're just operating in a vacuum," DeMilt said.

Some of those five were hired especially, some were already at Obsidian - a studio with a lot on its plate (Pillars of Eternity, Armored Warfare, Skyforge and another Kickstarter project we don't know anything about yet).

Ultimately, DeMilt would like the team to grow to "15 or 20" and the project to run for years and years. This isn't a fire and forget job - not a typical work for hire gig. It's a serious commitment for a 140-person studio - an independent studio with no owner to pay the bills. And clearly paying the bills is large part of this, because which independent studio wouldn't want a reliable recurring paycheck for years to come?

So what is Skyforge?
A bright and colourful, active F2P MMO. It's heavy on the action, easy on the number-pressing hotbar genre stereotype. "It's very immediate," said DeMilt. And you can become a god. Doing so will apparently bestow more than a fancy title, and there will be progression from younger gods to elder gods as well as god activities to do - and followers to impress. "It's not 'you reach a cap, I'm a god, now wait for the next expansion'."

Another interesting feature is the thoughtful time-saving one-stop portal to game content called the Divine Observatory.

Skyforge is free-to-play but it's been designed that way from the start, which usually means the business model makes a lot more sense than if it's shoe-horned in after launch. F2P is no longer the place were "MMOs go to die", DeMilt said.

So when's it out?
Good question! Russia will be first and that territory is "really close" to closed beta. DeMilt preached a "when it's ready" mantra and was reluctant to stand by specific dates, but said he'd "love" for the Russian Skyforge to be in open beta by the end of the year. "Yes that's possible but no we're not committed to anything right now."

What about the West - will we be able to play Skyforge in some form this year? "Again, that's a goal, that's something we'd like, but it's not something we're saying 'yeah we're solid, we're locked in, we can guarantee it'. We'd like to get there - we're pushing hard to get there," he said.

Oh, and before you ask, consoles aren't yet part of the plan.

 

[Athelas]

Ultimately, DeMilt would like the team to grow to "15 or 20" and the project to run for years and years. This isn't a fire and forget job - not a typical work for hire gig. It's a serious commitment

Though if it helps to bring in a steady paycheck, I guess it's for the best.

 

[LeStryfe79]

:russia:

 

[Night Goat]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/23/skyforge-teases-retro-skycar-seeks-tester-guilds/
Big news: Skyforge has flying zambonis!

Also, they want guilds to help with playtesting. Since Codexers are Obsidian's biggest fans, maybe someone is interested in a Codex guild?

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Azalin]

:russia:

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Zed]

People in my MMORPG circles haven't even talked about this game.
I predict that this game will fail on a communication/community level, just like Aion did. Westernizing an Asian MMORPG is not possible for the long run.

WoW will be the only relevant MMORPG for 10 more years.