Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Outside of the ceasefire zone of Sunset City, the game is entirely instance driven, with matches currently fixed at 8 vs. 8 (Mike was careful to note that “if we want to go bigger [than 8v8], we can go bigger. But we have no plans to go bigger right now”). Missions, aside from the narrative PvE content described above, “When you finish an instance, you basically get three things: experience points, in-game cash, and items. With experience you gain levels [to a current max of 50] and with levels you gain skill points. Skill points allow you to pick different skills, whether it’s active abilities like planting land mines and grenades, or passive abilities like improved radar or increased running speed. When you’re a higher level, you can still only carry three abilities with you into an instance, but you have a much wider choice.”

Two guns and a quick switching finger means never running out of ammo mid-firefight.

That limit means that while a level 50 player might be better equipped and more versatile, a level 10 player has a decent chance to take that level 50 down if he or she plays smart. “A level 1 has the same number of hitpoints as a level 50,” Mike explained. Levels mean little when you take a point-blank shotgun blast in the face, just like in real life, but in certain match types (like capture-the-flag) a level 50 could equip key abilities (like speed boost or stealth) to turn the battle in his team’s favor. To prove that skill matters much more than level, Mike described one high level gang that re-rolled level one players naked except for cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and pistols. According to Mike, this gang nonetheless continued to dominate the instances. “It’s all tactical.”

As for the gangs, Mike hammered home that he wants CrimeCraft to be a social experience. “Everything we do hovers around gangs. Gangs earn reputation based on how they do in instances, and they can earn gang perks, access to better crafting, etc.”

As for “quests,” players use one of Sunset City’s payphones to grab up to 20 “missions” at once. Missions are a lot like paid achievements - i.e. kill 10 players with a headshot or kill 10 players packing a rocket launcher with a pistol - with more cash for tougher missions. Jobs, CrimeCraft’s more traditional take on missions, will be available as well at times throughout the game.

The Vogster team discussed their pricing model for the game for the first time at E3 as well. “We’ll have an incredible amount of new content monthly, but instead of the episodic stuff like Guild Wars would do, we’re going to charge a moderate server fee (because we’re going to have 24-hour customer service, we’ll host the servers, we’ll host the anti-hack software, we’re going to host the tournaments and have refs for those tournaments). We’re providing a decent amount of customer service, and it’s not that much money. We’re hoping people say ‘that’s not that much money, I can pay for that and pay for another game.’

Tactics mean everything in a game balanced so that a level one players can kill a level 50.

“But we’re going to have premium items, and that’s the split. My mandate was that they could not affect skill. It won’t be like other games where you can buy the best sniper rifle in the game if you have enough money. So what we did is that you can go to a merchant, and say you have a helmet that has awesome stats. You can have that merchant make you another style of hat, say, a cowboy hat. So it’s ultimate modification, you can look exactly how you want to look and not sacrifice anything.” It’s an idea that gangs have really put to good use, Donatelli explained, with many gangs choosing a color and style all their own. As for how much this might cost? “It’s not going to be fifty cents for an outfit, it’s going to be on the cheap side,” Mike enigmatically answered.

As for the future of CrimeCraft, post-launch? “I want to do monthly content updates, new buildings, new instances. [Vogster] signed off on it, so we’re a go - we’re going to update every month with new challenges.” In addition to monthly content, look forward to live events and tournaments run by the live team.

Surprisingly, the Vogster team even has a fairly concrete idea on what they want to do for an expansion before the game even launches. “It’s kind of like back in World War 2, when the Italian mobsters would team up to fight the Germans. So these gangs might have to band together to fight an outside threat. We have a plan, it’s there, but we want players to drive it there. We want players to clamor for vehicle combat so we can say that the gas is all going, say, here. But the military took it, so we want to have this big lobby that takes place on an abandoned military base. Or maybe Vegas-style, indoors, with crazy lights. We want to do stuff like that, but we’re hoping to get players’ feedback on what they want and let that drive the game.”