Life Is Feudal: MMO

Life is Feudal: MMO
File:Logo layers gold vertical MMO.png
Developer(s)	Bitbox Ltd.
Publisher(s)	Xsolla Inc.
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Life is Feudal: MMO is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game in a medieval setting, developed by indie studio Bitbox Ltd. and published by Xsolla.

Gameplay

As an ideological successor to the game Life is Feudal: Your Own, Life is Feudal: MMO embodies the characteristics of a medieval setting with full terraforming of the environment, free construction, a branched system of crafts, survival elements, a non-armored combat system and realistic physics.

The distinctive feature of Life is Feudal: MMO from its multiplayer predecessor, Life is Feudal: Your Own, is a stable and pre-generated world with an area of 21x21 km with the future possibility of almost unlimited expansion and opportunity to form an individual system of economics and politics.

Terraforming and mining

Life Is Feudal has implemented a system of complete terraforming of the surrounding landscape. This means that the surrounding terrain and landscape can be completely changed by the players themselves. The in-game terrain is divided into cells, each of which is assigned a value by which it is possible to know its height relative to sea level. In Life is Feudal terrain can be can be modified by either lowering or raising the tile by 0.1 from its height. When lowering terrain the players gains a chunk of material removed from the ground while it costs 1 chunk of material in raising the ground. However, only soft ground material can be raised or lowered and there are limitations in modifying the terrain depending on the fall off mechanics of the material.

Players can dig tunnels, create canyons, mounds, lower and raise the ground according to their own needs. The extraction of resources for crafting also intersects with the terraforming system: in order to obtain metal, players will have to dig and strengthen the mine, in the depths of which there will be iron ore or another metal player needs.

Social and political system

Gameplay Life Is Feudal encourages team cooperation. In order to achieve the better counteraction against the aggressive environment, players are having a tendency to unite into guilds and clans. This feature allows players to divide duties between community members and, therefore, fasten the in- game progress. A successful establishing of a guild requires, at least, ten people. The guild itself is based by erecting a monument - a structure in the form of a sword thrust into the ground.

After the construction, a certain amount of land property or a claim will be held by guild. From now on, the land, protected by the claim, will be inviolable to other players. Company of players, protected by monument, will no longer can be harassed by trespassers because this will entail the acquisition of the status of the Criminal, as well as the lowering of karma(see below).

An exception to the rule is only the onset of the Day of Judgment (see the Combat System section).

To maintain the land claim, the monument must be regularly presented with sacrifices with valuable items. In the presence of systematic offerings, the radius of action of the monument and the claim will increase and spread. In the case of absence of systematic sacrifices, the guild risks to lose the monument, which is fraught with the loss of all guild lands. The monument itself can be improved with time, this will allow the guild to expand their claim further.

In total, several types of monuments are distinguished:

Name	Minimal Claim Diameter	Maximum Claim Diameter radius	Required amount of players
Monument	10	30	10
Fine Monument	30	50	20
Great Monument	50	100	40
Glorious Monument	100	150	80

Another important component of social interaction is the element of karma, which makes possible to determine the alignment of the character. Depending on the actions of the player, his karma can be lowered or increased. For example, if a player kills innocent people, marauds on the remnants of cities, invades foreign lands or robs graves, the indicator of his karma will be relentlessly reduced. This is fraught with the acquisition of the status of Criminal, which allows any player to kill and rob the holder of the status without the risk of losing karma himself, as well as a serious decrease in skills after death.

Economic system

The basis of the economic system of Life is Feudal: MMO is the so-called "Trading posts."A trading post can be built by any player at any point of the map. Any player who has access to a trading post will be able to store a few of his belong in his personal cell.

The main functionality of a trading post is the ability to put on sale things that lie in the player's personal cell in this trading post or the purchase of things from other players.

An important feature: when buying things, players must independently bring money to that trading post and then export the purchased goods from the trading post.

In addition, in trading posts it will be possible to sell valuable things to the Crown and receive for them the gold coins of the Crown.

In the current version of the game, developers are testing an advanced system of trading posts, which will allow players and guilds to tax private claims, storage of things at the post, and collect additional commission for placing an announcement about the sale in the Trade post.

Battle system

Melee damage system takes 2 important physics measurements: mass and velocity. While mass is simply an item attribute, speed is a whole another story.

Every weapon has its own unique set of damaging nodes and each group deals a certain type of damage. Players can perform 4 types of directional attacks:

• Left to right swing
• Right to left swing
• Overhead attack
• Thrust

Depending on attack direction a certain group of damaging nodes become active and will deal damage. During an attack animation damaging nodes track their positions every 32 ms and connect their current position with their position 32 ms ago resulting in a damaging vector. The longer that vector - the faster that node was traveling. If that vector crosses a body part of a victim, then a hit will be detected and further damage calculations will occur. These damage calculation will measure the length of a vector that triggered a hit and will convert it into a speed relative to the victim. 

Skill Cap

In Life is Feudal, all skills can not be higher than a certain value.

In order to manage your skills properly and distribute them in a way that more suits current character there are 3 Skill lock buttons available in a Skill book:

•  - Skill Up. Current skill will increase and will never decrease.
•  - Skill Down. Current skill will never increase and will decrease if Skill Cap is hit.
•  - Skill Lock. Current skill will neither increase nor decrease.

Plot

Universe

The main storyline of Life is Feudal: MMO goes through the two events: the plot of the mysterious divine intervention which has led to an instant disappear of the greatest empire known to the World - the Vulpic Empire and a constant memory black out of its citizens, followed after that incident. Still, due to some extraordinary reasons, beliefs and religion of people managed to make it through all stages of cataclysm. According to the official lore, the world of mortals, Sparksvaard, rests upon the branches of the World Tree. The overall Creator of it happens to be unknown. One day Svefnii, the Sleeping God, the one who blamed for starting the cataclysm, will awaken and plunge the universe into the new chaos, which will leave nothing behind and is going to be the end of the known world. The World Tree is a tree of immense size. The worlds of Elgverden – all the worlds of the inhabitable universe – are borne upon its branches. It is believed that the branches of this tree can be seen in each of the worlds, but at the very least, they can be seen in the world of people, Sparksvaard. One of the branches has been found at Abelle - the successor of the Vulpic Empire. Most of the survivors made it here, hoping to start a new society within the Realm. Therefore, the main objective of the game is to establish a kingdom which will not be an inferior to the former one.

Reception

A month after the release in November 2015, the game was awarded the "Best Indie RPG 2015" nomination by MMORPG.com during E3 2015. The reviewers noted that "Life is Feudal isn’t quite an MMO… yet. You can buy it and play the more limited survival RPG now, but when the MMO portion launches later this year, we expect more than a few sandbox MMO fans are going to find a lot to love in Life is Feudal. With fully customizable housing, PVP warfare, and a deep skill progression system LiF is one to watch, no doubt". The game itself has a score of 7.9 points out of ten based on 228 user reviews.

Bleeding Cool praised the beta version of Life is Feudal: MMO in 8.5 points out of ten, calling the project "labor of love."

GameStar characterized the game as a "extremely realistic simulator of the Middle Ages." At the same time, the interface of the game was criticized. It was noted that "to interact with each menu you need a lot more clicks than is really necessary."

MMOHuts characterized the project as "very slow paced". It was stated that "The game does give you the idea that the world around you lives, yet portrays it very poorly and can be done so much better. Time isn’t on their side though."