The upcoming Fellowship‘s core appeal isn’t necessarily derived from its world or mechanics, but rather its mission statement towards the world of MMOs and other dungeon-crawler RPGs. Set to release later this year, Chief Rebel’s Fellowship will pull out a number of stops to make the genre more accessible and more streamlined.
Chief Rebel’s RPG game Fellowship is set to hit shelves later this year in an Early Access form, and it’ll be arriving with a particular goal at its forefront. The aim of Fellowship, as professed by the devs behind it, is to skip the MMO grind and get players straight into the dungeons that would be reserved for late or mid-game in other titles. Game Rant sat down with members of the Fellowship team, including game designers Isabell Mars and Will Maiden, who spoke more on the game’s principles of accessibility and ease of experience.
How Chief Rebel's Fellowship Removes The MMO Grind
The MMO Grind And Its Issues
Whether it’s in massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or even more run-of-the-mill solo RPGs, ‘grinding’ has always been a core part of the process. In most games, this involves mowing down as many lower-level foes as a player can find to gather more loot and/or levels to prep for a harder encounter, and it’s a section of these games that has only expanded as games generally have grown lengthier.
While this is a key component of the RPG genre and all its subgenres, and an enjoyable game-loop for many, it’s also an aspect maligned by just as many. When discussing the goal of Fellowship, Maiden went into why the team wanted to avoid this grind and get players right into the action:
“How many times has someone recommended a TV show to you but told you it really only gets good in season two or three? The endgame of MMOs is often the best kept secret in gaming, it’s such a compelling way to play but requires a significant time (and money, if you’re playing a subscription-based game) investment to get access to that experience and community. One of the initial goals of Fellowship was to bring the endgame to players who didn’t have access to it previously.”
The Ways Fellowship Cuts Out To The Chase
In terms of how the gameplay of Fellowship delivers on this goal, the team was also able to provide some detailed explanation. Maiden went on to say that the team went about achieving their mission by “making Fellowship a fixed, accessible price with no subscription, and by providing pre-made characters that streamline the best archetypes of an RPG into a pick-up-and-play hero.”
This approach starts to make the features of Fellowship resemble those of match-based, online games, and that seems to be on the team’s mind too. Mars’ added more details on the game’s ‘Quickplay’ aspect, and how the gameplay of Fellowship will mimic session-based titles:
“I personally can’t count the amount of times I’ve wanted to jump in and play a game with high barriers to entry in the middle of the season, being weeks behind my friends, and getting burnt out at just the thought of it, that’s what we want to avoid. And when we talk about the “Jump in and play straight away” that also includes how easily you can find a group and get into a dungeon. With Fellowship, we have been constantly working on lowering that barrier to entry. For example, from our Quickplay or matchmaking system: You don’t have to apply for groups and get declined, instead you can just press “Play” and find yourself in a dungeon within minutes.”