Ahoy fellow fraggers,
Other than the release date, some other subjects are sometimes brang into the official Crossfire X Discord and this one is frequently coming back. It's a good sign to see the rest of the pre-community interested by other things than debating on something they don't have their hands on.
I am here today to express my vision of all of that, as much as a player than a fan wishing the game doing well on the long term.
The K&M native support and the crossplay are two differents subjects joining themselves on some of the points but I do think they need to be threated separately since they are not bringing the same problems.
Keyboard & mouse
The principal question that we should first ask to ourselve is the following one : Does this device have the possibility to have an impact on both casual and competitive player-bases and if yes, in what way? It's a neutral question that will permit us to weight the pros and the cons.
Not surprisingly, that is yes ; Each action provokes a reaction. Allowing an external device to the game which is without any doubts today way more efficient than a controller does have a negative influence on the traditional and the larger group of people : the one using a pad, the default tool to play on console. FPS players on PC compete with a mouse for 2 decades because they are maximizing their rapidity and precision with it, and FPS players on console are not allowed to play on LAN / Internet with XIM/XFPS to give equal opportunities exactly as in the sport competitions where some equipments or substances are simply forbidden.
Saying you can beat mouses users with a controller so it's fair to allow mouses is a sophism and does not prove anything : Any more skilled people using an handicap can win against a begginer in any domain. Put a maimed and a 2 years old kid on a 100 meters racing line and guess who is going to reach the final lane first. That is what is called a power relationship so it is not more longer a question of device.
We are not going to enter too much in the details and explain why is the mouse far better on FPS because this was a debate you could have in the early 2000s but we can obviously discuss about it in the commentaries.
Returning to the specifics of what we've been talking about, let me develop why MnK would without any doubts a negative impact. It's superiority in term of possibilities and effectiveness would force the developers to make a separate playlist for them, and that would be prima facie the logical response if they are searching to make the both types of users enjoy their game and happily play each others on their sides. This idea is wrong, childish, and naive. Players using mouses and keyboards on Xbox are mostly console players looking to get offered the various advantages of playing this method. You will say, yes, and so what if they are only allowed to play in the specific playlist that developers made for them? I will once again tell you that you are naive, and that is very likely because you are a good person. The people using KBM will obviously want to play with their friends and to do that they will have no other choices to buy one of these adaptaters and come over the Controller servers. Other will have bad intentions and only do this to camp the leaderboards or reach the top ranks much more easily.
Do absolutely not believe that the controller players will want to join them over the MnK servers either with their controllers or plugging their mouses as long they have the choice to play with the tool that make them playing on console = a PAD.
Making a KBM playlist will only democratize the different adaptaters and making the problem even worse.
Crossplay
This topic is also being brang on the Discord, either before talking about the native MnK support, or later in the discussion. As long as we know and if we refer to the lasts posts from Crow (CM), there is, today, no PC release planned for CFX. It is therefore necessary to remember that we are going to open a subject that is actually even more abstract.
Since once is not the norm, thinking that giving the possibility to a bigger window of players to enjoy the game is without consequences to the part that was initally in the plans (there is certainly no needs to remind, Xbox + PAD players) is again a wrong good idea. And we have several exemples to prove this point : Shadowrun, Bleeding Edge, Spellbreak and Rocket Arena to only quote them. Every games aiming to put their focus on the competitive aspect at a big or lesser degree as the ones mentioned above ends to die faster than it have been to the devs to mind about the question of bringing the crossplatform to the titles. The sales representative will obviously believe that making a game playable on different supports and letting friends to play with each others is an absolutely genius idea, but this guy also stayed in the 2000s or isn't someone planning to play the game for the years to come / knowing how the reality is on games that aren't called Call of Duty or Fortnite, which represent a minority.
PC/Xbox Crossplatform titles usually offer the following solution : a mixed server allowing everyone to play together, a console server (and maybe also a PC-only one). When the game comes out, everything is beautiful, players wanting to stay on the Xbox server because they hardly can compete against a mouse are happy because there is enough people. The players wanting to stay on PC-only servers because they won't be handicapped by controllers players on their team or seeking a better challenge are happy. The players wanting to play with their friends on the mixed server are also happy because the game is new so the playerbase is consequent. Beautiful.
In fact, the competitive scene always makes it on PC (once again because of the superiority of the mouse, and the possibilities/freedom that a PC offer), which gives a wider audiance to the computer and attract the console ones. But this is all very relative because mixed servers very quickly cannibalize the one dedicated to the Xbox players, making quit a lot of players that are never jumping onto the mixed ones. It's a loss-loss for both communities because a game marketed as crossplay that doesn't offer any other choices to PAD players to not getting stomped is doomed to fail. You never can be appealing again to the majority of players using a controller if they can not have fun or being competitive. I am certain that if Smilegate wants to enter the console market and wants to subsist on the long run, all while pushing the Crossfire brand as a serious concurrent to AAA titles on the competitive aspect, they will make the right choice.
The only viable crossplatform system is between Xbox and Playstation machines.
To conclude this post, I would like to add a quote from Albert Einstein saying "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." We have seen by the past that every new IPs taking the decision to include one or two of these features either died in a few months or didn't made good on the long term. "Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis", or more commonly shortened in "Exceptio probat regulam" meaning "the rules does proves the exeption". Picking Fortnite as an exemple of success is a drop in the bucket and making it meaningless. The closest game we can compare Crossfire X to is unquivocally Counter-Strike: GO, which has been sold pretty well on both platforms. But one did better than the other one, firstly because there was a community based around on the Xbox version, but also because there was no native support for the mouse and keyboard. Today, you still can play it on the Microsoft consoles but they closed their servers on Playstation.