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Crowfall | The First Pre-Alpha Wrap Report | MMORPG
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Crowfall | The First Pre-Alpha Wrap Report | MMORPG
After spending several hours in the recent Crowfall Pre-Alpha Combat Test 1, I can say without a doubt my confidence in this crowdfunded title has never been stronger. For ArtCraft entertainment to take this player-driven MMORPG from a Kickstarter demo in March of 2015 to a playable module in August is nothing short of impressive. Considering that the module was delivered on-time and is actually fun game mode, it’s my opinion that the future couldn’t be brighter for Crowfall.
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Thanks, fixed! Might take a minute to reset.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
Being a PvP game, TTK is extremely important to me so I'd like to get some early indications as to how this feels in Crowfall. For example, in WAR, the TTK was extremely short in all situations except organised group vs group or non-dps duels. The result was that, unless you were in an organised guild and could pvp as a group, the game sucked and provided a horrendous experience to new players.
Same sort of thing happened in SW:TOR. With the ridiculous burst damage and CC, you could nuke someone from full to dead in 3-5 seconds, again, providing a terrible experience for newbies and alts.
This is compared to something like LotRO. Whilst LotRO's pvp was extremely limited, TTK was long, so regardless of your gear or group size, you at least had a chance to fight back, use some skills, try to escape etc. Even though the outcomes of both short and long TTK are the same, with a long TTK it feels like you are more in control of the outcome and each fight you have a chance to learn something.
Being a PvP game, its so important to nurture newbies rather than drive them off, as well as provide adequate options to play, whether you are solo, small group, large group or raiding. If you don't provide these options, your community dwindles and seeing as your community IS the content, you can't let that happen.
No textures at all in the database?C'mon would take 1 guy about 10-20 minutes to slap some textures on the surfaces.
I'll say this for the umpteenth time,you NEED real good pvp maps to make for good pvp,Just whipping out a bland boring map and flagging players to pvp in a H1Z1 setting is not good pvp.
I can login for free anytime i want DURING development in the new Unreal game coming out,make maps do whatever and play for free.These guys want money to do the same thing only the pvp is not nearly as good.
Sadly the new UT is going to use some of the silly ideas that shook me away from that franchise ,like super jumping.It seems the long lost art of making a great pvp game has been locked away in the history vaults of time.
They have to show me a LOT more quality pvp if i am going to buy into any hype on this game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If you think the combat is just standing around and smacking each other, then you must be watching the wrong videos. I've been playing in the pre-alpha for a month now and it's a lot of fun. Movement is very important to avoid attacks, close gaps or gain distance.
You clearly are misinformed if you think adding textures would take little time or effort to do. That's actually a significant amount of time and money that wasn't needed for the purposes of this test.
This is pre-alpha, not a finished game, and what you saw wasn't close to the game as it will be upon release. It was just something they put together to test combat mechanics.
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Darkfall Unholy Wars:
Zushakon Odi
Darkfall Unholy Wars:
Zushakon Odi
Wizardry, if you're going to "weigh in" on something, at least have some idea of what you're talking about, first. For someone with so much to say about, apparently, everything, it's amazing how little you, demonstrably, actually know... as proven by posts like this one of yours.
Pre-Alpha, and Alpha for that matter are development phases of the project. They're testing the game, putting it through its paces, test for problems, test for balance, etc. etc. Typically, the game is still in active development at this stage and things are bound to change. In most cases, the public never even *sees* the Alpha stages, and it's entirely done in-house, or with deliberately selected individuals, placed under NDA.
Pre-Alpha means the game is still very early in development. Systems are still being created. Maps are still being designed and/or iterated on... It isn't even Beta, where the game is "content and systems complete", but is being tested for bugs or any other show-stoppers before being called "finished" or "good enough", and having the gold master produced.
Regarding the lack of texturing...
In level design, there's a thing called "Whiteboxing" or "Greyboxing" (or some other variants, all meaning the same thing). This is where an entire level is constructed of solid objects, with minimal, if any, texture data (some might use a checkerboard pattern, etc), in order to test the layout, flow, and so forth of those maps/areas.
Maybe there's still discussion on things like jumping height or distance, and that plays a role in how environments are created.
They might well still be nailing down the final look for an area, and so going into the process of texturing things would be a waste of development time because those assets may be changed dramatically (in response to design changes, which are in response to things... such as, you know.. pre-alpha tests).
Until everything is nailed down, the idea is to keep everything as impermanent and fluid as possible, so the level designers can easily change things.
Once everything is finalized, and the map/area layout is considered "final"... *then* the texture artists, and 3D modelers and such can begin creating final assets to dress up and fill out the area.
It's been said that a game in development looks pretty damn ugly, and otherwise unimpressive, for the majority of its development. This is an example of that.
The content doesn't exist to wow and impress you. It isn't eye-candy. It exists as a way for the developers to test their work on, to put it into practice and see how it performs under actual gameplay scenarios.
That we're being allowed to see this kind of "behind the scenes" stuff is actually very rare, and very cool. It should be seen as a good thing - at least by those who understand what they're looking at, rather than put off by "why no textures?"
Another game where you can see a similar process happening is the new Unreal Tournament - which you can download, for free, test out, and even help create content for. Maps for that game are still very much under construction and in their "gray/white box" phase - at least as of last time I looked at it.
So please, before you go off on foolish, ignorant rants about how bad the game looks, or what it's supposed to be... learn a bit about the process, what it entails, and what "Pre-Alpha" indicates.
Knights aren't bad dps-wise. They don't do as much as Confessors, but more than Legionnaires, though the Legos will be getting some love in version 1.1 of Hunger Dome. Still, it's a long way between now and launch. Lots of stuff will change. 10 more archetypes will be added. Promotions and Disciplines will be added. Skills will be added. Gear will be more of a factor.
Right now, Knights can compete very well with the other 2 archetypes. One of their promotions may be more offensive-minded than the others. We'll have to wait and see on that. But it's worth remembering that Knight is a tank, first and foremost. They will likely never have huge dps.