Pre-Alpha gameplay videos

Franciscourant

Crowfall is still early in development and this phase of test focuses mainly on combat and server/client performances. There were a lot of improvements made since the beginning of the Combat Module. Here's a video of the current phase of testing, Pre-Alpha 1.3.

Rangers in action:

bcbully

It's coming along. Looking good. Looks a lot better than the other game every pvpr is waiting for

pegleg

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

Franciscourant

pegleg said:

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

If we compare the graphics with recent AAA titles that had a $100M budget, then I agree with you that those games probably have better graphics. The budget of Crowfall is around $6M. Also the team has opted for stylized graphics for a couple reasons, including performances during large PvP encounters and because more realistic character models and environment often feel outdated a few years later. Crowfall is built on Unity too, so it's probably not comparable to Cry Engine or Unreal 4. Lastly, it's Pre-Alpha and a lot of things should improve, including the FX, animations, textures, objects, etc.

So far I love how the game looks like and I can't wait to see what's coming!

Copperfield

i forsee that crowfall gonna be a major flop

It looks and it seems they are gonna do almost the same combat style that wildstar had.

Besides that: this game is made in unity..

I have higher hopes for CU then crowfall tbh..

CU made their own engine and cube system.. which seems alot more intresting then this

Nanfoodle

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

Arawulf

Great vid! Thanks for posting. I agree, the game is progressing nicely so far.

Alders

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. 

What kind of PVP system, action or tab, doesn't require this?

Arkade99

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

I've played both Landmark PvP (and PvE) and Crowfall. Crowfall combat is light years ahead of Landmark.

Nanfoodle

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

I've played both Landmark PvP (and PvE) and Crowfall. Crowfall combat is light years ahead of Landmark.

Never said one was better then the other. I just thought they both looked equally dumb, the bunny hopping from Landmark and the running in circles in CF. If you watch the video its always one of two things. Your hitting someone and they are running in circles, or they were getting hit so they started running in circles, even after they were no longer being hit.

******Im guessing its something to do with self heals*******

Not saying things cant get better. Im sure thats not the goal of their combat as that would get old fast. Just like Landmark added a movement cost in combat so people stopped spam jumping. 

Arkade99

Nanfoodle said:

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

I've played both Landmark PvP (and PvE) and Crowfall. Crowfall combat is light years ahead of Landmark.

Never said one was better then the other. I just thought they both looked equally dumb, the bunny hopping from Landmark and the running in circles in CF. If you watch the video its always one of two things. Your hitting someone and they are running in circles, or they were getting hit so they started running in circles, even after they were no longer being hit.

******Im guessing its something to do with self heals*******

Not saying things cant get better. Im sure thats not the goal of their combat as that would get old fast. Just like Landmark added a movement cost in combat so people stopped spam jumping. 

There are no self heals like in GW2. Knights and Champions both have passive heals at low health, and the Legionnaire has a group heal, which is probably what you were seeing in the video.

CF employs animation locking. Players are rooted while executing almost all attacks. This leaves them vulnerable to attacks from others, which is why you see so much running around in between attacks. A good portion of the combat is about watching what the other person is doing and reacting to it, but when it's a 5 on 5 battle (or more), attacks can come from any direction. Moving in non-straight lines is a good way to avoid getting hit while looking for openings or waiting on cooldowns/regen. 

I can tell you that, having played a knight, mana regeneration is an issue. Once it runs out, we really don't have any good way to get it back. Our basic attack regens between 10-13 mana per hit, but all of our attacks cost between 60-120 mana. So if you see a knight running around a lot, that might be why. 

Another reason why running occurs so much is that it's fairly easy to get away. Changes are being made to incorporate more movement into abilities, so that we won't need to move as much between abilities, and it will be harder for players to get out of range of melee attacks.

In truth, I really don't know of any fantasy MMOs that don't devolve into lots of running around when more than a few players are involved. If you manage to catch any 1 vs 1 battles, you will likely see more a more tactical fight with less running.

flizzer

Looks like nice Torchlight 2 mod!  Where can you download?

Nanfoodle

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

I've played both Landmark PvP (and PvE) and Crowfall. Crowfall combat is light years ahead of Landmark.

Never said one was better then the other. I just thought they both looked equally dumb, the bunny hopping from Landmark and the running in circles in CF. If you watch the video its always one of two things. Your hitting someone and they are running in circles, or they were getting hit so they started running in circles, even after they were no longer being hit.

******Im guessing its something to do with self heals*******

Not saying things cant get better. Im sure thats not the goal of their combat as that would get old fast. Just like Landmark added a movement cost in combat so people stopped spam jumping. 

There are no self heals like in GW2. Knights and Champions both have passive heals at low health, and the Legionnaire has a group heal, which is probably what you were seeing in the video.

CF employs animation locking. Players are rooted while executing almost all attacks. This leaves them vulnerable to attacks from others, which is why you see so much running around in between attacks. A good portion of the combat is about watching what the other person is doing and reacting to it, but when it's a 5 on 5 battle (or more), attacks can come from any direction. Moving in non-straight lines is a good way to avoid getting hit while looking for openings or waiting on cooldowns/regen. 

I can tell you that, having played a knight, mana regeneration is an issue. Once it runs out, we really don't have any good way to get it back. Our basic attack regens between 10-13 mana per hit, but all of our attacks cost between 60-120 mana. So if you see a knight running around a lot, that might be why. 

Another reason why running occurs so much is that it's fairly easy to get away. Changes are being made to incorporate more movement into abilities, so that we won't need to move as much between abilities, and it will be harder for players to get out of range of melee attacks.

In truth, I really don't know of any fantasy MMOs that don't devolve into lots of running around when more than a few players are involved. If you manage to catch any 1 vs 1 battles, you will likely see more a more tactical fight with less running.

GW2 did a good job with action combat. Dodging and for the most part combat didnt look like people were running laps lol. I could list many others but thats outside of the point of my post you quoted. Looks dumb now... From your post its much like I said. This is the start and as dumb as it looks I am sure things will change so it becomes more fluid and less about running laps. Combat is a fine art to tune. 

JamesGoblin

Nanfoodle said:

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

Arkade99 said:

Nanfoodle said:

To much of a need to run in circles and kite. Seems to be 90% of the combat. Looks as foolish as when Landmark first released PvP and meant bunny hopping to win. 

I've played both Landmark PvP (and PvE) and Crowfall. Crowfall combat is light years ahead of Landmark.

Never said one was better then the other. I just thought they both looked equally dumb, the bunny hopping from Landmark and the running in circles in CF. If you watch the video its always one of two things. Your hitting someone and they are running in circles, or they were getting hit so they started running in circles, even after they were no longer being hit.

******Im guessing its something to do with self heals*******

Not saying things cant get better. Im sure thats not the goal of their combat as that would get old fast. Just like Landmark added a movement cost in combat so people stopped spam jumping. 

There are no self heals like in GW2. Knights and Champions both have passive heals at low health, and the Legionnaire has a group heal, which is probably what you were seeing in the video.

CF employs animation locking. Players are rooted while executing almost all attacks. This leaves them vulnerable to attacks from others, which is why you see so much running around in between attacks. A good portion of the combat is about watching what the other person is doing and reacting to it, but when it's a 5 on 5 battle (or more), attacks can come from any direction. Moving in non-straight lines is a good way to avoid getting hit while looking for openings or waiting on cooldowns/regen. 

I can tell you that, having played a knight, mana regeneration is an issue. Once it runs out, we really don't have any good way to get it back. Our basic attack regens between 10-13 mana per hit, but all of our attacks cost between 60-120 mana. So if you see a knight running around a lot, that might be why. 

Another reason why running occurs so much is that it's fairly easy to get away. Changes are being made to incorporate more movement into abilities, so that we won't need to move as much between abilities, and it will be harder for players to get out of range of melee attacks.

In truth, I really don't know of any fantasy MMOs that don't devolve into lots of running around when more than a few players are involved. If you manage to catch any 1 vs 1 battles, you will likely see more a more tactical fight with less running.

GW2 did a good job with action combat. Dodging and for the most part combat didnt look like people were running laps lol. I could list many others but thats outside of the point of my post you quoted. Looks dumb now... From your post its much like I said. This is the start and as dumb as it looks I am sure things will change so it becomes more fluid and less about running laps. Combat is a fine art to tune. 

I enjoyed GW2 combat briefly, but the game attached to it is the problem.

Speaking of CF, this is early making the sausage phase; You typically don't see anything of any other game in this phase, and we are testing CF already since August (KS ended on March 26th last year! ). 

Just running away is currently quite efficient defensive "technique" due to lots of CC & snares not  in yet, controls / responsivenes being in their quite early iterations and all kinds of other features and fine tunings required.

That is to say, early tests spawn all kinds of early meta that is often rendered useless only couple days after it's "birth", but you likely know that very well.

Wizardry

I seriously don't get how people find that type of combat fun.
It looks sloppy,like players just running all over the place.Like what structure anywhere in life be it combat or sports woudld a leader or coach say,ok guys just run all over and do your thing.

I had to stare carefully before i realized that was pvp and not pve,i mean it's near impossible to follow with people just running around.
The on top of that,there is no terrain to work with,no zaxis no nothing,just run around and spam each other.

I am a pvp purist i was likely pvp before most had computers or were gaming,i was pvp back in the 28.8 days then 56k,so i do love pvp but this is not fun looking.

Arkade99

Such is the difference between watching a video and actually playing it, though maybe you wouldn't find it fun if you did play it. To each his own. 

Franciscourant

Nanfoodle said:

Never said one was better then the other. I just thought they both looked equally dumb, the bunny hopping from Landmark and the running in circles in CF. If you watch the video its always one of two things. Your hitting someone and they are running in circles, or they were getting hit so they started running in circles, even after they were no longer being hit.

I agree with you that the combat needs to get better. The developers recently said that after listening to our feedback and testing it themselves, they realize combat isn't ready and want to take a step back, try to do better on some elements of combat. ACE : "... we really really need to keep polishing on [combat] to get it to where it needs to be, because it's just not right now."

So this month we started a new phase of testing (still the combat module) where we'll test changes regarding : mobility, client controller, client vs. server balance, controls, camera, etc. This is what most people weren't happy with, including the developers, and it's going to continue to get a lot of attention from developers and testers. It's a PvP game, combat has to be good, there's not compromise possible.

[44s]

JamesGoblin

Speaking of new test videos - here is, for a change, one from Confessor's PoW:

Franciscourant

Awesome, I'm adding it to the OP!

filmoret

pegleg said:

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

Graphics are a part of the polishing process.  Which usually happens before closed beta.  This game is pre alpha and looks very good right now and it will be much better later once they get all game design and gameplay finished.

filmoret

I will say this looks very promising.

deniter

pegleg said:

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

3rd person? More like 2nd person.

I hope you can zoom camera way back.

JamesGoblin

deniter said:

pegleg said:

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

3rd person? More like 2nd person.

I hope you can zoom camera way back.

Even if they don't have it now, it will be added.

It's standard feature of modern games, and a must if you have PvP.

Franciscourant

deniter said:

3rd person? More like 2nd person.

I hope you can zoom camera way back.

The camera view is over-the-shoulder and I think it's intended that it remains closer to the character than in traditional MMORPGs, since it's more action-combat focused. Ranged attacks (and melee as well) need to be aimed with the reticule, so if the camera is too high, it may be really hard to aim properly.

Frammshamm

crowfall will fail bc of UNITY

filmoret

JamesGoblin said:

deniter said:

pegleg said:

What year is this? Are higher def graphics really hard to achieve? Looks like Runescape in 3rd person.

3rd person? More like 2nd person.

I hope you can zoom camera way back.

Even if they don't have it now, it will be added.

It's standard feature of modern games, and a must if you have PvP.

Yea it looks to me they are going to keep that camera view.  It is frustrating but since everyone has to deal with it adds a whole new dynamic to the game.  Watching the videos the players have to be careful not just look at minimap to see whats going on.  Frustrating but very challenging you can easily run too far away from your group and end up alone against enemies.