Crowfall Beta First Impressions | MMORPG.com

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Crowfall Beta First Impressions | MMORPG.com

With so many games attempting to innovate their respective genres, the MMORPG has been in need of some serious love and attention in recent years. Thankfully we've moved past the age of every new title needing to be the next "WOW killer", and have instead progressed to a time where MMO's are more interested in creating something new rather than the same thing but "better." Matt took a look at Crowfall in the most recent beta test.

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foxgirl

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Scorchien

Slapshot1188

Thanks for the thoughts.  Interested in seeing how they change over time.  One thing you should know relates to your Like #2 (Progression).  If you follow the quests (new player experience) you will be max level (well, max except for using necromancer created bodies to go to 35) at the end.  The quests take a few hours to complete.  A guildie that joined for the first time a week or two ago soloed there in one night. 

Afterwards you really do not need to run the new player experience again and can just get power leveled either by having someone give you mobs or by giving the player sacrifice items which grant XP.   My second and 3rd characters took about 2 minutes to level from 1-30.

Interested to see your future thoughts because my likes/dislikes are pretty opposite yours up to Dislike #4.

Scot

Dislike #3: Combat bugs and Lackluster Visual quest

What "visual quest" is that a typo, maybe he means cues or something?

Good to see a review for CF, but the launch review is what I am really waiting for.

Slapshot1188

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Umm... the Guinecean can pick from Duelist, Knight and Cleric.  That's 3 not one.

Personally I love the racial/class locks.

Scot

Slapshot1188 said:

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Umm... the Guinecean can pick from Duelist, Knight and Cleric.  That's 3 not one.

Personally I love the racial/class locks.

You both realise of course that over time every race will have every class and they will try to pass that of as new content? Happens every time I have seen race restrictions. Not saying they could release them all now, just that it is not a priority when down the line they can do it.

Slapshot1188

Scot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Umm... the Guinecean can pick from Duelist, Knight and Cleric.  That's 3 not one.

Personally I love the racial/class locks.

You both realise of course that over time every race will have every class and they will try to pass that of as new content? Happens every time I have seen race restrictions. Not saying they could release them all now, just that it is not a priority when down the line they can do it.

Well, Coleman’s history is Shadowbane and stuff was race restricted there. As far as I know that never changed. 

foxgirl

Slapshot1188 said:

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Umm... the Guinecean can pick from Duelist, Knight and Cleric.  That's 3 not one.

Personally I love the racial/class locks.

Yeah I read the chart the wrong way... I still think it cheapens the experience of the game. And like the other person said, they could just unlock more class/races later on.
And I think they do the restriction not out of laziness (well maybe a little), but because they have it set up like that in their lore - as if no one ever learned a new fighting style from a different culture *eyeroll*
It's done for flavour I guess. Personally I rather liked the way EQ2 did it, where the "evil" faction had Dirges and the orther side had Bards and so on. Basically the same class but flavoured differently.

muthax

The duelist burrows and moves underground, I can't see other races than the guinecean doing something like that

koldmiser

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Demon Hunter. Limited to Elves only. Yes, I get it's a lore thing, just pointing out that even WoW still has race/class locks.

koldmiser

I guess I'll have to look at this again. I thought it had open world PVP which is an automatic fail for me.

Scot

Slapshot1188 said:

Scot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

foxgirl said:

The limited class/race combo turned me off... I liked the guinea pig race, but one class only? Are they joking?? Even wow at it's sloppiest of decisions wasn't this stupid.

Umm... the Guinecean can pick from Duelist, Knight and Cleric.  That's 3 not one.

Personally I love the racial/class locks.

You both realise of course that over time every race will have every class and they will try to pass that of as new content? Happens every time I have seen race restrictions. Not saying they could release them all now, just that it is not a priority when down the line they can do it.

Well, Coleman’s history is Shadowbane and stuff was race restricted there. As far as I know that never changed. 

Shadowbane is from what I think of as the first age of MMOs, he will be up against everything developers think they "know" about making a good MMO if he sticks to that. There may be exceptions, that will depend on how cookie cut the classes are, if the races had distinct class abilities they might well never change.

All this is a bit by the by for me though, I am not going to drop the game before launch for something like this, it is small fry. The graphics are borderline but the gameplay may swing it for me.

Prometeu

The limit of race/class is animation cost only. Many games have different classes on same skeleton. Crowfall has the highest variation of skeletons and proportions that I have seen in an MMO:
Centaur (Horse) vs Guinecean (Rat)
Minotaur (Bull) or Elken (Dear) vs Fae (A fairy type with wings)
The rest are humanoids and fairly similar

saker

I don't agree with much of the review. I found it to be boring, tedious, UN-original. The classes very bland and generic.

bng28

Guinea pigs can be tanks but not a half-giant. Who the fu... nevermind

donzin08

played about 10 hours (not that much i know) played alot of different classes. Each one plays pretty uniquely, even playing different races "feels" different. I gotta admit, i am super hopeful for this game, the world looks great. combat feels completely fine, plenty of people playing, IF and its a big IF the game launches well and the devs really pour more into it, it could potentially be an absolutely brilliant game. i'd say its worth checking out especially if you've got some buddies or a guild thats looking for something a little new/different. My biggest worry is that this game absolutely requires a thriving population for it to be successful, look at what Albion has managed to do over the last few years with its player population, this game could be the same way

hercyson

This is a full loot PvP game. If you are looking for a PvE game look somewhere else as this is definitely not the game for you.

Wizardry

There is just waaaay too much to comment on and seems pointless since the excuse of NOT officially launched will be used by many.

There is also a lot to talk abotu in each topic mentioned which tells me this is an extremely vague review in progress and not touching on the deeper parts of each design that matter to many.

So quantity of classes does not equal quality of classes,this alone is a deep subject to discuss.

crafting is a huge topic and things that need to be mentioned are how does crafting affect the gameplay,is there depth or just craft items to use and that is it.
\
Optimization is not something the whole team works on so there should be a dedicated person or two working on that full time.Also on this topic is that numbers alone don't tell us enough.Like it is very easy for a dev to turn up the framerates by dumbing down the graphics so a lot mroe needs to be KNOWN and not just guesswork since we on the outside don't really know what the yare doing or how they are optimizing the game.

Combat,this topic can go in every direction as everyone has their own likes and dislikes.The problem i have is that RPG combat is GAITED once you introduce pvp.This means it wil NEVER be at it's best form especially when comes to FUN combat.

So far we are talking about BASIC game deign,combat,make your character,do some crafting.This SIMPLE game design does not cater to me personally because i need a LOT of game design out of a RPG and not the simple stuff we have been doing for over 20 years.

muthax

tzervo said:

muthax said:

The duelist burrows and moves underground, I can't see other races than the guinecean doing something like that

That's a racial thing not a class thing. Guineceans of other classes also have burrow. Duelist is the only class that is locked only to the guinecean and no other race afaik.

Yes but it is also an essential part of the duelist gameplay, that's probably why the class is locked to that race

samvenice

I tried to give this a shot so many times, but the engine is so abysmal
life's too short for this stutterfest, I'm used to 90+ fps at max detail, not sub50 (at best!) at potato detail.
I had a smoother gameplay in daoc 20 years ago, just sayin'.

hard pass.

mcrippins

I absolutely hate the quest dialog system in the game right now. Having to click 4-5 times in some cases just to get through quest text is extremely tedious imo. Fortunately this seems like an easy change, but who knows if they will.

theGnade

I think the whole "class being locked to race" is sensible. I mean otherwise we would see some weird arse combos that would make no sense and make game awkward.

cameltosis

Interesting review with some good info.


However, at the moment it's only a review of what is essentially the tutorial, which is entirely PvE and not representative of what the game is supposed to be like.


I did enjoy the tutorial experience, probably took me 6 hours to do 1-30 and complete all the quests. Granted, the quests were all generic and boring but it didn't matter, I treated it as a tutorial and basically just used the time to learn the class and experiment with the mechanics.


I tried searching out the "real" game but I could just never find anyone! Granted, im quite late night when im playing but it was still disappointign not to find anyone to PvP against! Like, not a single one! So, I didn't get to experience anything of what the primary game is all about.



The part I found weirdest in the review was the comment about the pacing of leveling. "Just right". I'm just really curious what MMORPGs allow you to level to the cap in under 6 hours?!?!? Not that im complaining with respect to crowfall: it's a PvP game, you want all your players at the level cap as quickly as possible. But really, all the other MMORPGs I've played it's taken about 125 hours (~5 days) of playtime to hit the cap when the game releases, so 6 hours seems phenominally quick to me.

lotrlore

Scot said:

Dislike #3: Combat bugs and Lackluster Visual quest

What "visual quest" is that a typo, maybe he means cues or something?

Good to see a review for CF, but the launch review is what I am really waiting for.

Yup, we'll have a launch review. This is a preview of how it is now for sure. 

I'll also double check on the cues/quest. This was edited pretty early this morning, so I may have misunderstood thinking there was a typo when I edited the piece.

NicoleC

I found combat to be rather tedious and full of weirdness. At it's core it's tab target; if you move away that wolf bite can still reach you 20 feet away.

The race/classes were also *extremely* imbalanced, and not in a way that you'd expect at a beta stage.