The first pre-alpha of the upcoming competitive MMO Crowfall has concluded, and the developers are reflecting on it in a post-mortem.
For the developers, the analysis of network connections and stability was, of course, very important. The measured ping times also played a significant role. In the beginning, average times were around 500ms with spikes in the 2000ms range (sometimes even up to 18,000ms). However, by the end, the average times were 50-150ms. On the official website, they provided more details about the technical progress in a blog post (crowfall.com). The most important finding was how long it takes for a command to arrive at the MMO server from the player and be sent back.
Interesting: See what the Crowfall pre-alpha test has to offer(tte).
Furthermore, some interesting facts emerged. As seen in the following graphic, the Confessor was the most popular archetype of the beta.
And so, confessors fired approximately 52,385 fireballs between September 23 and October 4. However, this type of information is rather not usable. It became more interesting when analyzing other skills during the same period. Only 369 Hellfire spells were cast, and Knights and Legionnaires used Charge only 198 and 90 times, respectively, but their primary attacks with the left mouse button were used 22,981 and 18,457 times. This led the team to the following questions that now need to be resolved:
- Do people not understand the alternative combo accessed with “E”?
- If this is the case, is it because of the user interface?
- Are QWERTZ players distorting the data?
- Is the E key too cumbersome to press?
- Would a new key assignment solve the problem?
- Is the time window to press this key too small?
- Are the alternative combos weaker than the primary attack?
The developers have learned a lot from this first pre-alpha of Crowfall, such as that the server controller is very sensitive to latency. The big advantage is that the team around Crowfall is clearly beginning to be transparent early on and working closely with players to ensure the best possible gaming experience in the end. Future alphas will provide further important information based on gameplay logs, including the impact of this and that archetype and how its powers are utilized. In the next alpha, which starts in November, players can look forward to a new archetype: The Champion.
Additionally, we are excited to exclusively show you the first artwork of the Druid class from the MMORPG Crowfall! This depicts the male Druid, who seems to be very connected to nature and the animal world.
By the way, you should take another look at Mein-MMO.de tonight. There’s something to win.
