The latest updates posted to the Crowfall website deal primarily with how combat in the game will work. The team have, for example, been doing a fair bit of combat testing recently:

The first and most critical feature that we need to tackle is: COMBAT. Specifically, PvP combat. Combat, as a system, actually encompasses a significant amount of functionality, functionality that we absolutely MUST nail first.

Having a solid combat experience means we have a GREAT foundation on which we can build the rest of the game. The opposite is equally true: If the combat system sucks, then the rest of the game—campaigns, kingdoms, fealty trees, etc.—won’t matter because no one will care.

Milestone 1 is laser-focused on the core Combat experience: movement, targeting, physics, animations and power chains. Not the content related to these systems or the game balance, just the systems themselves and the player’s ability to interact with those systems. This will likely be the first of many such combat tests because it’s highly doubtful we will nail it on our first try. (Technically, our second try since we’ve already rebuilt most of what you saw in the Kickstarter video.)

Click on through for additional details about the changes they’re making to combat in Crowfall, and for pictures of Origin Systems alum Mike McShaffry hard at work on the ArtCraft combat team.

And if you have time, check out the video above — and this article — for some further discussion of the game’s combat system, and of the team that is working on it.

And if you backed Crowfall, you may also want to check out this “state of the web” post, which gives details about some imminent updates to the Crowfall website, forums, and pledge storefront.