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There are basically two types of players, those who must always win no matter what to have fun in a game, and those who don't mind losing in order to get a more challenging experience. The former won't be happy and may well slag off the game, PvE will suit them far better as it's designed to let them always win no matter how well or not they play, for the latter Fury offers really satisfying depth and the chance to always improve and learn better tactics and co-ordination (teamwise).
If you are the second player, who thinks that playing against humans can be far less predictable therefore more rewarding than only playing against stupid scripted spawns, this is a game for you, provided you can deal with the realisation that with all humans in a match, not all humans win by default. Anyone who's ever played a FPS online should get this core concept.
I first PvP-ed online (not counting doom/quake etc) with Ultima Online a decade or so ago, I've seen alot of MMO's make a total pig's ear of their combat system or butcher it trying to overcome substantial design flaws or ruin it to accommodate PvE needs. There's nothing wrong with PvE, but good PvP is very very hard to find and maintain.
I've also seen alot of MMO launches, my personal experience with UO, EQ, AO, SWG, SB, EQ2, Ryzom, WoW, VG launches etc etc were all far far worse at launch. I'm not saying everything is perfect, but the servers have been up and stayed up, game is playable and fun, there are no game breaking exploits or dupes or cheats, there are no barriers to advancing from badly designed progression, and you cannot be locked into a gimped or underperforming skillset. By the standards of many MMO releases that's very high.
The reason Auran have got the funfactor so right and Fury is worth buying is their fundamental design base is really really good, and that's the bit you cannot fix post release.
70% Player skill, adaptability, tactics and teamwork.
25% Player & Team build (infinitely reconfigurable as everyone can access every skill).
5% Gear. Adds some fun to rolling new gear at the artificer or trading etc, but doesn't skew combat.
Tweaking game performance, and minimising the unlucky few who encounter billing or support issues is all the stuff that happens over time along with refinements to the interface and ongoing minor tweaks for balance. Those are all things that improve as your system for running a pretty vast undertaking like an MMO improves - but you can't fix a fundamentally flawed design brief. Most MMO's release with combat dynamics that can never ever produce really good PvP, because that's simply not their focus.
To sum up the stuff that can't be fixed is in really good shape, the stuff that can improve will and is rarely as bad as any forum displays (happy gamers mostly play but alot of disgruntled players post, that holds little relation to their actual numbers though).
- The best level of PvP balance yet seen at release. The charge system, or having 2 sets of opposed pools of adrenaline is a great core concept, specialising to mainly use two pools and focusing more on melee or ranged stops everyone from bringing everything onto the battlefield at once, but any hybrid and mix is possible as you desire.
- Total PvP focus means you don't have to worry about PvE misbalancing things. No PvE grind to then get to PvP, none of the 400 skills have to be tuned for some raid boss, nor do you have to go camp him for 20 raids to get just 1 of the items needed to get competitive etc.
- Instant Archetype (total gear and equipment) swapping in between matches anytime is genius, play a healer this round play a dual sword wielding backstabber next round.
- Combat has a fast pace and yet a great deal of depth and strategy, there is always more to learn and doesn't overly rely on Rock, Scissors, Paper, - 1 class autopwns another class design.
- There are no hacks and dupes and cheats and exploits I am aware of
- Making endless variations and tweaks on your builds is a lot of fun
- The best small team PvP I have yet seen, it's fast and frantic and complex and a little confusing at first, but the level of depth of team tactics means it has lasting appeal.
- Anyone who tells you combat is about gear not player skill is trying to cover for not winning as much as they want to, it's player/team tactics and adaptability rather than grinded gear and skill levels based PvP.
- The routes to unlocking skills and gear are very quick and easy, to put it simply it's far faster to unlock the skillset of a build than actually get enough experience with it to play it well. Anyone who tells you the option to buy a total unlock of the skills (similar to guildwars unlock sets) interferes with PvP is again trying to cover for not winning enough due to their tactics employed, not items or skills. The UAA is great for some, but not needed, I do fine without it.
- You get not only a really really fun game with loads of depth and tactics, but you also get Auran rounding up sponsors to give away free stuff to their players, like at the end of beta challenge event. Play a fun game with constant room for improving your skill and get free stuff given to you, who can argue with that?
The only real cause for concern you have if you like PvP is you'll need a newish machine for high graphics settings, if you care more about gameplay than graphics that won't matter much. Having the monthly subscription only offer some convenience perks, no actual game performance means you've got full power full fun for 1 purchase and you don't have to worry about ongoing subs if you choose not to.
Comments
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The problem most players have is that FURY will not give you instant gratification. It takes time to learn how to play what things counter what etc. I did not like the game the first 3 days but after I learned soem things I found it is the best game I gave ever played, the most balanced pvp I have seen and just alot of fun.
This game deserves a 9-9.5 IMO
It seems to me that this game and say, Hellgate: London, are mirror opposites of each other. I'm finding it interesting how these releases are playing out.
On the one hand there's Fury. It seems there are lots of players who will just simply not be able to play this game. Either they don't have the attention span, or they are just not good enough to be competitive. The issue here is that no one is prepared to tell themselves that they just suck. It's natural, and they'll just move on. Fury = low subscriptions.
So...that brings us to Hellgate: London. This has got to be the most mindless, easiest, bash your head on a keyboard multi-player that has come out in a decade, and yet it looks to be a runaway hit! Why? It appears that majority of people that play these kinds of games kind of suck at them. Those that can't succeed in any fashion in hardcore mode, flock to games like Hellgate: London to join a club of other people who suck. HGL is the cheat code for MMO players. Therefore, Hellgate: London = high subscriptions.
Yeah, maybe I'm a dick for pointing this out, and maybe I'm generalizing way to much - all of that is probably true - but you know what? The fact that Hellgate: London, as mindless and linear as that game is, is going to blow Fury out of the water come release, speaks volumes of what kind of gaming the majority of MMO gamers can handle or desire.
The popular trend of MMO's appears to take this progression, the dumber it is the better it sells, quite disturbing really.
Halo3 pawns this game called fury alot.
Hellgate london is hyped because of the devs, i know my entire family is getting a copy of hellgate london including my girlfriend and her family.
Fury isn't P2P - there's an optional monthly subscription that has some convenience perks to let it's most avid players fund the servers and ongoing content development with some perks entirely divorced from combat performance. It is the most balanced and rich PvP system released in years.
Halo3 is pretty, but a bit too simplistic and lacking in gameplay to really hold my interest tbh.
I did the big mistake of renting Halo3 on Xbox 360.
Oh boy... what a game. Could bear it for only 1 hour. Bad design, mindless killing and dying. Such a crap game.
But I guess they need to feed the kids worldwide so that they stay away from real, competitive PvP games like Fury, which is a good thing.
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Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
Theres this thing called CPL. just like counterstrike.
Yeah. I agree with your post
When I started, when my newb skillset and spells I literally OWNED a guy multiple times with like the pre-order set.
Its all about skill, how well you can use your build and how effective it is.
At times i've been owned REALLY REALLY badly because I did not use my skills properly. Then at other times ive dominated due to proper usage of the same skillset.
Cheese Portion Large?
Competitive Pogo League?
Canned Peach & Lime?
Counter Productive Lingo?
Can Post Longer?
Do let me in on the CPL secret.
Competitive Player League?
Fury Links & Guides|Don't believe the hype
Cyberathlete Professional League!
Good review.
Fury may have been released a few weeks too early, but I couldn't agree more with "all of the important decisions were well made, all of the problems can easily be sorted out". Nothing that a good patch cannot solve.
That said, it's a great PvP game already, and loads of fun. Yes, it crashes on occasion. Yes, the DX10 renderer could work better. Yes, sometimes you get D/C'ed. But hey, it just launched and I have seen much worse.
Some people seem worried about population. This game would never be a "big bang" kind of game, but always a "slow growth" thing. Because "big bangs of players" require "herd like mentality" which is basically based on "instant gratification". And PvP in Fury and pretty much in any other game, is NOT "instantly appealing". Because, like you correctly point out, in a match where all the opponents are humans, some WILL loose. So, in my opinion, the game will grow from the testimonials of the people that have played it and learned its depth, much more than anything else.
I find it amazing that so many gamers just want to have their ego's stroked by games that offer no depth complexity or challenge, just the simple repetition of insultingly basic tasks, jog to dot on map, beat pathetic computer spawns designed to always loose to you, return for scooby snack reward - rinse and repeat.
Why is this what MMO has come to mean and why are some people really resistant to anything outside that unambitious model? Makes one wonder if having the idea reinforced that everyone always wins without even trying is at all healthy in a social sense.
Heh, I'm gonna play hellgate 'cause I don't feel like playing a hard game right now. Don't have time. I just wanna blow stuff up for awhile. I'll gear up for real gaming again when WAR comes out probably. (If I have any serious time to play by then.)
I'm glad you guys like Fury, its about time a pvp game came out that wasn't crap.
D.
I just wanted to say that I bought Fury last week with a couple of friends and at first it is very over whelming as there are alot of things to take into consideration. A lot of abilities and a big balancing act between abilities and gear. After 2-3 days I started to really understand it and all I gotta say is the PvP is wicked fun and this game has major potential. One of the big problems hurting it at the moment are bugs, but they have already announced a patch due out on November 1st that will correct the major problems associated with crashes and lockouts.
This games PvP is up there with Shadowbanes I am not sure if you can compare them exactly because they are on different scales. But the graphics rule turned up and I'm happy with it along with my other friends who play.
I believe the above posts tell us something important.
People that are after instant gratification will always be chasing it in some way or another, and as much as they can fool themselves (and others sometimes!) into making their achievements hard to reach, deep down they know they were easy to obtain. Smashing endless PvE bots is easy to do, and probably fun for a while ... but at the end of the day its a zero brain activity that pretty much anyone can do. Because, uh, the bots were developed to be smashed.
People that are after a deep competitive gaming experience and are willing to put in a good effort, will learn and be rewarded differently. It's not a harder thing to do, it's just a different STYLE of play: playing against other human players, winning and loosing, learning from your losses, improving on your wins, every match pitches at you different situations so you can use your skills differently, etc, etc. You definitely use your brain a bit more, and for me it's a much more fun and rewarding way to spend my online time. And Fury is doing a good job at it. I've had incredible matches on every day since the launch, the kind of tight-knit PvP situations I used to get once every week when I was running teamplay based PvP on other games.
No path is better than the other. This is online fun and should be entertaining and rewarding for the people that play. Everyone is free to choose. You simply get different returns on different ways of spending your online time.
So, let me add to my comment about population coming to Fury that although the bad news is that they wont come in herds, the good news is that they will stay after they understand. And looking at population levels, there seems to be a lot of people coming ... and staying.
There is certainly an element of needing to persevere when you begin, precisely because there aren't bots programmed to lose to you, but as the game is starting to hit shelves and population is expanding more and more people will be matched up against players with similar levels of skill, which will make matches easier on beginning players.