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Key Game Play Features for Earthrise
Oakstead
Member Posts: 455
This game promises to be an earth based Eve-Online without the grind. Its main features. Not since the promises made for Dark and Light (may it rest in peace) have I seen such a well thought out plan for truly integrated (PvP, PvE, crafting, guild, roleplay) game play.
1. Half the land is dedicated to guild conquest and settlement, the other half to PvE questing at a safe to semi-safe level.
2. Two main factions with 6 smaller factions for roleplay background. In addition an over-arching threat exists from an underwater Borg like entity that is seeking to colonize the land.
3. Characters may align themselves with the factions, or be neutral or be criminal which come about from killing players in secure areas similar to Eve-Online. (criminals can be countered with Bounty Hunters). The devs and the community are still debating if the game should only allow on character per account.
3. Characters progress by gaining and allocating skill points. No character levels. But skills sets only be expressed one at a time based upon what one wears. Skill points are earned from quests, PvE killing, and crafting. So long time players will have a lot of potential play variety while new players can skill up in their area of interest and be effective quickly.
4. Fast shooter style combat in which aim is important. Developers call their method of combat a soft lock.
5. Guild territories can be improved defensively and economically with a wide variety of buildings that can be destroyed (but no houses on launch). With certain buildings guild territories can automatically produce common resources for wealth creation so guilds have a reason to conquer and defend territories.
6. Rare resources for crafting must be player harvested and many will be NPC drops in PvP areas. They can also be looted from other players.
7. Items wear out and must be completely replaced (not just repaired) so a real player economy will exist. No complete items are dropped from NPCs although player characters can be looted for complete items if those items are not immediately bought back from the victor within 30 seconds of death. Items can insured however with the cost increasing greatly as the number of insured items increases.
8. Players get a constant minimal cash flow from offline professions and not from grinding.
9. Cloaking skills are in the game for the gathering of intelligence about other guild territories.
Comments
Good summary, but there won't be a Borg-like entity living in the ocean striving to colonize the island.. Don't know where you got that false information from.
I never played SWG, but all this sounds like it. But is the whole game set on an island? How big is it?
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Q3 this year right? If they can deliver on this stuff, and all of it, at release Im sold.
PAST: UO-SWG-DAOC-WOW-DDO-VG-AOC-WAR-FE-DFO-LOTRO-RIFT-GW2
PRESENT: Nothing
FUTURE: ESO
This game actually sounds interesting.... ... for a while i was thinking Fallen Earth might be the game for me, but it didnt turn out too well.. perhaps Earthrise can be challenging in ways that FE wasnt
This is my interpretation of the entity from the sea colonizing the Hatchery area: play-earthrise.com/enterra.php. The key quote:
"The mutations of the vanguard swarm turned even more disastrous once it encountered the Xcelyte deposits on the island and the other D.U.S.T. created compounds. They further boosted its adaptability and made it an even greater menace than it was before. An abundance of new horrific creatures spawned on Enterra, and finally drew the attention of the people. A new deadly enemy was poised against humanity, and while the people were still divided, it was but a single entity driven to devour and assimilate all life."
From a Statics interview with the devs (taken from: earthrise.wikia.com/wiki/Datadump#Territorial
Brannoc - *Vehementi* How's the game in terms of world size, openness, and explorability? Other games have pretty small zones enclosed by mountains at all sides with quest lines that railroad you through the content like a tourbus, with no real reason to explore, or even possibility (due to getting swarmed by stuff that is N levels above you and thus unkillable).
[MS]RaynerApe - The island of Enterra is massive, and while some railroading will be available to ensure that players don't lose themselves in its scope, players will be able to travel hundreds of square miles of terrain.
[MS]RaynerApe - What we will try to avoid is railroading players through a set tour of areas that appear artifically created to accomodate fluid power leveling. We want Enterra to feel like a real world, not just a game.
[MS]Horhe - One important point is that the most of the world of Earthrise is continuous, unlike many other worlds consisting of hubs with roads between them constrained by terrain and other obstacles. Player basically can reach almost any location.
[MS]Ostiak - Players will not have to jump from zone to zone, everyone will be on the same map
This is my interpretation of the entity from the sea colonizing the Hatchery area: play-earthrise.com/enterra.php. The key quote:
"The mutations of the vanguard swarm turned even more disastrous once it encountered the Xcelyte deposits on the island and the other D.U.S.T. created compounds. They further boosted its adaptability and made it an even greater menace than it was before. An abundance of new horrific creatures spawned on Enterra, and finally drew the attention of the people. A new deadly enemy was poised against humanity, and while the people were still divided, it was but a single entity driven to devour and assimilate all life."
It's just the lore to explain the mobs/mutants running around the island.
Masthead Studios said, that you'll need 2 hours to cross the island from coast to coast, if you're running at maximum speed all the time. Running at maximum speed all the time isn't possible tho.
Masthead Studios said, that you'll need 2 hours to cross the island from coast to coast, if you're running at maximum speed all the time. Running at maximum speed all the time isn't possible tho.
I believe the two figure also did not figure in terrain and other obstacles.
Actually the developers are aiming for the second quarter. This quote is from their December 2009 newsletter: www.play-earthrise.com/newsletter/011/index.html
"We have made great strides in these last few months, but in order to ensure that we are releasing the game that we've promised our fans, we are looking towards the second quarter of 2010 for the launch of Earthrise".
Note that Masthead studios is based in Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian fiscal year is the same as the calendar year. That could mean the game is supposed to be released sometime around June (or they could be going by another fiscal year).
Interesting features, we will see if the game will be polished/properly designed though.
Everything sounds better on paper...
...but this is the sandbox I'm really looking forward to.
It sounds like the one MMO to rule them all, exactly the kind of MMO i lust for after being forever spoilt by pre-cu SWG.
Lets hope and pray Earthrise delivers, if it does they have my wallet and full support.
Masthead Studios said, that you'll need 2 hours to cross the island from coast to coast, if you're running at maximum speed all the time. Running at maximum speed all the time isn't possible tho.
I believe the two figure also did not figure in terrain and other obstacles.
So basiaclly if the land was a flat plane and you could run at sprint speed the entire time it would take 2 hrs. So pretty useless knowledge then lol.
Heh well, I think it gives us a good idea of how much raw space Masthead has given themselves to work with, and thus should reflect on the amount of content.
I wished instead of giving us a time line of how long it would take they gave us relative size of the island. Also we have to take into consideration on what direction they were running at. Does it include the two outer islands also?
Harabeck how much raw material is 2 hours of flat out running on a flat surface?
Well, a typical human sprint is almost 20 mph, so over two hours that's 40 miles (by some measures, that's about the size of one of WoW's continents). Is that what Masthead intended to say? Hard to know. I guess it's just to give us something to think about.
I found this one in the Earthrise-forums.
The creator of the map took a Marathon-runner (world champion) as the basic (2 hours for 42.5km). If this assumption is correct, then the shown map has roughly the size of New York City.
It does sound great. The real question as always is if things will play out as they've been described. Personally, I'm highly skeptical on the game just because it seems to have been "running silent" for nearly three years. Information and occasional vids pop up on occasion, but nothing suggesting we'll see the damn game in our lifetime.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
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We get new info at least every week from the Question of the Week at the official forum. But you still have a point, it would be nice to see more vids. I'm fairly certain we'll see one soon (apparently they had one made by the end of January).
We get new info at least every week from the Question of the Week at the official forum. But you still have a point, it would be nice to see more vids. I'm fairly certain we'll see one soon (apparently they had one made by the end of January).
If there's a new one, I havent found it. But am chomping at the bit for anything new on Earthrise. Please do tell, if anything appears.
We get new info at least every week from the Question of the Week at the official forum. But you still have a point, it would be nice to see more vids. I'm fairly certain we'll see one soon (apparently they had one made by the end of January).
If there's a new one, I havent found it. But am chomping at the bit for anything new on Earthrise. Please do tell, if anything appears.
It looks like they've decided to wait until GDC to show it. >.<
I have only 2 mmo's on my radar right now.
Earthrise and The Secret World.
I love the ideas in Earthrise, but i have to say i have seen this all promised before and never delivered to any noteworthy standard. This is why im very hesitant about getting excited this time.
Fallen Earth promised a lot of these features, but it just didn't work imo.
Dragon Empire promised almost everything Earthrise promises, but never got into alpha before it was canned.
IF they get it right, this could be a real dark-horse and might succeed in the same way EvE has.
If they fail to live up to the huge expectations they have put on their product, this one could bomb before it even releases.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
[quote]Originally posted by Oakstead
1. Half the land is dedicated to guild conquest and settlement, the other half to PvE questing at a safe to semi-safe level.
The first part is correct but the bit about questing in safe zones is wrong. There are only three locations where PvP is restricted, those locations being the huge population centers for the main factions (Sal Vitas for Continoma, Noir Base for Noir, and some other city for criminals/neutrals).
The last bit is semi-true, actually. There's some sea creature off the coast which aims to grab more and more land. It already has a territory in the game that players can explore though I don't know if the creature's advance is dynamic or simply a terrain aesthetic at this point.
There are the two main factions, yes. And there are around dozen "mini-organizations" each of which may or may not owe some allegiance to one of the two main factions.
That being said, the mini-organizations are primarily used to procure technology. That is, you grind reputation with them and then spend that rep to purchase designs which can then be installed onto the blueprints of items that will be crafted in order to enhance it in some way.
Not similar to EVE, actually. As mentioned, you are only safe in one of the three major cities. While the factions may have some NPC/mob influence beyond their own borders there is no CONCORD like organization in ER; the PvP area is much more open than that.
More or less. Much like the "designs" that can be installed into a crafted item's blueprint to enhance it ER allows players to do much the same with their own skills. The enhancements to skills are called "tactics". Think of it kind like City of Heroes/Villains' skill modification system. It's similar though obviously without classes or levels your actual skill selection is much more free-form.
The devs have said it will be similar to what Tabula Rasa's combat was like. Despite the many shortcomings of TR I've always felt it was the best MMO combat engine I've experienced aside from PlanetSide.
Actually, rare resources are mined off of guild territories. The common resources are mined by "public" mines. While the supply of common resources off the brokers is supposedly unlimited mutant infestations of these "public" common resources mines drives up the price of the units.
Only creature resources are harvested manually by players. As mentioned above, the mines on guild territories automatically extract the rare resources which are then automatically stored in a guild resource silo on site.
Spot on.
Spot on.
Mmmm, I'm sure some stealth skills will exist but there has been no mention of anything specific yet.
Game sounds nonthing like Eve Online.