World looks great and there is lot's of details to explore in post apocalypse world. It is bit weird that human population has lived in their settlements decades - but their settlements still look like that apocalypse happened yesterday. It wouldn't have big thing to clean up places bit and actually fix some abandoned houses in town to liveable condition.
Combat system is pretty good - thought I would have entirely dropped out melee fighting - it just doesn't make sense to bring swords to gunfight. There is also lot's of - maybe too many - different abilities that you can use in fight, making combat hard to manage, if you want to use your abilities.
Characters and armours are also looking good - thought more different armours, more armour dyes and more character customization would have been great. Especially there should be possibility to modify your avatar body - more/less muscular etc. Also you pretty much have only one armour / weapon that you want to use at your level - so characters pretty much end up to look like clones eventually.
At first look game's economy look likes player run economy - but when you play more, you realise that lot's of items are actually coming from loot and rewards. Your inventory is basically filled with allkind trade items crap that you have no idea are they valuable or not. Item decay is slow - so eventually when game gets older crafters are less needed. Good thing is that crafted items actually seems to be useful. Rewards and loots are not only option.
Game is theme/amusement park - not a sandbox. At least lower levels you can solo easily. Also there doesn't seem to have need for traditional healer-tanker-dps trinity at lower levels - (maybe higher levels this trinity is needed). It is really weird why group of scavengers are just walking around in middle of nowhere and doing nothing...
PvP doesn't have any meaning.
No housing, no real reasons to socialize with random people, no roleplaying.
Going to play my melee character to max level - then going to create another rifle/crafter character and play it to max level with different faction. Then I will probably quit...
It is like game where developers couldn't decide between sandbox and theme park. They did bring some sandbox features - no classes, no holy trinity and lot's of different crafting items. But same time they did also bring theme park features - fixed and quests driven world, rewards/loots and meaningless pvp.
Fallen Earth is amusement in amusement park - weird theme park where developers were lacking vision.
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
It is doing amazing ain't it? In their news they said the player base were increasing recently in double digit amounts.
10 is a double digit amount.
Woah that is silly. 99 is also double digit. XD Now if you take your hater-assumption of the increase beeing the lowest possible, and just for the sake of argument my assumption of 99, and we are both half-right, we end up at around 55% increase. WHOA!
This is obviously nonsense. The only one knowing the true numbers is the company running FE. It's most likely not 10%, and most likely not 99%, but somewhere inbetween.
Compared to the way current MMORPGs do, any increase is a success, especially for an indie game.
At what audience is it aiming?
Mature PvE players.
FE is an indie game, and it is doing well. It has loads of people who happily play it, and beeing made by a small company they probably make some good money which means they will have the resources to keep improving the game and adding more content. The subscription numbers are increasing as well, which is more than many other MMORPGs can say.
So some people tried it, and dislike it. That's why it's called "a trial". The game is not perfect, no MMORPG is. But for many people it's lots of fun obviously. And for me personally it's the most fun I had in MMORPGs for years. Which is great. Not to mention the community is just great. I haven't been insulted once in that game, but found lots of people who give me free stuff, help me with quests even they don't have them themselves and are just friendly in general.
The amount of players are fine too. Wanted to check out a dungeon recently, and after asking if a nearby group is looking for reinforcements, I got an invite a few seconds later. We went through the dungeon without anyone whining about someone dying (though sometimes someone did) or that we were not fast enough or all the crap you often have in WoW and the like. It was friendly PvE fun, exactly what I was looking for.
If you don't like it, well... that's your bad luck I guess. I wish good luck in searching another MMORPG you enjoy, I found mine.
It would be unfair to say that FE is a bad MMO (comparing to other MMOs on the market) but it is far from perfect.
I have been playing FE almost since the release, enjoyed it for few months and left without thinking to ever come back. The reason is that you will eventually come to the point where you have nothing left to do except PvP and PvP is not really a solid ground for FE.
FE is linear, in a way, despite its HUGE zones. You will find that your char level ( weakness) is what mostly prevents you from going wherever you like. You will also have a level prerequisite for going to higher zones or unlocking some quests so, sticking to a certain area will be the most logical decision. However, many quests (not all) are well thought out and it is worth reading quest dialogs. Others will ask you to kill 50 of this and 30 of that, but this is common for any MMO.
Another weak aspect of the game is the economy. Economy is based around auction houses and gives no pleasure in trading. You will find that it is hard to sell most of the things for various reasons. First of all, anyone can craft 90% of the stuff without allocating AP (points gained from completing some quests). Those that decide to profess in crafting will be able to craft high end equipment (ramaining 10%) so these will have some chance to sell on AH. Another reason is that selling through AH is pain because you can put stuff for sale only for a limited amount of time (48h i think) for which you are charged a fee. If you placed lots of stuff there... well if they don't sell you will have to do it all over again in 2 days. In addition, lack of personal shops and vendors will drive all those that love trading in MMOs away despite interesting crafting sistem.
FE indeed has a interesting crafting sistem comparing to other MMOs nowadays. It is complex enough to be exciting yet not too complex to be difficult to understand. Time to craft items is kind of "realistic"... takes around a week to craft interceptor (best vehicle) but you don't have to be online once you start crafting process. What I find most unfortunate however is that crafting a certain item will always have the same result (same item specifications). No thrill of what might the outcome be, no sense of true accomplishment or success for getting excelent crafting results...shame. So, piece of equipment that you are selling is identical to one someones else is selling. This combined with dull trading sistem makes the whole "crafter" role in game boring. The result? Crafting is mostly used for personal needs such as better equipment and ammo or occasionally to craft something for guildmates -> another reason why its hard to sell something. Rarely for trading since product range of interest or target market is very very very narrow.
Scavanging for materials was fun, at least for me. Sooner or later you will get tired of doing quests so taking a break and exploring around in search for resources is a nice refreshment. By the time you get tired of scavenging you will be ready for crafting and after that for PvP or more quests. You will find yourself going in circles like this and it works well. At least by the time you get near level cap.
Graphics are ok for a MMO, not great but ok. Animations are poor especially in melee combat which is the main reason I specialized in ranged weapons.
Another weakness is lack of social content. There are no places for gathering, trading etc. Some might argue that it is the world after apocalypse and it is supposed to be like that but even so there would be places where +100 people would gather for various reasons. One would expect larger towns to serve this purpose but the only reason people go there is to drop off their stuff in vaults and leave. Lack of player owned cities and global chat also adds to this problem.
Community and developers are one of the greatest you will find in MMOs. People are very helpful and cooperative and it is relatively easy to find a good guild that will offset the lack of social content to some extent. Devs are fast in delivering patches and they actually listen to community. They included camps and bunker pubs in one of the patches to improve social aspect of the game but at the time I was playing it was unsuccessful.
This is how the game was 2-3 months ago. Some things might have changed by now so correct me if I'm wrong. FE overall is not a bad MMO. I have just pointed out some things that made me look for another MMO.
It's a cool game and I might go back, but one thing that bothered me was all the brown. I like games with some color, with rivers and oceans and lakes and beautiful forests. The environment of Fallen Earth is very brown and in many cases desolate. Ofcourse it's the appocalypse and appropriate to the theme but that is besides the point. After a time it felt a little dreary.
The other thing I was looking forward to was housing. Unfortunately that hasn't been instituted yet. A swg type housing system would draw me back.
And the final thing was the social aspect of the game wasn't very strong, atleast for me. I solod quite a bit and never made any friends to hang out with, but I will accept responisbility for that. Maybe I'm not that social.
The big issues with the social aspect of the game was the ability to group with guildies. In this game it is very very difficult and time consuming to go across even one map which makes grouping with people you know very painful or take all day. I know that this adds to the realism of the game but honestly who wants realism in a game that makes it painful to group. This is supposed to be a group oriented game i mean it is an mmorpg but you cannot with the travel in Fallen Earth unless the person happens to be in the same town that is. I quit the game for this reason alone I can solo in games without paying a sub why ride my atv 1 hours to group for 30 min and then have to backtrack to finish quests or do crafting.
It's a cool game and I might go back, but one thing that bothered me was all the brown. I like games with some color, with rivers and oceans and lakes and beautiful forests. The environment of Fallen Earth is very brown and in many cases desolate. Ofcourse it's the appocalypse and appropriate to the theme but that is besides the point. After a time it felt a little dreary.
The other thing I was looking forward to was housing. Unfortunately that hasn't been instituted yet. A swg type housing system would draw me back.
And the final thing was the social aspect of the game wasn't very strong, atleast for me. I solod quite a bit and never made any friends to hang out with, but I will accept responisbility for that. Maybe I'm not that social.
I understand the lack of color turns people off, but at least its how the area looks. If I look out my house in Colorado all I see is brown and some mountains in the distant. Its a bitch to keep grass green out here now, I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to keep it green in a PA setting.
To be honest it was kinda a turnoff to me as well, cuz like I said If I wanted to see brown I can go outside in real life. I liked a lot of things in the game but there were things I didn't like as well. It was fun while it lasted and I'm glad I could help in testing the game and play a few months after launch.
The problem is most people probably won't make it out of S1, which really is like a giand sand box... and after the excitement of staring at sand and skeletons of old highways that were 200 feet of the ground, it just gets visually depressing...
Crafting seemed to be more self oriented, meaning make your own ammo, make your own elbow pads, make your own everything, but you did this at the expense of your build so you are either a crafter or combat, or some 1/2 gimped hybrid of the 2 with subpar gear/skills for your level...
Personally I liked the setting, hell ever since playing Wasteland (when EA was a great company) on the ol' C64 I was hooked on the genre... then Fallout etc... this seemed like a perfect fit... but no... Here I was playing a post apoc/virus/wasteland game buy there I am back with a sword in my hand because ammo was a fortune, or had to be scavaged, or took up a ton of inventory room because the type you found was differnet from the type you crafted (with no apparent stat difference)... That and rifles (my pref) just sucked... you would hit a mob, then it charged at you in seconds only to dance around you and tear you apart before you could line up a second shot. /reroll melee...
Things may have changed since I played so consider this information kinda dated... but this was my impressions from beta, and release up until the first graphics patch where they took the crappy "X" looking shrubs/trees and made them pretty...
Unless i'm mistaken Fallen Earth isn't doing that well which really suprises me. I haven't actually played it but from what I'm reading it seems EXCACTLY what 50% of the threads on here are asking for.
-No classes, you can make your character how you like it.
-A very large sandbox type world to explore.
-An innovative crafting system which also means a more player orientated economy.
-Not endless amount of grind.
-Skill based unlike the "Click a button to shoot" type gameplay.
It's everything you constantly ask for, I don't get it, unless I have misunderstood something?
hehe - you know I saw the topic title as soon as I hit mmorpg.com's homepage and thought "how could anyone ask this?" and then..... well you haven't played it.
Sadly you have misunderstood just about everything. There's hype and then there's what the game really is.
1) No classes, you can make your character how you like it.
Unfortunately, not really.
The skills are incredibly wildly imbalanced and some skills are just so important that you HAVE to invest in them. Others are so awful you'd just about cry if you wasted any AP on them - and there's no respecs..... Add the fact that skills are dependent on statistics (which cost a lot to raise, so you'll only raise a limited number of stats) and this creates a limited number of builds.
In effect - putting aside completely gimped builds - there's less freedom in character development in FE than in class-based games like WoW. The number of viable builds is limited and the small degree of flexibility in those builds is about the same as class based games like WoW that allow specialisations.
2) A very large sandbox type world to explore.
The word "large" doesn't do it justice. It's ENORMOUS. Not sure about "sandbox" though. FE didn't have that feel to me at all.
The many, many, many missions in the game will lead players to lots ot juicy stuff - but I did get the impression actively exploring it could bring rewards. I didn't actively explore much, but I made a point to always check out resource nodes on the map as I rode between missions. Eventually - at level 27 - it paid off and I found a rare resource that was extremely useful for my crafting. It was a very satisfying find.
That made me think that actively exploring the whole map might reveal other goodies like that. Normally fan/info sites would ruin those kinds of surprises. Luckily FE doesn't seem to have been popular enough to spawn any.
3) An innovative crafting system which also means a more player orientated economy.
Again, unfortunately not.
The crafting system is good. It's hands-down FE's best feature. I really loved it.
But did it create a player-oriented economy?
No. And here's why.
Mission rewards are good. Ignoring crafting and just doing missions, you'll end up with plenty of gear for your character. There's no need to craft anything or buy anything from crafters. The only possible exception would be ammunition, and even then there's repeatable missions that give ammo as a reward.
Also, even non-dedicated crafters will end up with a good enough crafting skill to meet their ammo needs. And I suspect most would create crafting alts to boost their output.
That also doesn't take into account guild members crafting for each other.
Taking all of that into account, the scope for a player-oriented economy is limited. Some trade happens, but nowhere near as much as you seem to be hoping.
4) Not endless amount of grind.
Well... um.... wrong again.
Yes there's an abundance of missions. Way more than you need. But there are bonus AP (i.e. skill points) attached to many and it does start to feel a bit grindy eventually. Not hugely so but it's there.
And faction wheel-spinning (I'm sure there are whole threads dedicated to it) for bonus APs, mutations and faction special abilities (though they've since removed abilities from this equation) is the kind of "endless grind" you're talking about. Just staying in one spot and kill mobs endlessly for faction points.
I actually didn't find it too onerous - especially in a group - but according to this article is has been made more "tedious" (i.e. grindy).
As for levelling - that's definitely not grindy. If you keep a weapon skill maxed (and you will) then you will kill most mobs with 2-4 shots/swings using headshots. I liked the headshot mechanic - i.e. getting a bonus for actually aiming - but overall found the game stupidly easy. Two shots from a shotgun - and without investing any APs in dex (prime stat for pistols/rifles) would kill most same level mobs. I could also solo nearly every same or higher level "group" mission I came across.
It's way too easy.
5) Skill based unlike the "Click a button to shoot" type gameplay.
I love FPS and personally thought that apart from crafting, this was the one thing about the game I actually liked.
Unfortunately and I have to say oddly, it's not completely FPS. For some really strange reason that I've never heard an explanation for, mutations are the typical point-select-click style of gameplay. It's a bizarre setup.
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FE isn't the worst mmo I've played and it took two weeks of playing for me to actually hit the cancel subscription button. It really does have some good points.
But it doesn't feel like it's been beta'ed properly. There are lots of good ideas, but more misses than hits.
I tried fallen earth. Its a good game, but i had my own issues with it:
-the world felt linear, as if your were supposed to go to town A do all the quests/PvE, then to town B, repeat through zone 1, repeat through zone 2.....
-restricted pvp, pvp zones are just annoying. I have to travel halfway across the world to fight someone (if theres anyone there) and when i get bored with that, travel all the way back to pick up where i left off with my PvE trail.
- the economy bugged me a bit. Post-appocalypse i would expect useful salvage/items to be much more rare/valuable.
None of this makes it a bad game, it just doesn't quite earn my credit card.
That pretty much sums it up for me too. Although I stopped playing about a month in and never really made it to any meaningful pvp searches. I was looking for a break from WoW and had hopes for this title to take me away into a totally different experience. Sadly it is move to a zone and quest/grind not much different compared to WoW.
I found the combat annoying and not fun. That simple.
Same here. I can put up with pretty much anything if the combat is fun, but it wasn't.
Agreed. I liked a lot of other aspects about the game, but the combat felt like one of the worst FPS/TPS style games I've ever played. It's impossible for me to stomach this after playing so many FPS with refined combat.
For me It mashed the worst of WoW with the worst of sandbox gaming. Tons of kill ten rats quests, a solo play experience, and fields of endlessly respawning mobs combined with an arcane and impenetrable craft and level system.
I liked the idea of it, but it was just too needlessly complex, and I couldn't find people talking much. It's a shame because I liked the atmosphere and idea of it.
Community and developers are one of the greatest you will find in MMOs. People are very helpful and cooperative and it is relatively easy to find a good guild that will offset the lack of social content to some extent. Devs are fast in delivering patches and they actually listen to community. They included camps and bunker pubs in one of the patches to improve social aspect of the game but at the time I was playing it was unsuccessful.
This is how the game was 2-3 months ago. Some things might have changed by now so correct me if I'm wrong. FE overall is not a bad MMO. I have just pointed out some things that made me look for another MMO.
That's a really well thought-out critique. I enjoyed reading it and have no strong disagreement with anything you said.
As to what's changed in the past few months, well the melee penalty on some rifles has gone down (as of patch today), with the possibility of lowering it more with specific (new?) recipes.
Item decay and fatigue have been brought in (again, as of today) in an attempt to make crafting more viable and more economically useful - sadly they saw fit to "balance" that with an xp nerf on crafting books (80%!) and vehicles (50%, I think) and an increased spawn timer on certain resource nodes - junked cars, respawn timer increased to 10 mins was the example given.
They've promised that they're working on melee animations (sorely needed) and attempting to deal with imbalance between rifles/pistols/melee in PvP (also sorely needed).
A full one-time-only respec should be coming in summer after patch 1.4, when they get the balancing issue sorted.
Fast travel is also on the table (use for all those bus stops around the place, in all likelihood), which should make grouping etc. easier for clans. Personally speaking, I just pug regional and tend to be able to find groups easily. For certain instances, people know they'll need help, so they jump at the chance to run them grouped. Maybe I've just been lucky, or it's the hours I play at, I don't know.
Both you and green13 are right for the most part when it comes to build viability. There are constant questions in-game and on the FE forums about the "best" build for whatever their focus is, it's getting very close to cookie cutter, and will only worsen with respec (I can see multitudes rolling whatever build is considered most OP at the time). This is mainly people who intend to PvP, PvE'ers are less concerned with gimping a build, as long as they can survive. And yeah, even I've caved in and rolled a crafter alt (yesterday) since my main is kept rather busy crafting ammo and higher level books (which take an age). So I have my grumbles....and I really really wish they'd fix mob pathing since it bugs me more the longer I play (time on my hands these days), but I'm adopting a wait-and-see policy on promised developments.
And after all that, I'm still having fun....which is probably kinda weird...
-An innovative crafting system which also means a more player orientated economy.
- wrong there are no incentives for explorations
- there is no economy when you can have 3 alters craftin everything your main char needs and instead of having a markert you have a action house
-I believe the changes in the reource nodes and spawn rates encourgae players to explore other, out of the way areas.
-The new fatigue system is suppose to support the crafting industry more. Believe ti or not, there are a lot of players that would rather shove sticks in their eyes than craft goods or harvest resources.
Fallen Earth may have a few sandboxy elemnts to it, but it is not truly a sandbox MMO. It may continue to evolve towards that end.
To answer the question psed in the thread title...
Because it runs like crap.
I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does.
Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
To answer the question psed in the thread title...
Because it runs like crap.
I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does.
Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
To answer the question psed in the thread title...
Because it runs like crap.
I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does.
Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
2.8 quad 4gb ram
10-15 fps in cities
40-80 outside
yeah......now that's some quality performance right there Must be fun trying to aim with that kind of stutter.
To answer the question psed in the thread title... Because it runs like crap. I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does. Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
2.8 quad 4gb ram
10-15 fps in cities
40-80 outside
yeah......now that's some quality performance right there Must be fun trying to aim with that kind of stutter.
Don't need to. Nothing to kill in cities. That's the big cities with 50 plus players. But yeah in areas that I would be doing combat in 80ish. This includes pvp with 20 or 30 players.
The reason why is because when I want to play an mmo, I want to party up and talk to people while killing monsters and stuff. The first person thing doesn't make me say, ooh wow, next big mmo, me want now, no, if I want to play a first person shooter ill play one without grind and not clunky controls. Not an mmo where I dont ever see people, im always grinding, and the controls feel like shit.
MMOs played: Too many Watch List: FFXIV, CoH:GR, GW2, SWTOR, TERA, Earthrise
To each his own. Lots of group content in s2 and 3 though. New flagstaff university Sunset crypts Willoughbys El cadejo Deadfall point And a few others
To answer the question psed in the thread title...
Because it runs like crap.
I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does.
Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
2.8 quad 4gb ram
10-15 fps in cities
40-80 outside
yeah......now that's some quality performance right there Must be fun trying to aim with that kind of stutter.
Don't need to. Nothing to kill in cities. That's the big cities with 50 plus players. But yeah in areas that I would be doing combat in 80ish. This includes pvp with 20 or 30 players. Performance is amazing imo Better than most games
20-30 players is barely a skirmish. Talk to me again when you're having good performance in a battle with over 100 people....preferrably several hundred.
Comments
My first impressions after weekend.
World looks great and there is lot's of details to explore in post apocalypse world. It is bit weird that human population has lived in their settlements decades - but their settlements still look like that apocalypse happened yesterday. It wouldn't have big thing to clean up places bit and actually fix some abandoned houses in town to liveable condition.
Combat system is pretty good - thought I would have entirely dropped out melee fighting - it just doesn't make sense to bring swords to gunfight. There is also lot's of - maybe too many - different abilities that you can use in fight, making combat hard to manage, if you want to use your abilities.
Characters and armours are also looking good - thought more different armours, more armour dyes and more character customization would have been great. Especially there should be possibility to modify your avatar body - more/less muscular etc. Also you pretty much have only one armour / weapon that you want to use at your level - so characters pretty much end up to look like clones eventually.
At first look game's economy look likes player run economy - but when you play more, you realise that lot's of items are actually coming from loot and rewards. Your inventory is basically filled with allkind trade items crap that you have no idea are they valuable or not. Item decay is slow - so eventually when game gets older crafters are less needed. Good thing is that crafted items actually seems to be useful. Rewards and loots are not only option.
Game is theme/amusement park - not a sandbox. At least lower levels you can solo easily. Also there doesn't seem to have need for traditional healer-tanker-dps trinity at lower levels - (maybe higher levels this trinity is needed). It is really weird why group of scavengers are just walking around in middle of nowhere and doing nothing...
PvP doesn't have any meaning.
No housing, no real reasons to socialize with random people, no roleplaying.
Going to play my melee character to max level - then going to create another rifle/crafter character and play it to max level with different faction. Then I will probably quit...
It is like game where developers couldn't decide between sandbox and theme park. They did bring some sandbox features - no classes, no holy trinity and lot's of different crafting items. But same time they did also bring theme park features - fixed and quests driven world, rewards/loots and meaningless pvp.
Fallen Earth is amusement in amusement park - weird theme park where developers were lacking vision.
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
It would be unfair to say that FE is a bad MMO (comparing to other MMOs on the market) but it is far from perfect.
I have been playing FE almost since the release, enjoyed it for few months and left without thinking to ever come back. The reason is that you will eventually come to the point where you have nothing left to do except PvP and PvP is not really a solid ground for FE.
FE is linear, in a way, despite its HUGE zones. You will find that your char level ( weakness) is what mostly prevents you from going wherever you like. You will also have a level prerequisite for going to higher zones or unlocking some quests so, sticking to a certain area will be the most logical decision. However, many quests (not all) are well thought out and it is worth reading quest dialogs. Others will ask you to kill 50 of this and 30 of that, but this is common for any MMO.
Another weak aspect of the game is the economy. Economy is based around auction houses and gives no pleasure in trading. You will find that it is hard to sell most of the things for various reasons. First of all, anyone can craft 90% of the stuff without allocating AP (points gained from completing some quests). Those that decide to profess in crafting will be able to craft high end equipment (ramaining 10%) so these will have some chance to sell on AH. Another reason is that selling through AH is pain because you can put stuff for sale only for a limited amount of time (48h i think) for which you are charged a fee. If you placed lots of stuff there... well if they don't sell you will have to do it all over again in 2 days. In addition, lack of personal shops and vendors will drive all those that love trading in MMOs away despite interesting crafting sistem.
FE indeed has a interesting crafting sistem comparing to other MMOs nowadays. It is complex enough to be exciting yet not too complex to be difficult to understand. Time to craft items is kind of "realistic"... takes around a week to craft interceptor (best vehicle) but you don't have to be online once you start crafting process. What I find most unfortunate however is that crafting a certain item will always have the same result (same item specifications). No thrill of what might the outcome be, no sense of true accomplishment or success for getting excelent crafting results...shame. So, piece of equipment that you are selling is identical to one someones else is selling. This combined with dull trading sistem makes the whole "crafter" role in game boring. The result? Crafting is mostly used for personal needs such as better equipment and ammo or occasionally to craft something for guildmates -> another reason why its hard to sell something. Rarely for trading since product range of interest or target market is very very very narrow.
Scavanging for materials was fun, at least for me. Sooner or later you will get tired of doing quests so taking a break and exploring around in search for resources is a nice refreshment. By the time you get tired of scavenging you will be ready for crafting and after that for PvP or more quests. You will find yourself going in circles like this and it works well. At least by the time you get near level cap.
Graphics are ok for a MMO, not great but ok. Animations are poor especially in melee combat which is the main reason I specialized in ranged weapons.
Another weakness is lack of social content. There are no places for gathering, trading etc. Some might argue that it is the world after apocalypse and it is supposed to be like that but even so there would be places where +100 people would gather for various reasons. One would expect larger towns to serve this purpose but the only reason people go there is to drop off their stuff in vaults and leave. Lack of player owned cities and global chat also adds to this problem.
Community and developers are one of the greatest you will find in MMOs. People are very helpful and cooperative and it is relatively easy to find a good guild that will offset the lack of social content to some extent. Devs are fast in delivering patches and they actually listen to community. They included camps and bunker pubs in one of the patches to improve social aspect of the game but at the time I was playing it was unsuccessful.
This is how the game was 2-3 months ago. Some things might have changed by now so correct me if I'm wrong. FE overall is not a bad MMO. I have just pointed out some things that made me look for another MMO.
It's a cool game and I might go back, but one thing that bothered me was all the brown. I like games with some color, with rivers and oceans and lakes and beautiful forests. The environment of Fallen Earth is very brown and in many cases desolate. Ofcourse it's the appocalypse and appropriate to the theme but that is besides the point. After a time it felt a little dreary.
The other thing I was looking forward to was housing. Unfortunately that hasn't been instituted yet. A swg type housing system would draw me back.
And the final thing was the social aspect of the game wasn't very strong, atleast for me. I solod quite a bit and never made any friends to hang out with, but I will accept responisbility for that. Maybe I'm not that social.
The big issues with the social aspect of the game was the ability to group with guildies. In this game it is very very difficult and time consuming to go across even one map which makes grouping with people you know very painful or take all day. I know that this adds to the realism of the game but honestly who wants realism in a game that makes it painful to group. This is supposed to be a group oriented game i mean it is an mmorpg but you cannot with the travel in Fallen Earth unless the person happens to be in the same town that is. I quit the game for this reason alone I can solo in games without paying a sub why ride my atv 1 hours to group for 30 min and then have to backtrack to finish quests or do crafting.
I recommend this game for people with sleeping problems. I almost crashed on my desk twice. Never had such experience playing a video game.
I understand the lack of color turns people off, but at least its how the area looks. If I look out my house in Colorado all I see is brown and some mountains in the distant. Its a bitch to keep grass green out here now, I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to keep it green in a PA setting.
To be honest it was kinda a turnoff to me as well, cuz like I said If I wanted to see brown I can go outside in real life. I liked a lot of things in the game but there were things I didn't like as well. It was fun while it lasted and I'm glad I could help in testing the game and play a few months after launch.
The problem is most people probably won't make it out of S1, which really is like a giand sand box... and after the excitement of staring at sand and skeletons of old highways that were 200 feet of the ground, it just gets visually depressing...
Crafting seemed to be more self oriented, meaning make your own ammo, make your own elbow pads, make your own everything, but you did this at the expense of your build so you are either a crafter or combat, or some 1/2 gimped hybrid of the 2 with subpar gear/skills for your level...
Personally I liked the setting, hell ever since playing Wasteland (when EA was a great company) on the ol' C64 I was hooked on the genre... then Fallout etc... this seemed like a perfect fit... but no... Here I was playing a post apoc/virus/wasteland game buy there I am back with a sword in my hand because ammo was a fortune, or had to be scavaged, or took up a ton of inventory room because the type you found was differnet from the type you crafted (with no apparent stat difference)... That and rifles (my pref) just sucked... you would hit a mob, then it charged at you in seconds only to dance around you and tear you apart before you could line up a second shot. /reroll melee...
Things may have changed since I played so consider this information kinda dated... but this was my impressions from beta, and release up until the first graphics patch where they took the crappy "X" looking shrubs/trees and made them pretty...
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
hehe - you know I saw the topic title as soon as I hit mmorpg.com's homepage and thought "how could anyone ask this?" and then..... well you haven't played it.
Sadly you have misunderstood just about everything. There's hype and then there's what the game really is.
1) No classes, you can make your character how you like it.
Unfortunately, not really.
The skills are incredibly wildly imbalanced and some skills are just so important that you HAVE to invest in them. Others are so awful you'd just about cry if you wasted any AP on them - and there's no respecs..... Add the fact that skills are dependent on statistics (which cost a lot to raise, so you'll only raise a limited number of stats) and this creates a limited number of builds.
In effect - putting aside completely gimped builds - there's less freedom in character development in FE than in class-based games like WoW. The number of viable builds is limited and the small degree of flexibility in those builds is about the same as class based games like WoW that allow specialisations.
2) A very large sandbox type world to explore.
The word "large" doesn't do it justice. It's ENORMOUS. Not sure about "sandbox" though. FE didn't have that feel to me at all.
The many, many, many missions in the game will lead players to lots ot juicy stuff - but I did get the impression actively exploring it could bring rewards. I didn't actively explore much, but I made a point to always check out resource nodes on the map as I rode between missions. Eventually - at level 27 - it paid off and I found a rare resource that was extremely useful for my crafting. It was a very satisfying find.
That made me think that actively exploring the whole map might reveal other goodies like that. Normally fan/info sites would ruin those kinds of surprises. Luckily FE doesn't seem to have been popular enough to spawn any.
3) An innovative crafting system which also means a more player orientated economy.
Again, unfortunately not.
The crafting system is good. It's hands-down FE's best feature. I really loved it.
But did it create a player-oriented economy?
No. And here's why.
Mission rewards are good. Ignoring crafting and just doing missions, you'll end up with plenty of gear for your character. There's no need to craft anything or buy anything from crafters. The only possible exception would be ammunition, and even then there's repeatable missions that give ammo as a reward.
Also, even non-dedicated crafters will end up with a good enough crafting skill to meet their ammo needs. And I suspect most would create crafting alts to boost their output.
That also doesn't take into account guild members crafting for each other.
Taking all of that into account, the scope for a player-oriented economy is limited. Some trade happens, but nowhere near as much as you seem to be hoping.
4) Not endless amount of grind.
Well... um.... wrong again.
Yes there's an abundance of missions. Way more than you need. But there are bonus AP (i.e. skill points) attached to many and it does start to feel a bit grindy eventually. Not hugely so but it's there.
And faction wheel-spinning (I'm sure there are whole threads dedicated to it) for bonus APs, mutations and faction special abilities (though they've since removed abilities from this equation) is the kind of "endless grind" you're talking about. Just staying in one spot and kill mobs endlessly for faction points.
I actually didn't find it too onerous - especially in a group - but according to this article is has been made more "tedious" (i.e. grindy).
http://www.massively.com/2010/04/09/wasteland-diaries-spinning-the-wheel/
As for levelling - that's definitely not grindy. If you keep a weapon skill maxed (and you will) then you will kill most mobs with 2-4 shots/swings using headshots. I liked the headshot mechanic - i.e. getting a bonus for actually aiming - but overall found the game stupidly easy. Two shots from a shotgun - and without investing any APs in dex (prime stat for pistols/rifles) would kill most same level mobs. I could also solo nearly every same or higher level "group" mission I came across.
It's way too easy.
5) Skill based unlike the "Click a button to shoot" type gameplay.
I love FPS and personally thought that apart from crafting, this was the one thing about the game I actually liked.
Unfortunately and I have to say oddly, it's not completely FPS. For some really strange reason that I've never heard an explanation for, mutations are the typical point-select-click style of gameplay. It's a bizarre setup.
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FE isn't the worst mmo I've played and it took two weeks of playing for me to actually hit the cancel subscription button. It really does have some good points.
But it doesn't feel like it's been beta'ed properly. There are lots of good ideas, but more misses than hits.
That pretty much sums it up for me too. Although I stopped playing about a month in and never really made it to any meaningful pvp searches. I was looking for a break from WoW and had hopes for this title to take me away into a totally different experience. Sadly it is move to a zone and quest/grind not much different compared to WoW.
Same here. I can put up with pretty much anything if the combat is fun, but it wasn't.
Agreed. I liked a lot of other aspects about the game, but the combat felt like one of the worst FPS/TPS style games I've ever played. It's impossible for me to stomach this after playing so many FPS with refined combat.
For me It mashed the worst of WoW with the worst of sandbox gaming. Tons of kill ten rats quests, a solo play experience, and fields of endlessly respawning mobs combined with an arcane and impenetrable craft and level system.
I liked the idea of it, but it was just too needlessly complex, and I couldn't find people talking much. It's a shame because I liked the atmosphere and idea of it.
That's a really well thought-out critique. I enjoyed reading it and have no strong disagreement with anything you said.
As to what's changed in the past few months, well the melee penalty on some rifles has gone down (as of patch today), with the possibility of lowering it more with specific (new?) recipes.
Item decay and fatigue have been brought in (again, as of today) in an attempt to make crafting more viable and more economically useful - sadly they saw fit to "balance" that with an xp nerf on crafting books (80%!) and vehicles (50%, I think) and an increased spawn timer on certain resource nodes - junked cars, respawn timer increased to 10 mins was the example given.
They've promised that they're working on melee animations (sorely needed) and attempting to deal with imbalance between rifles/pistols/melee in PvP (also sorely needed).
A full one-time-only respec should be coming in summer after patch 1.4, when they get the balancing issue sorted.
Fast travel is also on the table (use for all those bus stops around the place, in all likelihood), which should make grouping etc. easier for clans. Personally speaking, I just pug regional and tend to be able to find groups easily. For certain instances, people know they'll need help, so they jump at the chance to run them grouped. Maybe I've just been lucky, or it's the hours I play at, I don't know.
Both you and green13 are right for the most part when it comes to build viability. There are constant questions in-game and on the FE forums about the "best" build for whatever their focus is, it's getting very close to cookie cutter, and will only worsen with respec (I can see multitudes rolling whatever build is considered most OP at the time). This is mainly people who intend to PvP, PvE'ers are less concerned with gimping a build, as long as they can survive. And yeah, even I've caved in and rolled a crafter alt (yesterday) since my main is kept rather busy crafting ammo and higher level books (which take an age). So I have my grumbles....and I really really wish they'd fix mob pathing since it bugs me more the longer I play (time on my hands these days), but I'm adopting a wait-and-see policy on promised developments.
And after all that, I'm still having fun....which is probably kinda weird...
- wrong there are no incentives for explorations
- there is no economy when you can have 3 alters craftin everything your main char needs and instead of having a markert you have a action house
BestSigEver :P
-I believe the changes in the reource nodes and spawn rates encourgae players to explore other, out of the way areas.
-The new fatigue system is suppose to support the crafting industry more. Believe ti or not, there are a lot of players that would rather shove sticks in their eyes than craft goods or harvest resources.
Fallen Earth may have a few sandboxy elemnts to it, but it is not truly a sandbox MMO. It may continue to evolve towards that end.
To answer the question psed in the thread title...
Because it runs like crap.
I personally had high hopes for this game. But the coding just.....lacks. There's NO WAY a game that looks like FE does should run as badly as it does.
Here of course is where some raving fan of the game responds to me saying "it runs great on my 4ghz quad core with 8gb of DDR3 and 2 Nvidia 480's in SLI....I get 20fps in the wild and a whole 5 fps in towns!!!", thus unwittingly proving my point.
2.8 quad 4gb ram
10-15 fps in cities
40-80 outside
yeah......now that's some quality performance right there Must be fun trying to aim with that kind of stutter.
i dont like the combat and lack of social activities. maybe others feel the same
2.8 quad 4gb ram
10-15 fps in cities
40-80 outside
yeah......now that's some quality performance right there Must be fun trying to aim with that kind of stutter.
But yeah in areas that I would be doing combat in 80ish.
This includes pvp with 20 or 30 players.
Performance is amazing imo
Better than most games
The reason why is because when I want to play an mmo, I want to party up and talk to people while killing monsters and stuff. The first person thing doesn't make me say, ooh wow, next big mmo, me want now, no, if I want to play a first person shooter ill play one without grind and not clunky controls. Not an mmo where I dont ever see people, im always grinding, and the controls feel like shit.
MMOs played: Too many
Watch List: FFXIV, CoH:GR, GW2, SWTOR, TERA, Earthrise
Lots of group content in s2 and 3 though.
New flagstaff university
Sunset crypts
Willoughbys
El cadejo
Deadfall point
And a few others
Also 6 more coming in deadfall patch.
Otherwise guilds and pvp for social.
Any other games have more socibility?
(Not counting raids)
20-30 players is barely a skirmish. Talk to me again when you're having good performance in a battle with over 100 people....preferrably several hundred.
Nothing to kill in cities?? Really?? How lame.