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Earthrise Beta Review
Apeg
Member Posts: 91
I have been beta tester of Earthrise since August 2010. Back then there were around 100 people in beta and the game was quite rough. There was a very long delay of updates between August and December and that worried me quite a lot, it seemed like Earthrise would not go out in the next year or so. It was a great relief to see a new update in early December and what update it was... There was a huge improvement in all game features and the overall gameplay. Since then the developers are releasing frequent patches with new features and bugfixes. Before posting my short review here is a list of games I have played in the past:
1+ years: UO, EQ2, AoC
6months: WAR, Tabula Rasa
1month: EVE, Fallen Earth, Darkfall
Short Earthrise Beta Review:
Graphics: If devs fix the annoying shadow bug, the graphics would be excellent. Some of the best I have seen in MMOs. From what I have played only Age of Conan has better graphics. Similar games to Earthrise like Fallean Earth and Darkfall are ages behind. The armors and weapons in Earthrise look like a AAA shooter, the environment is something that players should experience, the screenshots and videos cannot depict the feeling when you are inside the game. The environment is fantastic. Once again, shadows are very bad and need to be fixed. A word about animations – there are some complains on the beta forums about animations, but I don’t care that much about those, immersion and gameplay are more important for me. Something else people should keep in mind are the steep hardware requirements. I have NVIDIA 9800GX2, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 Ghz and 2GB of RAM. With shadows and HDR on the game runs at 25-30FPS, without shadows and HDR goes up to 35-40FPS. I am not sure how the game will perform on older configurations, but I doubt it will have good performance.
Gameplay: One word – addictive. The skill system and crafting system is just like the devs were describing – a lot of skills to choose from. No skill caps, no limitations except the armor that the character is wearing. You can PvP everywhere except some demilitarized zones where you cannot take your weapon. There is fool loot system and it is possible to kill someone and get his items. To protect your items you need insurance, which is done via the inventory interface – easy and simple. The more inventory slots you insure the higher the price. When you kill someone with insurance you take 50% of the price of his last insured slot. There is a criminal system, players can become PKs.
There is also PvE with many different types of creatures and quests. Some beta testers were complaining by the lack of creatures in the world or the shallow quests, but this game is PvP oriented and I didn’t expect that much anyway. It has much more PvE content than other PvP games out there.
Music/Sound: I read in the beta forums that there are around 50 music tracks, more than enough to satisfy the music fans out there. The tracks are mixed ambient, techno, industrial, I like them. The sound is good and adds to the atmosphere.
Features: I would say comparable to other indy MMOs on release date. The game has the important features that make a MMO – combat and crafting skills, guilds, chat, trade via vendors and player market, quests. Missing features that should be in the game or I will be disappointed are the sieges and vehicles, but the Roadmap which Masthead released today gives some indications when they will be in game. They better be.
The dev team: A quick note about the dev team – they are very active on the beta forums, taking suggestions, keeping us informed. The support is great even before release. I hope it stays like that after release
Conclusion:
Good:
- Old school sandbox features, I feel like in UO years ago
- Environment – HUGE world, the best MMO environment I have been in, period
- Skill system – a lot of skills and endless possibilities for character builds
- Best items come from crafting
- No instances
- Active developers who care about their product
Bad:
- Shadows
- Steep hardware requirements
- No vehicles yet
- Some beta testers have problems with controls, there is no keymapping yet.
Comments
Great review, makes me want to play it more
You can apparently mod your controls by modifying a lua file. I do not have the details, but there is a forum post (somewhere).
In the current build, skills are very expensive, but they are supposed to be fixing that in the next build (a day or two away?).
Like most games (imo) this one's success depends on what the developer does right after the game's release. If the first two months go the way Masthead plans, this game looks like a winner.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
That's what I posted in my review too, if they deliver their promises it will be one of the top niche games out there.
Sounds like theres some promise in this title. Im all about the world and that part seems to be in place. Shadows are no biggie for me and the rest should be a easy fix.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
Regarding insurance, is it true that insurance cost doesn't scale with gear tiers? If that's the case, are there any plans to change that? That's a major bummer to me as gear seems to be the deciding factor according to other reviews. If there's no additional risk wearing expensive stuff over starter gear, why have full loot at all?
sounds fun... arggg i want to buy but im still scared
Remember Old School Ultima Online
That is what I was thinking as well. Not big on the insurance thing. Aside from that it sounds good.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
My Review (figured we might as well make this the review thread):
First off this is just a beta and it WILL NOT be the final build that it released. I will however judge it how it is even though I'm aware some things will change. Second off I've only played the game for around 10 hours so I don't have an advanced character and this is more of a detailed first impression.
Character Creation- This is a very basic character creation and it is cosmetic only. You have 3 "races" (asian, black, white), each with a male/female option. Then you can select a face and a hair style (about 15 choices for each) and thier are 3 different tones of your base skin color. You then pick your name and thats it.
Tutorial- Once again this is a very basic tutorial. You start out, go through some teleporter, get your armor, then go through a jumping course, then go though a bunch of short "kill 5 monsters with X weapon." Its nice and quick, while also allowing you to test out almost all the different weapons.
Starter Island- You then procede to teleport to a small island where you are introduced to the two fighting factions and can take quests for the side of your choosing. You don't have to do any quests here and can just run though the island and find the big teleporter that takes you to the main world of Entra.
General Gameplay-
PvE- The PvE in this game is simple. AI is very basic (melee AI just charge at you, ranged AI run until in range and fire at you). They don't seem to be agro'd when you shoot thier friends right by them, they are only agro'd by your presents. Their not that hard to fight and its not super fun. This could change once I have a higher level character and play some of the group areass. But in all honesty if your looking foward to the PvP features of this game then your going to be let down.
PvP- This game is an open FFA pvp game with full loot and an insurance system (I'll discuss this later). Their are 3 main faction that affect the consequences of PvP. The two fighting faction, Noir and Continoma, can kill eachother at will with no consequences. The 3rd faction is neutral (you become this by not doing any quest or killing for a certain faction) and you can't kill anyone without getting Criminal Karma. On the otherside of things no one can kill you without getting CK. Criminal Karma is what you get when you kill a player of the same faction or a neutral player. If you get to much CK in a period of time you will become a player killer. CK goes away in real time whether your online or not. If you do become a player killer you will be killed on site in cities.
Thats how PvP works now lets talk about the actual fighting. As I said earlier I'm a relatively new character so none of my battles had any skills/devices/abilites involved in them. Most battles would have us both start shooting at eachother with our long range guns and as we moved in we'd switch to short range weapons. It seems in most smaller battles you will need more than 1 type of weapon. I am a bit dissappointed Melee weapons are almost completely uselss as of now. Combat is fun, it controls like a normal shooter, but thier are some dysinc problems that make targeting very hard, especially when its close range (this is one reason why melee is horrible, you cant hit anything). Thankfully though the new client coming out is supposed to improve server performance. Thats really all I can say now since theirs really not that many people online now and most of us are low Battle Rating.
Progression- This is where earthrise really seperates itself. To increase your skills in earthrise you must require Battle Points. You obtain these from killing mobs and completing quests. You must then use the BP to buy skills and tactics. Your base stats are all gear based. Armor governs health and power while weapons determine DPS. Don't be worried though, you still have to work for the equipment though because to wear better armor or get better weapons you must increase your skills with BP. So to use Tier 3 armor I must purchase armor Tier 1, 2, and 3 skills with BP and same goes for weapons (you must purchase each type of weapon tier seperately though). Along with these skills their is so many other abilites and tactics to buy it will blow your mind. So if you like making a character the way you want too this is your game. Also thier is no skill cap. Currently the grind is aweful but they will adjust this in the new client due out this week.
Contorls- The game controls like a mix between a norma MMO and a shooter. You can use WASD to move, mouse to aim, andn LMB to shoot, or you can switch to free aim mode where the mouse doesn't control your camera. You still use the numbers to control your abilites.
UI- Everything is pretty generic here and it works fine.
Crafting- I didn't craft at all since thier is no player storage implemented yet (will me in with the aformentioned new client).
Insurance- This seems to be a hot topic for some people. Let me explain how it works. You insure your gear from the inventory screen. The first slot cost 600 to insure, and each additional slot cost 200 more than the previous slot. So the formula would be something like this: 600+(X*200) where X is the number of slots insured. Your armor, equipt weapon, and two devices only count as one inventory slot btw. When someone with insurance is killed, they spawn with everything they had inssured but lose incurance on one item. The killer gets 50% of the cost of the insurance of the last item. So if I killed some one who had 5 slots insured I'd get 800 becaus thier 5th insurance slot cost them 1600.
I personally like this system as it caters to PvPers because they get money compinsation, and it also lets crafters and such protect thier items for a price.
Graphics and Performance-
The look and world of Entra is amazing. This is honestly the coolest open world MMO world I've ever seen. Its incredible varied, has a great since of veritcallity, the graphics are pretty, its just a blast to explore. Tthe mosters are also mostly unique and interseting looking. The bad thing is it is horrible optomized. If I was ever in an area with fog or sand my FPS would drop to a craw. This is thier main focus in the new client so hopefully this will be fixed soon so everyone can enjoy the world.
The sound is also nicely done. There seem to be alot of music that is different styles, the environments sound like they should, and all the guns sound destinctive.
Support-
I can not say enough about how good MHS support team is. They have been in constant communication with all the beta testers and actually listen to what we have to say. They even responded to my PM's and ansered my questions. They also show great love for the game and have a great Road Map laid out for post releaese.
CONCLUSION-
Earthrise is a fantastic game with a great concept. It took a couple of hours for me to get my head around the controls and the game mechanics, but once I did it was a blast. The two biggest issues are the performace of people PC's and the dysinc. If they can patch these up in the next client update and they also fix some of the small bugs this will be a hit. If your on the fence about buying this game I would say wait till release and see if they've fixed up the server issues and optimiation.
The PvE content could be compared to Entropia, at the moment.. There are many many creatures just doing their thing, and if you want to get anywhere, you better organize and execute hunting excursions against the nasties. The PvE also drops crafting parts, which you recycle into raw materials.. So there's a big reason to PvE hunt, but don't much expect theme-park quest lines in the world.
Also on the subject of amount of pve spawns.. not sure about the rest of the world but the eastern section of the main island was full of nasty animal spawns, and many brigand outposts to smash up.
One Huge problem with the game right now is that most mobs can just be kitted for a short bit and then they will just stand there at the zone border while you kill them without giving them any type of chance to hurt you. Thats going to destory the economy and will make it extremly easy for people get skilled up fast.
Also there is a planet mob in the game that is stationary that can easily be exploited since its firing range is half the fireing range of yours. You can just sit there and shot them to death ( a kill every 20-30 seconds) and they drop both a quest item you can turn in and random husks that can be used for armor crafting and selling. All without ever taking any damage.
I really like that most mobs you can just pull to the edge of a river that drops down.. just fall down the drop off a little and they just stand there while you kill them without taking any damage at all.
Combat and AI is soo broke right now. If they release the game as it is there are going to be rampent exploiting (can you even call it exploiting?)
I personally think its worth the risk. If you liked DCUO and FPS games then this should be somewhat up your ally. Right now the only thing stoping me from recomending this game to everyone is the poor optimization and server problems, but thier releasing a new client later this week that is suppose to address those issues. When the release the new client I'll do a write up on it.
As for monthly cost i don't think they've announced it yet, all they've said is it will be priced competitively with other MMOs. This leads me to believe it will most likely cost 15 USD a month.