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Another terrible game, launched far too early with little to insight or inspiration
Elmoren
Warhammer Online CorrespondentMember UncommonPosts: 110
Xsyon isn't bad game. It's a poorly done game. Much like other MMO's of the past few years, it suffers from the 'get it out the door!' mentality of MMO project managers and was rushed out far too early, severely crippling its potential.
As I said, its not a bad game. Howver, it's also not a good game. It's a classic case of diehard MMO players (like myself) trying to find somewhere to call home, embracing the newest, poorly done, idea. When you're bored, struggling to find a game to play in your spare time, you'll play ANYTHING. Thats where Xsyon comes in.
If you haven't read forums or looked up guides, don't bother playing this game. You won't be able to. Not from an impossible point, but from a WTF point. You'll come into a world without tooltips or descriptions, without a tutorial, without a blatantly obvious UI, and without much time to learn it. You'll probably get ganked while trying to figure out what to do.
Don't get me started on character creation, where you get to allocate meaningless stat points into a few commonly named places. I label them as meaningless because there is no way to figure out what each one does, and in game - some are even less obvious then their labels.
Tooltips are not hard to write. They are not hard to implement, and they are inexcusable not to have in any program, of any kind (except perhaps a calculator) in any production level environment since 1995. Information is never a bad thing. Not having these means you're allergic to success and money.
Combat is a mass of poorly animated and designed characters from 1998 swinging wildly without any indication of, well, anything. Are you hitting? Are they? when will either of you die? What's happening? Why play a game where you aren't even in reasonable control of your actions. Swinging wildly at someone hoping you're hitting isn't PVP. It's luck. Go to the casio if that's your thing.
Just a terrible all around game, from another company that didn't bother to write up a project plan and pushed out a release far before it was ready. What another monumental waste of time and development. Incredible potential.
Do not buy this game. You were warned.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
Comments
Official launch is on the 15th, but yeah, I hear ya.
Do you have experience with Xsyon as a player or as a digruntled ex-employee? (Just asking to be sure, because there has been a case of this or so I heared).
My brand new bloggity blog.
Wait, have you actually read their development ideas and the weekly FAQ on the forums?
Good god man, if you think that the game doesn't have a project plan from what you listed here, you should really read the development ideas and weekly FAQ. Their game design plans are so freaking scatter brained and all over the place, that I find it amazing that they actually made it this far. They have no solid plan of what direction the game is going to go, other than basically "oh it's a sandbox" and it's not that they haven't published it, because they have published enough information and answered enough questiosn on their Weekly FAQ thread, that you have plenty of information to derive that they have no clue what they are doing.
The game is going to suffer the exact same fate as their last game, for the exact same reasons. Trust me, it's following the same path Roma Victor followed almost perfectly. If anything, Xsyon has actually done worse.
Got a Game Idea? Look Here!
Oh no, I've read them. It's a good example of 'what not to do' in the software publishing arena.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
I have played the game. I am not an ex employee. I like having a job, not working for a company that can't produce respectible products,
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
I wanna like Xyson too, but c'mon.. Just cuz the guy has some bad things to say about it dosn't mean he's a "disgruntleed ex-employee." I mean this game has had, what, 10 people working on it tops? Whats the chance of him being 1 of those 10 people and not being 1 of the 1,000,000,00,000,000,000 other people out there?
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Sorry to give you the wrong impression but it was an honest question.
I did read about a guy being vengeful and posting about it everywhere. The OP is very negative (to say the least) and didn't really write about his personal experiences / how long he played / what things he tried / any redeeming aspects, etc. But like you say, probably a disillusioned player, statistically.
My brand new bloggity blog.
The game has problems, the launch is an issue, but where I see the main problem is that the developers are listening a little TOO closely to their playerbase.
2 Servers should have gone live, not one, but everyone complained there wouldn't be enough people. In that same avenue if things keep going like this its quite possible that they won't have enough people for 1 server.
The developers have misjudged a few things here, mostly the ability of their hardware in comparison to the popularity of the game. This is a major problem but is understandable for very small studios. In the weeks prior the servers were mostly stable.
The game isn't for the touch and go crowd. It is not easy to do anything, however, just about anything is possible, so those that are looking for that could find it here.
I think if the launch was stable, it would be alright with some of the issues we're experiencing in combat, the strange item issues, and things of that nature. Not because its okay to have an unfinished game, but because the game still plays pretty well without them and I'd rather see the game go live then shut down before its time.
Unfortunately it isn't playable at this time with the way the servers are lagging and going down. People do need to wait on this one until the servers are stable as you can't really decide for yourself if you only get to play in 15 minute intervals.
Perhaps Notorious will wise up here and get that second server going. Maybe they'll pinpoint the lag this time instead of pushing the game over to another soft launch at a later date. It seems like they are overwhelmed a bit here, but to say that the game isn't a respectable product is going a little too far. I very much so respect what they were able to achieve to this point. Once it becomes stable it will be that much more worthy of my respect, and my money.
As the game doesn't truly launch until the 15th, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
You don't play a game like Xyson for what it lacks, but rather for what it offers.
It has a very well developeed crafting systems, is all about city building and teraforming, and more about players building their communities than anything else. For people looking for this type of game I think it does a very good job of meeting their needs.
I bought Xyson, and am waiting until official launch before trying it once more to see if I can get into it.
I'm not sure though, most of what I enjoy in MMO's is killing things. NPC's mostly, other people on occasion and Xyson's terribly short on either at this point in time.
One day perhaps it will add mechanics more to my liking but I suspect for now its not my style of game (nor yours).
But its not fair to paint the game with a broad brush and say it's totally not worth playing, there is definitely a target audience for this MMO and they'll enjoy it quite a bit I suspect.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I'm sure all 15 of them willl have a wonderful time. lol
Got a Game Idea? Look Here!
There's less than 7,000,000,000 people on the entire planet. Anyone else in the universe doesn't really count since they'll never actually play Xsyon.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Blindly figuring things out without feedback is not a challenge, its an exercise in futility. I'm not spending a week figuring out what stats do. Fundamental expectations of a video game are fundamental. You can not have a successful game with a target audience of limited people.
This is a business, businesses need to make money. You will not make money passing things off as a 'challenge' or a 'sandbox' because you were too lazy to write tooltips or a tutorial in a disaster of a UI. Even something as simple as descriptions would have gone a long way, and not chased players off.
95% of the people that play this game will leave after the free trial, mark my words. Not opening more servers was the best thing they could have done. One would die immediately.
Also, don't expect things to get added to this game. It has a long way to go to even be functional, let alone add to its established base of functionality.
Good luck if you think not knowing things, and guessing what things do is a 'challenge'. It's not. It's just dumb luck.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
Xsyon sounds like an interesting game I'll give the devs +1 internet for trying something cool, but from the features that are in now and the state of the game I'm afraid I wouldn't play it even if they paid me to.
The first few responses to the OP were (as usually in here) down to personal..why? Yes,he did colour his views a bit,granted,but he expressed his opinion..an opinion that unless one is willingly blind,has been expressed over and over,from different mouths..so why should people get heated?
You don't have to hate something to flame it..i flame EQ2 for all its faults for example,but still play it,hell,it's one of my all time favourites..i would think people need learn the meaning of leniency..most especially when (some) of the points mentioned are valid..this forum is a good tool if employed correctly,teams and customers alike will come and read..use it wisely..stop going personal : ) This is a buy to play product..when it fails to deliver in as core an issue as say server stability, combat mechanics,etc etc,a customer is entitled to complain. Had this been done from both the fans and the indifferent "passer-by"s, the genre might,just might, end up improving itself. Think about it before asking people you never met if they are a former employee,or if they are a troll, simply because they didn't please you. Look at the big picture,we're all in it
Wish you all a good night
i rather like it
Same.
It has some things going for it, but I'm worried that the dev seems to be reluctant to balance the game for all players.
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"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Well i like it as well,now it is having problems launching because his player base dbled on what was going to be the last launch day,which caused issues. Not like any of us have never seen a game fail on launch day.
One thing is the game does have tool tips i saw them my self. They have been turned off to help reduce the lag. While i do agree they should of gone with 2 servers the choice not to could still change. Thats one thing good about the devs they do make changes based on whats actually happening to the game.
Reguardless i will be there plugging along.
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek
and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
I would hardly consider Eve to have a limited player-base. CCP is likely pulling in between 4 and 5 million american dollars a month. More than enough to pay employees, update the game, and launch research initiatives. Is it limited relative to World of Warcraft, then sure it is. Is it limited relative to Darkfall? Not by a longshot.
I think the poster you quoted was thinking more along the lines of Darkfall and Mortal Online. Those games, while they strive to be "sandbox" (I prefer the term emergent-gameplay) in execuation, they fall short because of lack of depth, horrible launches, and the developers fearing that they will alienate their player-base by making too many changes.
What Xsyon needs to do is outline a plan that will balance the game better in terms of PvP and Non-Pvp combat options, item efficacy, and play-styles. They need to figure out ways to improve their server's ability to handle the things going on. And they need to finally come out and say, "Look this is the way that will work the best. If I'm wrong then I will figure out a way to change it in a step-wise fashion that isn't too drastic at one time."
--------
"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
lol
As for the whole stats thing, did you not even bother to look at the forum or read the manual? That might have, you know, helped you out in the long run. Now you just look like an idiot.
Then again you're a Warhammer correspondent... how's that working out for you?
Needless to say I've already gotten a refund on Xsyon, not that it matters anyways. The game will do good regardless.
this isnt launch day thats in 5 days
I'm confused...you title the thread "Terrible game" and you start by saying it's not a bad game...my head hurts.
"Do not buy this game. You were warned." I do not know if I will purchuse this game or not but I will investigate it first...THATS A HINT SON.
The problem with a lot of indy games is that they have too many big ideas and not enough means to implement them. I'm not sure what the issue would be with simply release a solid base-game to be built upon with future content and updates. Instead, too many indy games get releaesd with half baked ideas and unfinished content that leaves players little else other than a world and a character model to move around within that world.