Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Xsyon needs YOU! <-----
massicks
Member Posts: 46
To all you Die-hard Sandboxer's out there....
Finally after so many years without a decent - TRUE - sandbox MMO has arrived curtesy of a small but brave development team who have stuck their necks out and have answered our calls...
Xsyon was born and straight away it was clear (at least to me) that the developers had listened and were on to something. Some of the qualities we know and love from games such as SWG are here - large open map, world PVP (with death loot), no quests, skill based not level based, player built towns, player driven story, community orientated (i.e. reliance on others for things) etc.
As an avid fan of Pre CU SWG it has been a long time, and much money spent, trying games to final find this one.
My only concern is that because the development team is only small with little budget much of this games potential may never come to fruition. It's release was plagued with latency/ping related issues which took a while to be sorted but are now gone. Recent patches have introduced improvements to the game, however I must admit further development work is required on the combat side of the game.
Recently the population has taken a leap which is a positive step.....hear comes the but.......
without more subscribers to boost the capital available to the development team I fear that this game, and all of it's unrealised potential, will fade into non-existance.
This would be such a shame......
If we, the sandox community, stood united and supported this game I am more than confident that we would have the game we have been without for so long. 
Comments
I love sandbox mmorpgs.....thats why I play EVE
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe
Sandbox perhaps, but the graphics look a decade old and heard there are many issues with this game. I love sandboxes but i wont pay 40$ for this.
People are not going to order for a unfinish product or a beta product..Sorry many players got burn.
I retired retroactively..Haha
I purchased this back when it was just coming out into the pre release, and I was severely dissapointed. I couldn't figure anything out, and I like sandbox games a lot. I enjoyed UO, Mortal, Darkfall, Pre CU SWG, all of them, but this has no direction whatsoever. I sat there for 10 minutes trying to figure out why it wouldn't let me fish when it kept saying fishing pole must be equipped in your right hand, which I did, but didn't know you had to unequip anything else you had on any of your hand slots, which I think was 4? The game itself has a lot of really cool ideas, but they are very poorly executed, it looks okay not too bad in the graphic department but the skills, combat and overall animations just are abysmal. I would definately come back if the population was thriving just because I feel only then could they make enough money to fix the issues with the game.
Here's the deal, if you are going to build a MMORPG you have a couple of responsibilities and aside from creating a good game (which Xyson isn't atm) you must make sure you can obtain the funding you need to successfully launch the game.
It isn't up to the potential subscribers of the game to fund development by subscribing especially if the game is largely unplayeable or incomplete (which Xyson was when I bought it.)
Deliver even a quasi finished, fun, entertaining MMO and I'll be happy to sign up, but Xyson is a long ways away from that state.
"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
Xsyon is nice but not worth 15$ a month! Get real, this game is late alpha stage and you don't pay 15$ a month for late alpha!
Get it to 5$ a month and watch your population increase ten fold. Stay greedy and watch your game die.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
On behalf of all Perpetuum players...
NO! No more small DEV mayhem.
What Xsyon really needs is some investors. I am not willing to fill that roll for them.
I was so close to takeing a gamble a while ago but still not convinced so thanks but no,maybe a trial to see how the game has progressed would help,even a free weekend if possibe
But for now if any sandboxes appear on the horizon i need to see it from the ground up,so keeping close tabs on one which is as ambitoius as Xsyon strives to be,but good luck i did this sort of thing for the game i'm bigging up won't say what as i don't want to hijack the thread.
While I would like to support the game if it has potential.. the company can't be selling it like a grade A MMO title (namely the monthly fee) if it's not.
Look at what Minecraft has done.. almost 5 MILLION people have bought the game at a resonable price, with no subs.
Bottom line, they need to align their pricing structure with what their game provides, not ask people to pay for it like a top line game, in hopes it will eventually be that.
Xsyon "had" me for about 6 months. Then I gave up in despair and got a refund for the 2 copies of the game that I'd bought.
Sorry, but I'm not prepared to pay $15 per month for a game that I might enjoy playing in 2015 (when most of the originally promised features might be implemented and might actually work).
Xsyon doesnt really need to be readvertised to a bunch of mmorpg.com cretins who tried it and decided it wasnt up to their AAA standards. So this post is pretty much flogging a very dead goat.
How did you get a refund? I tried 1st month with all the launch issues and they wouldnt let me. : (
I got a refund too. I sent an email to jordi, acted like apolite adult. Explained why i wanted the refund (i was under the assumption that i was preordering for a launch of prelude not a beta testing of a starter area) Asked to refund so that i might return when the game was in a better state. He told me another person in billing to email. Within 1 day i had the $40 credit.
Ill keep my word on returning once the game is playable and atleast half done.
Also, being a very outspoken pvper probably helped...they didnt want my type in for the vital development part of the game.
Had a very big problem with the direction of the game moving away from sandbox rules in trerms of pvp. They had a no grief policy which every single GM (or whatever they called them) interperated diffrently, including Jordi the lead dev/owner.
See at the time i played there were some very nasty temperd pve only players who, upon seeing them, i would kill, not looting anything (other than pants) and then moving on with nothing spoken to them about the incident. Most would start spewing venom at me in whisper. No reason, they didnt lose anything of value and i didnt spam them with GSO or other taunts. I would double back and dry loot them (only if they raged at me). This was considerd griefing by some. Something that was bannable. I didnt get banned but i did stir the hornets nest since there was a general no grief policy with no parameters. Something that isnt what you want in a full loot game with ffa pvp (aside from magical safe areas) and half the population who thinks the act of pvp is a crime.
Anyway. Im all for small dev games. However. They must learn to deliver the BASICS first then move onto the cool stuff that sounds good. No point in terraforming when combat doesnt work and you can barely move in the game....
Ill be back once this game reaches that state.
Also...Have they made the game look post-apocalyptic yet? Or is it still nature walk scenery ? One of the other gripes was that if you didnt read the lore of the game you would have no idea about it. Just looked like pristine nature with some ground texture recoloring to somewhat look like garbage...looked more like woodchips and dirt with some fish skeletons. Again would have like wreckage and smouldering heaps of trash and wreckage over the "lets just bump map a hill then texture if with a brown color and call it the wreckage of an apocalpyse that occured a year ago"
Also..do they actually have pve mobs or is combat pointless still, other than punching other players for their pants..
Yea I bet Xsyon "needs YOU!" but mostly needs your money. I bought the game during prelude and enjoyed it for a while. Found a nice little group of travelers who wanted to play for fun and had a good time with them. But the game was missing an endgame and a purpose at this time (tools/weapons/armor never broke, no meaningful walls or city protection, pve friendly zones able to be set up basically anywhere, no 'sieging' cities/destructable environments).
The game was fun enough for the few months I played so I did NOT attempt to get a refund from the devs. Maybe I am rationalizing it, but I was very shocked to hear they were giving players full refunds on their game purchases.A lot of people who left the game asked for a full refund and a lot of them got it. I couldn't imagine that sort of thing flying with the bigger developers who also continue to fail to deliver on their initial promises in MMOs, they would just laugh at you.
Loads of potential, but lack of resources on the development side its really a shame.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
I stood by the game and purchased it when the official release happened. Unfortunately, the game isn't a game yet, and the tiny development team takes far too long to get things done. When there is a free trial, something along the lines of two weeks, I will come back and see how things are progressing.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
This, and this again.
I wish all these indie devs trying to sell unfinished games could just wake up and realise that a different pricing strategy would get them a lot more players, i.e more money and more resources for developing their games.
MO, DF, Xsyon, Earthrise... No one wants to pay full box price and an AAA-styled sub for games that lack crucial features and polish, games that grow so slowly that years pass before anything changes to the better (if it ever does). Very few gamers pay for games out of pure charity - actually I think those who do, are all that remains of said games' communities. Go figure...
On the other hand, if Xsyon (or MO, or DF, or ER) cost 5 dolars and had no sub cost, sandbox players would flock in droves, and they won't care too much about the lack of polish and the slow dev process.
I'm with Darker here. Was a few clicks away from buying this myself when it launched. Not trusting that I will enjoy this game enough to warrent the financial outlay without playing it first. If Xyson needs players then give the fence siters like me a trial or a free weekend . What's the worst that could happen?
It has the best graphics out of any terraforming game. Xsyons terraforming and crafting/resource systems are awesome. (except the rarity of old saw blades)
Combat and mob AI is horrendous. And from what I understand they dont plan to change this anytime soon.
I'll stick with Mortal Online.
If they put a free trial up for returning players I'd play it again and see how things have changed. Like others said, If they dropped the sub to like 5 bones I'd probably subscribe again. Otherwise I'll just wait for Arche Age.
To the guy above, I wish I could play MO I spend all day downloading it just to get an error patching it.. I deleted it asap, I mean if you can't even get the patcher to function right chances are in game features are broken as well.
While I desdain MO and the company behind it I will give it this: it is more of a game than Xsyon is at the moment. Stick with MO if you have to choose an indi under-developed game.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Ok, so when we're in the forums for the Themepark games, all of the Sandbox folks come on over and shit in our yard. But now I see that they just shit in every yard, even their own..lol.
You finally get a game from an indie developer trying hard to give you something decent and instead of helping, you shit on it. Yeah the game is rough, but at least the folks are trying to get something going. How does the community respond? Same way they do to Mortal Online... same way they do to Darkfall...
You ask why people don't try anything new... I think you have your answer. This is why you will be unhappily playing Themepark games until the end of time. Sometimes you're not given a gem, you have to help make it. Would you rather help them create their vision or just play the same ol' shit people keeping throwing at you with these themepark games you hate so much?
I hear people complain about the system, yet, you crap on this and buy the themepark games just so you can complain about them.....
Xyson's launch flaws were not it's only problem.
It's one thing to create a sandbox, but it has to be fun. People constantly deride themeparks because they don't want to "Kill 10 rats" or "Go fetch 10 thingamabobs" but as I played Xyson, I just had this nagging feeling that instead of "fetching 10 thingamabobs" and getting some xp, gold and an item for my efforts, I was instead fetching 1000 tree trunks for which my reward was a pile of logs.
Basically, it can't be a sandbox for the sake of being a sandbox, it needs to be fun as well. Just because an NPC with a big exclamation mark over their head didn't tell me to fish 50 fish, doesn't mean it was fun. That's where I get confused when people talk about how great sandboxes are; they don't want to be told what to do, but they'll do the most repetitive tasks for little reward or entertainment just because.
Kinda feels like a hamster wheel without big shiny epics at the end. Just more running.
But, like others have said, this may have mattered more if combat and town sieging had worked. Then your efforts and time might mean something and be enjoyable. As it stands, if you want to build something, go play minecraft, at least it's fun.
It is a difficult comparison. Minecraft had little to no maintenance costs compared to MMOs which require server/utility/customer support. So Minecraft could get away with a $20 up front cost with no monthly sub. I wouldn't say an MMO could follow the exact same process, but it certainly shows that if you build a community (by offering low up-front costs) that the community is indispensible in growing your game and in the long-run results in more revenue than charging more up front...
I think more similar than the Minecraft argument are all the F2P games. And how much more popularity games like Fallen Earth got by opening up the doors to play a more difficult version of the game for free and then opening up the possibility to charge a monthly fee for an easier version of the game.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Enough with the panhandling. The amount of people that have started begging others to support games based on principle lately is ridiculous. The game isn't failing because it has a small team, it's because it's not good.
You gain support for your game by giving players something they enjoy playing.
"Keep throwing your money at us and I promise it'll stop sucking, eventually!" I can't believe this is even an argument players are making these days. When did video games become a charity?
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."