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do NOT pay Founder for this game
And I will tell you why. Well actually no, I will tell you my personal, biased, only 10 hours of ClosedBeta2 opinion and you can make up your own mind.
Disclaimer: this will be a rather long, probably not too original and focused on the more negative aspects of the game review. The game is not that bad and it is definitely worth trying once it is open beta or live free to try (NO it is not free to play, it is free to try, because the amount of limitations a free player has are quite considerable). But honestly do not pay for it. The client has so many issues, so many people complaining on the forums cause the client crashes and sometimes even crashes their computer. This is not the beta of a 3 years old game, don’t be fooled by it.
Ok so now the [not so] short review:
- World: Beautiful, but nothing out of the ordinary. Even after getting rid of all the graphical anomalies (which vary from seeing only the eye bulbs in character creator and having environment appearing and disappearing as you move forward to full black textures against the landscape or mountain large rocks appearing in the sky…) the game is nothing special. It is not as beautiful as FF14 is or even Terra (and yes, I understand that beauty is a subjective thing, but the colour palette, the level of details, the quality of textures, etc matter). Water looks really nice, but at least the couple of rivers I went through are not remotely as interesting as GW2’s water is (AA one is barren and darkish/opaque). Flying is cool and looks really nice, but then again we’ve seen it in Aion already and there it was so much more interesting and combat ready.
- PVE: Oh god NO (and I’m the kind of player that does not say no to a little grinding). But this is just dull, plain, pointless to the level that I only watch the couple of lore low quality movies (which seem to be race specific, so that is nice) and that is it. Not one dialogue, not one NPC that mattered to me in the slightest (good thing you can accept quests directly, no need to go next next through most of the “dialogues”). Not one variation to the quests so far. It’s like PVE is some sort of a something they had to have cause everyone else does but is on the 10th spot on their list. It is SO BASIC that it is mind numbing. If you think EVE PVE is bad you are in for a ride with this one. It creates zero story or context. Oh and NO drops (more about that in the appropriate section
) - PVP: Sorry I had no contact with it whatsoever and since it is a MAJOR part of the game it would make my review quite incomplete if I would try to review the whole game. I don’t. However people on forums are complaining about losing XP if you die in PVP which sounds REALLY idiotic to me for a game where PVP wants to be the bread and butter and apparently there are some sliding bugs during combat. If you add badly implemented arenas to an open world PVP environment you start having an idea.
- Player interaction: EVE players will love this one. So many possibilities to grief players with almost no way to retaliate is not even funny. The chat is very active (even limited as it is by beta invitations) but so random and useless that you don’t even bother asking questions. Only moment I needed to interact with players was when they had some world event that 50 people wanted to do at the same time… I think in this game is mandatory to team up, but that is just from a performance perspective, not cause the mechanics and the lore encourage it.
- Classes: Having the freedom to spec in whichever 3 classes you want is really cool on paper. Less so in practice. I chose archer like I always do and I chose healer cause I want to be self-sufficient. They don’t mix too well to be honest and now choosing the 3rd class is even harder cause none of them seem to support each other too well and yes I’ve read all the skills from all the classes multiple times. Add to this the 23 points limitation that will practically only allow you at level 50 to have one majority of a tree and hardly anything of the other 2 and you get a pretty limited experience (at least this is how it looks to me right now, I’m sure I’m wrong )
- Economy: Boy oh boy… Where to even start. So TRION decided that in order to make this game more “west like” they will implement a Labour Points system. Which is fine but it is so deeply connected to paying. If you do not pay you get less points while online and none offline (yes, really, they indirectly promote AFKing to even the paying customers in order for these players to make more LP and they(trion) are adding an extra layer of retardness to their already shaky client in the form of an AFK kick system). And they started changing all mechanics to require LP. Everything requires LP, from gathering to crafting to taxes to even fcking dying, if you want your lost XP back you pay with LP. And it is a pool that grows slowly and once depleted the only way to make more faster is to buy it from the cash shop. Hence why the game is NOT free to play, cause as a “freeloader” as you are called in the forums you can’t do $hit with the amount of LP you generate while online. Even as a paying customer you are limited in development by this. I have no idea why, other than greed and bad game design. And as I said there is NO real loot. All you get is a bunch of pouches that in order to see what they contain you need to spend… guess what… yes LP. And all they give is currency and from time to time some really expensive material which now has really low drop/luck rate in the pouches and as a result blocked the whole economy. There are about 4 types of used to be relevant currencies in the game, but now all it matters is LP and that is RL $$ all the way. Read the forums, you will get the picture… and then some.
- Crafting: seems cool, seems complex, seems to have little information in the wanna be wikis up there. It is connected to hell and back to LP and owning land (which is only allowed to the paying players) and is chocked by bad RNG. Apparently BIS are created from crafting and it will require support from a guild so that is definitely very nice.
TLDR: Non innovative (except naval battles which sound cool, still to experience one) really complex game getting wrecked by poor design decisions and greed. The game has everything (quests, mounts, rides, gliders, ships, housing, castles, complex economy (before it was dumbed down to make $$), complex crafting, open world pvp, even a basic player driven law system (which does not seem to work too well, but sounds like a lot of fun and really interactive)), so it could be the ultimate MMO for years to come. And every one of these things is done poorly (average at best). And you need money to make money and the core of making money efficiently is by paying RL money. P2P with relevant, economy influencing, cash shop for you And since land is limited the speed with which you make money is really relevant.
And the client is so buggy, god so buggy. More than 700 posts in the CBT2 bug section of the forum before it was taken down 1 day before the beta ended. Unbelievable.
They still have plenty of time to fix most issues (it won’t make any aspect of the game great, but the sum of them could be). Though I doubt they will in time, not if they want to release before Black Desert and EQ Next.
Thanks for reading,
Jad
Intel Extreme Series Core i7 4820K
ASUS P9X79
2x G.SKILL RipjawsX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866Mhz
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SC SLI
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro
Comments
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
Not a dead on accurate review but close enough to make the point. I won't fill in/correct the parts he missed or were very wrong but I will say for the most part (coming form a guy that spent two months in the BETA with a max level character) he is spot on.
The latest big patch pretty much fucked the game and took it from a light grind and fun farming/crafting system to a eye bleeding grind. I would regret the money I spent on it but it allowed me to see the screwed up changes Trion wants for this game and I hope I can help some of you not waste money on this crap heap of a game. Prior to the 'big patch' (I cant remember the number, blame TBI) the game was awesome, some bug fixes would have been great, now it is a waste of cash. Wait for F2P if ever.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Thanks for the advice, but i will happy pay the monthly fee.
In fact AA is the only current game atm that worth my money, just need the release to start paying and play.
Have no idea why people against this when LP is a way for game to profit (incentive to purchase) and a powerful tool to limit how much one can affect economics as a whole. I mean, surely WoW in-game economics are SO GREAT thanks to the greedy gold-digging goblins. Enough said.
About cash shop / sub, you really need to evaluate what they really do, without bias. You will only realize, as far as cash shop for alpha / beta phase, it's purely for convenience and looks.
And you probably should once you verify that the game works for you. Even more so after they clean up some of their mess.
I've payed either subscription ( 6 years now of 3 accounts in eve, a couple of month of FF14), for the game (gw, gw2) or for in-game items (aion, poe, terra, ps2, warframe, etc) for every game I played. Is not about the money per se. The LP thingie is just double-dipping and probably a VERY bad attempt at bot controlling. It is the overall really bad state of the client that made me write the whole thing.
Btw my client force exits with NO error message every EXACTLY 12 minutes 30 seconds. I use a stop watch to know how long till that time so I know not to engage (cause there is no auto-attack so when you disconnect in a fight you are guarantied to die). And I'm one of the lucky ones that don't get BSODs every couple of minutes.
That is the main reason not to pay for the game. The rest of the average gaming experience / economy balance issues / cash shop bs are just secondary and you can choose yourself if they constitute a problem or not for your game style/finances.
Intel Extreme Series Core i7 4820K
ASUS P9X79
2x G.SKILL RipjawsX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866Mhz
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SC SLI
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro
So apparently this whole Labour Points concept is to make people spend money in the Cash Shop ? Strange that they put a 12-hour cooldown on those LP pots though, not a very good "money grabbing" design if you limit people to buying X per day. If it was a serious money grab, they'd just allow you to buy an unlimited number at a higher price ?
I wish Trion would announce the launch date already, I just want to PLAAAAAAAAY !!!!
I think they are trying to avoid completely and utterly trashing their end game but allowing a very competitive AND rich in RL guild to run the whole show. This way you grab their money but in a way that allow others to pay too trying to stay competitive. Easier to get more money from 100 people paying to be in top then 1 person paying a lot and getting there and the rest of the 99 realizing ... well this is futile.. not worth paying for it anymore ...
Intel Extreme Series Core i7 4820K
ASUS P9X79
2x G.SKILL RipjawsX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866Mhz
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SC SLI
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
I tried liking this game, I did have some fun playing it. Just some things seemed off to me that I wouldn't enjoy later.
Granted it was a beta but still possible after release - level 30 ganking. I would read in chat was these level 30's + are waiting for us to hit 30 so they can attack. I would have fun, but at this moment I don't feel like watching my back all the time for someone coming up to attack. Seems like a waste for a character level based game with xp loss (though not sure if PvP causes this, hopefully not otherwise that's not good).
The public crops would look like a constant cluster **** of different crops everywhere.
Trials are an annoyance that I could just turn that chat off, but looks like people would want to waste time just to put you on trial.
The questing is just that normal go here, kill this, collect that... meh done that before and just plain done with it. Especially hated the kill this target when 20+ others were at the same spot waiting, and not wanting to group up and make it easier.
Lots of CC in abilities to mess with people, and with level 30+ being the PvP level you'd have to respec just to make sure you had some form of CC to either escape or kill the one attacking you.
Well this really seals it for me, now that I type this. Just having type this makes me think this isn't the game for me anyways.
Intel Extreme Series Core i7 4820K
ASUS P9X79
2x G.SKILL RipjawsX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866Mhz
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SC SLI
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro
I may be going with this game seems like my cup of tea. Weeds out the undesireables.
I'll likely be doing the P2P option with an occasion extra few dollars for the cash shop.
You said only 2 lines about the game not working on your machine in the OP and that seems like a problem on your end. Game not working =/= client is not working for everyone.
Also, current game mechanics are very easy to know just by googling about the game. If someone having a modest income spends $150, i am pretty sure he researches enough on it. I really don't see the use of stating it here.
Let's not forget how the majority of your OP is criticizing the F2P model since you are entitled to everything free of cost without actually putting some effort right? If you sub to the game which you should to support the game in case you like it, then there are no problems within the F2P LP system to me. Buying the Founder pack gives you more than 6 months of sub status using the in-game points which takes away the problems of the LP so why should you not buy the Founder pack then?
Couldn't agree more, I just want to play this game
I really don't get all the fuss about LP, you play as F2P and suffer LP restrictions or you sub and LP appear to then be a non issue. I also read that as a F2P player you can purchase LP pots to top yourself up from merchants using in game gold.
Not sure if that is true or not, but if it is then there is no cash grab is there....just a restricted F2P option ala SWTOR.
Just like I did during my time in SWTOR I will sub to get the best experience with the occasional cash shop purchase when I feel like it.
QFT. Bought the 150$ pack and not regretting it at all. Loving the game. Its the first game where I feel like im part of the world. Cheers! Hope to see you in game!
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
Yeah the only issue I really have with Archeage is the world seems a little disconnected for me. I dislike games where there is a clear line between assets and terrain. Still its a pretty world. The game is wonderfully responsive in movement and combat. Overall an extremely deep Sandpark (or whatever people are calling these now).
I bought the $150 pack and I don't play much. I am waiting until launch before I sink me teeth in. I wish I had of waited for a bit before I purchased it the money could have been used for something else. If I could advise anyone on this is its a good game. You will play it enough to get your moneys worth imo.
I was super hyped to try this game after I found out it was made by Jake Song. Then I played it all weekend and was horribly let down. One of the most boring mmo's I've ever played in my life.
I played Nexus for 2 years and loved every minute of it. Archeage made me fall asleep after 5 minutes.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
This comment of yours is such nonsense or more like arrogant. The Cash shop if you give it a honest review has not a single item in, which is any usefull. And how do you suppose they make money to sustain the servers? Do you think they are basketball players getting sponsored by billion dollar banks?
You don't see a problem when the people who determine the rate at which LP are gained are trying to sell you LP for cash? That's like acknowledging that LP rates may be a problem but deciding that the solution is to sell you a solution.
thats atleast 1 dollar every 12 hours XD
It's a sandpark.
Every time I see "The game doesn't work for me!" what I really read is "I've done something to mess up my PC and interfere with games working!".
EVERYONE I've played with and spoken to about playing ArcheAge over the past few weeks has had ZERO issues with the client working.
The only MINOR bug is a stuttering issue caused by DX11, which can be solved by playing in windowed mode, or using DX9 settings.
As for the other criticisms, they are completely invalid. Sounds to me like you want some instant gratification FPSMMO. Maybe Planetside is more on your level?
(Uzik ibnYaraq in game. Always willing to help.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/UzikAlJhamin