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My honest opinion.
maybebaked
Member UncommonPosts: 305
I starting playing this game at the beginning of NA alpha. I bought the pack, yes it was a lot of money, but I had fun with the game for many months. I was a patron the entire time. I played the release in early access and had no problem finding land and at the end had a Thatched Farmhouse, 2 large farms, an aquafarm and 4 small farms. The guild I was in is a trade guild that was quite large for the server and made alliances with other large and powerful guilds.
Levelling: The quests in this game are the most basic, bland and derivative sort of quests that you would expect from any MMORPG nowadays. This was obviously not a top priority for the developer as the quests are really just an introduction to the game and a way to make some easy gold. Getting to top level solely by doing quests is quite possible, but certainly not recommended.
Housing: Owning land is something I had never really experienced in a game before, I missed out on UO and SWG and was really excited to get a chance to own a chunk of digital property. Then I started seeing what other people were doing. I knew this one guy that, at any one time, had up to 25 properties. Apparently there is a glitch that didn't add additional tax for owning 10+ properties. He would then buy and sell these properties, acquiring thousands of gold within the first few weeks of release. So with no land left for new players, they are forced to save a large amount of gold and buy land from one of these wealthy land barrons. This is without even thinking about the bots that instasteal demolished land.
Farming: I enjoyed this aspect of the game. The amount of different crops, trees and livestock was interesting but eventually felt like I was playing a mobile game; waiting for timers and trying to get a little closer to the carrot.
PvP: The bigger zerg wins. No matter what you are doing, more people means you win. I recall going to Freedich Island, which is the best place to turn in packs for Gilda Stars (the currency for buying boats, houses,etc.), we had around 80 people, 2 galleons and a bunch of smaller boats. When we arrived, our scouts assured us the island was clear of enemies. Within a few seconds of landing on the island, about 300 enemies landed on the other side. To say the least we were destroyed and lost a lot of packs. The game is also not balanced. There are a few FOM builds that pretty much destroy in arena PvP.
PvE: 1 endgame dungeon, 1. I realize this isn't a PvE centric game, but when the first easily attainable gear set is from 1 dungeon, it gets really old. Bosses in this dungeon are/were glitchable and many people had full sets, very fast by basically cheating.
P2W?: Not really. You can buy gold, and not from some shady Chinese gold farmer, but directly from Trion. That I find disturbing. There was a guild on the server I played, that bragged about spending US$6000 a month on this game. Spending money isn't a guaranteed win. Whatever winning means to you. But it does allow you to get ahead of other people. You can own dozens of land parcels and spend real money on tax to keep them.
Conclusion: There are a lot about this game I really like. I had high hopes since the first video I saw. After playing for months and experiencing as much as I could. I decided that this game isn't for me. I didn't talk about everything this game has to offer but for me it just didn't seem right. The idea of "winning" is different for everyone. I know for a fact some people are quite content sitting in their house and picking barley all day. But with so many other games out there. This game isn't worth the investment it requires.
Comments
I somehow find that horrific, awesome, pathetic, hilarious, and stupid all at the same time.
Truthfully, shouldn't it work like that.....or does maybebaked think his guild should've been like Leonidas and his 300?
Depends. On the one hand, 80 people in several boats utilizing scouts in advance but ambushed by 300 people? Awesome/epic/amazing/hilarious. On the other hand, game reliant on and allowing zerg tactics like that, resulting in the zergers getting rewarded for it and thus encouraing more zerging by everyone in the future? As well as that they were able to do that despite the area being scouted first (hacks involved? Stealth? Or is it just that sutpidly easy to teleport everyone anywhere instantly?) Unfair/pathetic/stupid/hilarious.
Sadly, as a person who was there playing UO and all its open-world PvP when it first launched, I know from experience that for most people it eventually becomes the latter case more and more as time goes on, if only because of the "It gets old-_-" effect that constantly imbalanced PvP match-ups brings (even when you're on the winning side).
You are lucky you had some land OP. I just wish I had money to get land so I can craft and get exp to get to 50. The questing really slows down at 20 and getting through the 30's is not going so well questing only. It's funny, I need land to farm to craft. I need land to make mats for trades packs. I can try to buy supplies for packs from others, but questing doesn't give enough money to do much of anything. So I can't craft, can't trade pack run, can't farm (a bit illegally I suppose), super slow leveling with questing only. It's like an endless cycle.
I just looked at my progress cooking with the bit of illegal barley and rice I planted. I may get to higher level cooking in a couple years lol. I just logged off.
I agree with OP, I like much of the attention to detail that the game has and it is truly unlike anything else in the MMO genre. However, them making PvE so horrible lootwise makes PvE not viable and makes owning land pretty much required to do anything.
It's basically the same in any open world PVP , SWG was no different, although a better coordinated group could take out a larger body of players in that game. I don't know if that's the case in AA or not. Some games simply don't factor in as many variables to their combat, nor feature alpha levels of power.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
50 gilda run to level 12 2.5 hrs.......mining and fishing .........armor and weapon quest only .....15 hrs per hasla weapon .....level 50 geared to pvp and run gha -(50 hrs max)
Indeed it should work like that, it's all about risk vs reward. The joy of sometimes being the dog and the pain of sometimes being the dog food.
If you aren't nervous when running a trade ship to Freed then something is wrong. It's exactly how a MMORPG like this should be.
(screw balance in MMORPGS as well)
The issue is how easy it is to zerg in this game. A trade run needs to sail across the ocean whereas a zerg can be instantly transported to the island or even 100 yards away from the guilda trader if they have a house on freedich.
This is the result of PVErs trying to play a PVP game... it's almost as hilarious as PVPers trying to play a PVE game, only that is more sadder.
Some people like that sort of thing where such epic ambushes are possible. And some people don't where such imbalance is possible. That's why it's important when giving a review (which is what this "honest opinion" basically is) to let people know such a thing exists in the first place. That way, both people who like it, as well as people who don't like it, can be informed about its existance in the game, which is part of the whole point of a review.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that in a PVP game, faction balance is paramount. Anyone playing the game even a short time knew there were zero restrictions in place regarding faction balance... sure they implemented restrictions to keep players from creating new characters on full servers (at the time), but you certainly saw them lifted as soon as capacity was improved... all of a sudden there was faction balance? Doubtful... just more space on the server.
Most people are aware of faction imbalances in PvP (I hope).
What people aren't aware of is the sheer PERSISTENCE of others in a competitive PvP environment (whether it uses hacks or is legally done or whatever else, as long as the end result is the same)
In this case, EIGHTY people gathered together and used forward scouts and despite that, they were still ambushed and destroyed. People getting into this game need to know that's just how ruthless and hardcore the competition can get, because some people will go into it thinking "Oh, I'll be fine if I have 80 friends. This will be easy!" only to be met with the harsh reality that 80 friends is not good enough.
The difficulty of a game as well as the scale of the grouping required are core aspects. People need to know how hard things can get and what the general bar of social networking is required because those things directly affect play experience.
If buying gold directly from the company that makes the game is "not really" Pay 2 win then what is?
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I guess it depends on your definition on winning. Buying gear or other items would be p2w more than gold. You can buy all the gold you want and get no where, because unless you are spending thousands of dollars, it's not going to help that much.
I think I missed the writing on the box that said "PVP Game". Here I was considering playing because I wanted to be a ship builder, but I guess this isn't a "sandbox", it's just a "PVP Game".
In all seriousness, could I actually be just a ship builder if I wanted to be?