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Comprehensive Review of the 10-day beta
burrek
Member Posts: 198
edit: added a comparison between DnD and DDO for those that want to know how the game holds up to the source material.
REVIEW
After playing the 10-day beta I think it's a good time to write a review for the game. So far I spent about 40+ hours with the game and have a good idea of the gameplay and other fluff.
Overall : 7.8
pros: fast paced dynamic combat, strong atmosphere, excellent group dynamics
cons: bugged quests, lack of content, limited scope
Dungeons and Dragons Online : Stormreach starts out by dropping you off in Stormreach Port and presenting with opportunities to adventure in a variety of locations.
Graphics: 8/10
From the artistic point of view the graphics are allright, nothing exceptional, but they have more flair than EQ2 or Quake3. On the technological side of things the graphics have post-process effects, light bloom, reflexions, bump-mapping (although used sparingly, no plastic looking stone or faces), gloss mapping, realistic shadows, and high resolution texturs. The engine is pretty good and well optimized. It also has alot of options to tweak the performance for a large range of machines.
The armor designs are very nice, they mesh realism and fantasy in good proportion. Every character starts with the same armor type, but after 1h of gameplay you will have found 2+ armor sets. Even the same type of armor has multiple desgins which lets the players pick and choose what design fits a character best. The character models are also very realistic and have nice proportions and animations. The animations are not motion-captured and do not feel 100% realistic. I would say the animation quality is similar to WoW. There is a wide variety of hair-cuts and facial features as well as skin tones. Unfortunatly it is not possible to change the frame or size of the characters which makes all humans, elves, and dwarves look alike from afar.
One complain I have is the lack of variety in the advneturing settings, most of the first few levels are spent crawling in sewers and warehouses, killing kobolds ... and more kobolds... and some more kobolds... did I mention the Kobolds? Since the game uses a tile system you will eventually get a feeling of dejavu. The game does have different lighting, fog, props, etc., as well as very different tile setups, yet the art is the same for the different dungeons. Later on in the game you will venture into ancient temples, catacombs, jungle areas, pirate hidouts, underground cities, dangerous caves, and tropical islands.
The common city areas are designed by hand and are fairly good looking. I feel the artists failed to give the impression that the ruins serrounding the more modern housing are 1000's of years old and failed to capitalize on the concept of a city borderd by limitless jungle. None the less the many districts have their own distnict art styles and present a nice veriaty.
Sound: 9/10
The ambient effects bring a lot of atmosphere to the game. It's often times rather spooky to be creeping through a dungeon and wondering wether what you heared was a monsters, the wind, or some harmless vermin. One nice detail is that the tavern ambient noise will change depending on the amount of people inside. From a quiet atmosphere of clinking glasses, all the way up to the chorus of the joint voices of many a conversation.
Whenever participating in an adventure DM text will show up on the screen and give you hints about your serroundings. The text is also enacted by an excellent voice actor and it brings another layer of immersion into the game.
The characters themselves do not have any voice emotes (they don't have many emotes overall).
The music is also excellent. Tavern music mixes a medieval jigs and pirate songs, while in-mission music has an interesting mix of forboading tones and rythmic combat staccatos. It's rather hard to define the in-mission music since it's nothing like anything I heared before. I would best desribe it like "gothic tribal" music, very unreal, yet very good.
The ambient music in the city areas will soon grow old since there is only one tune per area.
Role Playing: 7/10
The game inspires role-playing, but it does not facilitate it. The thick atmosphere encourages character immersion, yet the lack of usable benches in taverns, lack of alcohol or any other props, forces you to use /e instead. Since the pacing of the game is not forced, there being no respawn, it is much easier to add RP comments while in mission, moreover the forced tavern visit are a nice place to socialize between missions and for random RP with strangers.
Value: 6/10
The game is short when compared to MMORRPGs like WoW or EQ. The amount of gameplay is just slightly above GuildWars PvE. The developers promise to bring a lot of new content in monthly patches (akin to AC, and AC2) and that will certainly extend the gameplay, although it's hard to comment on that until I acctualy see a content update.
I'd say you can get about 80+ hours of gameplay with your first character. This also depends on how fast paced you like your adventures to be. The game does encourage using alts since every class plays differently. Unfortuantly the game can get repetitive quickly due to the fact that there are limited missions which you will have to do more than once, the game does provide diminishing returns whenever repeating a mission so it's enouraged to seek out new missions, yet there is a slight amount of repetition. I'll go into more detail on the mission replyability in the gameplay section.
Gameplay: 9/10
The game is really fun! the combat is fast-paced, dynamic, and exciting. The missions are interesting and varied. The only downside is that there is little to do outside of combat. The fun that is there is top-notch.
The game provides an excellent LFM and LFG system that lets you specify who you are looking for, what you want to do, and what level range of characters you want.
Here is a little on class balance in groups:
Obviously the cleric class is the most favored companion due to the fact that they are heavily armored, can heal, can deal with undead with little trouble and can cast buffs as well as offensive spells.
The second most important character is a rogue, yes a rogue. Unlike many MMOs that followed the DnD rogue staple DDO makes the rogues play the role they were designed to play: trap and lock specialists. The adventures are full of traps, locked doors, hidden passages that only a rogue can disable successfuly. The only thing is that you never want to have two rogues in the same party since soon enaugh you'll see the fur flying. Running into a trap can often mean death to a character so it's a good idea to have the rogue around.
Rangers are light fighters that focus on ranged combat as well as verious survival skills.
Fighters are flexible melee combatants that can be either damage dealers or expert defenders.
Berbarians are sowmhere between a fighter and a ranger. They can deal very good damage yet are not as flexible as fighers.
Bards are a flexible class that can be either a figher, caster, or healer.
Wizards and Sorcerrers have a nice selection of spells and they play much more stratigically since they usally don't participate in melee combat and isntead have to ratio their spells so as to use them most effectivley before they run out of spell points.
Paladins are clerics with a stronger melee focus, they get fewer spells than clerics and have more combat orinted special abilities like Smite Evil.
All the classes are very customizable as per the 3.5 DnD rules.
It should not take too long to get a group going. Even a party of 2-3 (max is 6) is very strong and will have no trouble with quests of equal level to that of group members. Once you have a group ready you will venture into a quest instance. The quest instances are usualy within a minute (or less) of travel from the quest givers. The quests themselves provide a veriety of ojective: rescue missions, location defense, clean up missions, stealthy item "retrieval", treasure hunting, exploration of ancient ruins, investifgations of unusual events, etc. .
There is no automatic health regeneration in the quests which adds a deep level of strategy and intensity to each quests, especially the ones that require you to survive an onslought of enemies or escape with your life from a bad situation. You can only regain your lost health in taverns which makes the taverns seem like... taverns, places to rest up and look for work and adventuring companions. The focus on taverns definitly brings the community togather, encourages roleplaying, and aliviates the feeling of solitude that instances bring. It can become rather tedious when it comes to selling and resting between every mission yet it is a decent system overall since the travel times are extremly short.
Once you finish a quest you will be awarded experience equal to the experience worth of all the enemies in the dungeon + the quest exp. You can earn bonuses to your quest exp by performing exceptionaly well in a mission. This is a personal gripe of mine since it prompts the players to go out and smash all the crates and kill every last enemy to get that extra 3% exp.
The combat itself is very fast paced and reminds me a lot of Fable. It allows the player to simply turn auto-attack on to win a fight, but it also gives you the ability to lead your character directly which will appeal to anyone that likes a good melee combat game or enjoys dynamic combat that requires quick thinking. The game encourages preparation before encounters since there are tactics that can dramatically affect the outcome depending on the foes and the enviornment.
It is not possible to get to level 10 (the cap at release, each level being devided into 5 subleves, which gives 50 opportunities for advancment) without repeating some of the quests along the way. You will quickly see dimishing returns if you repeate quests (in terms of both loot and experience) so repeating a quest more than 3 times is not advisable. The game has multiple difficulty setting for every quest, as well as a small degree of randomness in monster and loot placment, combiend with different group combinations (and thus different approaches), keep things fresh.
The interface provides a basic degree of customizability, allowing you to drag everything around and change the chat windows at will. There are two noticable flaws: lack of /replay key and a fairly poor in-group interface that tells you less about the players your with than the LFG/LFM and guld interfaces. Overall the interace is not much different from AO and EQ2 in terms of design and options.
Community: -/10
Can't say yet. I've met some great people, and the voice chat really brings you closer to the other players. Most people are very respectful and the forced grouping makes life miserable for those that are rude. Since beta mixed everyone in one bag it's hard to tell how the community will look upon release. The average age of the players is definitly higher than WoW and that is a good thing if you ask me.
Lag/Performance: 8/10
I personally had no problems running the game. I've heared of people having some lag issues and loading issues with the scenary but can't say what % of the players do experinece those. The game engine is based off of AC2 graphics/server engine and so it has been well polshied and optimized through the years.
Customer Service: -/10
I did not have to ask for help with anything so I have no complaint or praise to give.
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DDO vs DnD
Many people around the forum seem very disappointed that DDO does not represent the spirit DnD as closley as they wish it did. Here is a short list of things that DDO fails to implement:
- no monk or druid class
- only 5 races
- Alignment has no meaning other than req for items
- There are no evil Alignments
- There is no real GM
- You are forced to follow the story the way Turbine intended
- There is no over-arching story for your characters, only smaller campigns and single quests
- When preparing spells you cannot allocate a specific number of spells and instead there are spell-points that can be used to cast any of the prepared spells
- You cannot rest whenever you want while inside an instance
- there are a few missing feats and skills from the PnP version
- the game does not calculate exp per kill
- there isn't the same level of interactivity with the enviornment
- there is no choice in NPC interaction
- warforged can drown and are no immune to poison
- you cannot attack your fellow party members
Can't think of any more, if there is something that you think is should be on the list please let it be know.
.............................................................................................................................
The game will appeal to those that enjoyed the PvE part of Guild Wars as well as to any cRPG fan that does not mind fast paced combat.
I tried to be as thorough as possible so shoot me if I missed something.
edit: for spelling and grammar
edit: lowered the RP score
Comments
very nice review - I think you touched all important aspects and I agree with most of your comments.
Overall a very solid game with some nice features - not your standard MMO but certainly appealing to people who prefer adventuring and grouping over grinding and farming.
one thing more i think the ranger could have more attacks like rapid reloade on bow and sutch my fighter have more fire power than a ranger kinda stupid
Always do the right thing
The ranger gets the Rapid Shot (or something like that) feat at second level which doubles their fire rate.
edit: here is some info from the WotC website:
Combat Style: At 2nd level, each ranger chooses a combat style that grants him bonus combat feats. The archery style grants the Rapid Shot feat and later the Manyshot feat. The two-weapon combat style grants the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and later the Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feat.
I have couple of points I would like to insert into this thread.
1) How did you like the interface?
I ask because all the "little annoying things" like a lack of off-hand eqip support through the quickbar and the lack of element scaling really bugged me about the UI.
2) What was your favorite class/race/item/quest in the game and why?
3) What was your least favorite class/race/item/quest in the game and why?
4) What are two other MMOs that you have loved after 6 months?
5) What are two other MMOs that you have hated after 6 months?
-Tatsu Oyama
The real injustice here is that Turbine has not given Burrek a free prepaid year of DDO. Are you listening you Turbine asshats, you need to be kissing this person's ass for what they are doing for you.
I think this is a pretty fair review of the game. I am still amazed about the offhand weap not being able to be used by a shortcut. I know they had it in ac2 so I would expect it to be fixed pretty fast.
Solid game so far but definitely needs a very solid monthly updates to keep people subbed longer then 2/3 months.
I think this will be one game that alot of people like but will not stay subbed to continiously. Probably sub for 1 or 2 months off for 1 or 2 months then resub again to play new content.
I really like this game for the simple fact that I can get alot of gaming done in 1 to 2 hours of playtime. Very minimal downtime but that is at the sacrifice of having a huge free roaming persistent world. I personally would have liked a different D&D campaign then Eberron but its not a negative IMO.
I would give the game a solid 8/10 as well with my final review after 2 months after launch. I played through the alpha and each patch I did see very significant improvements. Turbines track record should do well with the monthly updates but that still has to be shown first before I strongly recommend this game to others.
Good review. I pretty much agree with your assement. Although, I would have rated RP a little lower (maybe 7) due to limited emotes, no moods, and lack of rp-friendly actions (sitting in chairs, etc.). Overall, I also think the value of 6 is along the lines of what I rated it.
I really hope the first update fixes the combat exploits (speed hack) and quest bugs and adds some more content. I just hope all of the new content doesn't go into the upper levels. Thats why I'm on a 'wait and see' for this game.
I loved the game for the first 3 months that I tested it, then it just got stale and I rarely played over the next months. So I'm hoping the next patch will give me a reason to subscribe.
I changed the RP score since I agree with Shurijo that the lack of moods and emotes can affect RP flexibility.
If anyone has any suggestions about items I missed that can severly impact any of the scores please do bring them up.