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Another 3 day impression...
rivethead23
Member Posts: 41
Here's my impressions:
1. Visual - I was able to set all graphics at maximum at the max resolution for my monitor, so I can safely assume this is the best it gets. (I've got a pretty decent rig). The avatars/creatures/etc are a bit more cartoonish than somthing like EQII or Vanguard, but not as stylized as WOW. The landscape is (from what I saw) appropriately alien, and the creatures inhabiting it are definately unique. Some of the avatars have some animations that look a bit odd. Overall the graphics - they are not bad, and while not cutting edge do convey the sense of an alien world. There are some nice little graphic touches, like the ground shaking when a large creature is stomping nearby, and the shotgun has a nice satisfying shake when fired.
2. Sound - The sound overall is good. Nothing terribly exciting, but there are some nice sounds you don't hear everyday in your typical mmo. Also the use of sounds helps clue the player in to what is going on. For example - Alien drop ships have a distinct sound that leads you to pan around to see where it's dropping off more baddies. Music really didn't stand out but at least it wasn't obnoxious. A few gripes in this category - there was this rare screetch that happened at random times. Could be my creative sound card? The tutorial starts off well with most quests having an accompanying voice over. Then once I made it into the main world it's far more spotty. Some have voiceovers, some do not, some NPC's were completely mute and didn't greet at all even tho they had written dialog.
3. Gameplay - The game has been billed as being an MMO with a FPS type control scheme. Having never played SWG post NGE, it reminds me of how SWG's NGE gameplay was described. The control scheme and interface while simplified are almost oversimplified. There are only a few boxes for weapons and a few boxes for consumables. You can only select the one weapon you want to use and the one skill you want to use. They are fired off using the left and right mouse buttons. The interface takes some getting used to, especially for an mmo vet like me. I've learned to put my rightclick skill on something not consumable. I kept using heal packs trying to loot creatures. Speaking of which to loot, you just run over the item to pick it up. Kind of wierd to me, but I can see where it has it's benefits. Unfortunately when an item gets lodged in a wall it isn't.
While there are a number of quests that I saw, most amounted to the usual kill x monsters, or kill monster NAMED and retrieve ITEM and return it. There are attempts to explain the reason for your actions, and some quests dovetail where you can choose to do one thing or another thus creating some amount of decision making. Regardless, nothing special there.
The class progression scheme is a branching type with abilities defined by skills that you dump points in. All characters start out as recruits and you then branch into either a Soldier or Specialist. Basically soldiers are your tanks, melees, rogues, and such. Specialists are your pet classes, and buffer/healers. The real problem is at each tier you only gain 3-4 more abilities that each have usually 5 ranks. I feels like there's not much to look forward to. Pumping more points into skills usually either makes them more efficient/more damaging or alters the damage type they do. Some skills such as pets the ranks provide different summons for each ability. Overall the class system isn't bad, just basic with what feels like too little skills. Because of the system, some tier skills just aren't worth using. The guns you get as a recruit which everyone use seem to be better in many respects than the specialist guns. There are two melee classes but you don't melee until you reach the highest levels of the game, you start out shooting like everyone else. You can use hand-to-hand combat but compared to weapons it just seems lacking. Some of the "logos" or spells are situational, and aren't really compelling.
The combat has to be the biggest disappointment for me. The simplified right and left click combat basically means you have two attacks. Yes, you have to switch weapons or skills on the fly. The problem is this switching is unresponsive and the client will sometimes lag so you'll click again thinking it didn't register and end up going to another skill, or it just doesn't register at all. The spawn system is kind of interesting in that some monsters jump out of trees when you pass them, or they come in dropships. However the enemy AI for the most part weak. They usually just stand in one place shooting at you, or run right at you. I have seen them take cover, but even so that's about the most intelligence they show. Most of the time they just stand around. I have a feeling reason is as follows, and it's my major gripe with the gameplay. The game isn't a FPS so where you stand in space for the most part is meanless. You can "take cover" and crouch behind an object but you can't move to dodge incoming ranged attacks. They hit you no matter what. For most ranged weapons you have to let the weapon "bead" on the target in order to hit for full damage, and to bead quickly you have to kneel. So you basically walk up, kneel, and repeatedly mash the left mouse button until the monster is dead. You may have to switch weapons to hit a creature far away (rifles) or one that is close to you (pistols, shotguns). Creatures have varying resistances, so you may have to carry two similar weapons with different damage types, or invest in skills to vary weapon types. You can't play from a first person perspective either, it's either third or an over the should zoomed in view. Overall the FPS feel is not there, but I suppose it's not supposed to be. There are some huge chaotic battles with tons of people/monsters running around but in the end it still feels like the same - stand and shoot. The only weapon you can use at lower levels that has a more action feel to it is shotguns. They don't have to bead, so you just shoot on the run. Compared to hellgate it just feels so much more slowpaced and tactical. Maybe I got spoiled by Hellgate... it feels responsive, viseral, and well, unpolished at times.
Another big beef is you have to buy ammo and some weapons chew through ammo. Bascially most of you money you have to hold in reserve for ammo. The creates a real problem because weapon and armor mods require breaking down sellable weapons/armor and cost even more money to make. From my experience in the early game, I felt perpetually poor and like I was feeding my gun my entire paycheck. I didn't even buy any better armor only used what I looted for fear I could run out of funds for ammo. Perhaps later in the game, money will be easier to come by, but after trying to craft two mods and buying 1000 rounds of ammo I would deplete my cash. From what I have heard crafting ammo isn't cost effective either, and the price on ammo goes up with each tier, hopefully the loot keeps up.
Finally, a major problem is I got disconnected often. I am talking a couple times an hour. And the quest you are on will often reset if you get booted. It's frustrating to have to do a mission 3 times because you got disconnected twice. Add in some bad lag spikes and I though I was playing the early dialup days of EQ. I don't want to give the impression this was constant, however. It seemed to happen mostly during early evening EST, and during afternoon on a Sunday. I can't say I have had problems with disconnects with any other game with my current ISP, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly the problem. I usually could log right back in.
Overall I can see the game has potential. The world is a fresh change with gobs of atmosphere. The game looks pretty polished. The combat is less than compelling to me, and classes could more fleshing out.
I guess this will say it best. I won a collectors edition from this site and I won't be opening it, rather I will be selling it to someone else.
Edited for formatting. Then decided that perhaps connectivity problems with game shouldn't be so strongly worded, and furhter added to discussion on ammo.
Comments
nm
holy shit, wall of text much? maybe consider using paragraphs in the future, people will actually read your posts.
edit: disregard that, OP edited in paragraphs.
same here, but i edited and said nm. I agree with most of what this guy has said. Ive played 2 of my 3 days and have seen exactly what he has said.
good potiential...very untapped atm
after actually reading it, there are a couple of points that i disagree with. the first one is that during my 3 day trial i had never experienced lag spikes or disconnects. it might be an issue with your ISP. secondly, there shouldn't have been a problem buying ammo unless you had a machine gun (or something similar) out constantly while blasting weak mobs. i actually used a machine gun often and have always had more than enough money to buy ammo, too much money to spend actually.
Great read....thanks for the post !
after i hit level 20 money is no longer an issue i found , and i use chainguns all the time + rockets. Money is kinda tight until 15 ish tho so if you didnt get past 15 then yeah its a problem.
But for the disconnects , did you set the NC launcher to turn off once the game loaded? There is a known issue where the launcher causes the game to crash or lock-up so until they find it , the fix is have it set to turn off once the games kicks up. ( in NC launcher settings).
nice read , tho im having a blast as this game is my new I NEED TO BLOW SOMETHING UP! fix lol i can see there being issues with me staying longer than 3 months unless some changes are made to the higher level play.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Nice evaluation. I agree with pretty much all of what you said. I would consider playing TR, but I feel there is better MMOs out there. Not a bad game, just not what I would pay to play.
If you use the number keys to swap weapons / skills rather than e/q you wont have a problem with cycling past them.
Playing from Australia - never had a disconnect.
You can hold the left mouse button down and your weapon will fire repeatedly - no need to mash the mouse button.
You are correct that there isnt any point dodging - if the enemy rolls a hit - you get hit. However getting into cover reduces damage, which often makes the difference between living and dying.
If you duck behind a rock/tree etc and break line of sight, the enemy will stop shooting and move to retarget.
Did you try and assault/defend of capture points? I find these great fun - the enemy attack in multiple waves in an attempt to breakdown the defences and overrun the base.
One tip for the cycling of skills thing you mentioned:
You have two control options - "FPS" or "MMO". By default the controls are set to FPS which means you have to right click to activate a skill. If you switch to MMO settings you can press the number on the keyboard to fire off a skill immediately and lots of other usual MMO control things like right click on an NPC to talk rather than pressing "T" etc.
Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for me I can't find a better MMO that caters to my casual style of gaming than TR. To me its worth every penny if I can log in for 10 minutes and get to experience "fun" right away.
Most games it takes 10 minutes + to just get to an area to start having fun or to form a group if lucky.
To each their own I suppose.
Agreed! just do not want to level grind all over again on a new buggy game!
I leveled up to 12 in 2 days basically. I played a lot of hours and had maybe 2 disconnects, both of which i think were ISP related. I also chose the pegasus server as it always registered the highest load (the more the merrier
). This game isnt meant to be a FPS the way i see it. It is meant to be a hybrid, something different than the other MMO's out there. I've played Entropia, Ryzome, Eve, and EQ2 (2 week demo) and this game, for me, has been the most fun. the action is non stop and as often as you want it. the missions arent overly tedious and can be chained along with others.
am i poor? yes
i pretty much kept a balance of 10,000 credits the whole time until i went to another continent (higher lvl mobs, worth a little more) im a hoarder as well, so i have completely filled my foot locker and most of my backpack. That is actually my one and only complaint about the game.. the mobs drop so much stuff, a lot of it higher lvl than you, that you have nowhere to put it. i have at least 60 bp's and am out of room. maybe they want you to craft with all that stuff.. but until i cant play with what i currently have equipped.. why craft?
The game is visually and audibly sufficient for my needs.. do i need fancy scenery and music to have fun.. nope. maybe im different in that. there is plenty to see and hear in this game for me.
The mobs dodge and roll, side step and run from me. Perhaps it's because i like to participate in the base takeovers and defense so much that i see this. i crouch behind a barricade/wall and fire away then run out with the shotgun and blast them up close. in other words, mass carnage and hundreds of mobs. ive seen them do some interesting things. they do at times stand there and let me shoot them, but they always seem to turn and let loose a couple of shots before they die.. but, then again, they are focused on some target just as i am. im getting blasted in the back as well and am firing at the guy in front of me.
The controls did take a little while to get used to. i have also healed myself repeatedly, wasting med packs, when i thought i was using a logo attack. perhaps there is something i can do with my key setup that will fix this. switching guns has become much easier the longer ive played. You do have to let the gun cycle though before you can switch it. You cant switch your weapon in mid fire, or when you are pumping it to put another round in the chamber. This seems logical to me and even though i WANT the other gun, i cant just get it while i'm in the middle of shooting.. makes sense to me.
Overall, im sure there are things to gripe about if i really looked for them. But, i've been so busy shooting aliens.. i haven't had the time. I came in to this game expecting bugs, lag, poor AI, etc.. after reading this forum. I have to say i was very surprised at how much fun i had. Thank you for the 3 day trial, it was awesome and i'll be back for more
Very nicely said.
I have played for several hours now and am about to ding level 8. I am having fun so far. Unlike while playing other MMOs, I am not spending the whole time staring at my XP bar. I have leveled twice now unexpectedly while killing bane or finishing a quest. The logos quests alone yield a fair amount of XP so I don't feel like I am grinding, at least not at this point.
I am not having the money problem at this low level that others in this thread are experiencing at higher levels. I have about 10000 credits and seem to have tons of ammo without ever purchasing any. I do however have space taken up by items I am not yet high enough level to use. I think there is a reason you have limited space for items im MMOs, it adds challenge/choice making in terms of what you will keep or what you will sell. It helps to drive the economy of the server.
I have never been disconnected but have had one really buggy moment when the ground around lower Eloh creek (or whatever it is called) suddenly disappeared out from under me while all of the buildings were still there. I just logged off then back on and all was fine. I fully expect some of these issues in a brand new MMO.
Overall, I like this MMO better than any I have tried since taking a break from WoW. It is very hard not to compare TR to WoW since it is the biggest MMO right now but I like this game for striving not to be a WoW clone. Sure, there are some kinks to iron out but I do believe this game has plenty of potential.
I found levelling exactly the same - it just happened. For the first time in an MMO I didn't spend every other second looking at the XP bar. Very refreshing game. I was 3 day trial too and will be receiving the full game for Christmas.
I took advantage of the 3 day pass this past weekend and came away very impressed! TR is the best getaway from the over flooded fantasy MMO world. Is it worth $15/month? I'm not totally convinced yet, but it would be worth $9.99.
NCsoft does it again! Now they have 2 very respectable titles (the other being CoX)for those who get bored and need a break from fantasy. Like was said before, there's absolutely no waiting around to get into the action and the action is extrememly fast paced.
What I liked most was there wasn't even a need to get into a group. If I went into a cave, pretty much everyone else in the cave was there for the same reason as me thus we all worked together to defeat the opposition and complete the mission. We all got XP, we all stayed alive, and we all finished what we set off to accomplish.
Grinding? Only if you want to! I never ran out of a mission, and the missions always sent me some place different to do something knew. If I didn't want to quest, I didn't have to. I could join a huge battle whenever I wanted to either defend or attack a post.
Money problems? Bleh! Get off the front lines of battle and complete some missions if your money is running low! At lvl 12, my funds fluctuated between $34,000 - $39,000. By the time I ran out of ammo from all my guns, I was at 39 grand. It cost me about 5 grand to restock and get different types of ammo up to a surplus of a little over 1 grand after all my guns were fully stocked.
Usually for me, I don't start having a blast with my main and alts till they hit lvl 20 or so, but not with this game. It kicks major booty from the start! I recommend everyone to try the 3 day trial.
Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for me I can't find a better MMO that caters to my casual style of gaming than TR. To me its worth every penny if I can log in for 10 minutes and get to experience "fun" right away.
Most games it takes 10 minutes + to just get to an area to start having fun or to form a group if lucky.
To each their own I suppose.
I agree completely. This is the only MMO I can load up for an hour on my "lunch break" and play to satisfaction. Maybe it's just my own personal tastes, but TR has fulfilled my need for a fun MMO that WoW did back in 2006 (although it took till May 2007 to finally kick that habit).
Will I play TR for more than 5 months or so? Who knows...it probably needs more content. But hey, for the next few months I'm going to have a lot of fun shotgunning the hell outta the Bane.
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
I actually thought the opposite about credit problems. I thoguht it was too easy to get credits. I always had way more credits than I could ever use. I am level 13 and have 76k credits. I mainly used shotgun, rifle, and pistol.
I have not gotten disconnected once yet.
I agree that the bane needs better AI.
Whether or not you have credit problems depends on your play style and the weapons you use.
Some weapons use more expensive ammo - eg rockets, cannisters, batteries.
Some go through a lot of ammo quickly - chaingun, shotgun.
So to give an example
At lvl 20 sapper I had 700,000 credits in my footlocker. I use lightning a lot. Its an ammo less killer. If the foe survives lightning, then I use pistol, rifle , polarity gun etc to finish it.
My friend as a level 20 commando was always broke. I would be giving him money to buy ammo. He uses the chaingun on everything. Chaingun is a great weapon, but it uses bucketloads of ammo. If this is the weapon you use all the time - expect to be broke and scrounging for money until your mid twenties.
As a soldier - use rage it gives a big boost to your damage, which will reduce the ammo you consume to kill an opponent. Also dont put 1 point into every weapon and use them all. Pick the weapons you like to use and increase the ranks in them to boost the damage. ie at rank 4 you get 30% extra damage.
Firearms is a great skill as it boosts the damage on all three basic weapons - pistol, rifle, shotgun.
Range also plays a factor - if you are outside the optimal range for your weapon, then the damage is reduced.
Shotguns are great in caves.
LOgos powers like lightning do damage for 0 cost.
Thanks everyone for posting. I've read enough and now I'm off to d/l my free 3 day trial.
You guys/gals seem great. I hope I'm able to meet some of you in TR.
Thanks again,
NXavier
Hi!
I too just finished my 3 days trial and thanks again to MMORPG for that. I know we all see and have different play style needs for games. I was surprised by that game. The graphics is not the best out there I agree but they nice. I too played long sessions like 15 to 20 hours in a row and got disconnected once when coming back from having logged into an instance.
There is 2 things that this game would need for me to play it on a long period (a year or more). More options at player creation and more things to do than fighting! But I always judge a game for the system it has not for what it dont have as MMO are customizable and they can add stuff at anytime. The fact that I am waiting for AoC too influence things but I will probably play TR for the couple months waiting.
Thanks!