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First Day in TR
gauge2k3
Member Posts: 442
Here is what I'm going to call an unbiased review of the game.
First i'll try to establish a little credibility. I've played WoW for WAY to long, lineage 2 for a little over a year, ffxi for 6 months, and almost eveyr major MMORPG to date for at least a few days. Seriously almost all of them, my game box is full of cases. Also I am a game programmer myself, nothing ont he scale that these guys do it but I know enough to make my own 3d game engine.
First Thing: This is game is dramatically different then the forums lurkers here would have you believe. How you can log into the game and say it is not going somewhere is beyond me. Even if i hated the game, I could tell you this game has a place among mmo's today.
Now to the review.
Graphics: Again I am amazed at what people call bad for an mmo. I found the graphics stunning. I have it on all maxxed out graphics except for shadows. The game does use shader 3.0 which is a draw back unless you have a dx10 card. It doesn't really matter because if you take off shading it looks just as good as with, the difference is negligable. The character creations, the models, the amount of different gear and how it looks, all stunning. The people who say these are bad for an mmo have A. never played that many mmo's or B. Have really crappy graphics cards.
Sound: Best sound of an mmorpg I have ever heard. This is amazing, and that's an understatement. Someone put a lot of time and effort into the sound engine and sounds of this game. The ambient sound is truly amazing. This is just on my old crappy sound blaster audigy 1.
Story: This is a very compelling and interesting story, in fact it's the only story of any mmo that made me want to read it more. So I went to the website and did. It's a really good story and not the standard swords and wizards microwavable MMO's we're used to. From the second you enter the game you are surrounded by the story line. You really are a soldier on the front.
Char Creation: This was very fun. Having a last name that is standard through all you character s and being able to choose any first name you want( even if it is taken) was really cool if you ask me. There was I think 30 some faces to choose from, a jillion colors to color your outfit. Not to many outfit choices but who cares you get gear to replace it in the first 2 seconds of the game.
Dev comm: I won't comment to much on this as I have not been playing forever, but I spoke to a gm within 10 minutes of playing the game. Not a petition rather, he was just chillin in town hanging with the players. He was helping people in general and taking a break with us having some laughs. I have never in all my time in WoW and L2 ever seen a gm in game.
Gameplay: Very different. It is fps style but not at the same time. Stats matter more then twitch play, but twitch plat matters enough that you will need to have decent hand eye in pvp. IT IS MAD FUN! The battle rages EVERYWHERE. Even in zones the ASF have completely controlled the bane are dropping dudes everywhere. I was fortunate enough to take place on a base raid by the bane and we were defending, all I have to say is WOW. Screw WoW battle grounds, this defines Battleground. It was a slaughter on both sides. They had drop ships comming in faster then we could kill them and the same for our side. They even broke our front gate and almost took the base, but we barely stopped them in the end. TO SWG PLAYERS, this is MUCH better then the crap that is the swg camera/control. It is much more intuitive then that pile of garbage. The tutorial was very breif and informative getting you to the game very quickly.
From a game programmers point of view there is some very interesting features many people are overlooking that took A LOT of programming to do. Here are some.
Cover: I mean really, Line of sight in WoW is one thing but real cover come on,
Pathfinding: The NPC's in this game have the best pathfinding algorithms i've ever seen. They don't collide with objects to get around them they actually run around fluidly. Most of the time I can't tell the difference between an NPC and a player unless I scroll over them and look at the name. In large base battle you won't be able to find your team mates half the time, thats how real they are. It's war you are bound to lose your friends 
AI: Th enemy AI in this game is nuts lol. When I was grouped they would almost always single out a party member ( just like we do to them) to focus fire on. They always try to climb over thing syou are using for cover, they never run into each other. They always seem to move as a military unit. When aoe buffer monsters are around they all try to get close to it to receive the buffs. The AI in this game is crazy.
Bugs: Wanna know how many I encountered in a 10 hour session......a grand total of 0. Pretty god damned impressive for a new release.
For the development team they had I am AMAZINGLY impressed with what they have created. Sure the game ends at 50 right now, but who cares, most MMO's don't release with end game content, many of them are successful now. It took many years for wow to reach it's glory right now. A game that is gonna be even close to as good as that isn't gonna happen at release, it's gonna take time.
I am trying to be unbiased in my opinion and honestly I expected the game to be crap going in from what I read here on these forums. This game is far from that. Event he 10 hours I played today was worth the money I spent.
I'm an AF Specialist! Soon to be Demolishionist. I fight the good fight against the bane. Flame on but I found this game for a new release to be a gem in a rather large pile if huge release failures.
Comments
Get to lvl30-50 content and tell me what you think. Oh, there's also no endgame. just warning you now. TR is like that girlfriend/boyfriend you mess around with for a few months and then it gets boring and you moving on looking for something more meaningful. The devs in TR also promised a new update every 2-4 weeks. Patch 1.4 wasn't released until 2 months after 1.3. Don't bash me for being harsh, but this game is dieing. (I've also made it to lvl50, which is max, on several toons)
People level to 50 because they love the game. You don't play the game that much and not love it. People care about end game because they love the game. if they hated it why would they care if there was end game. It'll come, it's a small dev team, it'll take more time then some people want. But hopefully some renewable content will make it in the game sooner then later to give people something to do soon.
This game is a lot of fun from 1-30, well wilderness to mires actually. Starting in plateau the whole feel of it changes. It turns into a chore with painful repeated deaths. I've had dying streaks before but a lil rest and thoughts usually solved it. Not this time. I get swarmed around mission objectives and this kael i have to kill in plateau is just to hard.
I've actually killed him on my sniper. I had to kill the 3 adds, dying once or twice and then focus on the giant, dying around 10 more times. If the hospital wasnt close i woudnt have been able to do it. That mission is prerequisite for the zone's instance mission.
-Would you like cheddar or swiss cheese?
-Yes.
-...
I did not played the game yet - I'm still looking for a trial key - but my enthusiasm is growing thin with every post I read.
After I searched the game forums, the fansites and the gaming sites:
It appears to me that someone at a moment had a great ideea about a game, he hired a brilliant team to implement it, but they lost their motivations somewhere in the road... It seems the former crew had time to implement graphics and basic game mechanics then they massively quit, leaving the game development in the hands of a bunch of incompetent retards.
That explains why the trial period is only 3 days (hell, if you play more than 3 days you might figure the flaws of the game) and why the trial requires a very hard to obtain key (if anyone would be able to play the game very easy, the attractivity would be substantially lower).
I'm starting to believe that I should find a better use for those 4 GB (hdd space actually used by TR). I really don't know if I want to try this game anymore.
Um, no. I know a few SWG players, myself included, who played the beta of this game. It was nothing more than a slap in the face. They use the same game target mechanics of the original NGE. No respectable SWG player (note CU and prior) would touch this thing with a pole.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
Maybe the devs are trying to encourage you to find a partner or two in order to complete this area?
In every game there are just some things that can't be solo'd
"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
Um, no. I know a few SWG players, myself included, who played the beta of this game. It was nothing more than a slap in the face. They use the same game target mechanics of the original NGE. No respectable SWG player (note CU and prior) would touch this thing with a pole.
Imagine gamers actualy judging a game on beta state, man these forums would become a mess.......oh wait..........
OP well said, i do believe that many people "trying" to play these type of games have lost sight on the details that are put in these type of games but only are focused on how to reach end lvl asap.
Um, no. I know a few SWG players, myself included, who played the beta of this game. It was nothing more than a slap in the face. They use the same game target mechanics of the original NGE. No respectable SWG player (note CU and prior) would touch this thing with a pole.
Imagine gamers actualy judging a game on beta state, man these forums would become a mess.......oh wait..........
OP well said, i do believe that many people "trying" to play these type of games have lost sight on the details that are put in these type of games but only are focused on how to reach end lvl asap.
I agree. There are so many things that they spent such a large time implimenting that people are overlooking. They didn't want to be every other mmo so they decided to do some things differently. I believe the end game content will come, maybe slow, but it'll come. I fully believe when it does it won't be the just add water mmo repeat we have already seen.
Reading some of the other post, I do understand the frustration of some long term players in not getting any feedback from the devs. I do feel this is at least an issue.
I'll say if any of you programmed video games at any point you would be impressed with this game. The AI for attacking a CP alone would take....god I don't even know how long. Don't take stuff like this for granted. That's what makes me hopeful for the future. If they were this meticulous with the content I'm going through maybe that's what's taking them so long on the content you guys want.
To the SWG player, maybe it was in beta, but believe me, it is WAY more intuitive then SWG now.
LOL, no it doesn't. Newb.
Sorry this is only a snip from the 1st post here. If you want to establish credibility you lost it as soon as you got to Graphics. The graphics in this game are really poor. The textures are very low res, and the trees look like they were borrowed from the models used in Dungeon Runners. I have seen games 2+ years old that look better graphically.
Then you have the audacity to make the claim that anyone who disagrees has
A. "Never played that many mmo's". Been playing every major and some smaller launches since 99
B. "Have really crappy graphics cards". 8800GT, maybe not the best offering on the market but definitely not crappy.
Seriously, at this point I'm really just going to stop, because looking over the rest of your post makes me feel the whole thing is a joke.
I have to say I agree with you, upto a point.
I really like this game, the problem is the real lack of content, you quest (and run out of quests, yet remain too low to move on) then you grind for a bit.
I know this wont last forever, and I can see this game going places. But I feel as if they dont have much time to impress us. I have played for less than an hour this week (take a look at my Xfire) and have been buying single player games due to boredom. On tabula I remain semi afk. We need lots of things, Character customization with regard to skills, more faces etc, other options, something else to kill time + PVP and more group content. It's quite a big list, and I can think of a fair few more.
Its a really very good game, but they need about 300 more devs... and a cookie.
Sorry this is only a snip from the 1st post here. If you want to establish credibility you lost it as soon as you got to Graphics. The graphics in this game are really poor. The textures are very low res, and the trees look like they were borrowed from the models used in Dungeon Runners. I have seen games 2+ years old that look better graphically.
Then you have the audacity to make the claim that anyone who disagrees has
A. "Never played that many mmo's". Been playing every major and some smaller launches since 99
B. "Have really crappy graphics cards". 8800GT, maybe not the best offering on the market but definitely not crappy.
Seriously, at this point I'm really just going to stop, because looking over the rest of your post makes me feel the whole thing is a joke.
I don't know how you can say that really. Some of the tree's and grass are low res, but a lot of the game is beautiful. The sprites, the char, npc, and monster models. Go play WoW for awhile and then say the graphics suck. The best mmo to date that i have played is EQ2, or maybe lineage 2, graphically. I can't see either of them beating this game.
MMO games commonly have lower standards in graphics so it can handle the network load and all the objects around you without extreme lag. Think how bad Crysis would be if it was an MMO.
I honestly think TR's graphics is quite nice, not top notch but nice, WoW's and City of Heroes' (even after issue 7 graphics upgrades) are so-so, SWG (before the NGE) had some of the most beautiful graphics in an MMO that I have seen and EQ2 as well, but to say TR has crappy graphics- pfft.
Sorry this is only a snip from the 1st post here. If you want to establish credibility you lost it as soon as you got to Graphics. The graphics in this game are really poor. The textures are very low res, and the trees look like they were borrowed from the models used in Dungeon Runners. I have seen games 2+ years old that look better graphically.
Then you have the audacity to make the claim that anyone who disagrees has
A. "Never played that many mmo's". Been playing every major and some smaller launches since 99
B. "Have really crappy graphics cards". 8800GT, maybe not the best offering on the market but definitely not crappy.
Seriously, at this point I'm really just going to stop, because looking over the rest of your post makes me feel the whole thing is a joke.
I don't know how you can say that really. Some of the tree's and grass are low res, but a lot of the game is beautiful. The sprites, the char, npc, and monster models. Go play WoW for awhile and then say the graphics suck. The best mmo to date that i have played is EQ2, or maybe lineage 2, graphically. I can't see either of them beating this game.
Making a reference to TR to WoW is again a bit of a stretch. We can talk about style, sticking with the lore and look of previous games and system requirements which come into play. While there are many elements that may technically be modeled better in TR the world to me still felt really void and uninspired. much less the low poly trees. Not to mention the animations in TR are fairly weak and choppy.On top of that mix in a weak backstory of how we were too busy takin pills and screwin whores and oh no aliens attack! It's easy to make up nearly any lore when you have no reference backstory to adhere to or need to build upon. Choosing your characters color at character creation is pointless as by the first time you get an armor upgrade your gonna look like the other 20 people who just finished that quest. The character models themselves aren't horrible, It's the world itself that just really lacks.
you crack me up, first you say:
"the graphics are really poor. the textures are very low res (...) i have seen games 2+ years old that look better graphically"
then someone calls you out and you answer with talk about style and lore...
it's awesome if you don't like tr and its style, but if you start out like you did, you maybe should put a comparison out there, you can't mean wow, you can't mean lineage2 (cause even though it looks good, you primarily look at it from a rather far away point of view, and believe me, those trees do not look as good as you'd think), you can't mean anything younger than 2 years, you can't mean eq2, as eq2's engine would break instantly if it had as many mobs on the screen as tr does (can't compare apples to spaceships here, apart from that eq2 trees don't even look too good and lastly in rok they are so blown up that they look worse than ones from wow), so please do tell us what you mean.
the armor upgrade stuff happens in every mmorpg, it's just how it works, i don't have to mention that you can color your armor for practically no money, do i?
weak and choppy animations? hu? state your examples (you may illustrate with videos of course)
if you just wanna say that you don't like the style of tr and you feel it's an empty and static world, please do (i even agree to a point here) but don't make stuff up just so you said something.