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First impressions from a skeptic.
Kordesh
Member Posts: 1,715
We'll not talk about how I was able to do so, but suffice it to say I have played the game for a bit, and as someone who never really thought highly of this game, allow me to give my thoughts.
Much of my preconceptions about the game came directly from the community here and on a few other forums. Sadly, people seemed less apt to actually talk about the game, and were too busy trying to proclaim how "HARDCOREZ" they were because the game was "ALL ABOUT DA SKILLZ!". This kind of crap quickly puts me off, and so I deligated the game to being nothing more than a FPS with bunny hopping everywhere.
After having finally played the game, fortunately, it seems my fears were built up around an overly immature forum community. The game itself, is actually quite lovely. "Skillz" aside, as while the added tactical element is nice and gives the game a different feel, I don't think it's drastic enough to warrent the abject worship its been getting, the game is interesting in how it handles itself. The tutorial is I feel a bit too short, as you don't really get introduced to some of the more interesting mechanics until at least level 11 or so, which I think could give people a bad impression initially, or at least a less impressive one.
Character creation was a tossup. On the one hand, there could have been more options. On the other hand, the ones that were there allowed me to build a character that overall was likely to be fairly unique and let me get the kind of look I wanted for my character. With equipment not being stat locked, there will be more options for customization down the road as well I'm sure. One thing I liked particularly was that of the face choices, most of them seemed to be a variation of facial shapes, but also ages. It's nice to be able to make a character that doesn't look like a prepubesent teenager. It was also nice to be able to pick a weapon of choice for more asthetic purposes. As a mage, you often get pidgeonholed into staves. Finally I was able to live my dream of casting spells down the edge of a blade!
The skill deck is one thing I always thought would work rather well, and it does. It also seems as though it will prevent the issues with hotbar overcrowding that come into place in other MMOs. Overall, it just gives a nice flow to combat, and lets you setup how you're going to fight in a more interesting way than just waiting for timers.
Graphically the game is a mixture. The style is I think best described as I heard elsewhere as "Tim Burtonesq" with exagerated models and features. I do wish the developers had used their own engine rather than the unreal engine, as the unreal engines issues with texture pop-in are present once again. My only other complaint is that the draw distance for character models is too short, and they should add a slider to increase the distance before a character becomes a simple stick figure. Outside of these issues though, the game looks very nice and adds to the games own distinct feel. It's no graphical powerhouse like AoC or other games, but it really doesn't need to be, and it would likely take away from its charm. I'd also like to take this time to compliment the soundtrack, which is just beautiful.
Random interjection: A slight complaint about combat, ancestral mage pets seem to be a bit glitchy and don't attack as often as they should because they're trying to line up with their target. This is something minor though that I'm sure will be fixed.
Overall, I was quite pleased with my initial experience. The game feels different and is different, which is something sorely needed in the current MMO landscape. It establishes its own identity right away. As long as character development and the world continue to flesh out as you go along, which it appears to, I see no reason why later levels should be any less enthralling as the intro has been.
However, while part of me can't wait for the NA release so that I can begin playing in ernest, two things concern me deeply, and they are BIG things.
1: Acclaim. Acclaim, lets face it, has a long track record of "lovely" titles, and has a large business focus on F2P. Quite frankly, I just don't want to see the game hosed up because a company thats a bit crap doesn't know what it's doing.
2: The community. The community I was playing with was actually quite friendly and mature for the most part. Zone chat wasn't spammed, conversations were civil, very unlike barrens or just about any other public channel. However, as I said, much of my negative feelings towards this game were generated by the NA community and the epic levels of immaturity as they tried to be big bad competative badasses of the internet. The game can be perfectly wonderful, but I could very quickly see this game go from a charming little MMO to a complete cesspool of obnoxious twits if the community takes a turn for the chuck norris.
All I can do at this point is wait for Acclaim to get off their ass and do their job so we can all get to playing, and hope my last two caveates end up incorrect. But that's my first impression, and I thought someone might be interested.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
Comments
Good for you, I'm glad to see some are trying it out dispite what some on the forums had said before it was released in the EU.
I also enjoyed the game, I played a Warrior and found it to to be really fun. Quests are what you would expect from any MMO these days so nothing new here, although some quests have multiple answers to questions.
What did ya think of the sound in the game? I really loved the ambient sounds at night...
I loved it. As I said, the soundtrack was beautiful, and combined with the local ambient noise, it really contributed to the overall feel the game seems to give off. Everything seems to feel sort of, quaint. It's hard to describe. Like it would feel nice to stop fighting for a second and just look at the sky and listen a bit. It's a rather calming game surprisingly.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
I've played the game myself, and I too found it to be a breath of fresh air from the norm.
Feel free to read my guide over at ---> http://phpbb.acclaim.com/spellborn/viewtopic.php?t=418
If you guys like what you see, post a reply on there and keep it on top for me, thanks.
Good to see someone trying the game after reading all the crap some people seem to talk about it.
I've noticed the same with some people near me actually, they don't know the game but try it cause I recommended it, and they don't have anything but positive things to say about it, looking past some bugs that "haunt" any release ofcourse. But they're not nearly as bad as some other releases have been.
Hell, I had a quest that was bugged due to an NPC being in combat and I got a GM to reset him for me in about 1-2hours. Which isn't bad at all.
I'm thoroughly enjoying it with some friends atleast.
This forum is not representative for the actual Spellborn community. Good thing the OP found that out and took the time to tell us that. Of course, we already knew that most of the mmo community do not like the mmorpg.com community at all, eventhough both communities are not strictly seperated.
Anyway, now that my favorite poison has been released I plan on visiting these forums much less. And many Spellborn fans left this forum already some time ago. No doubt new fans will arrive and go again keeping the chances for finding valuable information about this game here quite low.
--
Delanor
Good for you! I'm prevented from playing with my friends and family.
Btw I agree Delanor this forum mainly represents those of us Spellborn International decided shouldn't play the game.
- Syn
The game is not bad.
But i fear it will have a hard time surviving.
Lets compare it to TR, another game
aiming for actionpacked combat and enhanced AI. Though one is scifi and the other fantasy they have many things in common.
-Character customation is in both good,
but TCOS suffers here a bit, cause of the artstyle, the char models will be disliked by a chunk of people.
Super skinny chars with xtradimensional feet.
On the other hand you can make some nice fat chars
-Classmodels: Both games had a neat charakter advancement systems, there is room to make true unique builds within the classes. As it is this always leads to fotm builds.
Offen Devs need to nerf and change in such a complex system especialy with pvp, what then again will drive away players.
-Graphics: I liked the Tr graphics a lot, still Tcos
does more with less, in overall they capture more amtosphere, combined with the ambient
sound makes a catching enviroment/world.Both games shped up a great world.
-Quests.
Some praise the funny quests of Tcos, i see they tried to be funny....
The lack of a questindicator on the map will force you to read or fly through the text.Not a gamebraker for me but for a part of players it will be.In the end the wise guy will use a webside to get the locations fast. Exploring for quests is good but can grow very stain if you want accomplich a quick task in ya 1.30 hour ya had
in between work/family/bedtime.
I realy do enjoy good quest storys. But today a good quest should have a voice over, hey its not 1998 anymore.
If you want me to imerge in your universe please rent 3 voicactors and give a good chunk of your quests some love.
Look at eq2, its just plain fun and brings your world so much more alive. So in the end quest are okay but nothing new to see here.
Mobs:
the mobs in Tcos are placed in the world,
like in any other mmorpg. *there to be slaughtered* , though good to see em interact with each other, like a wolf hunting a squirel,
i have not seen herds of mobs wandering around
or other more advanced mob behavior.
TR had a much more intriguing spawn system
imho, what made you stay combat ready and on the move much more.
Also here many mobs have been placed to be killed but it felt less like that, more like the natural inhabitants of that place
.
Combat
At this point i tell you to download the the client and try it
.
In my eyes the aiming dodging and rotating skill bar can be fun for a while, but you end up pressing a mousekey and concentrate on dodging changing the run down line every now and then.It limitets and dosent widen gameplay imho and is very vulnerable to lag.
Maybe i just missed the catchy joy of setting up the skillroll(lol).
Tr had semi aiming and the gameplay overall was fluid ,finding cover and getting to a tactical good position was good fun.
Tcos sounds to be very *quest grinder* heavy,
so no big use grinding mobs, as you also have long downtimes. There TR did right and gave ya a bonus to xp if ya got a killstreak.
ONE big thing invented by Tcos i have great hopes other mmorpgs will conmsider is the pep system. You dont get a penalty for dying but a bonus for not dying to mobs. Means you get seperate xp for every mob, and can lvl 5 levels ech giving bonus to your stats each death subtracts 1 lvl.
Soon people will come and say it is very shallow
Together with the other bad decisions they made in the end yes Tcos will fail..sorry guys :P
and sorry for all my typos
____________________
It`s alright
AC2,AO,D&L,Lotro,VsoH,SWG,Uo,HGL,Drunners,CoH,GW,Potbs,PWI
Eq2,Dofus,WoW,WWIIO,Ryzom,Planetside,EvE,TR,DDO,RFonline,FOM,VC,..etc blabla
also hobbies....staring at loadingbars
The only thing wrong with comparing it to TR is a matter of scale. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'd bet that TR had double the development costs of TCoS. Not to mention whatever royalties his highness demanded. TR was unable to survive with 30k players, but TCoS may be just fine with those numbers.
TR was also arguably one of the most innovative MMOG's ever made. I see where you're coming from though since TCoS is trying to innovate in many of the same ways. It seems like the play style for these two games couldn't be more different. Where everything in TR was high paced, high action, high octane excitement, TCoS is a very laid back relaxing game that just so happens to have an action oriented combat system.
I guess what I am saying is that I like both games, but for different reasons. I'm not tyring to dispute anything you said since its mostly correct, but it is a little like comparing apples to oranges.
I for one can't wait till play next month.