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Observations after the first few hours of play
Jeff44
Member Posts: 459
Opinions and observations, in no particular order:
-Took about two hours to DL the game.
-The character creation screens are well done, but the facial features of the rag-doll are a bit off-putting.
-You can change or modify many parts of your character, but you are limited at this time to three choices of career, and two races.
-You have a choice, at the moment, of two servers (US). One is listed as PVP and one as PVE.
-The intro, and the voice over, wow! Well done.
-Tutorial starts at the very basic (ie. how to move, side slip, climb, etc.) which anyone with MMO experience will breeze through but will certainly help those new to this.
-The keys can be re-mapped, but the default setting for the WASD keys are set that way for a reason. Combat.
-So used to hitting A or D to strafe, here it is Q or E. Again, combat particulars are the reason.
-The game does seem to resemble FABLE in its look. This is not at all a bad thing.
-Humor in the quests in the first area. Some poking fun at MMO cliches.
-Suggestion: Try a warrior if you are new to this. You must learn meele, no matter if you are a spell-caster or a rogue.
-Combat takes a bit getting used to, but after a bit I found it intuitive and much easier. The most important thing to remember is that spamming the attack button does absolutely no good if you are not aimed at the target!
-Combat here, unlike most MMOs, is a dance. Pull with a bowshot. Back up as the mob comes to you. Dodge its attack either by sliding (A or D) or backing away (S). Slip in directly after the attack for a good free shot.
-In combat here, aming is all. However, placement is just as important. Dodge the mob and slip to the right or left and get a good shot in on it's flanks. Back away. If you stun it or it pauses, charge past it, wheel and hit it from behind (many times I got multiple attacks in by doing this)
-There is a story in this game. Granted, thr first day not many of us care yet, as we get used to the controls, but the parts presented to us so far indicate an interesting story.
-They are giving everyone two free weeks of play. Free. As in no charge, no credit card registration, no hassle. Really. Why are you still reading this? Go give it a try, you might like it!
Good luck!
Comments
couple observations on combat
1. it doesn't sync very well so your weapon swings don't match up with damage shown very well.
2. Straffing never worked much for me but running over the mob and waiting for it to start turning then just back over it worked great. If you time it right you can kill stuff and barely get touched.
3. Aiming other then with the bow and even then it is very liberal doesn't seem to matter. When I was straffing over the mob my attacks would hit no matter where my pointer was. I mean generally if it was in the general area it worked. If I ran away from the mob facing away from it it didn't work.
I only got a couple hours into the game so i'm far from an expert on this but so far the combat system is not very impressive in my opinion. maybe as I get more abilities that opinion will change but it looks like you just line up combat attacks in a sequence and one button runs through the sequence every time. Kinda like putting a macro on the mouse button that does all of a set of abilities in order...
I like the graphical environment and the starting tutorial area and cut scenes. Very good stuff.
My two hour play session came to an end with a game freeze up and windows saying the game was no longer responding.
Anyway it is too early to make an opinion yet.
---
Ethion
Great first impressions. Mine are about the same after a couple hours. Was up late into the evening....
Totally immersive tho, which is so refreshing!
Nice post.
Everything that you talk about just gets better and better as you play as well. Even the simplistic and straight forward quests in Hawksmouth (it IS just an extended tutorial after all... designed to give you room to get a feel for the world and the way your character works) get more and more in depth as you get deeper in.
All that i would add now is that even when you do start to pay to play you can buy 3 months of SB for LESS then AoC, DF, WAR charged you for their clients 'off the shelf'. That HAS to be a good thing
Wecome to Spellborn
One I forgot:
-Skill bars. The skill bars that allow you to choose combat moves are an inspired design.
-It works like this: Picture a hexagonal tube-shaped object with 8 (I cant remember exactly) or so "faces" (think about wooden dowel, for example) and place it on its side. This resembles, to my mind, the wheels you would find inside a slot machine. Got it? Okay. Now on each "face" you get five slots to put combat maneuvers into. You can have a bow attack on the first, a melee attack second and a melee that hits multiple foes in the third. The system always starts you out on the first slot.
The real beauty of the system is that each time you hit your attack button, the bar spins to the next "face". You can, of course, use your mouse to move to whichever slot you want, but if you used slot 3 on your initial attack, then the bar will spin and you are now set up to use slot three on your next attack. The strategy this imparts to the combat system is obvious. You could, for example, place all your spells/ranged attacks on the first window of each "face" and then simply toss them off one by one. However, remember that in this game, everyone can and will have to melee. That tosses a whole new dynamic into the mix.
Should I make face one-slot one a ranged attack, and then make the face two and three-slot ones a melee attack? But what if there is time to get off a second ranged attack? I will miss it. So, I make 1/1 a ranged attack, and 1/2 also a ranged attack. I can then make 2/2 a melee attack and 3/2 a melee attack (and just by moving the mouse I can go from slot one on my first attacks to slot two on those subsequent).
Now, realize that really all I have been describing is the basics of the system. You want to fight wolves and boars, this covers it. When you start getting to opponents that toss spells at you, all bets are off.
-The upshot of this is that nearly every time you change opponents, you have the choice of changing your skill bar to reflect their weaknesses. There are a huge number of ways to approach this.
-You also get new skills periodically, which must be worked into your combat strategy.
-Don't even get me started on how many strategies one could come up with for PVP, in order to be successful. My head would spin like the skill bar.
-This system keeps combat new and fresh (for the most part) throughout the game.
-Hey! Did I mention it is free to play for two weeks? What the heck are you waiting for?
I
the way that this board (generally) is sooo positive. Makes it a pleasure to come here. I never bothered with mmorpg.com before after reading some of the others, but this is great. Nice observations OP 