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Global Agenda - Beta Preview (image heavy)
Gemfire
Member UncommonPosts: 5
Hi MMORPG.com. Long, long time lurker, first time poster. I wrote some beta impressions for some friends on our private site, and I though the community here might benefit as well. Yeah, this post is huge.
So, I preordered the game on steam, which gave me access to the beta. It was a gamble, since I can be pretty picky about shooters and mmos in general. After playing about six hours in the beta, I have to say, this game is a lot of fun.
It's basically a 3rd person shooter with bells on. Lots of fancy bells.
Note: I have played in the beta, but not for a long time. Some of my reactions may be incorrect. I don't know all the subtle nuances of the game yet. I just wanted to make an image dump and set of first reactions. Hope you enjoy reading!
Log-in screen. Pretty standard. I do like that they have a server status twitter that links directly to this screen. It's especially nice because beta is up and down atm.
I chose to try out the medic class first. I did my best to make him look like Bones from the new Star Trek movie. He looks all angry and when I'm healing I think to myself 'for god's sake man i'm a doctor not a doctor.'
(note, there's a cool intro sequence that introduces the game, the story, and controls and such. It was down for my first foray into the game, so I skipped it. This boosts your character to level 5 and drops you into the game proper.)
The first thing you see when playing. This is the dome. It's basically a really fancy-pants lobby. Here is where all the shops are, and where you spend your time tweaking your equipment, spec, appearance, etc. Here is also where you hang out when you are waiting to get into a pvp or pve instance. Apparently the developers plan to introduce several more things to the dome over time, such as player race track, duels, casino stuff, and more. There's already quite a bit to see, but it's all basically player management stuff. The dome is a large circle, with shops on all sides and a hub in the center for queuing and such.
There are a lot of shops: armor, genetic enhancements, skill replacement, facial reconstruction, a barber shop, a seasonal specialty shop, an auction house, an agency management house (agency = guild), and more. Several of them were 'closed'--presumably they had stuff that wasn't going to be available til the actual launch fab 1st. It all looked cool, though, and the menus for the shops are straight forward and interesting.
One thing, the armor doesn't really provide stat bonuses, as far as I can tell. It just makes you look cooler. Since this is really a shooter at it's core, it's really all about skill as a player, not having superior gear. This, I like. When I went to the VR training room (more on that later), some of the guys looked pretty pimped out compared to my nub, but I held my own just fine.
Before heading into combat to try out the actual game, I opened up my profile to see what kinds of shit there was for me to customize. I was a little overwhelmed.
The main character window. This is the first bit of customizing you do, and perhaps the most important. Notice at the bottom I have 'Device Points.' Basically, every device (gun, jetpack, abilities, etc) has a device cost, and you are allowed to put whatever you want on your toon, as long as it doesn't exceed the device cost. Some devices are free, others not so much. You also have different versions of each weapon or skill. The higher the damage, the higher the device point cost.
I threw together a bunch of shit, just to see how it would work. My dagger, jetpack, and boost (a passive party buff) were free. I gave myself a great gun, a decent heal gun (more on that in a second), a decent aoe heal, and a great heal grenade (yeah.). I was ready.
Next was the appearance tab. This is where you put your cosmetic armor.
This is the mods tab. Here you can add modifiers to your character (this is basically like gear from WoW - each has a bonus). They aren't cosmetic, meaning you can look however you want with custom armor and still have the stats you need with custom mods.
Oh yeah, there's a three-page talent tree as well. It works a lot like wow, except it's not as integral to how you fight, at least not at first. Medic spec choices are balanced (dps/heals), heals, and poison (dps). I had no points, so I didn't 'spec' at all.
Stats and skills. Note the crafting. Yeah, there's crafting. Crafting basically lets you build the armor and weapon mods described above. I had no money, so I couldn't yet try out crafting.
There's also an inventory and achievements tab, but neither had any data on them so meh.
Next, I found the AvA screen. AvA is basically agency (guild) or alliance (several guilds) pvp. This is the 'persistent, mmo' part of the game, and it looks awesome.
There are six of these large hex maps. Each hex is a different battlefield where guilds can fight for control. Some hexes have bonuses, others come with factories and the like. Agencies and Alliances basically fight for control of large areas, then they can build a ton of different buildings in captured territory, creating their own economy and base. Mines, crafting stations, research stations, and more are available, as far as I can tell. Since i'm only level 5 and only have played an hour or so, I didn't really get a chance to look into the system too deeply. However, the whole thing looks really deep, and very interesting.
Next is the instance menu. There are basically 10 types of instances to play, each with a variety of actual maps. On the left side are pvp instances, on the right side pve instances. pvp types are things like VIP, zone control, escort, assault, and more. PvE missions are varied and rank from low security to very high security, in difficulty. PvE missions have level requirements, pvp missions do not.
These instances are done in groups of four. The game automatically places one of each class in a group, to ensure the group has all the tools it needs to survive. it attempts to balance experience as well, so level 5s dont go up against level 40s.
These instances, along with AvA, are how you get xp and money. Do them, get rewards, buy stuff, do more. Basically, it's an extremely robust version of call of duty or TF2, with a ton of RPG elements.
Ok. So after exploring all of this and getting pretty excited, I decided to head into the VR arena. this is straight up team deathmatch pvp, with no rewards. It's a place to test specs and device setups, and make some friends. It's a TON of fun.
This is the prep area. Here you cannot shoot or use skills, but you can set up your equipment and inventory. Meaning you can experiment on the fly.
I checked my set up, ran outside, and-
I learned the medic is total ass on his own, as it should be. While my melee is decent and can poison the enemy, I just don't have the hp or armor to survive on my own. So I found myself an assault friend, and we stuck together like glue.
This is the heal gun. It's basically a heal beam similar to the medic's in TF2, if you've played that game. It heals the target and me, and it really frustrates enemy players. I was the only medic on the whole map, and while it was tracking stats, I'm sure I helped a ton. When it came down to it, I could easily whip out my rifle, zoom in, and shoot some bitches, but my strength was of course keeping up the 2-ton minigun weilding assault guy in front of me. We were unstoppable.
Guns are fun and interesting to shoot. You see numbers like other mmos, and I feel like skill is a big part of the combat. Melee is awesome, hacking at poor bastards, watching their shields fry. Skills are neat, and it looks like there are a lot to learn.
Oh, if you look in the center of that screenshot you see my health (the green number and bar) and energy (the blue ones). Health is self-explanatory, and energy is like mana or rage. Basically, everything you do, from stealthing, healing, shooting, jetpacking, etc, consumes energy. Your energy refills quickly enough (except when some fuck is shooting at me, then it feels super slow), but it is a powerful delimiter on what you do, and helps keep the game centered on skill-based combat.
The jetpack is awesome. Playing this game is very twitchy, but I felt myself getting better as I played. At first I was a bit overwhelmed, but soon I was jetpacking in, healign the tank, getting out my gun and shooting a dude, meleeing a recon in the back (backstab +DoT yeah!), dropping a heal grenade (it's as epic as it sounds), then jetpacking out.
There are a lot of things going for this game. The big one? no subsciption fees. Sure, you can pay 13 bucks a month and get the AvA system, some extra crafting stuff, and a few other perks (including all the new content), but if you just buy the game you get all the leveling, equipment, and, most importantly, all the shooty goodness you could want.
Also, the time commitment just isn't there: you can hop in, play a couple games, maybe level, and call it good. If you WANT to be hardcore and join an alliance and do the AvA stuff, it's there. In fact, the devs have explained there will eventually be raiding content, to continue the (actually pretty interesting) pve story.
Following posts will contain previews on the other three classes, at level 5, in the VR Arena.
Comments
Recon
So, the next character I decided to try is the Recon. This is the stealth/dps class. They have excellent melee or sniper abilities, and several kinds of mines and bombs to chuck. It was pretty lame, but then again I'm not a rogue-class kind of player. I did learn some things though.
The Recon has three spec choices: balanced, Infiltration, and Marksman. It appears the balanced tree is the same across classes, and is in fact and general stats booster. It gives you more health, energy, etc. It's basically level progression in a talent tree. The Infiltration tree is about boosting stealth and bombs, and sword skill.
The marksman tree is about SURPRISE! Shooting.
You get lots of kinds of bombs and shit to choose from eventually. I had available to me an augment that makes it so that I take no fall damage for a time, as well as a boost to run speed. There was a firebomb, which basically blew up and set shit on fire. I killed myself with this bomb. There was also a mine, which you plant and wait for some idiot to walk over it.
I did notice that the toon ran significantly faster than my medic did, and her jetpack lasted a bit longer. It would seem there are some subtle differences between each class in areas liek speed. Also, the body shapes are different. The assault woman looks like a fucking amazon.
Stealthed. This very slowly drains your power. At first you are somewhat visible, but you do become completely invisible after a moment, though of course you can still see yourself. It works quite well, especially when you can pop out swords blazing and backstab the fuck out of some guy.
Rifle scope.
The Recon's rifle fires much faster, and does more dmage than the medic's. Though it felt less accurate.
When you die, you get to watch others play while you wait to respawn (in the VR Arena, respawn is 8 seconds--not sure what it is in real pvp or pve).
Up next: assault!
Assault
Now this was fun. Assault is basically a huge tanky motherfucker with a minigun and a heart of gold. I found myself running out of targets to shoot at, but the fun I had means it's going to be harder for me to decide which class to focus on. The medic was awesome, but this chick just blew shit up.
She had the balance tree, of course. The other two were Tank (no fucking around there) and Explosives. The tank tree focuses on health, armor, and improving shielding abilities. The explosives tree focuses on the insanity of the assault class' weapons.
I had three devices to choose from: a shield with an aoe radius that protects everyone aroudn me until it takes 2k damage (which is quite a bit--almost my whole healthpool); a 'perfect target' augment that makes me invulnerable for 10 seconds and forces all turrets to target me (which is huge--turrets do a lot of damage); and an emp grenade that stuns folks so I can fill them with angry leaded goodness. I used this once on a Recon that tried to stealth and get away. Tore him up real nice.
The meat and potatoes is the minigun. Sheer insanity. It drains your power pretty quickly, but fuck is it fun to fill squishes full of plasma or whatever the hell it shoots. You also get a regular rifle and a fucking battleaxe. In short, Assault is awesome.
Next and last, robotics!
Robotics
And for the last class, Robotics. This is a class I really wanted to like. And, in fact, I did like it. Unfortunately it feels like a class that will come into it's own only when you're in a good group that's focused on getting shit done. and working together.
The robotics class has this cool robot arm hanging off their back, which is their special feature weapon. It's actually a robot heal beam that only works on turrets and other robotics pets. You can use it to heal, or, if a turret is building, you can beam it to speed up the build process. From the looks of the list, the robotics guys can have a lot of different kinds of turrets: Rockets, healing beams, shields, etc.
I started with this awesome electrified mace. I have to say, I like the art style of this game a lot, the more I play it. I also noticed while wandering around in the dome a lot of players with customized armor. It looks pretty cool. Of course, because it's beta, I don't plan to spend a TON of time on anythign, cause it's going to be wiped. Props to these losers who had the free time to do it in a beta.
Here's my turret: it's called a personal turret, and it shoots bullets at assholes that come around the corner. I deployed about fifty of them (a new one destroys the old one, as does my death), but never saw them shoot at anyone. Anyway, they're neat.
This is called an eye. It detects stealth. They stealthed guy this one saw showed up, then killed me before I could react. Helpful.
This was a cool one: it's a wall that stops bullets one-way. So I could shoot out of it while noone could shoot in, until it took enough damage to blow up. See the fucker sneaking past it? what an ass.
This is someone else's heal drone. It's pretty cool.
The robotics class is neat, but it looks like it requires a lot more time and attention to what the fuck is going on in the game. I hope to spend more time on it later.
---
Well, that wraps up my beta report on Global Agenda. I'm going to have fun with the game, I can tell. Three of the four classes really interest me, and I'm about to go try a real pvp game to see how much I truly suck ass.
Let me know if you want me to look into anything else in the game. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was helpful to see some of the game! Good luck out there.
Pretty good summary of the basics, i enjoyed reading it.
Enjoyed reading this and thanks for the info. Looks like a game I could get into for sure. Last game I played that wasn't a fantasy based game was probably Counter-Strike...yeah the original one.
Neat
ty.:)
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
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"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
Nice write up Gem, I enjoyed reading that. Haven't been too interested in GA so far, but your write up has swayed me somewhat. Maybe I need to stop thinking of it in terms of a traditional MMO, and more of a fun game I can dip into as and when I feel like it.
Im a closed beta tester and this game is loads of fun i've played 3 long closed weekends before the preorder month that has been going on and this game is refreshing, new and my kind of game the whole armour with no stats thing is brilliant because then it takes skill over loot to win matches. But that being said this game is very team orientated and the AvA conquest is all about team work.
I don't post very often either, but I enjoyed your perspective on this. You eschewed all the typical review bullshit and focused on the thing that mattered most to you: whether or not you were having fun at any given moment. Awesome. I'd like it if you wrote these for more games (or more for GA) when you get around to it.
Glad ya'll are enjoying the post
The beauty of the game is that it really is a crazy-odd mixture of standard fantasy mmo, counterstrike, planetside, and TF2. For whatever reason, it just seems to work.
I just played my first real pvp game, and it was a blast (quite literally). The group was haphazard, but we did our best and managed to win somehow. Running around healing and being a huge green and white target is loads of fun.
GA works because it's NOT a standard MMO. People have been crying for changes to the genre for ages, and while GA isn't perfect, it's certainly doing something much, much different. People complaining that this isn't an MMO are folks who are just looking for more of the same. I'm not ready to write a review on the game, but I have to say; after years of playing WoW, and before that FFXI, GA is exactly the kind of MMO I'm looking for: new, different, fresh, different, unique, different, and different. It's by no means perfect, but it's still a hell of a good time.
Excellent write up OP
Each class also gets a morale ability (which wasnt mentioned). Once you build up 100 morale, you use a skill that gives you and your team members a huge buff. The assault for example gets one that reduces all damage by 25% for him and his allies within 50 feet. Only 1 per class right now unfortunately, but I can see them adding more over time.
Does anyone have pics of the upgrades? I only have a few terrible greens so far. Basically, they adjust your stats in various ways. One upgrade might buff your health up by a %, add 7 poison resist and reduces all cooldowns by 1 second. 15 slots in all, and they degrade over time until you lose them (though apparently theyre putting in repair vendors instead).Upgrades are what you actual gear is, rather than the armour which is cosmetic. The crafting system is pretty poor right now due to some bad drop rates, but as well as craft them you can also buy them from an NPC.
Bump, thanx a lot, good and interesting read,
Very nice writeup. Enjoying beta myself but I enjoy it for the clan ava the most. The last clan based game I played had a clan ladder that basically allowed clans to duck you if they didn't think they could hang. You try the same stuff in this game and you lose territory and resources which I enjoy. I myself find it hard to enjoy traditional mmo's these days maybe thats why this is a nice concept from my perspective.
Thank you so much for posting something worth looking at with information, screenshots, and no mindless trolling. If anyone trolls or flames on this post, I'll destroy you.
Yeah down to $44.99 from the regular price of $49.99, which is what Steam does to just about EVERY pre-order. Nice troll attempt though.
Its been in the top sellers list for the last few weeks, so it cant be doing that bad. Its even beating l4d2 and avp at this moment.
LOL @ the desperate attempt to troll someway.
Good read, tons of info. Thanks for putting it together!
Some people really need to relax and just have some fun. This game offers a ton of it.
[Mod edit]
Let's not feed the trolls and try to stay on topic.
This game is so fun, i recomend it to anyone. think this is the most fun game ive played in the last 5 years
I have to say, this write-up got more and more entertaining as it approached the end. I thought it was funny how the profanity increased until the end. My favorite line " See the fucker sneaking past it? what an ass" ...I laughed until I cried.
Very entertaining post.
Great preview, Gemfire. Thanks for all the info and the screengrabs.
STO Rear Admiral DOZER TAYLOR TAC ESCORT U.S.S. Deadpool
CO DOC FAHRENHEIT TEACHER ** CO DARKWATCH STUDENT
CO DARTAN STUDENT ** CO RYUMON STUDENT
RIFT - Ketiei - Estrael Shard - DEFIANT FOR LIFE
I enjoyed my time in Beta and can't wait for early launch. I have both it and STO preordered but I can say that I doubt I will even install STO for a bit because GA is a great game.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
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