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Black Prophecy: Gamigo Board Member Addresses the Community
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Since the European launch of Black Prophecy just over a month ago, several issues and concerns from the player community have been raised. To address those issues and to give players a look at the future updates and patch process, Gamigo board member Patrick Streppel has penned a 'state of the game' letter. In it, he gives the community a look at the game's current state and a peek at what is yet to come.
Upon the announcement of the game’s launch, certain voices in the community suggested that the game was not yet “finished” and that more development time was required. We take these concerns very seriously and are happy to discuss with you what you think is missing but ask you to keep the feedback constructive. I might be getting ahead of myself here but a lot of mission content, PvP elements and other features are already on the way to fulfill the promises we made.
Some have compared Black Prophecy with an unpolished diamond. This comparison gets closer to the heart of it. The decision to release Black Prophecy at this point in time was agreed upon by both Reakktor Media and gamigo. Many obstacles have been overcome in the past few years to get this far and we are extremely happy and proud of the result. No MMOG sees the light of day completely polished and perfectly working, but be assured that all involved parties are 100% dedicated not only to perfecting the current game but to bringing so much more to it.
Read more on the Black Prophecy forums.
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Comments
The game itself is fine, the problem is that its the biggest grind I have ever seen since Maplestory.
How does this game compare to Vendetta Online or EvE? Need a frame of reference. Looks great.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I'd like to know too. Is the combat more fast paced than Eve, and include full control of your ship?
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The ONLY things this game has going for it at the moment are the graphics, reasonably good character creation (which is rendered pointless the second you enter the game, ala EVE where you are your ship) and the flight. Everything else is sub-par at best and downright insulting to western gaming sensibilities at worst. The combat is clunky, the "crafting" is pointless and about as deep as a mud puddle, the prologue (tutorial) is excruciating to get through because of all the cut scenes and text to read.
Not to mention that, and this is partially my own fault, my expectations and what the game actually delivers are so wide apart That I can't reconcile it. I was expecting more Freelancer with more MMOG elements like deeper gathering/crafting and social tools, but you really don't get anything like that... Nothing that has been said by production or development has led me to believe that they have any intention of changing any of the "shortcomings" that I mentioned, so if you were expecting from Black Prophecy what I was expecting, then you might be better off not bothering, yet...
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
That's extremely disappointing.
STO will have to do for now.
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As I said in my above post, the flight controls are good. They aren't "real world physics" type, but more of an arcade style. The downside is that in my opinion is that the combat that goes along with it is clunky. The weapons don't act the way that I feel they should. They just don't feel right.
As for other aspects that would make BP similar to EVE or even a game like VO, there are none really. The only "gathering" is loot drops from defeated ships that you then use for crafting. The crafting is basically a 1 level "insert-component-press-button-wait" mechanic with no depth at all.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Cheers for the info above. I'll go for the Vendetta Online trial for now and can always default to EvE (eventually).
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Freelancer mmo would be friggin awsome, next to a Earth@Beyond 2
I don't think the combat is as bad as darkholme makes it out to be. But he is right about the game otherwise.
Graphics and combat are the only things this game has. Crafting is useless, especially considering putting a mod on a part takes 20+ minutes that you can not play the game until it is done. Literally. You have to sit on the crafting screen in the station and wait for it to finish. You can't do anything else at all unless you close the crafting window.
There is no real reason to pvp other than bragging rights afaik. The grind is insane. Same old missions over and over and over and over and over and over and over just to get like 1% of total needed at level 8, and that's with bonus (think rested) xp! That's a little exaggerated, but it's exactly what it feels like.
If they want a big focus on pvp, they shouldn't be dragging out the pve stuff.
All-in-all the game needs a lot of work to make it worth spending any money on. Graphics are pretty, but gameplay is king, and the king is MIA.
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The pen is mightier than the sword, and authority is mightier than the pen, but the sword is mightier than authority.
If you can't beat 'em, hold 'em off 'till you come up with a better plan.
I don't think this game was made for EvE players.. No offense, but it is not an in depth spreadhseet stock market click-to-attack-and-move while watching yor skills raise and build starbases for defense type of thing.. It's Wing Commander, cut and dry.. You get in your ship and fly around killing things.. No suit and tie or blazers needed..
I find it refreshing from all that clickity click click "space sim" stuff.. Hopefully down the line they COULD add things more of the Freelancer style where being a smuggler or trader is possible.. But I hope they do not turn the whole game into a game about trading.. They just need to flesh out the universe and add more open areas, and ships with some kind of real consequence to death..
It's all about expectations. I know how I want my space shooter to feel when I am in combat, and for me, Black Prophecy doesn't even come close in most regards. Some weapons are better than others, but for the most part it doesn't meet my expectations.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
No it's not, not even close. I think you guys are mixing up the flight controls and combat in one bag. The controls are great, the actual feel of the combat is lacking and is nothing like a Wing Commander, Privateer or X-Wing/Tie Fighter... or Freelancer even. They TRY to feel like those games, but it falls way short of the mark IMO.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
I thought his "no MMOG is 100% complete on launch" comment was quite amusing. Everything he talks about adding should have been in the game WHEN it released. Not promise it "Soon(tm)." Half-assed releases might have been par for the course a year ago, but I think you'll continue to see the polished release trend that Rift had continue into the next few upcoming titles. This entire entry sounds nothing more than one big excuse...and you know what they say about excuses.
I had high hopes for this game, but it's about as shallow as a kiddie pool.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I got sucker'ed into a STO Lifetime, but i rather play BP... sure, it has a Coin Shop but STO has also along with monthly fee (for subs).
What the heck? ppl complaining about the story cutscenes and having to read?? Sure, complain about crafting, complain about combat, complain about ships, but don't go complaiing about the story cutscenes.
Saddly since EA decided to terminate Earth & Beyond to focus on their "next big hit" The Sim Online, we've been lacking on Space games, BP has its good and bad spots, some will like it and some will hate it... regardless WE NEED MORE SPACE GAMES and less Elfs-With-Swords MMO clones that get more retarded friendly with each cloning.
In most f2p games you'll spend more than 15/month especally if it has pvp if you wanna compete, if you don't you usually just get rolled. I'd rather pay 15/month and have everything pretty much be balanced, then play a f2p game, not spend, and have almost everyone who has spent roll me with me being unable to really do anything about it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
If you go through the prologue of the game in it's current state, you would see what I mean and am complaining about. I love story, and I don't mind cutscenes when done right. I'm one of those crazy people that reads all the quest text and actually gets into the lore of a game. However it is all way too much at least in the prologue/tutorial of BP. It's the kind of game that you really want to jump rght into and be a part of the action, but they stop the action way too often for things like "Quicktime events", long dialog text reads and such.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
There are cutscenes where it shows the ship docking or undocking a ship. Sometimes these cutscenes are 10-40 seconds long depending! And there are many of those scenes in the prolouge that don't allow you to skip! What's the point if watch a ship fly into a bigger ship?
The grind is excruitiaing. It's like they didn't even try with the missions.
Get mission from Contact, kill 10 thing, return mission for exp + coin, get new mission, kill 25 things and return etc etc etc.
Where, that gets boring after about 150 baddies shot down. The graphics are very pretty, that's about it
I can't even get past customer support without complaint on this. The graphics are nice. The gameplay is okay. I agree that the grind gets old quick, but then again, doesn't it always regardless of the game? I think the auto-target is a bit lacking. But my biggest issue is not even with the game itself per se.
I had a couple bugs occur and tried to submit bug reports on them, but I can't get my forum account activated. I've followed the instructions listed on the site, and it doesn't work. So I contact customer support and give them full details, step by step on what's happening and where it's failing. 3 days later, I get a canned response with a cut and paste from the site itself with the very directions I outlined as not-working for me. So I try again, hoping maybe there was just a language breakdown, and they fixed it, and were just asking me to try it again. Nope, still won't activate. So, I reply, explaining that this is exactly what I've tried via multiple browsers, multiple times, etc and its not working and asked them to please take the time to read the support ticket description befored cut/pasting a generic response.
Their response? 2-3 days later I got the exact same cut/paste back , plus an additional note stating they were closing the ticket. Gee, Thanks for the support.
Yes I know I'm getting what I paid for, and that this is a seemingly minor issue. But it's also one that should be relatively easy to fix, and if they can't be bothered to resolve it, what else are they going to let slip?
I stopped playing, not because I don't think it has potential, but I'm supposed to be beta testing it, and if they brought me into the beta, but then refused to let me help with the testing by not letting me post bug reports, then there's no reason for me to keep playing.