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[Column] Skyforge: My Love/Hate Relationship with Skyforge
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Don’t get me wrong, Skyforge is a pretty fun game, but it’s obviously flawed in so many ways. So much so that my desire to keep plugging away at the Ascension Atlas, repetition be damned, is something that boggles my mind whenever I click play.
Read more of Michael Bitton's My Love/Hate Relationship with Skyforge.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
LOL
You haven't even mentioned the decision to limit Pantheon size or the buggy chat system (eats chat text) and contact list disappearing or no reliable way to tell who's really on-line.
As a commander this has made my life difficult to have to tell your guildies they have to wait until the Pantheon expansion mission (1 member per clan) finishes. We've been in since OB early access and we're only 45 members large and we have that many waiting to get invited.
I'm not sure why the chat issues, biggest being chat messages "eaten", isn't one of the biggest priorities.
This is my road in Skyforge.
- Bought early access bundle
- Installed game
- All looks so damn good
- 4h latter, quest grind, quest grind, quest grind, quest take ages....
- Grind, grind, grind all look almost the same....
- Uninstall
I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.
Current: Dragonrealms
Some just don't manage burnout very well and if a game isn't easy mode the whole way they quit quickly cause the progression isn't instant which is what I look at as a flaw in most systems, but others can't seem to make this distinction it seems and it boils down to if they like the game style or not.
Personally I like the action combat and the way Skyforge plays so the grind to me is second nature as I will not burnout easily on this formula as I like the genre it hails from and really after the grind it just boils down to niche and Skyforge is my niche, regardless of the grind, which I also like.
I'm not sure why you would speculatively throw out something so easily verifiable as a memory leak.
Believing it is poorly optimized is very reasonable. Speculating there's a memory leak makes no sense! It either does or does not.
Does your game process use more memory than it's supposed to? Does it creep up in size indefinitely after starting it and rendering the game? Did you try even looking at Task Manager (or any suitable 3rd party utility if your keyboard is inexplicably missing a Ctrl or Alt or Del key)?
I was raised on grinding in MMO's so this doesn't bother me. Some MMO's gave xp loss on death so at higher levels you could lose days of leveling. This is like an arcade style mmo.
Good article. A lot of the game seems needlessly complicated and it would help of they had tutorial videos on youtube as they even have an in-game link to the internet they can use. One nice thing is players getting a lot of help in chat. They could also use a dedicated new player channel in chat.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The only time someone should consider something a grind, is when it is not enjoyable. Grinding should be something you do when you just want to take a mindless approach to getting the EXP or other resource you need/want. This could simply just be to the next level. Or maybe it is for multiple levels.
But if something is repetitive and enjoyable, is it a grind?
People complain if there are not many PvE or PvP zones available to them, that are level relevant. Or if a game like a MOBA or FPS doesn't have enough different maps. Consider this perspective for fun: Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey all take place on the exact same "map/zone". What a horrible grind! Surely those sports can't survive. Who wants to watch those guys grind out games every year?
I agree about the chat UI. It's really unintuitive. Just trying to put someone on ignore is a nuisance.
Was watching a RU streamer today with about 96k prestige and he showed the new chat system they have its way less clunky then the old one. He also said some of the bugs are fixed on RU servers but it still has a little bit of issues.
I do think Skyforge is a decent game I just wish they made the game more beginner friendly at the start by letting you pick any class as a starting class. The whole church thing isn't too bad imo it has been improved over the version i saw in CBT1. The sparks limit is what it is. It sucks in the beginning, I hear the cap goes up to 20k sparks a week sooner or later. And if the cap is a big deal to someone they can play it for the first week and start storing the cap while they put it down for a month and come back and have a huge cap to work down since the Cap adds to your current cap each week.
Overall this is a decent casual game I will play along with PoE and probably GW2 HoT when ever that launches.
Screw leveling games, give me something with "End game" at the beginning of the game.
I love this game and want to play it but every time I log in I get the same sinking feeling. This game just seems to be missing something at every turn. I normally play a tank or a healer role in every MMO I dive into. I am not much for pew pew and I rarely PVP unless I am required to by the game progression. This has let me to dig into the Paladin class while making my way over to the Knight. I love being the tank I like that up front looking for angles part of the grouping environment, so why does Skyforge just seem so broken when it comes to tanking. The mechanics are there the mobs hit hard, not all moves are telegraphed so dmg mitigation is required but without the healer role it always leads to the same feeling. Can my dps kill this before I die or hope the dps can drop another heal bar so this mob poops out a healing orb. I get the feeling like this game was originally designed for the Holy Trinity System but at the last min they decided to nix healers. Other than trying to balance healers in pvp I dont really get why they need to not have healing classes. I have been playing for a week and I am already logging off because I just got tired of dying in a dungeon because I couldnt CC enough myself and the support class does nothing but dps with the rest of the group. This game is awesome looking and the atlas system sets it apart from many other games I just feel like the healer role should be there but isnt. Am I missing something?
Probly just showing my age but was it really so wrong to be a bad ass cleric decked out in purple dropping massive heals on a tank all while staring at the wall?
Our Pantheon now has 121 members (11 clans of 11) and its so hard to make sure everyone is doing the pantheon missions.
This game does have a lot of cool things, but so many ANNOYING things. They really need to fix the pvp ques and chat channels asap before this game bleeds out
Don't forget the wonky targeting system. If you want to target the one tougher mob in a group of trash, the pointer doesn't hilight the desired mob and there "F" tab targeting goes on a random picking fest with it usually being dumb luck if the senior mob gets selected.
Also, if you unlock a more advanced class, you are locked into grinding the same instanced zone over and over to get the colored sparks needed to get anywhere with you new class. The larger zones only give colored sparks the first time you do the large open zone.
Will sadly be avoiding this game tell some major fixes are made. This probably means i'll be playing something else. I did have one week of fun.
All your points are right on.
Memory leak is a big drawback, as the game will crash randomly.
Logging back in is a tedious process, since the client does not shut down or terminate efficiently. It's always a three step process to log in: 1) Log in, wait 5 minutes watching loading screen, get notification that password is incorrect, then terminate process; 2) Go back to launcher and click Play again, wait to be told client is busy; wait another few minutes, click play again, client is still busy; wait another few minutes; 3) Click play again, finally log in correctly and get to play.
This whole process takes 10 to 15 minutes. Terrific waste of time for a game that should load instantly from the launcher.
You really have to enjoy the class you are playing and be one with its mechanics because it is the same thing over and over again. There are basically two differently play styles: A) whack boss up close, dash away from attacks, return to whack boss; repeat for 10 minutes until boss is down; and
for ranged attackers, you can just move from side to side, or around in circles while you fire away, with the occasionally dash away from boss attacks. And that's basically it. Once you have these two techniques down, you realize every class fits into one of them and that's the sum total of combat.
Today they posted on the launcher that people were not sufficient aware of the importance of the Orders. That's an understatement, but at least they appear to be grasping what a poor job they have done communicating.
Reading some comments i wonder if we are playing same game...
1. Memory leak: never head such a problem. Are u sure you have not some problem in your PC because my Skyforge never crashes nor have optimization problems, runs well also in crowded places. With very high graphic level too. And i have a shit computer, 8GB Ram Intel CoreDuo Quad and Nvidia GTX 560. So I dont really understand...
2. It seems people is lazy or afraid to work hard in a game... these are MMOs not arcade games where you log in, kill some and log off. But I guess lot of people has no time or no patience to level up. I prefer to repeat missions more and more and fight to get what i want than to immediately have everything and quit the game because i have nothing more to do.
3. The chat / social issue is the only thing I dont really like in SF. It MUST be improved.
I think the game is a very good game, probably the best FREE2PLAY game released lately. And it worths the time you spend in it. Well designed, good graphic, good combat system, so many playable classes and not all of them immediately available (that gives a goal to achieve), a good story, well designed NPC and some with a good sense of humor, lot of things to fight for (classes, clothes and so on) and visually appelling. Tell me which F2P game actually can be compared with this one. Ok, some games can have a better combat system, some can have a better story, but at the end no one has EVERYTHING, and graphically very very few F2P games have the same quality than SF (this is obviously not my first MMO, I play/played STO, Defiance, Firefall, Neverwinter, Vindictus, C9, Hounds The Last Hope, Warframe, Dragon Prophet, Repopulation, Wildstar, Entropia Universe, Panzar, Rift...).
Game can be surely improved, every games may be improved. But nevertheless it is a good game.
Exactly this. So many fake haters that never played the game or came past 500 prestige. Noobs. This game is a rock solid AAA MMOARPG with a lot of room for development. Some people even say the graphics are bad, LOL, lies.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, I smell bullshit.
You do not log in and "get" "a quest".
This thread is about Skyforge. Not other games you've played that aren't similar. And not some bullshit imaginary version of Skyforge.