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MMO Launch Spotlight: Plenty of New MMOs To Check Out This Week | MMORPG.com
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MMO Launch Spotlight: Plenty of New MMOs To Check Out This Week | MMORPG.com
This week we saw a few Chinese MMOs hit Steam, Mad World made a big debut, and Kritika Zero finally reached a global release.
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Notice: KRITIKA: ZERO is no longer available on the Steam store. At last minute they changed to the VFUN korean ptw launcher only, its like Gamico but with more awefulness.
The second, Kritika Reboot, was published directly on Steam by ALLM, the original developer. That was janky and broke a lot of things that had worked in the En Masse version. It also set the difficulty to be trivial so that you could one-shot basically everything at the highest difficulty, sometimes including bosses.
The third, Kritika Global, was supposed to be a "play to earn" NFT scam of some sort with horrible monetization. I didn't try that one at all.
Now it's being both published and apparently developed by Valofe. It sounds like they're redoing some stuff. They also have only four classes (the eleven is specializations within classes) as compared to eight from the original Kritika Online.
I'll probably give it a shot sometime. The difficulty has been adjustable in previous versions, and I hope that they allow it to scale up to be a good challenge. If they can do that without breaking much, then I'll probably play it for quite a while.
The En Masse version was heavily modified from the original Korean release. They buffed the heck out of mobs, and applied shields to pretty much all bosses, that normally didn't show up until level 65+ content. These changes didn't make it harder, it just made it more punishing, and slowed the pace of game play way down, especially against bosses that would have big attacks you should have been able to interrupt, but couldn't due to the shields they added, it was like if they took Devil May Cry, and tried to turn it into Dark Souls. They also basically disabled player trading, and made an auction house that ran on a type of secondary cash shop currency, with poorly conceived fixed min, and max prices, among other changes. Lots of people got fed up with the changes, and quit, especially shortly before launch, when they applied those mob changes to the at the time end game content.
Reboot was handled by the developers, ALLM, and was basically as it was in Korea. It was suppose to be a fast paced action game, which this was, and later content did take more doing, although if you were over powered for the content, you could of course curb stomp at least most of it. It had trading, and the auction house ran on the basic in-game currency, gold. This version lasted the longest, until Com2uS came along.
The third version was a result of Com2uS purchasing a controlling interest in ALLM, they had ALLM close Reboot, then launched the play to earn crypto mess that was Kritika Global. That died pretty fast, then Valofe purchased all, or just about all of ALLM's IP, including Kritika.
Kritika Zero is a fully global release, as all previous ones in every region have apparently been shut down, to make way for this one. It didn't have a beta, so I would have expected they'd just use an only slightly modified Korean version, which would have been what people in most locations were familiar with, as only lucky us in NA, and EU got all those fun fucked up versions. Although such would not be the case sadly, as they increased the skill resource cost (typically MP) by a lot, and reduced player damage output, so now after just a few uses of skills, we're stuck with using mostly basic attacks to regenerate said resources, all those attacks do less damage, so it just slowed things way down again. That is the issue people are the most annoyed with, but aside from that they also fiddled with other things, like killing player trading, and went with an auction house that uses a secondary cash shop currency, so like in the En Masse version, the auction house is pretty dead. Valofe has listened to complaints in the past, so it's possible that they will do away with these insane changes, and just go back to something at least close to what most are familiar with, and were looking to play, but right now it sort of feels like the En Masse version all over again, which again resulted in many announcing that they were fed up, and quitting.
I've got to find a way to get back there.
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The En Masse version let you adjust the difficulty anywhere from quite easy to very difficult. The ALLM version let you adjust the difficulty, but the highest setting was completely trivial, which is stupid and boring.
I haven't tried the latest version, but if you're going to make the difficult adjustable, then the highest setting should at least allow it to be challenging if that's what the player wants. Slaughtering monsters that don't even pretend to fight back isn't fun.
As for other, side stuff like the auction house, that only matters if the core combat is good. A mostly combat game with bad combat is a terrible game.
zero has tons of issues , u will see , u run out of mana in 4 skills and are forced to AA ...
Most of them aren't my cup of tea but that Soulmask thing looks interesting.
TY for the list!
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
You presented your info as if the En Masse version, was the base version, and Reboot (the ALLM version) was the altered one, when it was actually the other way around. The only region that got all those altered versions before now, was the NA & EU region, so for most people, what they're used to is the Korean version, and that's what they were looking to play, not a heavily modified version.
How far did you even get in Reboot, did you play the end game level 75 content, or did you give up part way through the levelling process? When Blade & Soul originally came out, you had to work at fights all the way through, later you could just coast your way to end game, although once you got there, it was the same difficult group only content focused game it had always been. This is the normal thing with a lot of online games, which is why so many say that the game starts at end game.
The En Masse version wasn't difficult, it was punishing. The thing that makes harder versions in a game more difficult isn't just higher stats for mobs, it's the mobs having more mechanics, which require you to play better. With the En Masse version, all they did was massively buff mobs, so even just a few hits from normal mobs could kill you, and you could be killed from one shot by elites, and bosses. This didn't require you to play better, as you could just stock up on revive stones from the cash shop. What they added was artificial difficulty, not true difficulty.
Kritika was designed to be played fast, and aggressively, although by massively buffing mobs, and applying late game boss shields to pretty much all bosses, you had to play slow, and careful, unless you wanted to keep stocking up on revive stones from the cash shop. This was not the experience many wanted, so many quit, especially after people saw those changes being applied to content they had been playing that didn't have those changes earlier in that version. You can try to defend that version all you want, but it failed, it objectively failed. Then if the En Masse way for doing things was so good, why did they go out of business? Also if Reboot was so bad, why did it have a 76% approval rating on Steam ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/439350/KritikaREBOOT/ ), I'd say that's pretty good.
The current version is basically the En Masse version all over again, except instead of slowing game play by buffing mobs, it did so by nerfing players. People are most certainly not happy, they wanted to keep playing the game they were used to, which was the way it was in Korea, with maybe some improvements, not some heavily modified version. With the current Valofe version, you still need to play aggressively, but the cost of using skills was increased to such an absurd degree, that skills are more like special attacks you can only use now, and then, while most of the time you're just using your basic attack. Although they also reduced the attack strength of players quite a bit, so fights just drag on, and on. Either way, the pacing of the game is much slower than what people wanted, so they aren't happy, so like many did during the En Masse version, they're quitting, it's just that unlike back then, they can't move to another region, and play it as it should be.
In the En Masse version, if you wanted to win on the "insane" difficulty, you had to learn the boss fights. You had to learn what the boss's moves were, when it was safe to attack, how many attacks you could land before you had to get out of the way, when you had to dodge, and so forth. In the Reboot version, you didn't need to know anything about the boss because every boss fight was the same: run up to the boss and attack and it will immediately die. Even if you prefer the latter, you could have it in the En Masse version by lowering the difficulty.
No, I didn't get very far in the Reboot version. You don't have to get very far to tell that leveling content is trivial and awful. If they're going to make the difficulty adjustable, then what is the point of making all of the difficulty options equally trivial?
Yes, it's common for MMORPGs to make leveling content that is intentionally awful, but require you to slog through it anyway. But just because other games do something awful that ruins the game doesn't mean that every new game should copy it. That's the primary reason why the genre is in bad shape. It's kind of like the old "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?", except that it's not just hypothetical.
Developers make players an offer of, we have tried to make this game absolutely miserable to play for many hours. If you slog through all of that, then the endgame is totally different. You probably won't like the endgame, either, because it's basically buying a random, new game that you know nothing about, but you can't even find out unless you spend many hours doing something incredibly boring first. Want to play? It shouldn't be surprising that most gamers don't.
It's not about being the original, it's about being what people wanted. Then as you didn't get very far in Reboot, you can't actually comment on how it easy it supposedly was, since as you even conceded, it is common for online games to be pretty easy until you get to at least around end game. It doesn't matter if you like that it's that way, or not, that's just how things often are.
Again, people wanted the fast paced aggressive play of Kritika as they knew it, and neither the En Masse, nor current Valofe version delivered that, which is why so many got fed up, and quit. Aside from that, it was DESIGNED to be played fast, and aggressively, so when someone later tries to fundamentally change how it is to be played, it stands to reason it won't work out well, and won't be what many wanted from it. If you want a slower, more careful type of action RPG, then go play a game that was designed to be played that way, such as a Souls like game, but that simply wasn't what most people wanted from Kritika, either then, or now, that's a fact, and you'll just have to accept that.
Your point of view on Kritika has by the results of the En Masse version, Reboot, and the current Valofe version been shown to in fact be the opinion of the minority. While you have been trying to present it as fact, or at the very least the widely held view, when it was neither. You need to learn that there is a difference between opinion, and fact, also that what you want, may not be what most people want.
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Valofe has recently shown that they have acknowledged that people aren't happy, and stated that they are working on making changes. They made some minor simple changes now which help some what, like sending every character a daily batch of MP potions, and adding some potions to a NPC. They seem to be treating this live version as a beta test, which is odd, but there is at least some hope that it will be adjusted to something more like what the majority of people that were looking to play Kritika wanted.