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Gameplay: As of right now the two things to do in game are craft and slay the 5-8 mob types over and over again. Crafting isn’t intuitive at all. Had to pull up several guides to get any kind of grasp on it. Combat feels very clunky and not smooth at all. Collision I thought would be a bigger part of the game. Tried testing collision out with a wizard blasting a group of mobs, and me the warrior stepping in and attempting to whirlwind to little to no avail. Completely ignored me most of the time, and trying to get the melee attack to go off was an act of the gods cause the mobs just seem to bum rush the initial attacker. I noticed a lot of blasters attempting to kite mobs when they were right in their face bashing on them. I’m curious to know if the miss chance of the mobs goes up by doing this or not cause it seemed rather pointless. And trying to attack the moving target with a melee class was very painful with the mobs constantly moving trying to strike the person kiting. The biggest positive for this category is the game world feels big. I like the wide openness feel of the game. As been discussed by numerous people already most of the feats don’t have their icons yet. And we need Feat descriptions in asap. This seems to be the biggest desire outside of PvP content. Another great thing I loved was little to no questing. There was a little tutorial in the beginning that wasn’t too terribly bad. It wasn’t obvious to spot though with the traditional flashing lights or other annoying quest icons over people’s heads. Let’s keep it that way. Reminded me of original EQ where you had to know the slash commands to talk to the npc properly. Gives a bit more of an immersion feel than the hey retard click the dude with the thingabobby over his head that’s glowing.
Visuals: Combat animations are a very rough, the ones that are there are very entertaining though. This issue has been addressed by the developers so I won’t harp on it too much. As far as character model selections go I and a bud made a joke. You want to be the red ponytail or the black ponytail dude. Another person we were playing with that night made the comment my character is ugly and I look like a woman prison inmate. She is all in to vanity and how cute her character looks, so I wouldn't pay her comments no mind. Options are very lacking at the moment, but I am hopeful, that these will expand over time. Terrain graphics looked pretty much the same wherever I went as far as color schemes go. Yes you have mountains and flat lands, but a little bit more variety is left to be desired. Game feels brightly colored and a happy place, but take one step out of town and you have a plethora of the 5-8 mob types to hack, slash, and blast through. Just seems a bit off to me cause there is no graphic transition as far as color schemes went just trees or less trees.
Polish: It’s alpha I don’t expect everything to be fully polished, but going to Early Enrollment (Beta, sorry Ryan I know you don’t like that dirty word, but it is beta) in about 3 weeks has me worried cause there is a lot of polish to be done before then based on the current game state.
Social: This is where the game shines. This is probably one of the most helpful and desirable communities I have seen in a very long time. The main chat is used the most unless you are not in a party. It’s a little hard to follow sometimes cause it moves by so fast at times. What I would love to see get added at some point is an army of emotes to select from just from an RP perspective. Another boon I think might be engaging would to add customizable chat colors on the clients end to color code things as they see fit from tells, settlement chat, general chat just to break up the same chat color feel. Resizing the chat windows or adding customizable tabs would be another benefit from a social aspect.
Innovation: Most of the innovation is still in the pipeline to be delivered to us. I am very hopeful cause everything looks fantastic on paper. The classless system is one thing I have wanted to see in a current MMO for a long long time. My best example I could use would be the glory days of Star Wars Galaxies before all the bad joo joo occurred with it.
Longevity: If Goblinworks can deliver the Innovation that they have promised us on paper in a timely fashion the game will have a very healthy life cycle. Players can’t wait too long for things though I will use Darkfall as an example here. I am not worried though the Developers engage us on a weekly basis either on the forums or a blog post and even in the game itself. And we are seeing updates get pushed out left and right. Big gold star for that my friends.
Value: Alpha is free so you can’t really argue with that. The Early Enrollment price is a bit steep for the current game state which will keep a large populous at a bay till a lot more polish and game mechanics get implemented. This has been addressed already and that they want to keep the player base small for the time being, and I am ok with investing toward the future.
I’m looking forward to what the game becomes over time. As I am very hopeful that this game could be one I invest my time and gold pouch for many years to come.
Goblin Squad Member
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Played a little Archeage over the weekend. It also bills itself as "beta", though that is not completely "true" by my reasoning, since folks on the other side of the Pacific have been playing for a year or so already.
What drew me in was it being advertised as an open-world sandbox, which I thought might make an interesting comparison with PFO.
Since the game's been out for a while (beta claim notwithstanding) and because it borrows heavily from Rift for it's textures and environmentals, I was not at all surprised that it looks more polished than PFO. Honestly, it's a lovely game.
As to the sandboxiness of the game? It's there, but it's limited. While you're leveling, the game is very theme park. Player content supposedly emerges as you approach the level cap. I wasn't close to that, so I can't evaluate the accuracy of that statement. I did see persistent player-made structures (entire villages, in some cases), which was neat and made me look forward to seeing our settlements grow in PFO.
All of the above aside, there were two things that stood out in comparison with PFO, one laudable, the other heinous.
PRO: Lawbreakers are tried and sentenced by juries of randomly selected players. Penalties are "jail time" (temporary character lock, essentially) of between 5 minutes and 48 hours, depending on the severity of the crime, mitigating circumstances, and the overall dickishness of the defendant. All trials are conducted in public. It is fascinating to watch and does seem to keep bad behavior in check.
CON: Ermagerd, the chat. If Obi-Wan thought Mos Eisley was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's only because he was never exposed to thirty seconds of general chat in Archeage. I've never--not even in the old Yahoo News comments sections--seen such venemous, loathsome, outrageous displays of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and types of -isms and -phobias that probably defy classification. It was nauseating, and made me not want to interact with any player at all. I "fixed" it by creating a new chat tab that didn't track anything, including whispers and invites. It's that terrible.
Final conclusion? PFO is rough around the edges, maybe even rough in the middle, but (so far, at least), the in-game community is helpful, informative, reasonably courteous, and above all focused on the game. I did not appreciate this as much as I should have until I spent some time where it is entirely absent.
Virtual high-fives to the PFO player community, for trying something genuinely refreshing in online gaming: being civil.
I played a bit of Archeage myself. It's a Sand Park is how I would describe it. It looks pretty, and the crafting is top notch. I hate the quest system, and it feels very on rails.
It's too much on the themepark side of things versus the sand for me to enjoy it.
So kudos to you PFO for staying classy in the sandbox.
Excellent review Pexx. I have had similar experiences in playing Alpha 7 this weekend (after playing Alpha 6 two weeks ago and then being out of town last weekend). I'm hoping for a lot of improvements in Alpha 8, but as of right now, most of my guild would probably vote wait for more polish before joining. I was able to play with 6 other friends and guild members since you can have 3 people logged in per Alpha account (which is great!).
The basic systems are there, but the clunky nature and (and missing icons on EVERYTHING; skills, abilities, buffs, debuffs) prevents it from being really fun and playable right now. Additionally, the "hooks" are there for a great "tabletop adventure turned into a video game" in terms of difficulty (including a great death penalty), encumbrance, stamina usage, etc, but none of that is implemented yet.
Finally, without the settlement system, the purpose behind it all isn't present. I'm not saying that I don't believe that GW will be able to implement their systems, but if I had a dollar for every time that I've read an MMORPG incredible game system that ended up not being finished or was implemented so flawed that it didn't work... well, I'd have a lot of dollars.
I would really like to see EE start with more polished basic systems and the encumbrance, stamina usage (when running), encumbrance, and a few things like that that would make for a great adventure game to start out with. If that could be followed up with the ability to start working on settlements a month or 2 later, then I think just about everyone would call that a place to start the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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..."jail time" (temporary character lock, essentially) of between 5 minutes and 48 hours...
Do players vote only guilty or not-guilty? What's to stop them, in all their chat-dickishness, from just voting "guilty" as soon as randomly selected, in order to get back to the part of the game they chose to play?
If they also vote on penalty-time, I can see it being fast-and-easy to just whack every defendant with the max sentence, and pay no attention to the particulars of the case.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You get boats and islands by buying them, staking them first, accumulating the resources, or participating in the grindfest. Non criminals can have them as well.
Still a kinda true statement, but not exclusive content to criminals. The last part is totally true you can pvp as much as you wish with no real penalty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Social: This is where the game shines. This is probably one of the most helpful and desirable communities I have seen in a very long time. The main chat is used the most unless you are not in a party. It’s a little hard to follow sometimes cause it moves by so fast at times. What I would love to see get added at some point is an army of emotes to select from just from an RP perspective. Another boon I think might be engaging would to add customizable chat colors on the clients end to color code things as they see fit from tells, settlement chat, general chat just to break up the same chat color feel. Resizing the chat windows or adding customizable tabs would be another benefit from a social aspect.
We do however need a way of tiling or windowing general/party/social to keep an eye on more than one chat as being forced to focus on one chat and then tab to see what people are saying elsewhere is counterproductive.
Alternatively have any tab that has new content flash at you.
At the moment there is very little conversation with people you randomly meet on the road as its all too hard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CON: Ermagerd, the chat. If Obi-Wan thought Mos Eisley was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's only because he was never exposed to thirty seconds of general chat in Archeage. I've never--not even in the old Yahoo News comments sections--seen such venemous, loathsome, outrageous displays of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and types of -isms and -phobias that probably defy classification. It was nauseating, and made me not want to interact with any player at all....
I hope that Goblinworks can prevent PFO chat from reaching that level. There are some venomous and loathsome players in every game, but I hope GW (and the established player base, leading by example and reporting when necessary) can maintain some degree of civility.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CON: Ermagerd, the chat. If Obi-Wan thought Mos Eisley was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's only because he was never exposed to thirty seconds of general chat in Archeage. I've never--not even in the old Yahoo News comments sections--seen such venemous, loathsome, outrageous displays of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and types of -isms and -phobias that probably defy classification. It was nauseating, and made me not want to interact with any player at all....I hope that Goblinworks can prevent PFO chat from reaching that level. There are some venomous and loathsome players in every game, but I hope GW (and the established player base, leading by example and reporting when necessary) can maintain some degree of civility.
In EVE hubs the main offenders are religion and US politics, though the Russian and Ukrainian players really have issues currently if they turn up in the same system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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..."jail time" (temporary character lock, essentially) of between 5 minutes and 48 hours...Do players vote only guilty or not-guilty? What's to stop them, in all their chat-dickishness, from just voting "guilty" as soon as randomly selected, in order to get back to the part of the game they chose to play?
If they also vote on penalty-time, I can see it being fast-and-easy to just whack every defendant with the max sentence, and pay no attention to the particulars of the case.
The trials only seem to last about a minute (the evidence comes straight from the server, so mitigating facts are the only point of debate), so most of the jurors take it reasonably seriously. The worst penalty I saw was 95 minutes. A half-hour looked roughly average.
And Ryan is correct--if you really want to be a pirate, being abominable is the fast-track to the required negative reknown. The challenge, I believe, is getting away with it!
As much as I have agreed with other posters regarding involuntary loss of agency being a bad game mechanic, I have to admit I found the player trial system quite novel and clever.
In PFO, the hard-coded reputation hit for certain actions is probably more fair in a general sense (and absolutely more consistent), at the expense of flexibility in doling out penalties due to extenuating circumstances.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Still a kinda true statement, but not exclusive content to criminals. The last part is totally true you can pvp as much as you wish with no real penalty.
if someone kills you on one of the starting continents regardless of weather you attacked them or not you get to go to jail for 2 hours every time. And often you are a PvP target without having the possibility of attacking first. You also loose access to about 2/3 of the opportunity to have land.
Being in the pirate faction is way more inconveniencing then described here. I'd even say that it is a pretty meaningfull and grow what I read here a more permanent one then the reputation system as planned in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CON: Ermagerd, the chat. If Obi-Wan thought Mos Eisley was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's only because he was never exposed to thirty seconds of general chat in Archeage. I've never--not even in the old Yahoo News comments sections--seen such venemous, loathsome, outrageous displays of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and types of -isms and -phobias that probably defy classification. It was nauseating, and made me not want to interact with any player at all....I hope that Goblinworks can prevent PFO chat from reaching that level. There are some venomous and loathsome players in every game, but I hope GW (and the established player base, leading by example and reporting when necessary) can maintain some degree of civility.In EVE hubs the main offenders are religion and US politics, though the Russian and Ukrainian players really have issues currently if they turn up in the same system.
I can see it now. An Atheist Liberal gets into a discussion with a Christian Conservative, it gets heated when an ISIS member hops on. That would be epic to watch.