Future Earth is being corrupted and invaded by another dimension in this Free to Play MMO which I've just started trying out, so while I don't have a full grasp on everything that's going on I do have a whole bunch of first impressions, most of which are negative. Let's look at what I think is -good- first: Most of the voice acting, background music and the bits of the world I've seen get a thumbs up (level 18 only so far). Having drop ships and glider pads that let you fly about is also good. Using cover does increase your lifespan. Dynamic world events and random invasions are also cool.
Seems I'm the only one that rides the air bus.
And now for the bad. There is no melee. Your secondary weapon (which for me switches between an SMG or grenade launcher) never runs out of ammo. Outside the tutorial I also haven't been able to -not- use a battle frame. They are the mandatory dress code. Jump jets are cool, but this made it lazy for them design wise as there are pretty much no lifts and very few staircases in game, instead forcing you to use this "feature".
There is no way to change your chat channel without knowing the typed commands to do so. The speech bubbles over characters heads look clunky, as does the inventory screen. I'm quite used to having my "pack" open at all times so for me, having an inventory screen that eats up a third of your window is quite annoying. There is also no way to find out what instance of the map you or your friends are on. Instead, after partying up, you have to again know the typed command to get everyone in the same map channel or you will never see each other despite standing in the same spot.
When partied up, only the leader can accept quests. You can also only have one main quest and one optional quest active. This makes for A LOT time wasting travel back and forth travel to quest hubs. I can see that some are meant to be done sequentially which is fine, but there are many others that should be able to be picked up simultaneously. Also the quest locations are randomized which sounds good on paper. In practice the place where I hunt the bandit leader, escort some civilians to a picnic, hunt a nest of spiders, search through garbage, tag a nest of birds, and deliver cookies to girl scouts is all the exact same spot.
Items also have level restrictions. This is somewhat more passable in say, Diablo where your character might actually not be strong enough to wield a sword effectively enough or lack the magical knowledge to operate a staff. Here, where everyone is basically walking in powered exoskeleton armor a level 10 player can't use a level 11 shotgun because...? The trigger is too heavy?
Despite all that the explorer in me wants to unlock all the SIN towers at the very least so I'll keep at it a bit more, just to see more of New Eden.
Blaugust Bonus: I prefer my MMO's to be medieval fantasy. This is partly because I like linking the same character throughout all the worlds I visit and it makes it difficult to do that when suddenly there are laser blasters everywhere. Also I don't really get the same epic feel. Facing down a horde of angry enemies with a blood stained sword is more intense and rewarding if you survive as opposed to facing the same horde with a gatling gun and jump jets. It basically becomes a "meh".
There is melee, you need to press G by default, and you can use a sin blade if you have the perk for it.
ReplyDeleteYou're not suppose to use the job board exclusively, it's only meant as a bonus, you're only really supposed to pick one and do it while you're on your way to do events in the area.
The item levels makes no sense but then again, they don't really make sense anywhere else. Without it though, there would be balancing issues, so they pretty much need to do it, unless they find another system closer to the one UO had, where anyone could use anything, which also had it's problems.
Ahha, that melee thing is coming in handy now. Thanks for letting me know! With the job board though, everything in game sort of points me to use the job boards. They even dictate which one I should visit next once I finish an area so that's what I'm doing first.
DeleteOnce they run out then I'll see about running to random missions. The tornado ones are pretty fun, just fell into one of those today!
Around Shanty town, there's tornadoes everywhere, it's really a good place to chase those, I really like chasing those things, I've got the tornado chaser achievement for a reason after all. Did you enter the tornado after it was destroyed too? that's really cool too, I know I didn't know you could do that when I started chasing tornadoses.
ReplyDeleteThere was no job board in beta, which is why people on played back then don't use the jobs that much probably. At level 25, you get a job out of there that let you built a LGV in Sertao, so obviously, some jobs are quite necessary..
Apparently, the devs are working on fixing the jobs system, so maybe it's gonna be less annoying to do.
Yeah I jumped into the tornado portals (x2). Only escaped the second time - first time I didn't know where to go! :P Also reached Shanty Town yesterday. Hoping to get all the jobs done before that Chosen "aggressiveness" patch hits.
DeleteHmm. Firefall. Yea, it was hard when i saw this friend go, and i sometimes still miss him.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time i wonder, if i should rather be amused or sad on the turn of events. Firefall once was really innovative. It had a wonderful crafting system and a good advancement system ( albeit with the flaw of "CPU" ressource, which made crafting for the open market a nuisance). The world was open, everybody was able to go everywhere, vertical progression existed but was under control, so one of the first thing a new player did was to explore all of the map. After all, ares missions of varying difficulty spawned all over the map, so no matter where you were, you were able to find matching content. The variety of content was limited, but no matter how long you played, if a friend joined the game, you met up and were able to play together everywhere on the map.
But alas. Everything changed a month ago. The whole progression, ressource and gear system was thrown out and replaced by something way more simplified. Vertical progression was stepped up, the map was split into smaller sections, so you better stick to your "level appropriate" small slice of the map now. So, the game changed from something fresh and new to basically WoW with jumpjets and smaller areas to play in.
The real sad part about all of this is, i could not even blame the developers for this. It was the community who cried for the game to be dumbed down. When any WoW-Clone hits the market, it is turned down for being a WoW-Clone, but when a really new and fresh game comes around, the community cries loudly that the game is now WoW and manages to make developers change their concept. The gaming future looks grim indeed. :(
Bah. One annoying typo.The last paragraph should actually read like this:
Deletehe real sad part about all of this is, i could not even blame the developers for this. It was the community who cried for the game to be dumbed down. When any WoW-Clone hits the market, it is turned down for being a WoW-Clone, but when a really new and fresh game comes around, the community cries loudly that the game is not WoW and manages to make developers change their concept. The gaming future looks grim indeed. :(
Sounds almost like a different game to the one I'm experiencing now. Other than consumable items, I am finding no reason to craft anything as I simply get better stuff from killing monsters...
DeleteIf you are really interested, check out the V1.0 patch notes. Item changes. It reads harmlessly, but it completely shredded all crafting and the economy in favour of a mostly loot based system.
DeleteI mean, you can still thump for ressources and build your gear, which for the top end gear still is a way to go, but before the endgame this is of no interest any more, and then suddenly turns into a chore. I really think they broke a lot by giving in to the "nice game, now please turn it into WoW" crowd.