General Discussion

The folks from Games-Masters have provided us with answers to a number of questions about Cabal Online including information on their recent decision to move from pay to play to item mall.

MMORPG.com:

I noticed two nations within Cabal Online, is there competitive player vs. player action within Cabal Online?

Cabal Online:

Absolutely! An action-oriented game like Cabal Online just screams for good PvP and right from level one players are able to take part in competitive player vs player action. From the duel system, which allows players to bet on PvP duels, to the specially designated channels where players can PvP with their name hidden, there are a variety of arenas for player vs. player battles. As you highlighted, a huge part of the PvP action is orientated around the two nations. Closely linked to the lore of the game, players are forced to chose a nation once they hit level 95. From then on it is possible to battle players and guilds from the opposing nation and players will be rewarded depending on the strength of opposition. The ultimate arena comes in the form of „Tierra Gloriosa “ ,a new war-map which is activated every day for a period of two hours. With towers and towns to capture, the winner is the nation who has captured all the towers or has the most points by the end of the war. At the end of each week there is one battle which is especially important. Hosted on a Saturday this war determines the dominant nation for the week ahead, with the winning nation leaving not only with personal rewards, but also nation rewards such as access to certain warping stations and an increased experience boost on certain maps. In essence everything you do in PvP actually has a purpose, which is often not the case in many games. Be it the personal honour points you gain, or the additional bonuses you might receive for battling on the war map, PvP on CABAL is not only competitive but rewarding.

Read the whole thing here.

Having played Cabal since the beta, I laughed my "back side" off when I saw the answers to some of the questions. The answers were just simply FALSE or in other words  NOT the truth or better - LIES..

Here are the answers to some of the questions from a perspective of a player who has been playing since the beta.

What sets Cabal Online apart from the other free to play online games?

Cabal is pretty much your garden variety none stop brainless grind just like all the other F2P Korean MMORPG out there. Around mid game the quests will stop and from that point on it will be nothing but grind. But a player who has just started playing will be completely misled as at the first levels there will be a massive amount of quests. At the beginning, leveling will be all about questing. But this will slow down as you approach level 60 or so and after 70 onward there will be 1- 3 quests / level that involve killing 60-90 mobs of certain type in order to gain 2-5% exp for that level.

How does crafting play into Cabal Online, will it be as tedious as traditional crafting?

Cabal has the worst crafting system I have ever seen. Yes it's true that unlike other games you dont need to be a specific class for crafting. Any lvl 50+ character can craft. But the issue is that out of all types of armor / weapons you can craft, only one type is worth anything in the market. Whats worse is that you can always buy things from the market for cheaper than the cost for crafting them. Example, to craft a high upgrade core (About 600-800k value in market)  you will require 5 medium upgrade cores (About 250-300k value in market for EACH) + a rare drop only item + bunch of other items that can be bought from NPC. Therefore crafting is useless and you can NEVER make money from crafting.

Will players who spend more money at the Item store gain an unfair advantage over those who do not?

YES. The paying users will get 25% exp in both hunting and crafting and 25% increase in drop rates. And you can buy upgrade cores from the cash shop and easily upgrade your gear making yourself much stronger than a none paying CASUAL player.

Is there any type of faction or reputation “grinding” involved in Cabal Online?

YES. Honor points are required for crafting and using higher level potions and gear.

Players love to stand apart from each other, what level of character customization is there in Cabal Online?

You can choose from about 5 or so different faces and hair colors and 2 genders. All armor from the that class looks the same and you will be wearing higher level armor such as Osmium for months at end. As a result everyone is just another clone. Oh and cash shop users can choose from about 5 funky looking different outfits.

Other than that:

Towns are filled with gold sellers and chat is filled with gold seller spam and none PVP channels are filled with botters.  The GMs do not kick/ban the gold sellers and selling Cabal gold is a huge industry itself. When you progress through levels at some point you will realize there is no more quests and no more drops. At that point you will be forced to buy money from gold sellers to buy potion if you wish to continue leveling.

Originally posted by nukem170

Having played Cabal since the beta, I laughed my "back side" off when I saw the answers to some of the questions. The answers were just simply FALSE or in other words  NOT the truth or better - LIES..

As someone who has also played the game since BETA I would like to point out that I completly disagree with your comments.

"Cabal is pretty much your garden variety none stop brainless grind just like all the other F2P Korean MMORPG out there."

How is the style of game play anything to do with the question asked? Yes CABAL Online requires players to grind levels, however this does not mean it is poorer than other free-to-play games. The game is great fun for the average gamer and does provide something new/different and refreshing for many people. No the game does not revolutionize but it provides some unique features and compares very well to the other f2p games (least the ones I have tried...)

"Cabal has the worst crafting system I have ever seen"

Many crafters in CABAL are making plenty of alz from the items they make. Of course if you buy all items from other players at a premium price you are bound to cut into your profit. Again I wouldn't say the craft system is perfect but it is like many other games, certainly not the "worst"

"25% exp in both hunting and crafting and 25% increase in drop rates."

Correct and what does this do? It adds comfort and convenience, exactly as the interviewer answered. You do not need this extra boost to get far in the game and its hardly like 25% is that noticeable. CABAL certainly does not exclude its free players and if two players from the same level range (one premium and one free) entered into a PvP match, the premium player would have NO advantage.

"You can choose from about 5 or so different faces and hair colors and 2 genders."

The amount of customization is normal compared to most games (again as the interviewer states). Sure CABAL does not have a huge range but the person answering isn't claiming that it does. With a range of armors and different looking characters I would say that you do not get clones as you state in every town. Yes some people will look similar, but that is far from everyone and there are class specific armors for players to wear.

As for gold sellers this is an issue on most games these days (unfortunately). The GM's have told the community that they are working hard on solving this and have recently developed several scripts which catch and remove them. It is a loosing battle though and with any free-to-play game as soon as you ban them they simply return under a new account.

"When you progress through levels at some point you will realize there is no more quests and no more drops. At that point you will be forced to buy money from gold sellers to buy potion if you wish to continue leveling."

This to me says a lot about your character. Items are not handed to you on a plate, however earning enough alz for potions is not an issue for most. If you feel it necessary to cheat, rather than actually play the game and earn your items, then more the fool you.

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I really don't wish to argue with anyone but I hate when people unfairly flame others with pure bullshit. This game is one of the best free-to-play games and is finally getting the exposure it deserves. For anyone thinking of giving the game a try ignore the comments of the idiot above and give it a go. There are enough people here on mmorpg.com (just look at the reviews) who will give you accurate and fair reviews on this game and they will not be filled with bitterness and personal motives.

Well I have played Cabal and sorry to say Nukem is about 95% on the money.  Granted there are worse crafting systems out there, but that is still no excuse for the travesty they call crafting.  If you make money on a crafted item, you were lucky to find a fool that would pay that much.

Cabal is just another in a long line of huge grindfests.  Once past 50 it is mind numbingly boring.

Yes there are worse free to play games out there, LastChaos comes to mind as an example, but it still is not one of the better ones either.. 

  The game is garden variety sadly.  However I think as far as the mediocre field of f2p games go it is in the top 10 probably. 

"Having played Cabal since the very first closed beta..." (is that how we are supposed to start our replys to make them seem "official" ? ) I would say that Cabal is certainly a great FREE to play game,

There are better p2p games (but not many) - but as free games go Cabal has a huge amount of content and pretty good stickability.

It has 5 main areas where you can progress your character

• level
• skill
• honour
• craft
• kit

It is playable by traders, crafters or grinders, it has solo and group content, nice graphics and above all unlike most f2p games the FREE player isn't excluded from any game content.  There are no map or item restrictions for the free player and that is damn unusual.  I know free players who are ranked in the top 20 of all three servers and you wont get that in many free games.

I do break from Cabal from time to time - we all like a change, but I do revist pretty frequently.  I have 2 characters over level 150 and 2 others over 140 - and there is no way I would have done that if the game was a pile of poo.

The only weakness I think the game has is in the end game - so I think there is a tendency for players to cap and then wonder what to do next.  Lets hope the devs try and address this with the future expansions and patches.

I've played a lot of games and frankly unless they hook me pretty soon I move on.  Cabal hooked me instantly - and it might you too.  Don't listen too much to the naysayers (or me for that matter) if your looking for a game give it a go, its free and the d/l isnt too huge.

Dunno why people are smack talking Cabal, it is a fantastic F2P game, yes there are some more anoying parts of the game, but all games have these.

Iv played it since beta and im still enjoying it even now.

Garrik

"Having played Cabal since the very first closed beta..."

The game is defo great better then most p2p games as others already said.

Apperantly nukem170 hasn't played for ages as a lot of things were changed in the quest system old quests were tweaked to be longer and a lot of new quests were added (the hidden helper quests for example) wich cover most of the dungeons and pretty much gurantee you wont run out of quests by lvl 70 as he claims. Special class rank up quests were also added (the last of them is at lvl 170). Some of them are realy hard for the avg gamer and require grp effort, but improve your charecter a lot (allow you to stack buffs for example).

The buff system is 1 of the things that was changed drasticly in ep 2. Including very powerfull but short timed buffs and group buffs, you now need to plan what players you are going to take in your party to ensure you'll be buffed as you want. You need to plan when to use what - to be most effective as some buffs replace others. "Best groups" change depending on the tasks that you wish to acomplish. Wich added a lot to the balancing of the classes and made each class even more unique and needed.

The craft system is definetly hard and its not something the avg gamer can make profit on, but if you put enough effort and invest in your crafting you can eventually reach lvls where your crafts will be needed and ppl will pay their last alz for some of the items. Best items in game are craftable, some of them can drop yes, but the number of possible combinations and the fact that craft drops are quite rare ensure that a person that has reached the high lvls of crafting can make a profit. Yes it is definetly very hard but when you get there you can enjoy the spoils.

The new Chaos Arena dungeon looks very promising the GMs recently posted screenshots and the background story of the dungeon.

Its a great game definetly worth a try and can keep you occupied for months