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Originally posted by kyrawolf
FE, which will officially start the same day as Aion, is sort of an anti-Aion.  The more I played Aion, the less impressed I was, until finally I deleted it from my computer.  Just the opposite with FE.

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I agree with this. However, I'm having a hard time deciding because I like them both in their unique and very separate ways. I hope that I can weigh the pros and cons before I get billed for two subscriptions.

Originally posted by Timzilla

I'm glad I got to beta test it before blowing good coin on it. I love the concept, but hate the implementation. Couple points:

1. Crafting is love it or hate it by most accounts. I pick hate it. I'm looking for instant gratification in my games, and I'll do my 9 to 5 for my work fix.  When I do feel like crafting, I want to craft. You know do the whole session thing. Not click once and log out for 3 days. I see what they're going for, it's just not going in my direction.

2.The absence of loot makes it an automatic disqualification from my gaming choices. Grinding without neat things to loot now and then is just grinding, and that's no fun. I like shinies, and I like them to matter.

3.  Combat is just dumb. You start out with a couple air pistols, a board, a crossbow and a couple other pieces of asorted junk. Eventually you can build your skill and level up enough to where you can shoot real pistols and rifles. As a modern  human playing a  modern human, I can't quite grasp what mental or physical block is keeping me from picking up a firearm straightaway. I'm not a sharpshooter in real life, but given a choice I'm gonna try to take you out with a firmarm first and a corkscrew somewhere around last. Not to mention it's about 13.6 times harder to hit your mark with a crossbow than it is to hit it with a 30.06. Anyway, the suspend logic requirement is way to high for me to enjoy the combat.

That's enough I guess. If you're not anything like me, you might like FE. Either way, have fun!

This post actually makes me excited to try the game.

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Originally posted by Palebane
 
This post actually makes me excited to try the game.

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Yes, it is what the developers intended. There is immense realism. This just makes it very time consuming and complex to play.

the noob area is done very well  content gets much more sparce the higher you level

crafting you have to think ahead when crafting  especially when the NUMBER ONE requested change whs to be able to reorder the crafting que  which hasnt been fixed yet,  that means if you are half way through an item thats gonna take 2 hours  and you need to make some ammo,, your screwed till the 2 hour item finishes   or cancel the 2 hour item and LOOSE the materials

(alts are good to havefor crafting mules)

combat

first wear armor  jump out of the tutorial  spend points to 15 in armor and melee and possibly rifle

get a duster and chaps

get a ax handle  and dump that crappy stick  I select the ax handle because it hits prety hard but is also a reasonable speed  the sledge handle is next in line

remap your weapons  to some quick keys  none of that ctrol +3 crap also  your mode key and your reload key

arm your xbow  gat back to near full range  fire at  body  or  aim for the head (crit) shoot 2-3 shots till near melee  try for about 20ft away   swap to your  ax handle  this delay is like 2-3 seconds

then you can wither hold down the mouse attack key and it will "fire" the handle  about 1 per second  or you can  "click fire"   I prefer the click fire because sometimes you will miss with the auto fire because your aimpoint wont be on target  when the autofire triggers  I prefer to sweep the aim point through the target  clicking as i pass my  point of aim 

also if you goto first aid and pick up "extended care" about 45 skill?  have this on you at all times  its like a 1 hour regen buff skill (useable on others)  later you can pick up recussatate (rez)  rez is good for all charactors to have and there are several methods.

food and drink are buffs and reduce tyour down time

for example the level 2 rats south of south burb at the farm  if you head shot them with the ax handle  you can oneshot them most of the time

there is a quest to fight a guy in the south burb junkyard  and he is hard if not nearly impossible to beat unless you gear up.

hope these pointers help you out. 

Originally posted by Tisiphone

So I plan on sticking this game out. FE is not an easy game by any means, but its a long-awaited environment and I really want to love it.

I just wanted to throw out some initial thoughts after playing a couple days, and see what other people think after playing the betas. I'll post more in a couple weeks.

The Awesome
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- The soundtrack is incredible, and its very well timed during gameplay.
- The playerbase and GMs are also absolutely outstanding. I see no whiny kids, and GMs answer in a matter of seconds on the New Player channels.
- The tutorial is great, immerses you in the game early on, and gives you a real sense of urgency (it got my heart pumping!) FMVs are cinematic.
- The developers obviously spent years planning characters, lore, and city layouts. There is unbelievable depth in character and faction interaction.
- There is tons of content of all sorts, both combat and non-combat.
- Character skill versatility is huge. I'm glad they at least provide some example character templates to compare to.
- Contrary to some reviews I've seen, I think the environment is very well done for the engine used. Its not a new engine, but it is not ancient. Lighting is good (could use gamma increased), and textures are just fine.
- There are plenty of character creation options for everything but body shape.
- There is a team of volunteers on the newbie channel fielding questions.

The Neutral
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- The controls are tricky to me, coming from both a FPS and MMO background. Its like I have to do a little of both - keyboard move, mouse fire, and somehow set off skills on my skill bar at the same time. There is some trick to this; I haven't been able to figure it out in 20 hours of gameplay. I find myself letting go of the mouse to hit the number keys a lot, and then I can't aim.
- Crafting takes rather realistic times. Making a bandage takes a minute. Making food takes several minutes. I like the authenticity, but its going to kill my two or three hours of playtime a night.
- Quests are tricky to find. During the tutorial in small areas, the mission map indicators worked great. In the larger game world, I found it really difficult to figure out how to zoom in and out of the map and figure out where my quests were.
- Weapon switching is really awkward. It works great in theory (ctrl + scrollwheel) to switch weapons FPS style, but if you dual wield weapons or have something else in your inventory, you can end up with the wrong weapon in your main hand or no weapon at all.
- I don't drop into combat mode when I get attacked. Maybe other people like this. But I find myself scrambling to hit the middle mouse button, not realizing my crosshairs are off. I'm sure this is something you adapt to.

The Ugly
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- If you can't tell from my early posts, I got pretty horrendously lost after the tutorial. Now, this may be my inexperience, but if I felt that way, other new players must have been just as frustrated, and they might not be as patient. The tutorial does an excellent job teaching you the controls and keyboard shortcuts, as well as introducing you to factions. However, afterward, you really get dropped on your ass. They tell you to select a category of city, and you don't know what impact it will have on your character. Then, you're stuck trying to figure out the complex map systems in the real game world. I like being confused along with my character, but I need to be able to read the map and not run in circles for hours.
- The enemy AI is weird! I don't have lag issues in any other game, certainly not in FPSes. I'm not rubberbanding or anything. However, I find enemies that were in front of me suddenly behind me.
- A lot of bugs need to be worked out in items and animations, still. I know the devs are overworked right now, and I'm sure it will happen. But the animation whilst holding an axe is laughable. I don't know how the animation for the first weapon one gets in the game was missed.

And the PvP?

PvP is.....complex,heh. In sector 1, you have your basic weapons, such as rifle/pistol/melee. In sector 2 and beyond, they add mutations. Combat is fairly quick paced and somewhat based on stuns. I say somewhat because it just depends on their weapon vs. your armor and such. I haven't had 2 equal people beating on each other yet, so can't tell you anything concretely, but it's probably 'he who gets the first stun will probably win'.

But combat has been generally this. I'm melee and have mostly fought ranged. Ranged guys will try to get you at range. Rifles do heavy dmg, but if you get close, they are pretty much dead, and they do have this in the game. You can crouch and sneak, which makes you invisible on their radar now and then ambush them as they look for you. In one combat, I was facing three rifleman. They were searching around for me, and I ambushed the first one. The other two started moving to my location and I ran a little bit, then doubled back with sneak and ambushed the second as he came around the corner. The third backed off and didn't come after me. Compared to me, they had very little hit points, but at the  same time, if they caught me in the open and at range, they could hurt me pretty good.

Another time, I fought a group of six guys, mixed melee, pistol and rifle, and was jumping in the middle of them to get them to shoot each other as I was beating them down, then was also ambushing them a couple of times. As I said, combat is really quick and it's hard to heal or remember to use other abilities during combat, simply because you have a lot to use during combat. I use healing on my third hotbar, alt 1 - =, with my melee abilities on the first, 1 - =, then my mutations will be on the second, shift 1 - =. In the higher levels, I suspect stun will be used as a break to dump a bunch of mutations and other abilities on you before they start hitting you again.

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Originally posted by Timzilla

I'm glad I got to beta test it before blowing good coin on it. I love the concept, but hate the implementation.

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Same here. I'm ashamed to say it, but I'll be playing Aion instead. At least for a little while. But I hope FE is successful enough to keep building on what they've got, so that it'll be worth a second look in a year or so.

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1. Crafting is love it or hate it by most accounts. I pick hate it. I'm looking for instant gratification in my games, and I'll do my 9 to 5 for my work fix.  When I do feel like crafting, I want to craft. You know do the whole session thing. Not click once and log out for 3 days. I see what they're going for, it's just not going in my direction.

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I don't like the crafting, either. For a game that makes such a big deal of it, its strange that there aren't all different types of crafters, and even different types of resource gatherers (e.g. scavengers, farmers, miners) It's all just lumped together, and I find that makes for a boring simplistic sort of character environment dynamic.

Just adds insult to injury that there's not much point to making a crafting focused character, since they'd just be standing around doing nothing. Might as well quest-grind like everyone else.

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2.The absence of loot makes it an automatic disqualification from my gaming choices. Grinding without neat things to loot now and then is just grinding, and that's no fun. I like shinies, and I like them to matter.

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Not a game-breaker for me, but I do think interesting, varied loot is an important gameplay dynamic. Just helps keep things fun, to see if anything good turns up, with every kill. Doesn't have to be shiny glowie uber swords, but putting a variety of things in the loot tables that are rare and valuable to players, in some way or another, can help a lot.

On a similar note, and back to crafting, I think it also helps if crafters can look forward to similarly rare and valuable results from their efforts. Rather than everything being so predictable and blah.

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3.  Combat is just dumb. You start out with a couple air pistols, a board, a crossbow and a couple other pieces of asorted junk. Eventually you can build your skill and level up enough to where you can shoot real pistols and rifles. As a modern  human playing a  modern human, I can't quite grasp what mental or physical block is keeping me from picking up a firearm straightaway. I'm not a sharpshooter in real life, but given a choice I'm gonna try to take you out with a firmarm first and a corkscrew somewhere around last. Not to mention it's about 13.6 times harder to hit your mark with a crossbow than it is to hit it with a 30.06. Anyway, the suspend logic requirement is way to high for me to enjoy the combat.

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Make it hard to find good ammo for the good guns, so low level players end up using zip guns, and crossbows, because making ammo for them is cheap and easy. Make it so anyone can fire a machine gun, but it takes skill to keep the kickback under control, and reload quickly enough. Doing so as a newbie is possible, but overall, a bad idea. Things like that.

Also, I know this is personal preference, but I think the combat in FE is severely lacking in flashiness. I know it doesn't need anything like the over the top particle barrages we see in a lot Asian MMOs, but I think more blood spatter and more dramatic animations would go a long way.

I'd also like to see shorter skill timers on skills with unique animations (e.g. pistol whip) that make them a bigger part of combat, rather than just being a one time thing, that doesn't do much to break up the monotony of holding the mouse button down.

Originally posted by Vhaln

I don't like the crafting, either. For a game that makes such a big deal of it, its strange that there aren't all different types of crafters, and even different types of resource gatherers (e.g. scavengers, farmers, miners) It's all just lumped together, and I find that makes for a boring simplistic sort of character environment dynamic.

Just adds insult to injury that there's not much point to making a crafting focused character, since they'd just be standing around doing nothing. Might as well quest-grind like everyone else.

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On a similar note, and back to crafting, I think it also helps if crafters can look forward to similarly rare and valuable results from their efforts. Rather than everything being so predictable and blah.

A combat focused scavenger makes up for a worse scavenger then a crafting focused one. I guess you know that but it feels like you left it out. I think the difference will become alot more obvious when moving over to S2, unless ofcourse one find a good motivation to use intelligence for a combat char.

Originally posted by Timzilla

3.  Combat is just dumb. You start out with a couple air pistols, a board, a crossbow and a couple other pieces of asorted junk. Eventually you can build your skill and level up enough to where you can shoot real pistols and rifles. As a modern  human playing a  modern human, I can't quite grasp what mental or physical block is keeping me from picking up a firearm straightaway. I'm not a sharpshooter in real life, but given a choice I'm gonna try to take you out with a firmarm first and a corkscrew somewhere around last. Not to mention it's about 13.6 times harder to hit your mark with a crossbow than it is to hit it with a 30.06. Anyway, the suspend logic requirement is way to high for me to enjoy the combat.

And there is a reason to why a specific sword have a level requirement in other games? Or why a piece of armor have that?

I don't know what you mean with a "30.06".

With a weapon like the German G3 the trajectory of the bullet is 20cm/7.7inch above the aimed point at 200m, if the aim is set to 200m. It would mean that if you have to hit that head (lol, sorry for this you would aim for the head) at 100m you need to aim beetween the chest and the chin. If it would be set at 500m it would be 90cm/35inch at 250m. Now I actually do not know any trajectory of an arrow.

As I would assume that the aim on the crossbow is adjusted for it's optimal range. Contrary to in the example G3 where you either adjust the aim and know the distance to the target or you adept to the trajectory and aim lower. You see the crossbow is made for a specific range and withing that range I hardly think a rifle is more easy to hit withing that range.

And moving up to longer ranges like 100m or 200m (try hitting a slightly moving balloon at 300m) you'll probably need alot more trainging to hit with a rifle then a crossbow at 30m.

But just let's back to an answer why you'd need to be a specific level to use a specific sword when you obviously can wield another at lower level.

In the 'survival horror' thread, I suggested that waepons should have levels of required skill. ANYONE with a working hand can pull a trigger. I could operate a minigun with very little practice. However, loading it would require some skill, modifying it would require a higher level of skill, and fixing it would require even more skill.

It is a tired game mechanic that requires a higher level of skill to use a better weapon.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

In the 'survival horror' thread, I suggested that waepons should have levels of required skill. ANYONE with a working hand can pull a trigger. I could operate a minigun with very little practice. However, loading it would require some skill, modifying it would require a higher level of skill, and fixing it would require even more skill.

It is a tired game mechanic that requires a higher level of skill to use a better weapon.

I agree that i may be a tired mechanism but (sadly?) it works. And when one got that "basic" aiming knowledge you are one a row.

Originally posted by Orphes

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

In the 'survival horror' thread, I suggested that waepons should have levels of required skill. ANYONE with a working hand can pull a trigger. I could operate a minigun with very little practice. However, loading it would require some skill, modifying it would require a higher level of skill, and fixing it would require even more skill.

It is a tired game mechanic that requires a higher level of skill to use a better weapon.

I agree that i may be a tired mechanism but (sadly?) it works. And when one got that "basic" aiming knowledge you are one a row.

That is the problem with this genre.  Everyone just sticks to what works, rather than coming up with anything new.  That's never been the way to make a great game, of any genre.  It's the way to make lots of easily forgotten shovelware for people to buy while waiting for something better.

Its a game with alot of potential. I dont pay for potential anymore though.

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Orphes

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

In the 'survival horror' thread, I suggested that waepons should have levels of required skill. ANYONE with a working hand can pull a trigger. I could operate a minigun with very little practice. However, loading it would require some skill, modifying it would require a higher level of skill, and fixing it would require even more skill.

It is a tired game mechanic that requires a higher level of skill to use a better weapon.

I agree that i may be a tired mechanism but (sadly?) it works. And when one got that "basic" aiming knowledge you are one a row.

 

That is the problem with this genre.  Everyone just sticks to what works, rather than coming up with anything new.  That's never been the way to make a great game, of any genre.  It's the way to make lots of easily forgotten shovelware for people to buy while waiting for something better.

 

Well I'm not up to come with a good alternative myself but I can see some good points in how it is done in games like FE. You have this points to spend, that you earn while you are leveling, that makes you to decide what eraåpns you should be able to use.

You could be a lvl 10 and be able to use a better rifle then one that are (don't know) let's say lvl15.

For me I have spent points in other areas aswell, trying not to gimp myself, but if I hadn't I could have had a way better crossbow then I have now.

I like their solution to the problem though.

Originally posted by Vhaln

 

That is the problem with this genre.  Everyone just sticks to what works, rather than coming up with anything new.  That's never been the way to make a great game, of any genre.  It's the way to make lots of easily forgotten shovelware for people to buy while waiting for something better.

 

Shovelware, indeed. I wonder which MMO will be the one which emulates the infamous 'E.T.' cartridge. There will be a backlash against the systemic garbage this genre is wallowing in.

Originally posted by Psythos

Its a game with alot of potential. I dont pay for potential anymore though.

That's great. You are indeed a wise man, thanks for letting us know.

Now please let me have an equal chance, and respect to my desicion, to say that I bougth it because I did find the game to be fun. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have bought it, isn't that great that I think just as you? (Don't buy things you don't like, or when you know you won't like them.)

Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

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Originally posted by Silvermink
You can queue items to craft while you are off-line. Some items later take 24 hours or more real time to make and this is pretty much expected.
 
Don't be afraid to change the key layout to something you are more used to. You can use f# keys to switch weapons. Pressing G will tell you what weapon is equipped where(you can carry 6) and which f key is needed to select it.

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Thanks! That helps me a lot. I had no idea that items can actually take a real life day to make. That's a daring and new move by the developers that I kind of like. However, I'm very, very glad you can be logged out for it.

I like the idea for the F keys as weapon changes. I am going to give that a try.

Try Eve. The system is similar.

Originally posted by blackhawk432

Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

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Originally posted by Silvermink
You can queue items to craft while you are off-line. Some items later take 24 hours or more real time to make and this is pretty much expected.
 
Don't be afraid to change the key layout to something you are more used to. You can use f# keys to switch weapons. Pressing G will tell you what weapon is equipped where(you can carry 6) and which f key is needed to select it.

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Thanks! That helps me a lot. I had no idea that items can actually take a real life day to make. That's a daring and new move by the developers that I kind of like. However, I'm very, very glad you can be logged out for it.

I like the idea for the F keys as weapon changes. I am going to give that a try.

Try Eve. The system is similar.

No its not.

So, an update...

Patience is wearing kind of thin. I've been playing regularly since my OP, and I made the suggested control changes. Still feel strongly about the positives, but the negatives are already eating at me. I'm having trouble convincing myself to log in and work on my character, because I know how much time crafting waits and runs are going to take. The horrors of having to run back to my horse after a death are very realistic, but most of my play time is occupied with running across the map and fighting after one death - I'm almost thinking of just stabling the horse (towing adds up and stables have been tricky to find in Sector One). I have to admit combat on horseback is very cool, and I'd love to get comfortable enough with the controls to do it effectively. I've started queuing my crafting before I log out, but that limits what I can make at low levels (because I have to change what I'm making when my skill increases).

This is by far, the most realistic MMORPG I have ever played. I am truly impressed by the elements that they added.

I'm just not sure I'm hardcore enough at three or four hours playtime a day to play this game and enjoy it.

I appreciate everybody's ideas very much. I'm still keeping at it...