All Posts by lkavadas

Entropia Universe

Has anyone tried this game?  I generally try and stay away from the forums on this site because... well, everyone here hates every single MMO ever made except preCU SWG so it's mostly just a sea of absurd criticism but I really don't know where else to go so I throw myself at your mercy here.

I'm a preCU SWG vet myself currently in TR and while I like the game I just hate being led around by the nose with such linear gameplay.  Just the constant, "I'm level XX so I need to go to map Y," is lame.  I value virtual freedom.

I've read a lot about this game and many player reviews.  I understand that is uses a real cash economy with a fixed exchange rate and some guy named "Neverdie" owns a mall that nets him $20,000.00 per month in real cash.  Now, I don't care about making money.  At all.  I just want a sandbox with all of the freedom that entails where I can just go and do what I want like hunt down the robots ingame hellbent on killing all humans and come back and still have every facet of a virtual space available to me like socializing, shopping, et cetera.  Making money off the game doesn't concern me at all.  All MMOs are a losing proposition, fiscally speaking, anyways so just because this one has the opportunity to reverse doesn't mean that I'll take advantage of it or even care at all.

I did notice that this year the game will be upgrading to the Crysis engine which will be absolutely gorgeous.  I didn't even think the graphics were particularly bad right now.  Screenshots look pretty good IMO.

So what are/is everyone's thoughts on this game?  Who tried it?  I understand that this is a game you either "get" or you don't and that's obvious from the player reviews. 

This game just comes off as Raph Koster's wet dream and I'm all about that.  I'd just like some input before I drop fifty bucks on the initial ingame currency investment and start plunking down 10-20 per month afterwards.  And yes, I visited the Entropia Forums site and read up on stuff there.

Well this thread is certainly divided by those who want to make their own adventure and those want adventure spoon fed to them, isn't it?  Because that's the difference.

Levels & Classes = Suck

Gimme sandbox.

Is it still 2005?

Can I have your stuff?

Originally posted by nynniva

There are a large number of missions that are simply broken, I think I've had to have a GM fix at least 20 quests for me (I'm lvl 41 with 5 or so broken things in my quest log and the last 4 instances I've tried to do were broken/incompletable (crucible)). So it needs some work here as well.

 

Could you exaggerate anymore?  As a level 46 grenadier I've run into four broken or bugged quests.  Two were in Mires (Flight Salvage and Little Bit Crazy), one in Plains (Terminate Lt. Phelps) and one was in an instance in Thunderhead (Ruins of Tampei - Flaregasher Genocide).  I know for a fact that the Phelps mission was fixed recently because I completed it the day after the patch went through.

I'm sorry but if you've had a GM fix twenty quests you may possibly be the worst TR player in existence.  And the last four instances were incompleteable?  Again, bullshit.  I did every single instance in Crucible literally a week ago and not a single anything was bugged.  In fact, I've done every instance up to Descent and I've just had the one bugged mission in the Ruins of Tampei (Thunderhead).

Y'know, I keep hearing this "lack of content" crap and y'know what?  I call B.S. on everyone.  I'm a level 43 grenadier currently.  I'm not yet out of Ashen Desert.  I still have a solid three or four entire zones to do and this does not even count all of the stuff they've just recently added to low level zones for higher level players.

And it's buggy?  Ummm, sorry, but no, TR really isn't buggy.  The only frustrating issue I've had is footlockers which they fixed just yesterday.  Only two quests in the entire game we're bugged for me and they were both in Mires (Flight Salvage and Little Bit Crazy).  Everything else has worked perfectly.

Don't listen to clowns around here.  I doubt 3/4 of the people in this forum have even played the game, let alone set foot out of the first zone. 

I think what they're really upset about is that there aren't any major issues in TR worth bitching about which presents them with the paradox of having nothing to cry about on these forums.  Guess the next logical step is just make it all up.

Thank the gods they dumped that crap and made a serious game.  I'm fed up with fantasy.

What is an "AH?"  If you mean, "Are the military surplus vendors going to be included in the next patch?" then the answer is, "yes."

The little touches in this game are fantastic.  I love how all of the same, lame MMO mechanics are cleverly hidden by good game design.  For instance all mob spawns don't just pop out of nowhere and respawn.  A dropship flies in and drops them off.

I also like how quest giving and static NPCs aren't static at all.  They'll actively get off their ass and jump in battle when they have to.  They don't just stand there like 'tards with Bane swarming all around them.

So don't go into the first instance.  I can walk into wilderness 4-6 and the Bane will have both the LZ and Imperial Valley.  Again, I did this yesterday.  During primetime.  Plus you only need a quarter as many tokens on the assault  missions.

If you don't like TR than please feel free to crawl back to WoW or wallow in your SWG tears.  I've played five or six MMOs in my time, liked preCU SWG the best (it's not even a contest), but I'm already enjoying TR more than I ever enjoyed SWG sans JtL play.

TR is like what I would have wanted for the GCW in SWG and that's what I view it as, the GCW minus everything else and that's fine by me.  I don't see why people feel the need to rape the game and insult those who play it.  The solution is simply: stfu and don't buy it.  Wow, I should get a medal.

The game has more open areas than closed ones.  Plus the boundaries are cleverly integraded into physical map features so as to make sense.

I was big about that myself after popping my MMO cherry on pre-SWG.  Right now I only have a few mechanical gripes about this game (having character levels and all of the  instancing which drives me nuts, I like unified game worlds).

I don't understand how you're having so much trouble.  It took me two days to get 100, and this included starting my first toon and learning the game from scratch because I got it D2D.

Last night during primetime on Casseiopea  in wilderness 1 I collected 137 defense tokens in... not even two hours.

PlanetSide and World War II Online are the only current MMOFPSs out there.  Both are fairly old and I don't know what the population is like in PlanetSide anymore.  Haven't played for about two years.  WWIIO is damn old and the graphics show it.

Face of Mankind and Neocron 2 are both MMOFPSs as well.  Both are sci-fi.  If you liked the movie Blade Runner you'd like Neocron 2.  Face of Mankind was an awesome idea but... after beta it just fell apart.  I guess some big changes have gone through recently and the playerbase is growing again so that's good news.

I'd start with those four.  Future MMOFPSs are Huxley, Fallen Earth, and... I think there is one more but I can't recall the name of it.

I'd start with PlanetSide to be honest.

As long as the game world is big enough and there is a lot of very different things to do (I'm talking more like minigames such as gambling at casinos, social stuff, concerts, smuggling, bounty hunting, private investigating, policing) on top of a lot of traditional content like questing, combat, PvP, crafting, research and development, et cetera, I don't see why there would be any issue.

Just wait for that special community driven SWG project to finish.  Things are getting close. 

That's wonderful.  How about instead of discussing the feasibility of an MMO which doesn't use XP/grind based system (again, EVE proves you don't need XP or to include some enormous grind to increase your skills) we get back to the discussion wI meant to have which is what are the alternatives to XP grind?

EVE gives one alternative by simply having skills take a predetermined amount of real time to earn.  Does anyone have any other ideas?

A grind is not essential to any MMO.  It's just a marketing gimmick to keep tools and simpletons subbed to a game so they can turn a profit.

If games were more open and had more mechanics and minigames included in them there would never be a lack of content.  And when I say contet I do not meant quests.  Quests suck.  By content I mean a good PvP system that includes an elaborate guild alliance and enemies deal, player housing and cities, bounty hunting, smuggling, gambling, et cetera.  There are thousands upon thousands of examples of repeatable (and entertaining) minigames which have spectacular replayability value.

At any rate, I don't want this thread bogged down into how you're absolutely certain that grinding and XP be mandatory for any MMO ever.  You'll never budge me on this issue.  The only reason this mechanic is even used is because it creates longer player subscriptions and creates a bunch of crappy content that every single player must aimlessly plod through until they hit the endgame where they are given like four things to do.  It's just a shortcut devs take to simplify content and for suits to scam more cash off consumers for horribly tedious gameplay.

I'm here to discuss alternatives to the XP model and grinding.  EVE proved that game does not need XP or the inclusion of grinding to earn it so you're argument advocating it's necessity has already been defeated.

This is basically the approach Force of Arms is taking.  Users are allowed to submit nearly any type of content they wish and if it's dev approved it'll be patched in.  Right now players are submitting entire mech designs (both equipment wise and artwork wise), points of interest for the gameworld, weapons, equipment, vehicles, FPS or third person, twitch or RPG combat, so and so forth.