All Posts by starbead

NDAs are usually lifted when a game goes into Open Beta.  With the numbers of testers available to them, they don't even have to have an Open Beta.  They are doing focused stress testing, so OB might not even be necessary, in which case the NDA probably wouldn't be lifted early.

Somewhere between zero and two.  If early word on AoC is bad, I'll pass on it and see how WAR pans out.  If both seem Vanguardish at launch, I guess I won't be buying any.  WoW has a horrible endgame strategy, but they make leveling more fun than any other game out there, so WotLK is probably on my list.

If Conan rocks, I'll hold off for the full reviews of WAR before deciding whether to give it a try.

Originally posted by smitty0356

Diablo 2 somehow managed to make several classes of warrior and caster that was not in Diablo 1...  They just didn't meld paladin, assasin, and barbarian back into warrior because it was too hard to make them different.  I think this was a rush job since this game keeps being delayed.

OK, now ask yourself how many classes D2 had and how many AoC still has after this change. 

The number of classes needs to manageable, so you don't end up with a garbled mess like the GW class system.

Wasted talent.

Wasted opportunity.

It could have been a classic.

Instead it is a mediocre game that was rushed out the door so much too soon that it has to fight its bugs to maintain mediocrity.

Hybrids are the lamest idea since Blizz lifted Arena combat from Guild Wars.

I was in the TR beta (not the FP stress test, the beta).  The game got progressively less FUN with every patch.  If they had released a bug-free (relatively) version of the game that they had in June or July, I'd be playing now.  Instead they took the attitude that they knew better than us what we really wanted from the game.  And now the game is on clearance shelves next to the Golden Compass tie-in.

It is also an MMO-lite, yet they are charging a full $15/month for it.  For full MMO pricing, I want a full featured MMO.

Bad design decisions.  Just one example being character creation.  Spend time creating your character, customizing, and even picking color schemes just as you would with any MMO.  Then by level 5 all the colored gear is gone, you are wearing a helmet and everyone looks just alike.

Lastly, despite the seeming differences between the classes, shotgunning your way thru mobs is the best course of action, with only minor variations for class.

In summary, people don't want TR to fail.  TR failed all by itself.  People wanted TR to live at least partially up to what it promised.  It did not.   Lastly, for $15/month, clan v clan ganking is a pathetic excuse for an endgame.

Originally posted by sabutai22

WAR is nothing new except the standard run of the mill cookie-cut level based grind fest! Even the UI looks and feels just like WoW.

 

 

If I were making an MMO UI, I would take a close look at what players of the genre's biggest success wanted most out of a UI.

Originally posted by Terranah

It's just one of those catchy, fashionable phrases that people use now. 

 

 

 

It is?

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

After the disappointment that was MMO2007, I took it seriously and went back to WoW.  Of course I was just looking for something to hold me over til Conan in March, but...

OMG!!!

Someone is predicting that a game/company will kill WoW?  That has never happened before!

Let's come up with a name for a hypothetical game like that.  How about 'WoW-killer"?  I could really see that word being used again and again and again. 

Why, in the three years of WoW's existence/dominance has no one ever thought to make a "WoW-killer" before?  Imagine if gaming companies had thought to make a game that would compete with WoW before.  If only the developers had tried to make a game that would be able to compete with WoW.  People would have called Dark and Light, D&D Online, Hellgate, Shadowbane, LotRO, and Tabula Rasa WoW-killers.  But NOOOO, the devs all had to try and make mediocre games and/or games designed to appeal to a smaller audience.  Such short-sightedness!!!

But, thank God, EA and Bioware are actually trying to make an MMO that will be POPULAR.  Yep, Blizzard is in REAL trouble now.

RG is dead wrong on this one.  Every patch from early August on made the game LESS fun.  Everything after the Divide was pretty much ignored by the dev team in the last 6-8 weeks of the beta.  They polished the first 15-20 levels and got them bug free hoping that they would be able to sell people on the concept before they figured out how buggy it was.

They definitely let too many people sample the game too early, though.  We were incredulous on the forums when they announced that they were doing the FP subscribers week, when the game was that buggy.  But those are NOT the early beta testers.  Every patch brought more polish to the UI and the first zone or two while the Mires (25-30ish) were horribly buggy (I could literally count the working quests/quest lines on my fingers).  The people who had been playing the game for months were seeing the game change in fundamental ways that made it less fun, while the major bug fixes that were needed were ignored.

It was NOT that too many people played the "buggy" version.  It was a beta, we expected bugs.  The bugs were not the problem, fundamental changes to how the game plays turned a lot of the people who played it when it WAS still fun off.  It was fun in spite of the bugs when the closed beta was happening. 

The only way that his statement can be taken even slightly seriously is that the people who played long enough to level quickly knew just how badly bugged the zones after the divide were.  We knew that the game was getting released 3 months too soon (at least) and saw that the focus had shifted from listening to the community about the state of the game to aggressive marketing for the game.  The devs were talking up key features in interviews, then removing them or drastically reducing their usefulness in the next patch.  It was around mid-August that patch day became a day to dread because the game would get its fun factor knocked back, 1-2 new bugs for every bug fixed and the loading screens would like spiffier. 

The fix-a-bug-create-a-bug problem was fine when they were still listening to the beta testers, but as it became increasingly more obvious that they were not listening to us and were getting ready to release the game (most of us understood that this was happening, although there were of course the die-hard RG-worshippers who INSISTED that the game would not be released before January at the earliest because RG would NEVER release a game that buggy.  Of course, the day they formally announced the release date, all of those people began talking about how the game wasn't that far from being ready and they had a miracle patch that would fix all the bugs before launch).

In summary, it was NOT the bugs, which any real beta tester will expect;  it was the game.  The things that were most appealing about the game were being removed or nerfed, which made the game less fun.  The last few patches also made it quite obvious that getting the first 20 levels relatively bug-free before launch was all they really cared about.  As the 1-25 review points out, the game is still getting major bugs worked out in  the higher level areas.  Perhaps if they had used their testers to test the game instead of simply to report the 10,000 places where it was possible to get stuck in the Concordia Wilderness terrain, the closed beta testers would have picked up the game.  Instead the people who came in AFTER they hit the FUN with the nerf bat (and then beat it to make sure it didn't try to get back up) are the ones who find the game enjoyable because they have no idea how much fun the game could have and should have been.

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It kills you smacktards to see a great game take off. Get used to it.

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Back to the rational world, the game rating is now 8.4.  The inevitable slide after the initial euphoria has begun.  How large the slide is is really in the hands of the devs now. 

When favorite classes get nerfed, people strike back by lowering their ratings at sites like this.  More sliding is inevitable, but the devs can still kill the game by making beta scale changes to a retail game, or by not fixing the higher level zones soon enough. 

The final test is going to be what happens to scores once a lot of players start hitting the level cap.  Bored 50s griefing the Concordia Wilderness players will hurt the game.  And right now, there isn't much else for 50s to do. 

TR is essentially a PvE game, but the "endgame" is built around PvE clan wars.  It is hard to say exactly how the average TR fan is going to respond to that.

Ping issues have long plagued TR.  They fixed the worst of it in the last couple of beta patches, but started having more disconnect problems. 

It seems likely that while they have fixed the issues for most players, there are a few residual ping-related problems in certain situations.  I would suggest submitting detailed bug reports when you crash/disconnect to help them isolate the problem (be it tweaks on their end or working with your ISP to smooth out some of the problems). 

Considering the state of the ping problems as close as a month prior to launch, the devs have made HUGE strides.  Even if you decide to return the game, give them the info on your problems so that can see if it is on their end and fix it for others (or you, should you decide to return).

This is really simple.  The game has less than 350 reviews, a lot of them would be from fanbois and a lot are from people who haven't made it to the much buggier content at higher levels yet.

It will not stay at 8.5.  As more reviews pour in and some people re-evaluate their rating when they see that despite the fun, TR just isn't very deep at this point, it will start sliding down.  They spent the last part of beta ignoring everything but the first few zones, so the game makes a good first impression.  And it is fun to play.  BUT, it doesn't change all that much as you level, so the repetitive gameplay will drop a few tenths off of some ratings.

With only 350 reviews, it doesn't take that many organized fans to artificially inflate a score.

I have issues with TR launching 3 months too early (conservative estimate).  I have issues with it not really being a deep, full-fledged MMO but being priced at the standard $15/month.  However, it is far from the unmitigated disaster it could have been (that award goes to Hellgate) with the rushed release.  It won't stay at 8.5, but hopefully the devs will get their acts together and get the game in ready-to ship form before the score drops too low.

Originally posted by Kremlik

 

Originally posted by starbead

The TR devs don't know how to nerf.  They always go to ludicrous extremes. 

Changing a skill from 100% increase to a 25% increase with twice the casting cost is not a nerf, it is an annihilation.  If Rage needed that big a nerf, it is totally unacceptable for the game to have shipped in that state.

Just prior to release they (all but) removed the stealth functionality from Stealth armor and only after a huge outcry did they bump stealth back to a point halfway between where it was and where it had been.  In that case, the nerf was completely unnecessary and made no sense at all.

Rage may be OP, but it couldn't have been THAT OP.  It literally isn't the same skill anymore.  They should call it Miffed or Mildly Annoyed.

The game was at least 3 months from release-ready when it shipped.  The devs don't know the difference between tweaking balance and completely changing the nature of a class.  There is nowhere near enough content to justify a full $15 a month fee, let alone with the game still in beta mode (bug fixes on a two week push, sweeping class changes, basic features to be added in).  And they plan to have a retail expansion out in a year.

I really want to like TR, but can't in its current state.  It is one that I will keep my eye on and see if they ever get their act together, but it just isn't deep enough to ever be my main MMO.  If they get it together, it may suffice until the next wave of real MMOs comes along.

 

Actally The DO know how to ' nerf ' things, unlike a lot of devs that continuly guess what would be a good total to have a skill at, get it wrong, then change it again to get it wrong and continuly change it, these guys take the skill down to it's bare minimum on perpose to see how much it needs to be buffed by to be effective.

No one as yet relised that these notes ARE TEST SERVER NOTES and yet relieased that these may not carry over to the actal server hence why there IS a test server, but as no one bothers to help test these nerfs to prove that it wont work, your just going to have to bitch whine then quit that the game is 'broken' because it isn't in 'ez mode' wont you?

So, are you always this angry or only when doing something really important like defending the honor of a GAME.

I stated that a change that massive is not typical of a released game.  It is not post-release balancing, which should be tweaking, but beta-level sweeping change.  The skill wasn't nerfed, it was changed on a fundamental level.  The DG devs have a history of overkill when nerfing, which has made some classes unplayable while they decided how much too far they went. 

I fail to see how that is "bitch whin[ing]".  I made my points calmly and backed them up logically.  You may disagree, but you can't dismiss it that easily.  If you want to dispute the points I made, please respond in an adult manner.  And, for the record, at no point did I ever use the words "ez mode" or "broken".

TR is fun when it works, but it was released too early and everyone who was in the beta (not the last minute FilePlanet people, the actual testers) knows it.  Had they waited and released a finished product (keeping in mind that tweaking is constant in MMOs) I would be playing it now instead of waitinng to see if they get a retail ready product before they add a retail expansion.  Sadly, most people will NOT keep an eye on a game that has a buggy release, so the future growth opportunities are limited. 

I played a LOT of TR in the beta and had high hopes for it.  That is the only reason it is still on my radar.  I make my criticims out of affection for the game, not anger.  If a change from 100% bonus to 25% with double the cost is the type of nerf that DG considers appropriate for a retail product, then it isn't a game for me.  Only time will tell if they will continue this pattern or finally come out of beta in a few months.  I'll always have fond memories of my time with TR, even if it ends up being something that I wouldn't pay for.

Lastly, I find your criticism about no one playing on the test server misguided.  3 weeks into release no one SHOULD be playing on the test server.  There shouldn't be that much to test.  Three weeks in, people should be enjoying the game in a (relatively) bug-free state, not testing the latest bug fixes.  It is funny that a lot of people here have referred to the first 3-12 months as pay-to-beta, and you are taking it a step further and suggesting that people should spend $50 on a just-released game to play on the test (beta?) server.

The TR devs don't know how to nerf.  They always go to ludicrous extremes. 

Changing a skill from 100% increase to a 25% increase with twice the casting cost is not a nerf, it is an annihilation.  If Rage needed that big a nerf, it is totally unacceptable for the game to have shipped in that state.

Just prior to release they (all but) removed the stealth functionality from Stealth armor and only after a huge outcry did they bump stealth back to a point halfway between where it was and where it had been.  In that case, the nerf was completely unnecessary and made no sense at all.

Rage may be OP, but it couldn't have been THAT OP.  It literally isn't the same skill anymore.  They should call it Miffed or Mildly Annoyed.

The game was at least 3 months from release-ready when it shipped.  The devs don't know the difference between tweaking balance and completely changing the nature of a class.  There is nowhere near enough content to justify a full $15 a month fee, let alone with the game still in beta mode (bug fixes on a two week push, sweeping class changes, basic features to be added in).  And they plan to have a retail expansion out in a year.

I really want to like TR, but can't in its current state.  It is one that I will keep my eye on and see if they ever get their act together, but it just isn't deep enough to ever be my main MMO.  If they get it together, it may suffice until the next wave of real MMOs comes along.

1. Buggy releases.  Vanguard and Tabula Rasa are two prime offenders here.  TR released 3 months too soon and everyone in the beta knew it.  TR may be worth revisiting early next year, but it isn't ready for primetime.

2.  Time /played.  A game is going to have to be pretty damn solid to get people to just walk away from the game that they have so much time and energy invested in. 

3.  The things that WoW does better than anyone else.  Classic World of Warcraft (levels 1-60, primarily PvE) is one of the best games ever made.  (And very excited that the guys behind that content are developing a new game).  Blizzard knows polish.  There is a lot at endgame to turn a lot of people off, but the core of the game is solid and as polished as they come.  LotRO was a great Middle Earth simulator, but it stopped being fun really quickly.  The quest designs in the 30s and 40s are hideously tedious and made getting a group that was actually doing the specific part that you needed of the specific area (Dol Dinen was a nighmare of bad design decisions)  more trouble than it was worth in the end.

4.  WoW is the king of the mountain.  It is on top and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  If WAR ends up with numbers in the general range of WoW, but still decidely second place, it will have to be considered a smashing success.  It was the same when EQ was king.  DAOC was a success, but never able to topple the king. (On a side note, there is a legitimate concern that EA Mythic can't do what Mythic could have.  See Hellgate: London for an example of what ties to EA can do).   WoW will go down when the next generation of MMOs arrive.  WoW took a lot of the tediousness that kept MMOs from the mainstream away.  Its decline will begin when someone makes a game that adheres to what Blizzard does right and tosses out what Blizzard has done wrong.  Personally, I have high hopes for Carbine, but their first game is still years away.

Neither.

Beta'd both of these, neither delivers enough for the charge.

TR would be the better game with a $10/month fee, as it is an MMO-lite.  Endgame is an afterthought.  High end content, still buggy and broken and unpolished less than two weeks from release.  For some reason the AFS uses tons of Dell XPS computers.  There are rooms where it is hard to target the NPCs you need to because of all the Dells in the way.

Hellgate makes you pay $10 to get content that should be in the game out of the box.  AND installs adware on your computer.  It is way too short (an MMO with replaying at harder difficulty as endgame?).
Skip them both.  Neither is worth the money.

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  The Hellgate demo was far more enjoyable

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The problem is that is never really changes after that. Same rooms, same monsters, same loot. Apparently all of London looks just alike- sewers and maintenance halls and identical city blocks and riverbeds.

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Originally posted by Quasimojo  
I think the problem is he's actually *too* in tune with today's MMORPG marketplace. Like that 10,000 Maniacs song, he's givin' 'em what they want. Trouble is, what the myopic public wants doesn't do a thing to further the genre, it just waters it down and makes it less interesting, but in small, easy-to-swallow pieces.
The MMORPG genre could grow in a manner that would dwarf the growth it's seen over the past several years, if someone just had the stones to develop a title that is truly compelling rather than just offering cheap thrills (read: "accessibility").
The old adage, "Anything worth having is worth working for" holds true here, just like anything else.
 

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I don't think that this is an either/or situation. WoW, love it or hate it, showed the major game companies that if you make an MMO accessible, people who would never have touched EQ/UO will play. These companies are all owned by corporations who want to maximize sales/subscriptions.

MMO developers need to seek the same balance that makers of games in other genres do. The goal should always be Easy to play, but difficult to master. TR fails that test. The skill choices at later levels are pretty irrelevant because for almost any class at level 50 a shotgun is still better than anything else you could use. There is no depth to the game.

The "next big thing" aka "the WoW killer" will be the game that is easy to get into and easy to play, but rewards the skillful. There needs to be a careful balance between the casual and the hardcore so that it doesn't become an us vs them situation. Soloing in an MMO IS a perfectly valid form of gameplay. Soloists should not be deprived of a game's best gear, IF they have mastered their class well enough to take on the toughest challenges. Some people enjoy massive raids. Many more don't. When someone devises a system that allows PvE raiders/small groupers/soloists and PvPers to attain equal quality gear with similar time/skill investment.

WoW endgame fails because the first people to beat the Black temple deserve to have better gear than people who haven't. They put in massive time and effort and deserve to be well rewarded. However, once more than one or two guilds have a raid on "farm status", they start bringing along members who don't do the hard work. When a guild can beat a 25 man with 20, five people can essentially /follow and get the rewards. By the time that happens, people in smaller groups should have a way to get equittable gear if they have been working that hard. And once most of them are equipped enough to take along poorly geared friends, the soloists should have been able to put the time and effort in to get equitable gear. All 3 playstyles are valid.

People who have busy lives and can't play on the schedule of a 16-18 year old raid leader should not be punished if they they have the skill and put in the time and effort at their own pace around their own scedule. Their sacrifice is that they never see some of the really cool raid encounters.

This is a lot for a game to accomplish, but it IS possible. The game that delivers what WoW promised before the EQ guys took over will be the one to steal its crown.

TR won't be that game.

BTW, give yourself brownie points for the 10,000 maniacs reference (that is from Our Time in Eden-the last Natalie Merchant Maniacs album- wasn't it?).
 

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Originally posted by baff
 
 
Talking of Hype, the dev companies that made Guild Wars and that made WoW were also the same guys that made Diablo 1/2.
 
 
The question is, were they the texture artists, the play testers, the janitors, or the netcoders?
The guy that did the photocopying on Diablo 1 was still part fo the team.

 

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