Originally posted by indiramourn

 

Originally posted by Loben

The game is definitely fun. Probably too much fun because it's keeping me from studying. The more I play it, the more I like it. I think all the complainers are salty beta players that never played the latest build or have slanted views based on early beta experiences.

Count me as one of those "salty beta players" since I did beta test TR since June.  I completely agree that TR is full of fun.  The OP's screen shot is definitely the best way to show TR's fun-factor. 

But what you are not seeing, or more precisely what you are not experiencing by looking at a screen shot is the UI and the mechanics of the game.  Personally, I like the UI, it's slick and elegant, but many folks have issues with it because it's not customizable enough.  And there are many "unfinished" and "kludgy" aspects to the game design which even the most diehard fan of the game can't deny.  Sure it's full of fun, but for me it's short lived and becomes very repetitive very quickly.  I'm curious to see what the posts on this forum will be like after the "new glow" of the game wears off.  I can't justify paying a monthly fee for what TR currently has to offer.

You may be right. It's completely possible that I may be tired of the game in a week. It could be I just haven't played it as much as some of the beta testers. All I can say is that having played for 20 lvls on one char, it still entertains me. I have yet to see any of the serious bugs or lag that the beta people talk about. Then again, it could appear more fun because my schoolwork is extremely tedious lately. Who knows.

And yes I agree, the UI is terrible in a lot of ways but it's functional. I am hoping they'll fix it soon because I'm sure it's not just me that has a problem with it. The primary unfinished aspects that come to mind are:  the lack of an auction house (soon to be added), lack of vehicles (also planned), the chat channel system, crafting, and possibly a few class balance and pvp issues. It would be nice if these were fixed, but they're not game breaking, particularly at low levels.

The game is definitely fun. Probably too much fun because it's keeping me from studying. The more I play it, the more I like it. I think all the complainers are salty beta players that never played the latest build or have slanted views based on early beta experiences.

edit: That picture doesn't even do the game justice. Some of the dungeons and control point fights are awesome. (The UI sucks though :( )

What's it going to be? Orion or.....?

Originally posted by Warcriminal

 

Originally posted by Loben

There is another side to this argument. Suppose TR fails. Don't you think this will only drive developers to copy the WoW formula even more? TR seems to be a game that is trying new things, and if it fails, companies like NCsoft will be less willing to gamble on "innovative" gameplay. To want this game to fail is the same as wanting to prolong the WoW clone paradigm that's infecting the game industry.

Honestly, TR is sorta fun. I read a lot of negative reviews on it, and decided to try the beta to see for myself. It was really pretty fun. I didn't see the lag or bugs everyone was talking about. (Granted this was pretty recent.) The story seemed a bit shallow and the class customization was lacking, but the gameplay itself was kinda entertaining. This is not much different from any other NCsoft game I've played though. All their games are shallow. All their games lack what it takes for long term appeal.  Most are a bit of a grind, but they're all entertaining to some degree.

If they add some more pvp elements, rework the UI, and balance out the classes, (maybe make the bane playable :)), the game could be solid. Although I will say it's no modern UO as far pushing the boundaries of  gaming.

 

The main problem is that TR is NOT inovative. So if TR fails, because it is a feature-poor, shallow wow/SWG/generic second gen. MMO  copy, with lasers in stead of bows, it should send the message to future developers that thay really SHOULD try to be inovative, if thay want the huge sucess of WOW. 

also

 

would you pay a premium fee to play something that was "sorta fun" ?

I don't see this game as a serious competitor of WoW. I look at it and compare it to Hellgate:London or City of Heroes. I know it's not THE next big game, but it is fun for a while, especially if they were to work in some good pvp ideas. The price does seem a bit steep for something like that, but it is coming out at a time when there's not much else to choose from.

There is another side to this argument. Suppose TR fails. Don't you think this will only drive developers to copy the WoW formula even more? TR seems to be a game that is trying new things, and if it fails, companies like NCsoft will be less willing to gamble on "innovative" gameplay. To want this game to fail is the same as wanting to prolong the WoW clone paradigm that's infecting the game industry.

Honestly, TR is sorta fun. I read a lot of negative reviews on it, and decided to try the beta to see for myself. It was really pretty fun. I didn't see the lag or bugs everyone was talking about. (Granted this was pretty recent.) The story seemed a bit shallow and the class customization was lacking, but the gameplay itself was kinda entertaining. This is not much different from any other NCsoft game I've played though. All their games are shallow. All their games lack what it takes for long term appeal.  Most are a bit of a grind, but they're all entertaining to some degree.

If they add some more pvp elements, rework the UI, and balance out the classes, (maybe make the bane playable :)), the game could be solid. Although I will say it's no modern UO as far pushing the boundaries of  gaming.

For me the problem really isn't the math itself. Although I do agree, the obsession over maximizing stats gets a little old. The problem really is that most of the "math" is totally undocumented. What does this +1 charisma and +1 weaponskill REALLY do for my character in combat? How do they stack with each other? Which one is applied first? etc etc.  A lot of times no one really knows including the devs themselves occasionally.

It's a nightmare if you ever try to figure it out. You have the choice of doing some tedious test that may or may not be valid, or you can read a million forum posts hoping someone else will figure it out for you. Then if they make stealth changes or patch something, it can blow up your whole system. It gets really tiresome.

You could try Hellgate: London. I hear a lot of people saying it's fun. I haven't been following it closely though so I don't know if it's actually out yet. That or apply to Warhammer/Conan/Spellborn betas or something.

If you listen to the Eve soundtrack backwards, there are subliminal messages from the devs telling you to play more eve online. True story.

Eve is boring. Play Daoc or UO until one of the new games comes out. Or play EQII if you like the WoW type games (assuming you've already played WoW). Lotro and CoH are good at first but both get old fast. FFXI is good if you like good stories and cutscenes, but the leveling in that game makes you think taking a hammer to your balls would be more fun. Most everything else is garbage or asian grinders. But yeah....Daoc or UO would be my choices personally.

Really what I'd do is buy the orange box from steam and just play Team fortress 2/portal/hl2 until an mmo comes out that's good. That or go outside.

Originally posted by nomadian

I think theres a problem when a game is as niche as Auto-assault or Saga or Ryzom is. If you think about it the ideal situation is those that would enjoy the game you want to be playing the game. You want to maximize this as much as possible. The problem Ryzom I think may have had is appealling those people. People see mmos and they see the big guns, they need a reason why they would want to look for a small minnot like Ryzom. Maybe it didn't really sell that reason why it was worthwhile to choose Ryzom over any of the bigger games. Alternatively, it could just have been too niche.

I have to disagree with the whole "niche" argument. I think a lot of people stopped playing these games because they simply were not fun or were badly run. They had problems that were never addressed. Many people don't care about the game's setting so long as the gameplay itself is fun.

Having played Ryzom and Auto-assault both, the reason I stopped playing was not because the game involved cars or unusual creatures. The reason I stopped playing is because both games had other glaring problems. Auto-assault had a huge meaningless grind. The enemies were all the same. There was no real sense of community or reason to group. The "out-of-car" walking around was horribly done. The pvp was awful. The game world was shallow. The combat was not that fun. You couldn't really customize the way you fight. etc etc.

Ryzom was the same story. The idea of the world was sorta cool, and way you could customize the crafting and skill system was cool. The problem is....what do you do in Ryzom? You level up your skills to do....what? In Eve, the objective is pvp or conquering space or becoming wealthy or whatever. In Ryzom, there are no auction type systems for trading. Items are all sort of generic. There's nothing really to do with your money even if you had a lot of it. The harder monsters you fight are not that different from newbie ones. The storyline was never really developed much. There is no real pvp or conquest  (the pvp in game was awful).

The game just felt like an asian grinder with no end game pvp. The crafting/skills/unique world were the only selling points, and even those had problems. The game didn't fail because it didn't have orcs in it.

I'd say UO, Eve, Ryzom, and possibly Vanguard (don't know firsthand on that one). I would've said SWG no question if you asked before the changes. 

• I'm sure several people will suggest Eve. It is the most complex crafting system by a good margin probably (if you don't count AO). Just bear in mind that in order to craft a lot of the big ticket items, you'll need an alliance backing you up to make them. There is a market for everything you can make somewhere though. Also bear in mind that Eve is ffa pvp in many places with people who prey on merchants and miners. Scamming is everywhere also, but can be avoided. If you're ok with this, then Eve would be a good choice. You might also research something called "T2 bpos" and how important they are in the game before you get too far into it.

• Ryzom is much more pve based, and I'm not sure about the population on their servers. The game is very much based on crafting though.

• UO I wouldn't recommend playing on EA's servers. I'll just say certain versions of UO are better than others. That's all I can probably say about that. :)

• Vanguard...... um.... probably just better not to unless they have a free trial maybe....

You can automatically rule out any game that relies on end-game raiding and contains uber loot drops. (WoW, EQ2, etc). There are a lot of new games on the near horizon. You may be better off waiting for one of those if you plan to really get established in some game as a crafter.

Originally posted by Taram

 

Originally posted by Loben

Maybe gotten rid of T2 bpos, the need to gatecamp, the necessity to grind horrible npcs/missions to cover pvp costs....

I probably can guess the answer, but I thought I'd ask anyway since I like the idea and feel of the game....just not some of its idiosyncrasies.

 

TBH I've always found EVE "fun" Even as a 2 hour old pilot of a shiny noobship

30 minutes reading would have answered this question for you though so I doubt this was an honest question but I'll answer it anyway:

Gate camping will never go away, it's a fact of life.  However, that being said, with the advent of "Warp-to-zero" in low sec gate camps are far less frequent and much easier to avoid.  In 0.0 they are still very much a part of life as they are the best means of denying enemies access to your space.  Suck it up and deal with it.  Think of it as a border checkpoint.  If you have a passport (blue status) you get to go through.  If you don't?  Well... we're kinda hard on those who don't have passports here in EVE, you get to go home in your pod (if you're lucky.... if not... you get to take the express back to your clone vat).

T2 Lottery no longer exists and hasn't for months.  T2 BPC's are created through invention using T1 BPC's.  The better the BPC the better the T2 BPC you make.  It's not a 100% success rate but it's good enough that the prices on just about every T2 item and ship have come down significantly except for the usual FOTM ships (which do vary).  Oh.. and you can score a cerb now for right around 40-50 mil, not 80.

 

 

I'd say it was a good question from my perspective because I was able to read in 30 secs what would've taken 30 mins of digging through the Eve forums, and I appreciate the responses.

To clarify a little, my issue with gate camps isn't that they're unavoidable or that there aren't ways around/through them. My problem is that they're boring as hell to do. I realize they're a valid way to prevent people from entering territory and I'm fine with that. However, when 99% of all pvp occurs around a gate, it would be nice if the game allowed you a little more freedom to fight elsewhere. Or maybe have better things to fight around on a regular basis. I don't especially like playing guard duty at a gate checking "passports". It's probably about like working at a toll booth on the freeway except you pewpew people who skip the fare.

That's cool they got rid of the T2 bpo lottery. That was one of the things I really hated. Maybe I should try this game again.

Maybe gotten rid of T2 bpos, the need to gatecamp, the necessity to grind horrible npcs/missions to cover pvp costs....

I probably can guess the answer, but I thought I'd ask anyway since I like the idea and feel of the game....just not some of its idiosyncrasies.

1) UO

2) Original Doom

3)  Dark Age of Camelot

Before you get flamed, I want to say it's nice to see an objective opinion about WoW on this website. Many people who post here are out to champion their game (released or not) and at the same time bash WoW, since it seems to be the metric by which other games are measured. These forums would be a lot more pleasant if people could maintain some sense of rationality.

Having said that, I agree with you on most points. I will say that raiding puts a lot of pressure on a lot of guilds. A lot of players see it as a competition, and want to only have the "1337" players on their team. It's difficult for this mentality to exist alongside a more friendly guild environment. I've been in several raid guilds that systematically booted friends that the leadership didn't feel was up to par when it came to raiding.

My point is you're lucky you have a guild you really enjoy playing with which also raids consistently. My luck has been, the guild is either too casual and does nothing or is too hardcore and makes life miserable. From a certain point of view, it's not a problem with raiding, but with the social environment that tends to develop around it. All the same, from having done it several times, I'd rather not play a game that relies on raiding and gear for an "end game".

So aside from the raiding and repetitive instanced pvp, I'd say WoW is a solid game. The problem is if you take away these two things, there isn't much left to do (at lvl 70).

As posted above, it doesn't matter what server you pick because there's 3 in the cluster, and you can travel between servers easily with your char. You can play all 3 realms on the 3 servers in the cluster and switch among them whenever.....which is nice for variety but bad in some ways for rvr....

I just started playing again recently as well. I've been reading a lot and playing around with specs. It seems most wizards go earth spec. You get 2-3 bolts, nearsight, dots, snare nukes, gtaoe. Pretty good for seiges/defense I'd think.

Fire wizards have 2 bolts that are roughly the same damage maybe slightly better than earth and a good single target nuke. No utility. If you want a good single target nuker, you might be better off with a sorc or theurgist.

As far as ice spec, it's mostly about the pbae and AE root. I believe PBAEs have falloff now. I don't know how effective they are anymore. The AE root is good for 8 man fights I think, but again if rooting is your thing, there are other classes that are probably better for doing it (sorc/theurg).

In other words, earth spec unless you really just want fire damage or pbae for some reason. Then again I could be totally wrong as most of this I've gathered from reading and low level experiences.

For websites:

vnboards.ign.com is the forum everyone uses

daoc.catacombs.com is ok but somewhat dated and the "forums" are fairly inactive

www.classesofcamelot.com seems to be pretty good and up to date (except the player written guides)

also google for: daoc character planner....download the one on sourceforge

Having played many of the major mmo's,  I'd say FFXI wins no question. L2, Eve, AO....none of those even come close.

Sure L2 has a huge grind but you can do it solo and like others have said you can even bot. The game is just a giant time sink.

Eve is the same way, only the grind is economic rather than level based. As far as the "learning curve", people act like it's rocket science because you can put a moving average on the auction house prices and you can see your transversal velocity in space. The game really is all about grinding money and playing politics. Occasionally, you'll get into a fleet battle where you cant move or gank some guy coming through a gate. Yes, building a titan is not easy to do, but in the end it just takes time, money, and a bunch of other people to guard it.

AO is difficult from a planning perspective. It's difficult to min/max because there's so many variables. However, even if you don't get an absolute min/max, you're still viable and you can still progress (usually).

FFXI: For starters most people in this game don't even speak English. There is almost NOTHING you can do in this game solo except fish. If you manage to find a full group required to xp, chances are it won't last long. Everyone's tired from trying to find a group or you get a retard that wipes everyone making you actually loose xp/levels for all the effort. Then you have limit break quests which you must complete in order to continue leveling.... The only way you stand a chance really is if you know other people starting the game at the same time you start. If you're extremely lucky, you get in a "guild" that is patient enough to power you through levels/quests.

Leveling up is the easy part though. The amount of effort required to do the end game content is unreal. I could write for pages on this but I probably wouldn't do it justice and no one would read it. Suffice it to say that it makes the other mmo's look like a joke. Is it fun? Probably not, but it is difficult.

Thanks for the response. I was asking more about the state of the game at level 70 though. I had a 70 coercer on nagafen that I used to raid with some before the Echoes of Fadyr (sp?) expansion. I hate WoW style dkp raiding, and when I played on nagafen before, the pvp was sparse at best. Arenas were empty, and I was already tired of the outdoor boss thing from playing FFXI (a lot). I really enjoyed the game leveling up (once as freeport and once as qeynos), but it just got really boring after hitting 70. The samurai expansion was sorta cool, but I finished everything there minus killing the dragon turtle thing. Mostly, I just couldn't take another raid gear grind like I experienced in WoW.