I take it all back.  This game isn simply not worth playing right now let alone worthy of your fifty bucks (or more if you're not American).

This game needs at least six months more of development.  Check back in October.

I slogged through the nightmare that was launch. Made me miss AO's launch. My question now, as a science fiction fan, is what is the point of the game again? I am very happy to hear they finally got their crap together but I honestly don't remember the premise of the game. Is it simply an open world FPS where the whole point is to kill one another? Seems that would get old really fast. You say there are no instances, alright no sweat there but... are there any installations with creative and enthralling boss fights? Do players create and keep their own base camps or territory? What is the goal? What keeps players coughing up dollars each month?

At the moment the only true goal is an economic one through crafting.  Basically, the race to T10 gear in preparation for Territorial Warfare.

Now, there's a bit more to that as the investment to make something like that is huge and time consuming and cannot be completed by a single person.

The entire experience right now is predicated on the gear race to the top and getting your own avatar skilled up enough to utilize it and be a competent soldier for TW.

But if you're not entertained by the "parts-gatherer--->crafter--->gear--->parts-gatherer" circle of life there's probably little you'd enjoy about the game at the moment.  It's an arms race for TW.

The PvP can quite a bit fun though and the higher tier gear requires higher tier crafting stations which can only be found out in the wild.  There aren't that many so when groups make crafting expeditions to them the operations can really be a lot of fun.  This is where almost all of the large scale and organized PvP is happening at the moment.  A smart player with some good skills and equipment could probably make a decent buck if they merced it up for players making these runs.

So to sum it up the current point of the game is to prepare you and your unit as best you can for TW and TW isn't too far away.

Oh, and there are no boss fights in the game as there are no bosses.  It's something MHS has briefly talked about wanting to include but there's a lot that needs to be done before they should start worrying about stuff like that.  TW is what the team is currently throwing itself at but there is still major work to be done with both the netcode and client GFX optimization.

The good news is that the game is still subscription free so if you want to re-install or boot it back up you certainly have that option.  If you decide to do that let me know, I'd be more than happy to get you reacclimated to Enterra.

Sounds interesting.  I already sent you a PM lkavadas.

I gotta take off for a bit but I e-mailed you, vission.

I absolutely agree with Kavadas.
My experience with Earthrise is since beta last year and I play since launch. The start was rough and it took about 2 months for devs to fix the major issues. Now Earthrise is in the state that was supposed to be at launch - like Kavadas said servers are stable, performance is getting better. New features are introduced with every patch and some major features like Territorial Warfare are coming soon.

Warzod, I will be short with presenting Earthrise for you since most things are said on the website, but here is what you can do at the moment:

- Open world PvP
- Item protection with insurance (think Ultima Online)
- PvE part is mostly kill, collect, gather and talk to quests
- Great crafting system (all items are crafted by players, there are no final item drops from mobs)
- Player run economy
- Skill based system - a lot of skills and countless combinations (players can learn all skills and make their character builds with the gear that they use)
-Third person shooter style combat. It is fun and engaging.

There are no bosses in the game yet. I guess the end-game will be Territorial Warfare when it starts. Large portion of the game land will be open for capture by guilds and they can build their own bases there with economic and military buildings.

Earthrise has no alternative in the market at the moment (sci fi sandbox land based game). Hopefully the devs learned their lesson and we will see a jewel soon. I am optimistic based on my long experience since beta and the last few patches.

So the game has no real point aside from prepping for a game element that isn't even in yet... That would be like releasing a PvE based MMO with no mobs, just a crafting race to get the best gear if and when the devs put mobs in the game. I am glad you all like the game and thumbs up. I was simply confused, and still am to a degree. See I work in the industry and I keep imaging the pitch that someone had to give to greenlight this project.

"So what do the players do?"

"They can run around and shoot each other sir."

"Can't people do that in any other FPS?"

"Yes sir, but here they have to hunt tons of mobs to make better gear."

"Isn't that the premise of Global Agenda?"

"Yes but here we are not fighting for land hexes or facilities sir."

"So why are they fighting?"

"Well you see... they can shoot each other sir..."

Anyone checked out Firefall? Might be one for you all to keep an eye on. I get the feeling it might be more what a lot of people were looking for with ER.

Originally posted by Warzod

So the game has no real point aside from prepping for a game element that isn't even in yet... That would be like releasing a PvE based MMO with no mobs, just a crafting race to get the best gear if and when the devs put mobs in the game. I am glad you all like the game and thumbs up. I was simply confused, and still am to a degree. See I work in the industry and I keep imaging the pitch that someone had to give to greenlight this project.

Not really. There is a point and it is to get better and fight with other people just like in class based theme park games you are playing to reach top level and then fight with bosses. Character progression is complicated enough to keep you busy for months.

About your questions:

"So what do the players do?" - PvP, questing, crafting, advancing their character

"They can run around and shoot each other sir."

"Can't people do that in any other FPS?" - not really, most other shooters are very limited in territory and possible enemies, Earthrise has a huge open world with many places to visit

"Yes sir, but here they have to hunt tons of mobs to make better gear."

"Isn't that the premise of Global Agenda?" - never played it, but as far as I know it is heavily instanced, Earthrise is very open and free

"Yes but here we are not fighting for land hexes or facilities sir."

"So why are they fighting?" - to loot the uninsured equpiment of their enemy, to get money out of their insurance, to prove that they are better, to protect their fellow crafters while they are out in the wilds

"Well you see... they can shoot each other sir..."

I've been interested in the development of this game for awhile, but due to the nature of indie Devs I waited until launch to make my descision.

My only questions are ... how is MHS with their patching? Do they stick to schedules, tentative timelines ... or are they constantly giving excuses Ala Df  and MO ?

Do their patchs introduce more broken mechanics than they fix and is there a current playerbase testing this new Territoral War system?

If there are no testers ... how will they release it in a few weeks?

Thanks

What Apeg said, Warzod.  Aside from the arms race in preparation for TW, which is huge, Earthrise is an explorer's dream.  I'll be honest, the beast feature ER has going for it is Enterra, the game world.

I've played a lot of MMOs and can honestly say I've never experienced a game world more beautiful or interesting than Enterra.  Not even close.

There's still a lot of the island I've yet to explore.

That aside there's crafting, PvP, skill progression, gathering, et cetera.  It's basic and I understand that it seems you like this simply isn't enough to interest you but even the acting os just grinding crafting parts can be a total blast when PvP takes place.

Originally posted by Apeg

you are playing to reach top level and then fight with bosses.

I was fairly certain someone said earlier in this thread that there are no bosses to fight. Meh, it's a beef I have with recent developers. All mechanics and graphics, zero purpose. "We fight to fight!", I suppose is the motivation. Well I hope you all get you territory war sooner rather than later. And remember, just because someone doesn't care for you title... What do you think?

How does the insurance system work?  Do you have to keep renewing it every time you die or you go FFA?

Insurance is inventory slot based.  The sole exception to this is the "paper doll" which encompasses your equipped weapon, your two devices, and your five armor pieces; these can all be insured as one item with one insurance slot.

Each insurance slot purchased after that gets progressively more expensive and must be renewed upon each death.

Unfortunately, the frequency of deaths has no influence on the cost of the insurance premium.

Hi,

I'm quite interested in the game, especially in what you mentioned about exploration, as I am an explorer type. However, would you be so kind as to tell me how exploration works in EE? Is it:

1. The ability to go anywhere and see the views, but not be able to do anything specific in those places

OR

2. The ability to go anywhere and find secrets, hidden treasure and boss mobs and other things that have influence on gameplay.

I unfortunately grew accustomed to exploration in MMO's which is similar to 1. - ie. you run around to see the views, but cant do anything there as a) you are too low level and can't do shat against the enemies, b) there are only views to see and no real benefits from exploration.

@ madnagash

Knowing the locations and the loot tables of certain mobs is very valuable knowledge as the mobs drop parts which are then recycled into crafting materials.  There are three different types of parts (synthetic, organic, metallic) which can be recycled into dozens of different (synthetic, organic, metallic) crafting materials which can be of four quality levels.

As everything in ER is crafted this type of information is a huge deal.

There are also exploration rewards scattered about the map.  They're basically scavenge nodes which drop some nice bonus stuff like crafting materials, consummables, and some random loot.

Another bonus to exploration is knowing the location of the higher tier crafting stations which are needed to craft higher tier gear (you can technically craft anything at any tier crafting station but if you attempt to craft higher tier gear on lower tier stations you get more failures and critical failures, crit failures destroying all of your materials that were meant to make said item).

So is it #1 or #2?  On a superficial level I'd say #1 but once you realize the true consequences of the knowledge you gain I'd lean more towards #2.

Played this game at release for a while and I really only have one question:

Have they fixed the lag?

Everything else i can live with, but trying to pvp when the game lags like mad is not a joyful experience.

Other than that, i wonder if they have optimised the game yet, it used to chug-up my PC something fierce, and I have a pretty good spec rig.

To my mind this is the fundimental thing any pvp game must get right asap or it's siomply not worth playing.

As far as it has come, it still has three times as far to go.  Most everything about the game is still in a horrible state.  You mentioned the piss poor code and programming as prime examples as to why folks should not touch this game.  I can appreciate someone wanting to dig up more business so they have more folks to kill but ER is still over a year away from even being worth a revisit.  Right now it is a close bastard cousin to Mortal Online which is not a good thing.

Originally posted by Zinzan

Played this game at release for a while and I really only have one question:

Have they fixed the lag?

Yes.  The zone servers are now 100% stable, there is no more server hitching, and you no longer have to wait multiple seconds for an ability to finally execute.

Lag is quite good currently.

There is no lag and the fps can be adjusted with many options.

Advertising this game to be worth playing it is like convincing people to drink coolaid.

This game sure have seen some patches to reduce lag and client-crashes. Yes it even fixed some bugs and glitches, it still is one of the most horrible games released during the last three years.

There's nowhere you can go without being assaulted and killed within three seconds by some jerks. You don't see any enemy becuase of the very narrow FoV and short drawdistance and BANG... you get rooted and instakilled. Yes, three seconds is all that it takes to kill you by a single opponent and you've got no options to fight back, run away or whatever. And the worst thing is, that this can happen all over the world... there's no safe areas. Only the 10x10m camps are safe, but you can't do anything there besides chatting. Once you want to level up, train your skills, gather materials, you get killed so often that you'll leave the game because it makes this game unplayable.

Earthrise isn't a MMORPG. It's the biggest arena deathmatch ever created.

Another point why I won't advertise this game to be playable is that the controls are one of the worst ever. The whole thing is very clunky and you can't remap keys to make it any better. The game has some awkward restrictions somewhere in the code, so it doesn't accept more then three key-strokes at once. Walking forward, while strafing and shooting makes it totally impossible to activate skills or something, so combat is pretty much static.