There is a graphics option menu. You get it from the login screen, YOu probably got shoved right past that screen if it launched right after you registered, since you were probably already logged in through the website. THere's a back button at the character creation screen which gets you back there.
I was in the CBT for that, and it was pretty fun, but there is a limit to the amount of dungeon runs you can do every day. It's really good for playing casually though. Also customizable armor yay.
I was in the CBT for that, and it was pretty fun, but there is a limit to the amount of dungeon runs you can do every day. It's really good for playing casually though. Also customizable armor yay.
Due to the stamina system you are looking at 10 dungeons a day, not including if you wanna craft items.
Tiers of item determine how much it costs to craft them, so if you want a basic item that might cost you a level, where the best weapons are going to cost you a days worth of playing or even into the numbers where you gotta pay 75 cents to get the 200 stamina for that item. If you play enough to collect the regents to make that item i'm sure thats not a huge problem though.
Yeah, I think some craftable items can't be made unless you buy energy to get over the 100 mist energy limit. Or pay someone with the recipe to craft it for you.
THis game reminds me in many ways of PSO, which isn't surprising I guess.
Spiral Knights is a lot of fun, but the energy limit is a pain and making alt characters does not get around it. It's a shame, had I known that I wouldn't have spent 80+ energy reviving myself during a hard battle
When you revive the price goes up progressively so you can spare a few but after you've spent 10 energy reviving its not worth sticking around.
Also if you ever see an arena thats like hey 3-5 energy and fight terrible shit dont do it, they are not fucking joking its the hardest fucking thing.
On the bright side of Microvolts, its uh ya know alright, thought it was gonna be class based but isn't you get to use any of the 9 weapons at any time. Kind of like S4 League clothes give you stats, so you can run faster or get +HP, and accessories give either gun A or B additional ammunition.
TDM and DM are standard affairs of shooting and getting shot, but TDM just has more snipers. CTBattery is well just that, a bit better cause you make more team efforts to get that battery, plays well in vent with a few peeps.
Elimination is a fucking amazing game mode though, typical everyone is 1 life for the round, and during the last minute a radar spawns in the middle of the map to break turtle stalemates, or if someones camping their spawn with a sniper, you can wait em out for the radar and see their position through walls.
We were all really eh about the game but as soon as we got out first match of elimination in shit got real, totally fucking batshit matches, planning out how to go into a fight and with everyone having all the weapons at their disposal shit can get dicey pretty fast or you can pull off amazing shit singlehandedly.
Thumbs up for Microvolts as long as you play elimination and nothing else.
When you revive the price goes up progressively so you can spare a few but after you've spent 10 energy reviving its not worth sticking around.
Also if you ever see an arena thats like hey 3-5 energy and fight terrible shit dont do it, they are not fucking joking its the hardest fucking thing.
oh man no shit. I was in a group with some dudes, and I was like, hey wanna do this optional path, and guy goes it's a tough fight, and I'm like eh. So we go in and it's like, 15 zombies! 15 more zombies!
How do you get tier tokens? I'm a couple transmutes away from having the gear to move on to the next tier, but despite having gone all the way down to the tier barrier a few times, both in groups and solo, I haven't found a dude that would drop tokens yet. And it requires 15.
I've played some Spiral Knights yesterday, and it was pretty fun. I have a few recipes for 2 star equipment, but haven't found the (2 star) materials for them yet. Do I have to be down at a certain level for this stuff to drop, or what?
Edit: Also, guns seem to be really weak (and buggy) compared to swords. A lot of my shots will visibly hit an enemy, but no damage will be dealt as far as I can tell. Plus, the damage is really low at least for the starting guns compared to the starting swords.
I've played some Spiral Knights yesterday, and it was pretty fun. I have a few recipes for 2 star equipment, but haven't found the (2 star) materials for them yet. Do I have to be down at a certain level for this stuff to drop, or what?
Edit: Also, guns seem to be really weak (and buggy) compared to swords. A lot of my shots will visibly hit an enemy, but no damage will be dealt as far as I can tell. Plus, the damage is really low at least for the starting guns compared to the starting swords.
Gun's are indeed fairly weak, but they do have their uses. In some dungeons, if you're getting overwhelmed soloing an arena fight or something, you can run circles around most enemies potshotting them. Also a gun with a frost effect has a pretty good chance to freeze on a charge shot. And yes, lots of times, at least under certain circumstances they seem to just not register the hit. I noticed it when I first played, then it didn't happen all day saturday and then late sunday it started doing it to me again.
As for mats, you might have to try a different dungeon. I had recipes that needed iron gears and monster bones, but hadn't found any after getting down to level 8 several times in a couple dungeons. I moved to a different elevator and got different enemies with the drops I needed.
edit: I've only played around with the starter bomb on the training levels, but bombs seem to be pretty shit. They just take forever to deploy because you have to charge them. Though i did one time randomly get it to drop 3 bombs at once. That was kind of neat.
I was down to level 7 of one of the random arcade dungeons and ended up hitting a spot with 6 zombies all coming at me at once. Are you supposed to drop the giant face pillar on them or something to stop the instant revive?
Still, Spiral Knights is pretty cute and a fun little diversion. Does anyone know the exact release date yet?
I was down to level 7 of one of the random arcade dungeons and ended up hitting a spot with 6 zombies all coming at me at once. Are you supposed to drop the giant face pillar on them or something to stop the instant revive?
Still, Spiral Knights is pretty cute and a fun little diversion. Does anyone know the exact release date yet?
The pillars actually revive them, so move them away from the zombies.
I gave MicroVolts a try today. Played ten matches or so. Just enough to get to lvl 2.
At first I was kind of iffy about having the entire arsenal at your disposal. Much like Meta, I was hoping for a class-based game... but it just clicked with me nonetheless. The weapons are pretty balanced, although the machine gun felt kind of pointless, what with the gatling gun being better at suppression fire and/or storming into a nest, the shotgun being superior at close range and the sniper rifle being a no-brainer for long range. I haven't bothered looking into melee much... unless it improves your movement speed or provides guaranteed 1-hit kills, I don't see myself ever using it until I'm out of shotgun ammo.
The only game modes played were Team Death Match and Elimination. Elimination is definitely the superior one there, but I need to check out Capture The Battery too, since I'm sucker for CTF modes in this kind of game. The maps I played were all great (The themes for them were also surprisingly varied.) and seemed balanced enough at a glance.
I really love the art style, (I regret purchasing Pandora instead of Chip though. I don't think I'll ever play that character model.) and it runs smooth like butter with everything maxed. Despite being P2P and me having ~200 ms of latency, I never felt like lag was a factor, so I give their network code two thumbs up for now.
As usual, the cash shop and the flow of new content are the things that will make or break this game for me. Right now I'm cautiously optimistic.
OH jesus H christ. I knew the elevator fees were reduced over the weekend, but I didnt realize the full fee was that high. 10 energy? That's ridiculous.
Spiral Knights has a level, called Devilish Drudgery: Wired for Synergy.
In this level you will come across rooms with a maze with walls made of unbreakable blocks, that you can't even shoot over. The open spaces in this maze are mostly filled with spike traps. Trapped on the other side of these walls (which you can destroy by hitting a block in the center of the maze) are groups of demons. Several smaller demons, many of which wear glasses, all presided over large blue demons, with dorky glasses, a clipboard, and coffee mug. This demon, asshole that he is, constantly asks them to come in to work on Saturday, and you know what, might as well come in on Sunday too.
When freed from their imprisonment, the demons turn on you, and attack you, by summoning infernal replicas of mundane objects to hurl at you. Objects such as computer monitors, office chairs, and Swingline staplers.
Ahahah, I was wondering why these demons were throwing office chairs at me.
I also came across a pretty sweet haunted graveyard map. The layout was pretty straightforward, but you were chased the whole time by a ghostly demon knight. He didn't drop anything, but every other spawn he'd dive right in as you were fighting a pack of zombies.
Don't forget the promotion/demotion shenanigans. Depending on which demons you kill, others will change. The big blue guys and little green guys wearing suits don't even attack.
So Aeria has a new game coming out:
Eden Eternal. Not so sure about the animeish graphics, but the features on the game sound really appealing. According to the site the game allows you to change classes on the fly to whatever you need, so you aren't locked down to only one class on your character, i assume this works similar to the Final Fantasy online games. Also they advertise player housing, and even player made villages. Hopefully it turns out as fun as it sounds.
So Aeria has a new game coming out:
Eden Eternal. Not so sure about the animeish graphics, but the features on the game sound really appealing. According to the site the game allows you to change classes on the fly to whatever you need, so you aren't locked down to only one class on your character, i assume this works similar to the Final Fantasy online games. Also they advertise player housing, and even player made villages. Hopefully it turns out as fun as it sounds.
So Aeria has a new game coming out:
Eden Eternal. Not so sure about the animeish graphics, but the features on the game sound really appealing. According to the site the game allows you to change classes on the fly to whatever you need, so you aren't locked down to only one class on your character, i assume this works similar to the Final Fantasy online games. Also they advertise player housing, and even player made villages. Hopefully it turns out as fun as it sounds.
Thanks. Hopefully it won't be a boring grindfest.
Yeah, i like the sounds of the features but Aeria is host to many grindfests so im not keeping my hopes too high.
My friend told me that Eden Eternal is developed by the same people who made Kitsu Saga and Grand Fantasia and would be basically the same kind of game as those.
EDIT: Got my MMOs mixed up.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
Seems like every other free MMO has the same shit in it.
- Surprisingly good art, even if it's generic mecha angel wings and huge swords.
- Decent music despite the J-poppiness.
- A limited number of uninspired classes that eventually branch out into something potentially interesting after you've invested months of time into the game.
- Pet system. Basically the same one. Every time.
- Vaguely named services that take care of gear upgrading/customization. Soul Reforge, Heaven Transmutation, etc. Zero feedback on what any of this stuff does.
- Completely mangled dialogue options with clunky, difficult menus. Again, no feedback. Jack fucking shit. "In order to use Devil~Enhancement on my weapon, I apparently need to be Ascended Level 170+ and I have to find something called Celestial Archstones[][]." Prepare to experience that situation almost every time.
- Click-to-move, with WSAD not being included nearly enough
- Grind-happy gameplay. You've never had to grind like this before. Dare I say you may not even understand the true meaning of the word "grind" until you've been subjected to what the free MMO market has to offer. Reaping endless waves of almost instantly respawning neutral and hostile mobs; all of them being dumped onto this random fucking hill with all of the delicate care you'd find in, say, a shitty private server for WoW.
- Lots of early quests that involve running around large distances on foot, with a few missions to talk to basically every major NPC in a city as a way of introducing you to the vendors and services. This happens in a ton of these games.
- Cash shop. Not getting started on that.
- Constant spam of every available chat channel.
SELLING ETHERL PHNX DUST 20k ZINE PST
WTB [ARCHENEMY BLADE+16] WTT FOR HEAVENLY REFINE U BRING MATS
LVL 60 WT/VM 6+ LF TOMBS RAID PST W/ INVITE
Anyway, I'm sure I may be missing a couple of things, like the towns that are literally flooded with player-run shops. Little cats with umbrellas coming out of their heads all over the fucking place. So many shop names and descriptions(BUYSTUFF - Blue Summoner sets, etc.) that it fills your screen and you can't see shit thanks to this sea of fucking half English/half Engrish text.
I've played far too many of these fucking things. I'm tickled to death whenever I find one that isn't cut from the usual Aeria Games/Perfect World Entertainment mold. They've both become pretty good at remaking their one game over and over again and getting people to play it.
The only decent Aeria MMO is SMT Imagine, and its only because it deviates a little from the norm and has a lot more to do in it. Though the content runs dry fairly fast and to progress properly you end up having to use XP boosters from the cash shop (or ones you sometimes can find in game.), but at least they dont cost much and people sell them for in game currency. The demon splicing and SMTness makes up for it. Though it gets a little boring around level 30-35ish
- Mobs look cute.
- Quests sending you to kill those mobs are vague, usually hinting at some eminent "attack" or "destroying our fields"
- Within the first hour of playing you will acquire so much loot it will never fit in your inventory.
- Half of the stuff you pick up is used in a crafting system that does not provide you with any benefits
- The other half is for vague events you never hear anything about.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
So Knight Online or whatever that GamesFirst thing is... yeah, it's basically diarrhea. Imagine the original EverQuest remade with an early Unreal engine, then completely eviscerated with the inclusion of the typical clunky click-to-move free MMO interface.
9Dragons was a lot like giving myself a paper cut on the head of my dick.
I'm just going to retreat back to Perfect World and die.
EDIT: Dark Eden is apparently being executed in April, so yeah. Watch out for that one.
-there are about six different types of in-game currencies, mostly designed to obscure the heavy reliance on the cash shop ones to do anything of worth. The cash shop currency is likely a diamond of some sort
I was thinking about pets the other day and it's such an obvious feature I'm surprised it took free MMOs so long to implement it. Think about it: your players like cute creatures, in fact: the little shits probably look up pictures of puppies and kitties every day.
It's such an easy feature to implement too: no one expects decent path finding or AI from their pets, we're still totally OK with summoning and resummoning our pets every time we jump down a ramp in Pay to Play MMOs.
It's a beautiful money sink: make the pets have stamina/mana/live energy/loyalty that can only be replenished by a special item and you'll have every player in your game spending in-game/cash shop money on that item.
I don't like pets much, I enjoy playing classes that don't rely on a finicky NPCs trailing behind them. Exceptions are pets that I can have a lot of control over, like in LOTRO or WoW. I want them to be a vital part of my class instead of a little ball of fur adding some dps to my actions.
I could totally write a black book on "Shit no one wants to see in MMOs any more" by now.
My brother and I put some time in on world of tanks. Quite fun actually. Right now you get to play with certain premium features on, but not paying wont break the experience.
Essentially paying money gets you access to some tanks that are balanced well just unique looking, and helps you train your crew faster.
You also get a bonus amount of cash, which pretty much guarantees a defeat is still a net gain of money.
So not paying really only makes it so you care more about winning and have access to 90% of the tanks
...The weapons are pretty balanced, although the machine gun felt kind of pointless, what with the gatling gun being better at suppression fire and/or storming into a nest, the shotgun being superior at close range and the sniper rifle being a no-brainer for long range. I haven't bothered looking into melee much... unless it improves your movement speed or provides guaranteed 1-hit kills, I don't see myself ever using it until I'm out of shotgun ammo.
The cash shop is basically do you want the improved weapons permanently or clothes that give you small stat changes (additional ammo max or extra HP/run speed) so kind of like S4 and isn't terribly game breaking, since if you get HP+ for a complete set of items, you'll probably be able to survive 1-2 more bullets from an auto weapon, its such a small amount combined its hardly worth it.
The AR is best for single character engagements at mid range with near perfect accuracy if you fire in bursts and is good for taking pot shots when you are giving support fire. Melee weapons enable double jumping and I believe all of them improve run speed but the balance is run speed for melee damage, they disabled 1-shot melee hits, but you can get much closer by getting the chainsaw at level 10, otherwise stick with the shovel to run and never use it to fight.
Gatling gun is great at medium range and of course the surprise coming around a corner and gunning down a group of people is immensely satisfying, its wind up is always a few seconds and you don't get a "spin up" button so its timing can get difficult. Also as for suppressing fire the AR is a better choice cause it has near infinite range, the minigun sprays shit so bad that if people get out of a few hop and steps away they aren't really going to give a shit if someone is running their GG off for show. Also it overheats when fired for extended periods of time, these periods consist of shooting a little over half the 200 shots you get by default but still, I've run into some shit times to not realize the guns about to overheat.
A note to hoping for a class based system over just having all the guns, it does all blend well together and even then not everyone takes advantage of every gun there is so you usually don't have to worry about sniper fests or rocket spam cause everyone uses weapons as they see fit for any situation. This is expressed the most during elimination which also makes it the best mode, if you play TDM its just a gross overuse of whatever the map gives advantage too. Theres literally a picnic table map where you spawn looking at the other players spawn {two chairs across a table, spawning on the seats} and its just two teams standing around waiting for invincibility to wear off and get their 1-shot on.
It looked good on paper and the graphics are quite nice for what we're paying, but jesus that's a boring grind from the get-go! Look at how clunky combat is, some mobs just drop dead out of the blue while the character isn't hitting them. And why aren't there any other players around? Is it instanced off that heavily, while still having the same boring RPG combat and no special events that would warrant an instance. Or is the game actually that dead?
I could do that. I should do that. If I ever force myself back into playing shitty free mmos to help others avoid them, I will do that.
I had to make that one video about the NPC in Divine Souls. She was so bad. But I also stopped playing the game 5 minutes after I ran into her, so I don't know if the game gets better or worse.
All those really shitty games are actually so shitty it'd be a challenge to make an interesting YT out of it. Like, one of my main complaints is that these games are terribly slow...how can you even film that without making excessive use of "later..." screens?
It'd be fun to try, though. That's how I approach dubious titles anyway. My main interest is finding out how insane the world I'm stepping in is.
The cash shop is basically do you want the improved weapons permanently or clothes that give you small stat changes (additional ammo max or extra HP/run speed) so kind of like S4 and isn't terribly game breaking, since if you get HP+ for a complete set of items, you'll probably be able to survive 1-2 more bullets from an auto weapon, its such a small amount combined its hardly worth it.
Yeah, I've been playing some more, and I chose to buy a set of clothes instead of weapons simply because I was tired of looking at the base character model. It is kind of nice to have the challenge of gimped weapons though, and I feel like it helps me improve my game. It's awesome when you out-play someone in close range with your gimpy base shotgun against their nearly always 1-hit kill Bombard.
The AR is best for single character engagements at mid range with near perfect accuracy if you fire in bursts and is good for taking pot shots when you are giving support fire. Melee weapons enable double jumping and I believe all of them improve run speed but the balance is run speed for melee damage, they disabled 1-shot melee hits, but you can get much closer by getting the chainsaw at level 10, otherwise stick with the shovel to run and never use it to fight.
I quickly learned the value of the assault rifle as I kept playing. Definitely my weapon of choice for mid range and/or when I'm at close range and run out of shotgun ammo without cover, or if the target turns their back to me. As for melee, once I realized you had double jump with it coupled with the faster movement speed, I have no more complaints about it. I even swing it occasionally for joke kills and to get rid of AFKers without wasting ammo.
Gatling gun is great at medium range and of course the surprise coming around a corner and gunning down a group of people is immensely satisfying, its wind up is always a few seconds and you don't get a "spin up" button so its timing can get difficult. Also as for suppressing fire the AR is a better choice cause it has near infinite range, the minigun sprays shit so bad that if people get out of a few hop and steps away they aren't really going to give a shit if someone is running their GG off for show. Also it overheats when fired for extended periods of time, these periods consist of shooting a little over half the 200 shots you get by default but still, I've run into some shit times to not realize the guns about to overheat.
My gatling gun is just collecting dust for the most part. The accuracy past mid range is pretty awful as you've mentioned, and it makes you an easy target if you're alone. Not to mention it's just inefficient in most 1x1 scenarios. That being said, if you have a buddy or two with you, and you're going to round a corner, it's awesome. As for the spin-up time, I've just gotten used to letting it spin until it starts firing, then tapping the fire button in short intervals to keep it spinning without overheating too fast or having to restart the spin.
A note to hoping for a class based system over just having all the guns, it does all blend well together and even then not everyone takes advantage of every gun there is so you usually don't have to worry about sniper fests or rocket spam cause everyone uses weapons as they see fit for any situation. This is expressed the most during elimination which also makes it the best mode, if you play TDM its just a gross overuse of whatever the map gives advantage too. Theres literally a picnic table map where you spawn looking at the other players spawn {two chairs across a table, spawning on the seats} and its just two teams standing around waiting for invincibility to wear off and get their 1-shot on.
I actually like Chess TDM. People camping in their starting area make my day, seeing how I can usually kill at least one before my invincibility wears off and take the jump pad. I also love circling the battlefield and hitting their spawn point from behind. It's probably my favorite TDM map. (PVC Factory is great too.) As for Elimination, while I love it, I think the mode breaks down once you have more than 5 people on each side. Because if you die early, you get to sit there for ages twiddling your thumbs.
One of my beefs with the game right now are all the channels revolving around "Quick EXP!", which is basically making the rounds the shortest they can be... so you almost spend more time watching death screens, score screens and the lobby than actually playing the game.
And I still think renting items is fucking dumb. Especially at these prices. If you don't want to grind MP hardcore, good luck on actually keeping a set of parts and/or more than two or three weapons. (To be fair, I'd most likely only spend MP on an assault rifle, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Maybe a rocket launcher.) Even if you save up for the 90 days ones, which is the best bang for your buck, that's a pretty huge initial investment nonetheless. If only the decay chalked the durability off per day you log in instead of going off real-time, I'd be fine with it.
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Due to the stamina system you are looking at 10 dungeons a day, not including if you wanna craft items.
Tiers of item determine how much it costs to craft them, so if you want a basic item that might cost you a level, where the best weapons are going to cost you a days worth of playing or even into the numbers where you gotta pay 75 cents to get the 200 stamina for that item. If you play enough to collect the regents to make that item i'm sure thats not a huge problem though.
THis game reminds me in many ways of PSO, which isn't surprising I guess.
Also if you ever see an arena thats like hey 3-5 energy and fight terrible shit dont do it, they are not fucking joking its the hardest fucking thing.
On the bright side of Microvolts, its uh ya know alright, thought it was gonna be class based but isn't you get to use any of the 9 weapons at any time. Kind of like S4 League clothes give you stats, so you can run faster or get +HP, and accessories give either gun A or B additional ammunition.
TDM and DM are standard affairs of shooting and getting shot, but TDM just has more snipers. CTBattery is well just that, a bit better cause you make more team efforts to get that battery, plays well in vent with a few peeps.
Elimination is a fucking amazing game mode though, typical everyone is 1 life for the round, and during the last minute a radar spawns in the middle of the map to break turtle stalemates, or if someones camping their spawn with a sniper, you can wait em out for the radar and see their position through walls.
We were all really eh about the game but as soon as we got out first match of elimination in shit got real, totally fucking batshit matches, planning out how to go into a fight and with everyone having all the weapons at their disposal shit can get dicey pretty fast or you can pull off amazing shit singlehandedly.
Thumbs up for Microvolts as long as you play elimination and nothing else.
oh man no shit. I was in a group with some dudes, and I was like, hey wanna do this optional path, and guy goes it's a tough fight, and I'm like eh. So we go in and it's like, 15 zombies! 15 more zombies!
How do you get tier tokens? I'm a couple transmutes away from having the gear to move on to the next tier, but despite having gone all the way down to the tier barrier a few times, both in groups and solo, I haven't found a dude that would drop tokens yet. And it requires 15.
Edit: Also, guns seem to be really weak (and buggy) compared to swords. A lot of my shots will visibly hit an enemy, but no damage will be dealt as far as I can tell. Plus, the damage is really low at least for the starting guns compared to the starting swords.
Gun's are indeed fairly weak, but they do have their uses. In some dungeons, if you're getting overwhelmed soloing an arena fight or something, you can run circles around most enemies potshotting them. Also a gun with a frost effect has a pretty good chance to freeze on a charge shot. And yes, lots of times, at least under certain circumstances they seem to just not register the hit. I noticed it when I first played, then it didn't happen all day saturday and then late sunday it started doing it to me again.
As for mats, you might have to try a different dungeon. I had recipes that needed iron gears and monster bones, but hadn't found any after getting down to level 8 several times in a couple dungeons. I moved to a different elevator and got different enemies with the drops I needed.
edit: I've only played around with the starter bomb on the training levels, but bombs seem to be pretty shit. They just take forever to deploy because you have to charge them. Though i did one time randomly get it to drop 3 bombs at once. That was kind of neat.
I was down to level 7 of one of the random arcade dungeons and ended up hitting a spot with 6 zombies all coming at me at once. Are you supposed to drop the giant face pillar on them or something to stop the instant revive?
Still, Spiral Knights is pretty cute and a fun little diversion. Does anyone know the exact release date yet?
The pillars actually revive them, so move them away from the zombies.
At first I was kind of iffy about having the entire arsenal at your disposal. Much like Meta, I was hoping for a class-based game... but it just clicked with me nonetheless. The weapons are pretty balanced, although the machine gun felt kind of pointless, what with the gatling gun being better at suppression fire and/or storming into a nest, the shotgun being superior at close range and the sniper rifle being a no-brainer for long range. I haven't bothered looking into melee much... unless it improves your movement speed or provides guaranteed 1-hit kills, I don't see myself ever using it until I'm out of shotgun ammo.
The only game modes played were Team Death Match and Elimination. Elimination is definitely the superior one there, but I need to check out Capture The Battery too, since I'm sucker for CTF modes in this kind of game. The maps I played were all great (The themes for them were also surprisingly varied.) and seemed balanced enough at a glance.
I really love the art style, (I regret purchasing Pandora instead of Chip though. I don't think I'll ever play that character model.) and it runs smooth like butter with everything maxed. Despite being P2P and me having ~200 ms of latency, I never felt like lag was a factor, so I give their network code two thumbs up for now.
As usual, the cash shop and the flow of new content are the things that will make or break this game for me. Right now I'm cautiously optimistic.
In this level you will come across rooms with a maze with walls made of unbreakable blocks, that you can't even shoot over. The open spaces in this maze are mostly filled with spike traps. Trapped on the other side of these walls (which you can destroy by hitting a block in the center of the maze) are groups of demons. Several smaller demons, many of which wear glasses, all presided over large blue demons, with dorky glasses, a clipboard, and coffee mug. This demon, asshole that he is, constantly asks them to come in to work on Saturday, and you know what, might as well come in on Sunday too.
When freed from their imprisonment, the demons turn on you, and attack you, by summoning infernal replicas of mundane objects to hurl at you. Objects such as computer monitors, office chairs, and Swingline staplers.
I love this game.
I also came across a pretty sweet haunted graveyard map. The layout was pretty straightforward, but you were chased the whole time by a ghostly demon knight. He didn't drop anything, but every other spawn he'd dive right in as you were fighting a pack of zombies.
Eden Eternal. Not so sure about the animeish graphics, but the features on the game sound really appealing. According to the site the game allows you to change classes on the fly to whatever you need, so you aren't locked down to only one class on your character, i assume this works similar to the Final Fantasy online games. Also they advertise player housing, and even player made villages. Hopefully it turns out as fun as it sounds.
Yeah, i like the sounds of the features but Aeria is host to many grindfests so im not keeping my hopes too high.
Is the whole company merging with Nexon?
EDIT: Got my MMOs mixed up.
- Surprisingly good art, even if it's generic mecha angel wings and huge swords.
- Decent music despite the J-poppiness.
- A limited number of uninspired classes that eventually branch out into something potentially interesting after you've invested months of time into the game.
- Pet system. Basically the same one. Every time.
- Vaguely named services that take care of gear upgrading/customization. Soul Reforge, Heaven Transmutation, etc. Zero feedback on what any of this stuff does.
- Completely mangled dialogue options with clunky, difficult menus. Again, no feedback. Jack fucking shit. "In order to use Devil~Enhancement on my weapon, I apparently need to be Ascended Level 170+ and I have to find something called Celestial Archstones[][]." Prepare to experience that situation almost every time.
- Click-to-move, with WSAD not being included nearly enough
- Grind-happy gameplay. You've never had to grind like this before. Dare I say you may not even understand the true meaning of the word "grind" until you've been subjected to what the free MMO market has to offer. Reaping endless waves of almost instantly respawning neutral and hostile mobs; all of them being dumped onto this random fucking hill with all of the delicate care you'd find in, say, a shitty private server for WoW.
- Lots of early quests that involve running around large distances on foot, with a few missions to talk to basically every major NPC in a city as a way of introducing you to the vendors and services. This happens in a ton of these games.
- Cash shop. Not getting started on that.
- Constant spam of every available chat channel.
SELLING ETHERL PHNX DUST 20k ZINE PST
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LVL 60 WT/VM 6+ LF TOMBS RAID PST W/ INVITE
Anyway, I'm sure I may be missing a couple of things, like the towns that are literally flooded with player-run shops. Little cats with umbrellas coming out of their heads all over the fucking place. So many shop names and descriptions(BUYSTUFF - Blue Summoner sets, etc.) that it fills your screen and you can't see shit thanks to this sea of fucking half English/half Engrish text.
I've played far too many of these fucking things. I'm tickled to death whenever I find one that isn't cut from the usual Aeria Games/Perfect World Entertainment mold. They've both become pretty good at remaking their one game over and over again and getting people to play it.
- Quests sending you to kill those mobs are vague, usually hinting at some eminent "attack" or "destroying our fields"
- Within the first hour of playing you will acquire so much loot it will never fit in your inventory.
- Half of the stuff you pick up is used in a crafting system that does not provide you with any benefits
- The other half is for vague events you never hear anything about.
9Dragons was a lot like giving myself a paper cut on the head of my dick.
I'm just going to retreat back to Perfect World and die.
EDIT: Dark Eden is apparently being executed in April, so yeah. Watch out for that one.
It's such an easy feature to implement too: no one expects decent path finding or AI from their pets, we're still totally OK with summoning and resummoning our pets every time we jump down a ramp in Pay to Play MMOs.
It's a beautiful money sink: make the pets have stamina/mana/live energy/loyalty that can only be replenished by a special item and you'll have every player in your game spending in-game/cash shop money on that item.
I don't like pets much, I enjoy playing classes that don't rely on a finicky NPCs trailing behind them. Exceptions are pets that I can have a lot of control over, like in LOTRO or WoW. I want them to be a vital part of my class instead of a little ball of fur adding some dps to my actions.
I could totally write a black book on "Shit no one wants to see in MMOs any more" by now.
Essentially paying money gets you access to some tanks that are balanced well just unique looking, and helps you train your crew faster.
You also get a bonus amount of cash, which pretty much guarantees a defeat is still a net gain of money.
So not paying really only makes it so you care more about winning and have access to 90% of the tanks
Yeah i got an e-mail saying the game will be released the end of next month, and will hit open beta for all on the 4th.
The cash shop is basically do you want the improved weapons permanently or clothes that give you small stat changes (additional ammo max or extra HP/run speed) so kind of like S4 and isn't terribly game breaking, since if you get HP+ for a complete set of items, you'll probably be able to survive 1-2 more bullets from an auto weapon, its such a small amount combined its hardly worth it.
The AR is best for single character engagements at mid range with near perfect accuracy if you fire in bursts and is good for taking pot shots when you are giving support fire. Melee weapons enable double jumping and I believe all of them improve run speed but the balance is run speed for melee damage, they disabled 1-shot melee hits, but you can get much closer by getting the chainsaw at level 10, otherwise stick with the shovel to run and never use it to fight.
Gatling gun is great at medium range and of course the surprise coming around a corner and gunning down a group of people is immensely satisfying, its wind up is always a few seconds and you don't get a "spin up" button so its timing can get difficult. Also as for suppressing fire the AR is a better choice cause it has near infinite range, the minigun sprays shit so bad that if people get out of a few hop and steps away they aren't really going to give a shit if someone is running their GG off for show. Also it overheats when fired for extended periods of time, these periods consist of shooting a little over half the 200 shots you get by default but still, I've run into some shit times to not realize the guns about to overheat.
A note to hoping for a class based system over just having all the guns, it does all blend well together and even then not everyone takes advantage of every gun there is so you usually don't have to worry about sniper fests or rocket spam cause everyone uses weapons as they see fit for any situation. This is expressed the most during elimination which also makes it the best mode, if you play TDM its just a gross overuse of whatever the map gives advantage too. Theres literally a picnic table map where you spawn looking at the other players spawn {two chairs across a table, spawning on the seats} and its just two teams standing around waiting for invincibility to wear off and get their 1-shot on.
Dudes who film the games they play. Gratis MMORPG has been doing this lately and it's saved me quite a bit of downloading. This is their run through the starting area of Gods & Heroes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWFBGnoiP0&feature=player_embedded
It looked good on paper and the graphics are quite nice for what we're paying, but jesus that's a boring grind from the get-go! Look at how clunky combat is, some mobs just drop dead out of the blue while the character isn't hitting them. And why aren't there any other players around? Is it instanced off that heavily, while still having the same boring RPG combat and no special events that would warrant an instance. Or is the game actually that dead?
I had to make that one video about the NPC in Divine Souls. She was so bad. But I also stopped playing the game 5 minutes after I ran into her, so I don't know if the game gets better or worse.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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It'd be fun to try, though. That's how I approach dubious titles anyway. My main interest is finding out how insane the world I'm stepping in is.
Yeah, I've been playing some more, and I chose to buy a set of clothes instead of weapons simply because I was tired of looking at the base character model. It is kind of nice to have the challenge of gimped weapons though, and I feel like it helps me improve my game. It's awesome when you out-play someone in close range with your gimpy base shotgun against their nearly always 1-hit kill Bombard.
I quickly learned the value of the assault rifle as I kept playing. Definitely my weapon of choice for mid range and/or when I'm at close range and run out of shotgun ammo without cover, or if the target turns their back to me. As for melee, once I realized you had double jump with it coupled with the faster movement speed, I have no more complaints about it. I even swing it occasionally for joke kills and to get rid of AFKers without wasting ammo.
My gatling gun is just collecting dust for the most part. The accuracy past mid range is pretty awful as you've mentioned, and it makes you an easy target if you're alone. Not to mention it's just inefficient in most 1x1 scenarios. That being said, if you have a buddy or two with you, and you're going to round a corner, it's awesome. As for the spin-up time, I've just gotten used to letting it spin until it starts firing, then tapping the fire button in short intervals to keep it spinning without overheating too fast or having to restart the spin.
I actually like Chess TDM. People camping in their starting area make my day, seeing how I can usually kill at least one before my invincibility wears off and take the jump pad. I also love circling the battlefield and hitting their spawn point from behind. It's probably my favorite TDM map. (PVC Factory is great too.) As for Elimination, while I love it, I think the mode breaks down once you have more than 5 people on each side. Because if you die early, you get to sit there for ages twiddling your thumbs.
One of my beefs with the game right now are all the channels revolving around "Quick EXP!", which is basically making the rounds the shortest they can be... so you almost spend more time watching death screens, score screens and the lobby than actually playing the game.
And I still think renting items is fucking dumb. Especially at these prices. If you don't want to grind MP hardcore, good luck on actually keeping a set of parts and/or more than two or three weapons. (To be fair, I'd most likely only spend MP on an assault rifle, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Maybe a rocket launcher.) Even if you save up for the 90 days ones, which is the best bang for your buck, that's a pretty huge initial investment nonetheless. If only the decay chalked the durability off per day you log in instead of going off real-time, I'd be fine with it.