I doubt it's going to be a problem. Or at least not in the direction you think. Whatever their lore and other issues. Guardians are prettier than defiants. And, well, that's likely going to be the great leveler between the two factions.
Disagree. Defiants have night elves, and they are super-smexy.
And while both sides seem like total dicks, the Defiants at least are entertaining total dicks. I mean, Guardians are super-rightous and douchey, while Defiants
STEAL FUCKING SOULS
.
It's a pretty huge difference.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
So for someone who hates instance grinding like in WoW, and prefers dynamic open world dickery, what's the verdict for this? Did it live up to the hype?
So for someone who hates instance grinding like in WoW, and prefers dynamic open world dickery, what's the verdict for this? Did it live up to the hype?
What i'm asking is, pass or buy?
I think that the only instances are the "Dungeons" - which are just a handful of super elite quests that I've heard are amazing.
Otherwise you'll be questing in the world and I've loved it so far.
For one quest they tell you to go to a cave and clear out a nest of spiders, so I set off expecting it to be some instanced cave of some sort.
But when I arrive I just enter the cave entrance, no transition into another instance or anything, and do my business in there.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
That sounds interesting and all, but for a guy who liked Tabula Rasa's open warfare system, would you say this is a buy at release/preorder? Or wait on it a bit?
So for someone who hates instance grinding like in WoW, and prefers dynamic open world dickery, what's the verdict for this? Did it live up to the hype?
What i'm asking is, pass or buy?
Well, yesterday, a world boss appeared out of nowhere on my server and started attacking a town. About 30 people rallied together to get it down. And everyone who contributed gets rewards. The day before that, I spent a couple hours running around with a raid group and taking down invasions to protect low-level quest hubs.
If I do buy this via Steam, how do you find your key?
Use the CD key you get on running the game to sign up for a live membership account to the game. You'll need to choose a subscription plan.
Then you'll get an email at the attached email address saying you're part of the beta, and to relog on your Trion account. Click the EULA agreement box, and you're set to go.
Keep in mind that the Steam version of the game currently doesn't work. It looks like that version is keyed to the live release. You'll need to download the beta updater.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Guardian starting areas are pretty stale and easy (aside from the invasions) compared to the Defiants from my experience. Lore-wise, there's a much more sense of urgency with the Defiants where it's all
"YOU'RE FROM THE FUTURE HERE TO SAVE THE PAST"
and with Guardians it's all like
"MAN YOU FUCKED UP ONCE SO WE'RE GONNA GIVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE K?"
There's going to be so few of you that it would be a good idea if you all pick the same faction for your server.
Came off kind of hostile there bud. There seems to be a pretty high level of interest, not exactly sure where that comment is coming from...Especially since you pre-ordered like 3 copies? I would think you'd be hopeful for a PA community.
But I just ran through the Guardian start...man, that was lame. The Defiant start was much more...entertaining. Guardian start just feels like lots of running back and forth.
I went into this beta not expecting much. Mostly due to friends insisting I try it. This game IS crazy polished. Been playing all weekend and having a blast. The soul system leads to some awesome customization for your skills.
They took the best parts of previous mmos and put them together in one delicious rift stew.
Definitely keeping my pre-order. Hell probably upgrade to CE.
Do any of the clas...er..souls... have any 'fun' spells. I typically pick those sort of classes because I like more than every new level just being another attack skill. Any sort of teleporting or self-polymorph or anything of that nature?
Do any of the clas...er..souls... have any 'fun' spells. I typically pick those sort of classes because I like more than every new level just being another attack skill. Any sort of teleporting or self-polymorph or anything of that nature?
Well, the rogue riftstalker soul. The tank soul actually. Is all about teleporting. At last count think i knew of about 6 or so different ways that the soul lets you do so. Teleport forwards. Teleport behind the target. Teleport and aoe. Teleport behind and hit. Teleport to a point you aim at and teleport to a point you've marked.
Void Knight is repetitive and Reaver offers some "deathknight" kind of stuff that I ended up main-speccing to. It's nice to have a spammable ranged attack for when I'm trying to kite something.
Void Knight is repetitive and Reaver offers some "deathknight" kind of stuff that I ended up main-speccing to. It's nice to have a spammable ranged attack for when I'm trying to kite something.
I found Void Knight to be cool, but like you said repetitive and it's primary abilities are really situational (mages/mana users). It's probably awesome in PvP though.
I see a metric ton of rogues running around. So, rolling a fighter or cleric will result in groups. Rogues look to be a dime a dozen in this game (just like nearly every other MMO).
I've been trying a lot of souls through the newb experience. So far the best "tank" set up I've played is: Champion (gets a really cool charge) + Warlord (several taunts and aggro builders) + Beastmaster (local heals, pet to off tank).
I've looked it over and think that you could probably roll that soul build, and have a highly effective tank build (points in champ and warlord) and another role for DPS/Soloing (champion and beastmaster).
Now to just figure out which side to roll on finally, leaning more towards defiant since the races for guardian pretty much blow in my opinion.
It LOOKS different on the surface but the underlying features are really not different from WoW. Yes, they're in different places and given different names, but you still basically get to pick from 3 specs of your class. You just get to pick which 3 talent trees you get.
The races are also a turnoff. You get humans, pointy-eared humans, little humans, different-named humans, blue pointy-eared humans, and big humans.
It's FUN at first, but I can see this devolving quickly into 15 year old kids yelling at me on Ventrilo because my DPS is 0.0004% too low.
IMO Rogues have the least variety. You get attacks you spam to build combo points so you can use a finisher. Practically EVERY "soul" in this class works that way, so you end up with a fuckton of redundant skills.
Most of the rogue classes have one basic combo point builder and one basic finisher, which is necessary if they're all going to be viable at level 1, and this is where the redundancy comes in. After that, there isn't much redundancy at all. The playstyle of building up combo points and using a finisher is, of course, the same across the rogue souls, but you have plenty of options for what cp generating abilities and what finishers you use.
Example 1 - melee build - bladedancer (rush to 21) / riftstalker (13ish once you can) / assassin (20ish, last priority)
You primarily use keen strike / quick strike to build up combo points (later on I imagine you'd use precision strike and puncture as well plus flash of steel to initiate and the teleports to keep up your crit/damage buffs). For finishers you'd keep up dauntless strike (+crit), false blade (+dodge), and eventually annihilate (+attack power), using deadly strike whenever none of those need to be renewed.
Example 2 - ranged build - ranger (~15)/assassin (~5)/marksman (0)
Pet to gain aggro, quick shot to keep up the bleed (and the pet rage), swift shot if the mob gets into melee range. Head shot as your main finisher, to keep up the damage buff. Add in rapid shot as a finisher when you unlock it. As you gain marksman points, it looks like you could kite pretty effectively (haste + slow + dot that increases if target is moving). Then there's the whole hit and run + empowered shot + deadeye shot combination if you're pvping or really need to nuke a mob.
Example 3 - bard build - bard (~20) / ranger (0) / marksman (0)
Keep up your motifs, for starters. Then power chord + cadence to builds combo points, keep up codas of cowardice and distress on the enemy, then toss around damage (eventually heals as well) as you're able.
Same base mechanic, but those are three very different playstyles and you could have all three of them on the same character, switching between them as needed.
Oh god. All these classes sound very intriguing. I was going to pass this up, but I might check it out after all. I just hope the PvP is pretty good.
I can't say for the other classes, mostly because I’ve been simply too busy with work to really try them out as much as I’d wish, but all the rogue souls are fairly unique. Off the top of my head ranger and marksman are perhaps the most alike but even within them as soon as you start putting in points they go in very different directions.
Clerics are op as hell though. The official boards said it so it must be true.
Yeah, my Cleric (built for healing) hasn't gotten near death even with all the 10+ level invasion spawning in my questing hub.
I'm talking more the PvP side. On the other hand, no-one. Or at least very few. Have any % healing reduction so i'm kind of wary of screaming op from the rafters.
The nice thing about the soul system is that each class has a bunch of roles that it can fill - tanking, healing, ranged dps, melee dps, aoe dps, support, depending on which class and which soul you choose. The issue with clerics is that they have healing in pretty much every soul, which can get iffy (in the direction of OPness) when effectively combined with either tanking or dps souls. Mages and marksmen/rangers/saboteurs can nuke them down with huge crits if they're lucky, assassins may be able to stunlock them, and I believe void knights eat clerics (all casters, really) alive. As long as clerics CAN be taken down 1v1, and I think they can at the moment, they should be fine. If they're healing through a full group, then yeah, we have a problem. On the plus side, you should be able to escape any cleric who's healing through your damage. Max level may change the calculus, of course.
At least a couple souls have healing reduction abilities - nightblades do for sure.
There's going to be so few of you that it would be a good idea if you all pick the same faction for your server.
Came off kind of hostile there bud. There seems to be a pretty high level of interest, not exactly sure where that comment is coming from...Especially since you pre-ordered like 3 copies? I would think you'd be hopeful for a PA community.
But I just ran through the Guardian start...man, that was lame. The Defiant start was much more...entertaining. Guardian start just feels like lots of running back and forth.
How in the name of fucking hell did you get hostility out of that?
There are not going to be many of you playing this game, at least not enough that you'll want to split your numbers up on different servers/factions.
It's great advice from The Sneak. PA branches in MMOs, at least in my experience, tend to have a ton of turnover. There are by no means enough people in this thread to support more than one guild, and probably not even that without a good deal of recruitment of more forumers between now and launch, so getting everyone on one server on the same faction is a great idea.
Whereas my poor Stormcaller + necro + archon can barely kill solo mobs =p
Really? Unless the fire tree is OP, I'm mowing down most mobs before they can even hit me with Pyro + elem + Archon, and 99% of my points are in pyro. Fireball, Fireball, Flame Bolt and most things are sub 25% already and they're just getting to me, maybe stormcaller needs some buffs?
When a game launches the PA guilds have like a billion people in them.
A month after they have like ten.
I'm not ragging on anything with that, it's just an indication that PA folks love to try out every new MMO, but don't necessarly sub after that first month, especially since a LOT of MMOs aren't worth sticking with. Now, that billion might stick around and this game is incredibly successful and blah blah blah but it's better to stick together at launch and not go overboard and get all fancy. I'd have the same advice for the DCUO thread and TOR threads. It's just the way things are, and it's not even really a bad thing.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
So I just experienced an invasion.
And I don't mean the piddly little "squad of troops marches to a town and tries to burn it to the ground" invasion.
I mean "Cthulu has risen from the depths of Rl'yeh, and seeks to devour the world" sort of invasion.
Me and some group mates were on a peninsula in the Free Marches, fighting some group of artillery men water cultists, trying to close a rift. Which is when we apparently accidentally flipped some sort of pre-programmed trigger that triggered the apocalypse.
See, by this point, I had assumed that Rifts were pretty bog standard PQ's with a twist. If you don't close them, they start spawning troops that will gladly overrun the zone and shut down questing until they're taken care of. And the rifts never stop spawning them. You get rewarded pretty heavily for attacking rifts, however, so you're always wanting to actually attack these things.
So, we close this rift. And all of a sudden a voice rises up from the sea. Apparently by closing that last water rift we pissed off the in-game equivalent of Cthulu. He starts screaming at us, calling us false ascended, traitors, etc, etc. While a goddamn turncoat cultist of death on our side back at Kings Retreat basically shit talks the lovecraftian abomination (Ballsy move, I gotta say.) and ticks it off to the point where it launches a full scale assault on the zone.
Now. I should clarify on this. This wasn't just a couple portals to some stygian un-reality opening. This was a full fledged attempt to sink the zone under the sea. Hundreds of fleshless horrors that were over-leveled for the zone, and looked like something out of Lovecraft's worst nightmares came charging out of the ocean. Portals to another reality opened across the width and breadth of the zone, spewing water from nowhere and everywhere at once, slimy tentacles writhing from them in the air, disgorging their own elite, lovecraftian horrors. Strange, alien growths appeared on the ground throughout the zone, as if the land itself was changing to some sort of alien gods whim.
In short, all hell broke loose. After the initial shock on general chat (Which mainly amounted to people saying "holy shit!", "help!", and "THE'YRE KILLING EVERYTHING".), a raid got together and we started fighting back.
Across the verdant, drowned fields of the Free Marches, we rallied and began to kick ass. Killing at least fifty of the stygian horrors as we marched south to the beacons they were building, struggling to keep the NPC AI from taking the zone (Which apparently they're quite capable of doing. They had to build beacons, RTS style. And they were succeeding for awhile.). We even pursued our man-hunt to kill the monster that rose from the sea, under the sea, finding marks of his favor and hacking them to pieces.
Meanwhile, the sky darkened. And the ground under our feet got wetter and wetter, until in some areas, we were literally walking in ankle deep water at all times.
The Kelari village got burned (Drowned?) to the ground at some point, no clue when. Which is a shame, because not twenty minutes before it fell, I paid it a visit and upgraded it's wardstone to the highest tier.
The Kings Retreat, the most secure area in the northern half of the zone, also came under attack a few times, though a second battalion of ascended formed and marched down the main roads to meet the huge invasion force that had gathered, and was incoming toward's it, so it was saved.
There were easily 20 rifts open, and god knows how many eldritch abominations running around. When I logged out after the invasion, twenty minutes later, the southern half of the zone was still covered in rifts that were disgorging a dozen invasion forces, despite the event being officially "over".
Eventually, after an hour of marching around and hard combat, we finally managed to face off with the monster that started the zone wide event. It died. And I got myself a special orb, an epic item, that can be used to trade for epic quality gear, even at my level.
That was probably the most badass, awesome thing i've ever done in a MMO. Some of the scenes from it looked like they should have been on the cover of a death metal album, and it was definitely dynamic content on a zone wide scale. We had a frigging militia forming to defend the towns, for instance. For no other reason then to not lose them. This is how Tabula Rasa should have been.
Posts
Disagree. Defiants have night elves, and they are super-smexy.
And while both sides seem like total dicks, the Defiants at least are entertaining total dicks. I mean, Guardians are super-rightous and douchey, while Defiants
It's a pretty huge difference.
What i'm asking is, pass or buy?
I think that the only instances are the "Dungeons" - which are just a handful of super elite quests that I've heard are amazing.
Otherwise you'll be questing in the world and I've loved it so far.
For one quest they tell you to go to a cave and clear out a nest of spiders, so I set off expecting it to be some instanced cave of some sort.
But when I arrive I just enter the cave entrance, no transition into another instance or anything, and do my business in there.
Well, yesterday, a world boss appeared out of nowhere on my server and started attacking a town. About 30 people rallied together to get it down. And everyone who contributed gets rewards. The day before that, I spent a couple hours running around with a raid group and taking down invasions to protect low-level quest hubs.
Use the CD key you get on running the game to sign up for a live membership account to the game. You'll need to choose a subscription plan.
Then you'll get an email at the attached email address saying you're part of the beta, and to relog on your Trion account. Click the EULA agreement box, and you're set to go.
Keep in mind that the Steam version of the game currently doesn't work. It looks like that version is keyed to the live release. You'll need to download the beta updater.
Game Library, right click, view game CD key.
Also. WTF is wrong with the Guardians, seriously...
What's wrong with Guardians?
Came off kind of hostile there bud. There seems to be a pretty high level of interest, not exactly sure where that comment is coming from...Especially since you pre-ordered like 3 copies? I would think you'd be hopeful for a PA community.
But I just ran through the Guardian start...man, that was lame. The Defiant start was much more...entertaining. Guardian start just feels like lots of running back and forth.
They took the best parts of previous mmos and put them together in one delicious rift stew.
Definitely keeping my pre-order. Hell probably upgrade to CE.
Very impressed with it.
Well, the rogue riftstalker soul. The tank soul actually. Is all about teleporting. At last count think i knew of about 6 or so different ways that the soul lets you do so. Teleport forwards. Teleport behind the target. Teleport and aoe. Teleport behind and hit. Teleport to a point you aim at and teleport to a point you've marked.
So..yeah.. lots of teleporting.
It pretty much is. I tanked the first defiant instance with it. Generally i found myself teleporting in various ways just for the buffs they gave.
I found Void Knight to be cool, but like you said repetitive and it's primary abilities are really situational (mages/mana users). It's probably awesome in PvP though.
I see a metric ton of rogues running around. So, rolling a fighter or cleric will result in groups. Rogues look to be a dime a dozen in this game (just like nearly every other MMO).
I've been trying a lot of souls through the newb experience. So far the best "tank" set up I've played is: Champion (gets a really cool charge) + Warlord (several taunts and aggro builders) + Beastmaster (local heals, pet to off tank).
I've looked it over and think that you could probably roll that soul build, and have a highly effective tank build (points in champ and warlord) and another role for DPS/Soloing (champion and beastmaster).
Now to just figure out which side to roll on finally, leaning more towards defiant since the races for guardian pretty much blow in my opinion.
It LOOKS different on the surface but the underlying features are really not different from WoW. Yes, they're in different places and given different names, but you still basically get to pick from 3 specs of your class. You just get to pick which 3 talent trees you get.
The races are also a turnoff. You get humans, pointy-eared humans, little humans, different-named humans, blue pointy-eared humans, and big humans.
It's FUN at first, but I can see this devolving quickly into 15 year old kids yelling at me on Ventrilo because my DPS is 0.0004% too low.
IMO Rogues have the least variety. You get attacks you spam to build combo points so you can use a finisher. Practically EVERY "soul" in this class works that way, so you end up with a fuckton of redundant skills.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
Example 1 - melee build - bladedancer (rush to 21) / riftstalker (13ish once you can) / assassin (20ish, last priority)
You primarily use keen strike / quick strike to build up combo points (later on I imagine you'd use precision strike and puncture as well plus flash of steel to initiate and the teleports to keep up your crit/damage buffs). For finishers you'd keep up dauntless strike (+crit), false blade (+dodge), and eventually annihilate (+attack power), using deadly strike whenever none of those need to be renewed.
Example 2 - ranged build - ranger (~15)/assassin (~5)/marksman (0)
Pet to gain aggro, quick shot to keep up the bleed (and the pet rage), swift shot if the mob gets into melee range. Head shot as your main finisher, to keep up the damage buff. Add in rapid shot as a finisher when you unlock it. As you gain marksman points, it looks like you could kite pretty effectively (haste + slow + dot that increases if target is moving). Then there's the whole hit and run + empowered shot + deadeye shot combination if you're pvping or really need to nuke a mob.
Example 3 - bard build - bard (~20) / ranger (0) / marksman (0)
Keep up your motifs, for starters. Then power chord + cadence to builds combo points, keep up codas of cowardice and distress on the enemy, then toss around damage (eventually heals as well) as you're able.
Same base mechanic, but those are three very different playstyles and you could have all three of them on the same character, switching between them as needed.
I can't say for the other classes, mostly because I’ve been simply too busy with work to really try them out as much as I’d wish, but all the rogue souls are fairly unique. Off the top of my head ranger and marksman are perhaps the most alike but even within them as soon as you start putting in points they go in very different directions.
Clerics are op as hell though. The official boards said it so it must be true.
I'm talking more the PvP side. On the other hand, no-one. Or at least very few. Have any % healing reduction so i'm kind of wary of screaming op from the rafters.
At least a couple souls have healing reduction abilities - nightblades do for sure.
I'm reasonably sure the pvp souls did as well, though i'd not swear to it as i've not seen those tree's for a while.
How in the name of fucking hell did you get hostility out of that?
There are not going to be many of you playing this game, at least not enough that you'll want to split your numbers up on different servers/factions.
I vote Defiant for release! Also on an RP server (PvP or PvE, I don't care), just 'cause people tend to be nicer on those.
Really? Unless the fire tree is OP, I'm mowing down most mobs before they can even hit me with Pyro + elem + Archon, and 99% of my points are in pyro. Fireball, Fireball, Flame Bolt and most things are sub 25% already and they're just getting to me, maybe stormcaller needs some buffs?
When a game launches the PA guilds have like a billion people in them.
A month after they have like ten.
I'm not ragging on anything with that, it's just an indication that PA folks love to try out every new MMO, but don't necessarly sub after that first month, especially since a LOT of MMOs aren't worth sticking with. Now, that billion might stick around and this game is incredibly successful and blah blah blah but it's better to stick together at launch and not go overboard and get all fancy. I'd have the same advice for the DCUO thread and TOR threads. It's just the way things are, and it's not even really a bad thing.
And I don't mean the piddly little "squad of troops marches to a town and tries to burn it to the ground" invasion.
I mean "Cthulu has risen from the depths of Rl'yeh, and seeks to devour the world" sort of invasion.
Me and some group mates were on a peninsula in the Free Marches, fighting some group of artillery men water cultists, trying to close a rift. Which is when we apparently accidentally flipped some sort of pre-programmed trigger that triggered the apocalypse.
See, by this point, I had assumed that Rifts were pretty bog standard PQ's with a twist. If you don't close them, they start spawning troops that will gladly overrun the zone and shut down questing until they're taken care of. And the rifts never stop spawning them. You get rewarded pretty heavily for attacking rifts, however, so you're always wanting to actually attack these things.
So, we close this rift. And all of a sudden a voice rises up from the sea. Apparently by closing that last water rift we pissed off the in-game equivalent of Cthulu. He starts screaming at us, calling us false ascended, traitors, etc, etc. While a goddamn turncoat cultist of death on our side back at Kings Retreat basically shit talks the lovecraftian abomination (Ballsy move, I gotta say.) and ticks it off to the point where it launches a full scale assault on the zone.
Now. I should clarify on this. This wasn't just a couple portals to some stygian un-reality opening. This was a full fledged attempt to sink the zone under the sea. Hundreds of fleshless horrors that were over-leveled for the zone, and looked like something out of Lovecraft's worst nightmares came charging out of the ocean. Portals to another reality opened across the width and breadth of the zone, spewing water from nowhere and everywhere at once, slimy tentacles writhing from them in the air, disgorging their own elite, lovecraftian horrors. Strange, alien growths appeared on the ground throughout the zone, as if the land itself was changing to some sort of alien gods whim.
In short, all hell broke loose. After the initial shock on general chat (Which mainly amounted to people saying "holy shit!", "help!", and "THE'YRE KILLING EVERYTHING".), a raid got together and we started fighting back.
Across the verdant, drowned fields of the Free Marches, we rallied and began to kick ass. Killing at least fifty of the stygian horrors as we marched south to the beacons they were building, struggling to keep the NPC AI from taking the zone (Which apparently they're quite capable of doing. They had to build beacons, RTS style. And they were succeeding for awhile.). We even pursued our man-hunt to kill the monster that rose from the sea, under the sea, finding marks of his favor and hacking them to pieces.
Meanwhile, the sky darkened. And the ground under our feet got wetter and wetter, until in some areas, we were literally walking in ankle deep water at all times.
The Kelari village got burned (Drowned?) to the ground at some point, no clue when. Which is a shame, because not twenty minutes before it fell, I paid it a visit and upgraded it's wardstone to the highest tier.
The Kings Retreat, the most secure area in the northern half of the zone, also came under attack a few times, though a second battalion of ascended formed and marched down the main roads to meet the huge invasion force that had gathered, and was incoming toward's it, so it was saved.
There were easily 20 rifts open, and god knows how many eldritch abominations running around. When I logged out after the invasion, twenty minutes later, the southern half of the zone was still covered in rifts that were disgorging a dozen invasion forces, despite the event being officially "over".
Eventually, after an hour of marching around and hard combat, we finally managed to face off with the monster that started the zone wide event. It died. And I got myself a special orb, an epic item, that can be used to trade for epic quality gear, even at my level.
That was probably the most badass, awesome thing i've ever done in a MMO. Some of the scenes from it looked like they should have been on the cover of a death metal album, and it was definitely dynamic content on a zone wide scale. We had a frigging militia forming to defend the towns, for instance. For no other reason then to not lose them. This is how Tabula Rasa should have been.