Honestly I think seeing people actually rage on the PA forums about stuff is pretty rare, but usually the reason that someone's raging in something is because they have, like mentioned, an investment in it. Sometimes that investment isn't financial, and sometimes it's a really small investment - but with TOR for example, liking Star Wars and hearing "Oh man a Star Wars MMO that sounds neat!" and looking forward to it is investing in it.
Generally speaking when people get frustrated with games it's because they wish that they could be better. While "better" can be a nebulous sort of thing to claim, people get mad because they want to like something. I would have liked to spend a lot of time with TOR but I played it and thought it was bad and I posted about how I thought it was bad, and some people thought I raged because I use "fucking" a lot because I'm a vulgar youngster, when really I was just disappointed.
Anyway speaking of I'm disappointed in the proposed TOR F2P system, but we'll see how it shakes out.
Meh, they have the same 'pay per item' restrictions, where you can earn items, but not equip them. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was epic loot only, but from their matrix you can only use common items. That's pretty much a deal breaker for me.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Refusing to play a game on principle is understandable when it's about issues like racism, needlessly gross violence or sexism, but refusing to play a game because you *think* they might nickel and dime you at some point is only an effective way to never play any games any more. Play the damned game and if they end up demanding more money from you than you care for, you cut your losses and go and enjoy yourself with something else. For all you know you're going to enjoy the fuck out of the game and are more than willing to subscribe to it for the coming decade.
Plus, we don't know what Common actually means for items. They might very well have redone the loot system, otherwise free players might not even be able to equip quest rewards, let alone drops.
From what I understand of EQ2's system, it was wow's blue equivalent or higher that you had to pay (on a per item basis) to equip. If they want you to pay for anything green or higher, it's just ridiculous. Honestly even if it's blue or better that's bad enough to keep me away. It would be one thing if you could pay to unlock items even on a per-character basis, but for each and every item? Too much.
The way I see it: SOE wants you to subscribe. They give you options not to, but if you never want to worry about anything the game has in store for you: you will want to give them that 15$/mo they always wanted from you.
There are too many unknowns for me to already cast judgement about whether they are doing the right thing. For instance: I've already looked it up and "common" is the 3rd level of items, but I don't know what kind of differences between items we are looking at. In WoW a better item meanss everything, in LOTRO the differences are ridiculously minor. So what does it mean that equipment is behind the pay wall? You tell me, please. I haven't the faintest clue... is Vanguard a loot-centric game or does it offer progress in other ways? Is content gated off by gear requirements or can you compensate for your cardboard armour in other ways?
Freemium remains the oddest category on my list, it's somewhere between F2P and unlimited trials and companies need to put a lot more effort into telling potential customers what they are selling. If all you're saying is that your game is free and put an asterisk behind it leading to a spreadsheet with all kinds of subtle categories you are DOING IT WRONG. You need to come out with a firm statement about what you offer your customers at what price levels and give clear examples of what that means in practicality. It's like those god damned commercials for "interest free" loans, everyone knows that there's always a catch.
The Asian market is almost always worse in this respect, by the way. I just started up Dragon Oath and receive a lot of free stuff. I got a weapon as a welcome gift that does literally 5 times more damage than the weapon I got from my mentor. What the hell does that tell me? Do they want me to rush through the early levels? Or do they want me to check out the cash shop to buy decent equipment? Maybe they haven't thought about it at all and just figured that if people like better weapons then they're just going to give one away and everyone will be happy?
*e: I am wordy, but I hope I made it clear why I can't cast judgement yet.
From what I understand of EQ2's system, it was wow's blue equivalent or higher that you had to pay (on a per item basis) to equip.
Not really. You can equip everything up to and including Mastercrafted. Which is the best gear you can craft and requires rare drops to make.
You can't equip Legendary and Fabled items, which, aside from the occasional trinket in a lucky chest, will only drop in dungeons.
So, it's up to, and including, WoW's blues and crafter purples.
While I subscribed my characters never wore any Legendary/Fabled items. They didn't even wear all Mastercrafted, because the mats were rare and expensive. It's a bit better now that the crafting questline gives you the mats as rewards, but that hasn't dispelled just how good a full set of Mastercrafted gear is. And anyone can use it.
I highly recommend doing the new crafter questline. Each tier will give you about half a tier's crafting EXP and rare mats of your choice. You can keep yourself in good gear with minimal amount of effort.
You get 6 in the first tiers, enough to make all pieces, then they gradually reduce the amount for each subsequent tier. Still, having a full set of Mastercrafted in the 20s is nothing to sneeze at.
Yeah, I definitely don't think it's that big of a deal if its mainly end game stuff they're restricting. They do need to get you to pay them, and if you're going to be seriously doing end-game stuff, at that point you should really be thinking about giving them some of your money.
The only thing that really bothered me was the wallet and auction (buy-only) limit. The latter means you'll be perpetually poor and the former that, even should you want to splurge on the auction house, you won't have enough money to buy anything too nice.
You don't need the auction house and things like big bags are perfectly affordable even with the limitations, but if you're used to EQ2 subbed it's painful not to effectively be rolling in dough just from tossing all your random junk into your store and getting riches in return.
So...Darkblood Online. It's pretty fun. But is it more fun than Dungeon Fighter Online? Which one should I be playing right now? I know it's very early on in Darkblood's life, but I really only want to bother with one game. I'd appreciate it if anyone has some experience with both can weigh in on which they prefer. Thanks!
Maybe it's just because it's not really launched yet, but I can't reconcile the quote about items with the actual implimentation so far. Logged in my level 10 dwarf cleric I used to explore the dwarf racial start long ago. The vast majority of his equipment is blue and all of it restricted to Gold membership. The old areas were even pretty light on the magic equipment compared to the Isle of Dawn they added later. I guess "some" means basically all? I hope it gets better, I'm fine subscribing if I had people to play with but I think this will just drive people off. Apparently it's $5 to unlock 5 blue items. I don't see how they improved it at all, makes me sad.
My guess is that the reitemisation has changed the items the quests yield and you'd basically get the new, F2P versions from those quests now.
And by guess I mean hope, because otherwise they're just being silly.
[edit]
Free players can equip any items that are designated as common. Free players may also equip some items of uncommon or higher rarity, which are limited on a case by case basis. Items that aren't equippable by Free members are noted in game as "Gold membership required."
[edit2] From the quick look I managed to get, the only item-related concern I have is with diplomacy faction items. They've always been a bit of a faff, where your progress was stonewalled not only by your diplomacy level/cards, but also by requiring clothing with enough relevant faction. If you cannot acquire gear without enough faction points as a F2P player that could be a problem.
Also, the now-gold items I had equipped seemed to still give me bonuses on my old characters, so old players won't suddenly be stranded sans-gear and unable to kill anything to get replacements.
So for Vanguard all classes are free until level 20. after 20 only seven classes can keep going without paying.
"All classes are playable for Free members up until Level 20. After Level 20, the seven free classes included with Free Membership are: Warrior, Rogue, Monk , Cleric, Disciple, Sorcerer and Necromancer."
Also, I just noticed the Bard is not one of the free classes.... That's a horrible mistake or a great idea, depending on how badly people want to compose music.
Vanguard is disturbingly ugly. :? Why are there no shadows? How come Guild Wars can manage to look pretty while this game looks like EQ2? That is to say: ugly. Urge to explore ... dwindling
One of the problems with Vanguard is that it was more of a spiritual successor to EQ than EQ2 was. Many of the outdated things about EQ are also present in Vanguard.
I can ignore outdated mechanics, they can be fun and I'm young enough to be introduced to them for the first time just now. I don't think Vanguard is outdated technically, the drawing distance and all the bells and whistles are there, but there is just zero artistic thought going into it. A game like Baldur's Gate 2 or Guild Wars gets away with a whole lot less technical firepower by actually looking beautiful within the limitations of what was possible. I mean, you have to draw people into your world somehow and the game is complex enough that you have come up with some compelling reasons for people to start climbing that learning curve. One of those reasons can be to explore all the crazy mechanics (politics, expansive crafting system), but like with Uncharted Waters Online you have to ease people into it. Don't start them out in a ages long tutorial like in UWO, but setting you up with a vanilla experience and slowly introduce interesting mechanics is not going to work very well when that first quest is literally "go talk to the lady standing 20m away from me" and half an hour later your are running through a brown swamp killing brown monsters.
For reference, at it's best the game looks like this:
but that's with running around looking for a spot with more than 1 tree and at least 1 lantern in sight. Most of the time you'll be looking at
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Generally speaking when people get frustrated with games it's because they wish that they could be better. While "better" can be a nebulous sort of thing to claim, people get mad because they want to like something. I would have liked to spend a lot of time with TOR but I played it and thought it was bad and I posted about how I thought it was bad, and some people thought I raged because I use "fucking" a lot because I'm a vulgar youngster, when really I was just disappointed.
Anyway speaking of I'm disappointed in the proposed TOR F2P system, but we'll see how it shakes out.
[edit] They removed race/class restrictions? Double sweet!
Aaaaaaaaaah! A F2P MMO being, REASONABLE? I'm checking this out when I get home.
I'm thinking of doing Blade and Soul.
There are too many unknowns for me to already cast judgement about whether they are doing the right thing. For instance: I've already looked it up and "common" is the 3rd level of items, but I don't know what kind of differences between items we are looking at. In WoW a better item meanss everything, in LOTRO the differences are ridiculously minor. So what does it mean that equipment is behind the pay wall? You tell me, please. I haven't the faintest clue... is Vanguard a loot-centric game or does it offer progress in other ways? Is content gated off by gear requirements or can you compensate for your cardboard armour in other ways?
Freemium remains the oddest category on my list, it's somewhere between F2P and unlimited trials and companies need to put a lot more effort into telling potential customers what they are selling. If all you're saying is that your game is free and put an asterisk behind it leading to a spreadsheet with all kinds of subtle categories you are DOING IT WRONG. You need to come out with a firm statement about what you offer your customers at what price levels and give clear examples of what that means in practicality. It's like those god damned commercials for "interest free" loans, everyone knows that there's always a catch.
The Asian market is almost always worse in this respect, by the way. I just started up Dragon Oath and receive a lot of free stuff. I got a weapon as a welcome gift that does literally 5 times more damage than the weapon I got from my mentor. What the hell does that tell me? Do they want me to rush through the early levels? Or do they want me to check out the cash shop to buy decent equipment? Maybe they haven't thought about it at all and just figured that if people like better weapons then they're just going to give one away and everyone will be happy?
*e: I am wordy, but I hope I made it clear why I can't cast judgement yet.
You can't equip Legendary and Fabled items, which, aside from the occasional trinket in a lucky chest, will only drop in dungeons.
So, it's up to, and including, WoW's blues and crafter purples.
While I subscribed my characters never wore any Legendary/Fabled items. They didn't even wear all Mastercrafted, because the mats were rare and expensive. It's a bit better now that the crafting questline gives you the mats as rewards, but that hasn't dispelled just how good a full set of Mastercrafted gear is. And anyone can use it.
You get 6 in the first tiers, enough to make all pieces, then they gradually reduce the amount for each subsequent tier. Still, having a full set of Mastercrafted in the 20s is nothing to sneeze at.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
You don't need the auction house and things like big bags are perfectly affordable even with the limitations, but if you're used to EQ2 subbed it's painful not to effectively be rolling in dough just from tossing all your random junk into your store and getting riches in return.
Get used to it. I'm a pro at uninstalling Pando by now. Every other game uses it.
You would be correct.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Regarding Vanguard that just semi launched F2P
Maybe it's just because it's not really launched yet, but I can't reconcile the quote about items with the actual implimentation so far. Logged in my level 10 dwarf cleric I used to explore the dwarf racial start long ago. The vast majority of his equipment is blue and all of it restricted to Gold membership. The old areas were even pretty light on the magic equipment compared to the Isle of Dawn they added later. I guess "some" means basically all? I hope it gets better, I'm fine subscribing if I had people to play with but I think this will just drive people off. Apparently it's $5 to unlock 5 blue items. I don't see how they improved it at all, makes me sad.
Am I just reading it completely wrong?
And by guess I mean hope, because otherwise they're just being silly.
[edit]
[edit2] From the quick look I managed to get, the only item-related concern I have is with diplomacy faction items. They've always been a bit of a faff, where your progress was stonewalled not only by your diplomacy level/cards, but also by requiring clothing with enough relevant faction. If you cannot acquire gear without enough faction points as a F2P player that could be a problem.
Also, the now-gold items I had equipped seemed to still give me bonuses on my old characters, so old players won't suddenly be stranded sans-gear and unable to kill anything to get replacements.
"All classes are playable for Free members up until Level 20. After Level 20, the seven free classes included with Free Membership are: Warrior, Rogue, Monk , Cleric, Disciple, Sorcerer and Necromancer."
from http://www.vanguardthegame.com/free.vm
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Also, I just noticed the Bard is not one of the free classes.... That's a horrible mistake or a great idea, depending on how badly people want to compose music.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
For reference, at it's best the game looks like this:
but that's with running around looking for a spot with more than 1 tree and at least 1 lantern in sight. Most of the time you'll be looking at
Or worse