AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I didn't bother with crafting until I was 40 hours or so into the game. The game was still ridiculously easy with or without it, although I guess the difference is that without crafting at least finding loot can be exciting (because it's really easy to make ridiculously broken weapons using crafting).
Yeah, I had a similar experience. I didn't start crafting until after I'd already completed the game (I wanted to pick up a few crafting-related achievements). The hardest difficulty was pretty trivial even without any crafting skills, unfortunately. Once I made myself a set, it was ... just stupid easy, lol.
That's a big bummer for me, then, because I enjoy crafting in games. Was looking forward to it in this game because I could tailor weapons/armor to my liking as opposed to cookie-cutter items. If that makes the game broken easy, I may have to start looking for something else.
That's a big bummer for me, then, because I enjoy crafting in games. Was looking forward to it in this game because I could tailor weapons/armor to my liking as opposed to cookie-cutter items. If that makes the game broken easy, I may have to start looking for something else.
It's broken easy even without crafting. That said, it's still a fun game, even rolling through enemies with reckless abandon because you can't die.
It is a really fun game, though, yeah. I definitely wouldn't pass it up or anything based on the lack of difficulty, because it's a genuinely fun experience. I just can't bring myself to keep playing it, now that I've finished.
They've said that when there's a balance patch it most likely won't effect the balance/difficulty of the current difficulty levels, but add in a higher level to make the major changes.
Though i suppose they could still rework how areas lock to certain levels and change their caps; but I suspect they won't.
EDIT: However, there's been two major DLC's now and still no difficulty balance patch, so I honestly don't know what is up.
I never bought the second DLC and never finished playing the first one. I got too distracted by ME3 and then Xenoblade. I'll get back to them eventually.
As milk ducks said; it was a great game, and by all accounts the DLC's are great; but just after beating it the drive to keep playing is kinda off. The story is serviceable but nothing that makes you "zomg what happens next!".
I really wish they would at least raise the caps, that's why I'm waiting. I don't want to venture into any more zones in hopes that the caps get raised and I can have an actual challenge when I venture into them. I don't care if I do the entire last half of the game at max level. I just want yellow and orange monsters.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Thanks to doing the two DLC early on, I was still getting yellow and orange enemies in the areas across the ocean. I never even broke a sweat fighting them, but their names were yellow and orange.
I think the annoying thing about the level cap is it still lists a level 41 like you can attain it.
Well, I beat the game last night which means I have all the achievements for it, and now I'm feeling like after I beat all the achievements for Dragon Age Origins: I'm kind of happy I completed it, but I'm also kind of bummed because now it's all over and I don't know what to do.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Skyrim is what I'll be doing more of once I am fully done with KoA. Possibly I will take up basket weaving as well. Or crochet. So much potential!
I have given up on waiting for a difficulty balance patch for now, so I'm just going to finish what I was doing in the game and then put it aside for a while. I really did love the game, but the lack fo difficulty has just killed my interest - combined with being at the games level cap as well. I will say I'm finding it the perfect chillout game after playing trials evolution. Being driven stupid by the bike physics in that game has the perfect foil in just wrecking monsters shit however I feel like in KoA.
At first I was concerned that, because of level-locking, I wouldn't reach max. level. Now, being level 22 and not having left Dalentarth yet (or done any DLC), I am concerned I am going to be max. level far before the end of the game.
I could probably take off my +30% experience equipment...
I never used +xp equipment and though I did everything and was overleveled for the entirety of it, I still didn't hit 40 until a few areas before the end of the game.
Yeah, while you can still find uniques that are roughly on par with crafted gear; you can craft gear that is that good long long before you could possibly have those uniques drop during the course of the game.
The game is still perfectly viable without doing crafting; but as might I wouldn't recommend playing without crafting as it can be pretty tedious even if you're overpowered. EDIT: What I mean is, while combat is great, respawning enemies (sometimes absurdly quickly) and certain (usually giant enemies) high health enemies, even if they can't hurt you, still take way too long to kill. Sometime down the road I'm gonna playthrough as a caster. I kept wanting to try it out throughout the game, and despite the ease of respeccing, I just was too invested into the melee combat of Might to want to try to figure it all out at once as a magic focused character.
Anyway, having said that, what is almost more game breaking than crafting is exploring. What I mean is, when you enter a new region you will cap that areas enemies (permanently) to your current level, based on a preset level range. So if a new area is 15-20 possible and you go in at 15 just to check it out, if you come back at 20 to actually do it, it will still be locked at 15. This makes the later areas that you simply cant access without progressing the story are better "protected" from this, and tend to scale better; but the first uhhh...3/4 of the game isn't and you could spend most of the game with grey enemies.
Dungeons aren't as bad; they have (iirc) wider level caps than the zones they are associated with and aren't locked to the zone itself, so you have to enter a dungeon to level lock it; meaning you are more likely to find enemies that are more appropriate to your level inside dungeons than you would out in the world.
Like many games of its time difficulty has no real effect on the AI of enemies; but it just increases the health they have and the damage they do; so if you're really good at combat, in the end, difficulty won't make a ton of difference.
And it's been a few months without a peep regarding the supposed difficulty patch, so who even knows. They've been totally silent on DLC too since the last one was released. Considering all the "huge plans for DLC" they talked up pre-release I'm not sure what's going on over there at 38. Maybe the first two dlc's just didn't sell well at all and they reassessed their direction with it.
Not meaning to be too critical however, still a great game. Just don't feel like you[ have to do each and every side quest you run across unless you're just playing the game bits at a time. They become really repetitive and can hurt the overall experience that is otherwise quite good and satisfying.
So, I finally finished Dalentarth. At level 26. Step into the first area in Erathell and everything is grey.
As Mr. Herpes said, I would play on Hard and if you want an actual challenge, just not craft or use potions (minus maybe experience potions). If you want to avoid accidentally locking zones prematurely, here are some resources:
At this point for me, I am basically ignoring all of it as I am already vastly over-leveled. Basically, I just did most of the "zones" in Dalentarth, not the dungeons, and then went back and did the dungeons and all their corresponding quests. Unfortunately, as Mr. Herpes pointed out, all "Hard" difficulty does is increase the HP, which means the monsters are equally stupid and easy, just have lots of health (and maybe do more damage).
Otherwise, it is a fun game. If they tweaked the AI I think it could be an exceptional game.
I lurve this game. It's all the fun parts of Fable without the crummy sandbox stuff getting in the way. I don't mind that the combat isn't difficult because my nightblade just causes so much hilarious havoc on the battlefield. I just had the following fight with a boss in the Teeth of Naros expansion:
Activate fate, block and parry into trip mines, followed by pop up combo into an ice trap, switch to bow and shoot enemy frozen in mid-air, charge up arrow and finish boss with point blank shotgun-esque blast of five arrows causing bleeding DOTs. Roll away to avoid enemy AOE and adds, enemy bleeds out, activate fate finisher.
It was probably all of eight seconds, but it was an intense eight seconds, like Ninja Gaiden intense.
Is there more DLC coming out after the rock giant stuff?
Any recommendations on when to do the DLC? I'm guessing it scales to max level, so if I don't want to break everything else even harder I should put it off until the end?
Yeah, I had a similar experience. I didn't start crafting until after I'd already completed the game (I wanted to pick up a few crafting-related achievements). The hardest difficulty was pretty trivial even without any crafting skills, unfortunately. Once I made myself a set, it was ... just stupid easy, lol.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Meteor ended fights rather quickly (sarcasm). And when they were too close for Meteor, I just used Tempest, which gets a really fast casting time when maxed out.
I hope 38 pulls through. Reckoning had its problems, but they definitely deserve a shot at polishing its rough spots with a sequel.
Well, from those articles, their RI facility is working on the MMO. My guess is that the SP game didn't bring in the money they were expecting and that EA is probably ponying up less money than anticipated. Perhaps SWTOR has jaded EA a bit in the MMO domain? Unsure.
I hope 38 pulls through. Reckoning had its problems, but they definitely deserve a shot at polishing its rough spots with a sequel.
Well, from those articles, their RI facility is working on the MMO. My guess is that the SP game didn't bring in the money they were expecting and that EA is probably ponying up less money than anticipated. Perhaps SWTOR has jaded EA a bit in the MMO domain? Unsure.
As well they should. I don't want to be too harsh here, as I've said before I liked KoA a lot.
But lets be straight here; the setting was, for the most part, pretty damn generic and uninteresting. Some parts of it were neat because they were handled well (various houses); but overall plot, the game didn't really get interesting till the last 1/4, at best. The ending straight up took out one of the games most interesting aspects and tried to act like it ended up more interesting, when it did the exact opposite.
MMO's these days are having to deal with smaller userbases to make their profits, meaning if you sunk tons of cash into development, it's not likely you're going to see it back. I'd be interested to see how much of that 75mil RI loaned to 38 has gone directly to the development of the MMO and how much for Kingdoms. Because if that's straight MMO spending, yeah, EA should be really worried.
To compete an MMO has to not only have interesting gameplay, but it has to have a setting people care about enough to put in hundreds and thousands of hours into. For as much as people "loreolol" with WoW, it's often the same people saying it, this many years later, and they're still playing. Because jokes aside, its a setting that interests people and they care about or they wouldn't bitch about loreolol.
But what is EA supposed to think here. if SWTOR can barely hold a million subs while WoW is holding steady at 10mil; the market for $100million dollar MMO's simply isn't there without something profoundly different to offer and for people to care about.
And if Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings aren't able to break into the money needed to pay for these nine figure mmo's; some random startup with potentially good gameplay, but a story that no one gives two shits about (it was by far the most ragged on issue for KoA) doesn't have a chance.
38 missed a massive opportunity with KoA if they wanted to whet peoples appetites for a potential MMO, in that they provided no means for co-op play. The whole thing was a completely solitary experience, and there wasn't anything about it that made people think "yeah, I want to play with a ton of people" any more than they already were saying with Skyrim; and take a look at what happened with their MMO announcement. A game that everyone knew was in development, that people were hyped up for due to the success of Skyrim and Oblivion; overnight people went from salivating to not giving any fucks. Because what we were shown with the Elder Scrolls MMO was a completely generic setting and completely generic MMO gameplay that from all descriptions (and screenshots) didn't match the gameplay of the Elder Scrolls game but, surprise surprise, WoW and its kind.
There can't be a major publisher on earth right now who thinks that high ticket MMO's are remotely feasable right now, and bethesda has to be doing some serious soul searching themselves.
Anyway, my point is that KoA did not a franchise make. It should have had co-op to get people interested in playing with their friends instead of being just another solo WRPG. And even if it had, with its current setting and story, it wouldn't have been enough to lay the groundwork to jump to an MMO. They need to focus their efforts on making a series people care about, add in co-op play that people care about and then develop an MMO. But as long as the official line is that the single player games are just teasers for an upcoming MMO, when they haven't earned players care or interest, then they're just going to be digging their own grave, money wise.
My feeling has been over the last few years (I started MMOs in 1998 or 1999 with UO) that the genre has stagnated, a lot. SWTOR was the perfect example of a backstory and company that people love, but who ultimately tried to copy what was already out there (ala WoW, RIFT, etc.) and is doing worse than anticipated. Additionally, "way back then" we also had fewer MMOs, which meant that if you wanted the MMO experience you ended up sticking with the same game for a long time. At this point there are so many that keeping the attention of an MMO gamer is challenging at best.
I will say that the combat in KoA is very enjoyable (if a bit tedious at times, but that can be remedied with better AI). If they could take that and polish it a bit, and then add more interesting lore, they could have something on their hands. Whether they can do that or not is another question.
I can tell you this, though, as a classic MMO/RPG gamer I am feeling less and less enthralled by the genres lately as they feel too mundane. I remember when you had to think about stuff and try to solve puzzles or figure out where to go next, not just follow a cursor. I've actually started looking into business and political simulators to scratch that "thinking" urge. But that's just a fault on my end, I assume, as people seem to like the games being produced.
P.S. WoW doesn't have 10 Mil subs... it was like 4 or 5 Mil Western subs and then some number more of people in Asia who play, which are counted as a sub even if they spent just a few cents. I think something like 95% of Blizzards WoW revenue comes from their western subs.
Edit: Western here being NA+EU. AUS is probably in there, too, even if they aren't technically "Western."
"wow has x million and the rest are asia" or whatever is just nonsense. No one that claims that ever has any actual factual information to back it up other than speculation due to how many asian territory subscriptions work.
And even if you want to get into semantics and pretend those players don't count as "actual" subs, they're a huge chunk of the player (and more importantly, payer) base. Every time blizzard has released sub numbers they have made it clear that those are active and paying accounts. Not trial accounts, not free accounts, accounts. That people pay to play for.
I don't know how many times over the years people have claimed that to try to downplay WoW's success and it's just irritating and not one person to claim it has ever backed it up.
Has anyone managed to get dispelling to work well? I've given up on even trying to do it manually.
Hit the lower number of mark ones first. Otherwise, get it up to like 4 or 5 where it removes the dark sigils. Makes it a lot easier. And bind quick save/quick load to easy to reach keys. When I don't feel like trying to do it myself I let the game attempt it and just reload if I fail.
Has anyone managed to get dispelling to work well? I've given up on even trying to do it manually.
Hit the lower number of mark ones first. Otherwise, get it up to like 4 or 5 where it removes the dark sigils. Makes it a lot easier. And bind quick save/quick load to easy to reach keys. When I don't feel like trying to do it myself I let the game attempt it and just reload if I fail.
It seems like the timing is way off on when you have to press the button, and there aren't nearly enough easy wards for me to get any practice.
Kind of a nasty contrast to lockpicking, which is exactly like in Skyrim but much easier. I doubt I'll be sinking a single point into that skill.
It's not just the cursor, it feels like it doesn't actually align with when I press. I hit the button, and a second later the symbol that the cursor is currently over will trigger.
Your cursor only has to touch the sigil to get it. So, try to hit it as soon as it touches, to give you plenty of response time. You can even get 2 for 1 if you hit right in the middle of two. Otherwise... reload often.
My feeling has been over the last few years (I started MMOs in 1998 or 1999 with UO) that the genre has stagnated, a lot. SWTOR was the perfect example of a backstory and company that people love, but who ultimately tried to copy what was already out there (ala WoW, RIFT, etc.) and is doing worse than anticipated. Additionally, "way back then" we also had fewer MMOs, which meant that if you wanted the MMO experience you ended up sticking with the same game for a long time. At this point there are so many that keeping the attention of an MMO gamer is challenging at best.
I will say that the combat in KoA is very enjoyable (if a bit tedious at times, but that can be remedied with better AI). If they could take that and polish it a bit, and then add more interesting lore, they could have something on their hands. Whether they can do that or not is another question.
I can tell you this, though, as a classic MMO/RPG gamer I am feeling less and less enthralled by the genres lately as they feel too mundane. I remember when you had to think about stuff and try to solve puzzles or figure out where to go next, not just follow a cursor. I've actually started looking into business and political simulators to scratch that "thinking" urge. But that's just a fault on my end, I assume, as people seem to like the games being produced.
P.S. WoW doesn't have 10 Mil subs... it was like 4 or 5 Mil Western subs and then some number more of people in Asia who play, which are counted as a sub even if they spent just a few cents. I think something like 95% of Blizzards WoW revenue comes from their western subs.
Edit: Western here being NA+EU. AUS is probably in there, too, even if they aren't technically "Western."
Keep going west and you will reach us! Yes, it includes the AUS&NZ numbers because AUS players play on the NA servers.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
So after nearly 80 hours of playing the game and going through most of the first DLC, I have finally actually bothered to sit down and finish Kingdoms of Amalur. Although I really enjoyed the game overall I felt that it could have done a lot more with - IMO - a lot less. A lot of the games quests were of the "Go here, whack X and then bring Y back", which is okay design wise but when there is this much of it after a certain point I just plain stopped listening to any of the VA, pressing through then finding whatever quest marker I needed. I also generally stopped exploring on my own as well - because if you did discover somewhere cool if you didn't have the associated quest it was usually not a productive use of your time. Mostly because you can't start a quest part way - the necromancer under one of the towns is a good example - and because exploring wasn't very productive anyway.
Putting aside the problem with crafted items just being far superior to everything you can find (exception being the Tears of Tirnoch, which I found I couldn't match with crafted daggers easily), 99% of the game I never bothered even looking at stuff after a while. I just junked every item I found and moved on. Why? Because it ceased to matter. The games difficulty is the major part of the problem here and crafting isn't the reason for the lack of difficulty. I wish people would stop claiming it is: Crafting simply makes the stuff you pick up irrelevant, but it isn't why the game is ridiculously easy and doesn't have any challenge.
The problem is that enemies don't have enough variety and eventually are incapable of doing enough damage to remotely threaten a decently geared high level character. Enemies all have incredibly predictable attacks, they aren't "mixed" together very creatively (only groups of spiders, sprites and such) and after a point more HP/damage doesn't scale against the player having far superior skill/powers. Compared with other action games, Hard on Kingdoms of Amalur was an extremely pleasant stroll in the park - so much so that I would play it when playing actually difficult games like Trials Evolution (most recently anyway). The fact that at the end of the game, I almost one shot the final boss is testament to just how lacking the difficulty was.
Compare KoA with another action game like Bayonetta. Hard on Bayonetta is not just easy/normal with more HP/Damage. It mixes up the rules of the game (some areas allowing witch time do not), it mixes up the kinds of enemies you face but most importantly, enemies attack animations are much faster and more relentless. For example, a Fairness will spit fireballs at you more frequently at range and does so much less predictably. Enemies in KoA become speed bumps after a period of time and not threats. At the end of the game, I was just running through the motions of clicking through dialog, then finding whatever I had to murder, murdering it and then continuing on. Without the difficulty to make the combat system engaging, it feels like a huge squandered opportunity to me.
The story was reasonably forgettable and I've sort of forgot the major parts, other than Gadflow is a dick and that I killed him in the dick. Unfortunately the most interesting aspect of the story was bought up at the end and then utterly forgotten! What a shame that was
None the less I still really liked the game and I don't regret any of the time that I spent with it at all. I do wish they had at least made the combat more consistent, because the base system is there and really great - just that the enemies variety/attacks don't make it engaging. Hopefully something they can improve in a sequel... if they get that far.
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It's broken easy even without crafting. That said, it's still a fun game, even rolling through enemies with reckless abandon because you can't die.
Though i suppose they could still rework how areas lock to certain levels and change their caps; but I suspect they won't.
EDIT: However, there's been two major DLC's now and still no difficulty balance patch, so I honestly don't know what is up.
I never bought the second DLC and never finished playing the first one. I got too distracted by ME3 and then Xenoblade. I'll get back to them eventually.
As milk ducks said; it was a great game, and by all accounts the DLC's are great; but just after beating it the drive to keep playing is kinda off. The story is serviceable but nothing that makes you "zomg what happens next!".
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I think the annoying thing about the level cap is it still lists a level 41 like you can attain it.
Well, I beat the game last night which means I have all the achievements for it, and now I'm feeling like after I beat all the achievements for Dragon Age Origins: I'm kind of happy I completed it, but I'm also kind of bummed because now it's all over and I don't know what to do.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I have given up on waiting for a difficulty balance patch for now, so I'm just going to finish what I was doing in the game and then put it aside for a while. I really did love the game, but the lack fo difficulty has just killed my interest - combined with being at the games level cap as well. I will say I'm finding it the perfect chillout game after playing trials evolution. Being driven stupid by the bike physics in that game has the perfect foil in just wrecking monsters shit however I feel like in KoA.
I could probably take off my +30% experience equipment...
The xp curve in this game is bizarre.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Crafting and potions are considered to be the easy ways to break the game in terms of difficulty.
The game is still perfectly viable without doing crafting; but as might I wouldn't recommend playing without crafting as it can be pretty tedious even if you're overpowered. EDIT: What I mean is, while combat is great, respawning enemies (sometimes absurdly quickly) and certain (usually giant enemies) high health enemies, even if they can't hurt you, still take way too long to kill. Sometime down the road I'm gonna playthrough as a caster. I kept wanting to try it out throughout the game, and despite the ease of respeccing, I just was too invested into the melee combat of Might to want to try to figure it all out at once as a magic focused character.
Anyway, having said that, what is almost more game breaking than crafting is exploring. What I mean is, when you enter a new region you will cap that areas enemies (permanently) to your current level, based on a preset level range. So if a new area is 15-20 possible and you go in at 15 just to check it out, if you come back at 20 to actually do it, it will still be locked at 15. This makes the later areas that you simply cant access without progressing the story are better "protected" from this, and tend to scale better; but the first uhhh...3/4 of the game isn't and you could spend most of the game with grey enemies.
Dungeons aren't as bad; they have (iirc) wider level caps than the zones they are associated with and aren't locked to the zone itself, so you have to enter a dungeon to level lock it; meaning you are more likely to find enemies that are more appropriate to your level inside dungeons than you would out in the world.
Like many games of its time difficulty has no real effect on the AI of enemies; but it just increases the health they have and the damage they do; so if you're really good at combat, in the end, difficulty won't make a ton of difference.
And it's been a few months without a peep regarding the supposed difficulty patch, so who even knows. They've been totally silent on DLC too since the last one was released. Considering all the "huge plans for DLC" they talked up pre-release I'm not sure what's going on over there at 38. Maybe the first two dlc's just didn't sell well at all and they reassessed their direction with it.
Not meaning to be too critical however, still a great game. Just don't feel like you[ have to do each and every side quest you run across unless you're just playing the game bits at a time. They become really repetitive and can hurt the overall experience that is otherwise quite good and satisfying.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
As Mr. Herpes said, I would play on Hard and if you want an actual challenge, just not craft or use potions (minus maybe experience potions). If you want to avoid accidentally locking zones prematurely, here are some resources:
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/showthread.php?7411-Zone-level-maps
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/showthread.php?7867-KOAR-dungeons-list-by-upper-level
http://amalurfoundry.com/guides/reckoning-guides/level-lock/
At this point for me, I am basically ignoring all of it as I am already vastly over-leveled. Basically, I just did most of the "zones" in Dalentarth, not the dungeons, and then went back and did the dungeons and all their corresponding quests. Unfortunately, as Mr. Herpes pointed out, all "Hard" difficulty does is increase the HP, which means the monsters are equally stupid and easy, just have lots of health (and maybe do more damage).
Otherwise, it is a fun game. If they tweaked the AI I think it could be an exceptional game.
Activate fate, block and parry into trip mines, followed by pop up combo into an ice trap, switch to bow and shoot enemy frozen in mid-air, charge up arrow and finish boss with point blank shotgun-esque blast of five arrows causing bleeding DOTs. Roll away to avoid enemy AOE and adds, enemy bleeds out, activate fate finisher.
It was probably all of eight seconds, but it was an intense eight seconds, like Ninja Gaiden intense.
Is there more DLC coming out after the rock giant stuff?
http://kotaku.com/5910278/sounds-like-the-amalur-studio-is-having-money-troubles
EDIT: Another article saying Rhode Island is "trying to keep 38 Studios solvent"
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/14/rhode-island-gov-working-hard-at-keeping-38-studios-solvent/
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I hope 38 pulls through. Reckoning had its problems, but they definitely deserve a shot at polishing its rough spots with a sequel.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Meteor ended fights rather quickly (sarcasm). And when they were too close for Meteor, I just used Tempest, which gets a really fast casting time when maxed out.
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
Well, from those articles, their RI facility is working on the MMO. My guess is that the SP game didn't bring in the money they were expecting and that EA is probably ponying up less money than anticipated. Perhaps SWTOR has jaded EA a bit in the MMO domain? Unsure.
As well they should. I don't want to be too harsh here, as I've said before I liked KoA a lot.
But lets be straight here; the setting was, for the most part, pretty damn generic and uninteresting. Some parts of it were neat because they were handled well (various houses); but overall plot, the game didn't really get interesting till the last 1/4, at best. The ending straight up took out one of the games most interesting aspects and tried to act like it ended up more interesting, when it did the exact opposite.
MMO's these days are having to deal with smaller userbases to make their profits, meaning if you sunk tons of cash into development, it's not likely you're going to see it back. I'd be interested to see how much of that 75mil RI loaned to 38 has gone directly to the development of the MMO and how much for Kingdoms. Because if that's straight MMO spending, yeah, EA should be really worried.
To compete an MMO has to not only have interesting gameplay, but it has to have a setting people care about enough to put in hundreds and thousands of hours into. For as much as people "loreolol" with WoW, it's often the same people saying it, this many years later, and they're still playing. Because jokes aside, its a setting that interests people and they care about or they wouldn't bitch about loreolol.
But what is EA supposed to think here. if SWTOR can barely hold a million subs while WoW is holding steady at 10mil; the market for $100million dollar MMO's simply isn't there without something profoundly different to offer and for people to care about.
And if Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings aren't able to break into the money needed to pay for these nine figure mmo's; some random startup with potentially good gameplay, but a story that no one gives two shits about (it was by far the most ragged on issue for KoA) doesn't have a chance.
38 missed a massive opportunity with KoA if they wanted to whet peoples appetites for a potential MMO, in that they provided no means for co-op play. The whole thing was a completely solitary experience, and there wasn't anything about it that made people think "yeah, I want to play with a ton of people" any more than they already were saying with Skyrim; and take a look at what happened with their MMO announcement. A game that everyone knew was in development, that people were hyped up for due to the success of Skyrim and Oblivion; overnight people went from salivating to not giving any fucks. Because what we were shown with the Elder Scrolls MMO was a completely generic setting and completely generic MMO gameplay that from all descriptions (and screenshots) didn't match the gameplay of the Elder Scrolls game but, surprise surprise, WoW and its kind.
There can't be a major publisher on earth right now who thinks that high ticket MMO's are remotely feasable right now, and bethesda has to be doing some serious soul searching themselves.
Anyway, my point is that KoA did not a franchise make. It should have had co-op to get people interested in playing with their friends instead of being just another solo WRPG. And even if it had, with its current setting and story, it wouldn't have been enough to lay the groundwork to jump to an MMO. They need to focus their efforts on making a series people care about, add in co-op play that people care about and then develop an MMO. But as long as the official line is that the single player games are just teasers for an upcoming MMO, when they haven't earned players care or interest, then they're just going to be digging their own grave, money wise.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
My feeling has been over the last few years (I started MMOs in 1998 or 1999 with UO) that the genre has stagnated, a lot. SWTOR was the perfect example of a backstory and company that people love, but who ultimately tried to copy what was already out there (ala WoW, RIFT, etc.) and is doing worse than anticipated. Additionally, "way back then" we also had fewer MMOs, which meant that if you wanted the MMO experience you ended up sticking with the same game for a long time. At this point there are so many that keeping the attention of an MMO gamer is challenging at best.
I will say that the combat in KoA is very enjoyable (if a bit tedious at times, but that can be remedied with better AI). If they could take that and polish it a bit, and then add more interesting lore, they could have something on their hands. Whether they can do that or not is another question.
I can tell you this, though, as a classic MMO/RPG gamer I am feeling less and less enthralled by the genres lately as they feel too mundane. I remember when you had to think about stuff and try to solve puzzles or figure out where to go next, not just follow a cursor. I've actually started looking into business and political simulators to scratch that "thinking" urge. But that's just a fault on my end, I assume, as people seem to like the games being produced.
P.S. WoW doesn't have 10 Mil subs... it was like 4 or 5 Mil Western subs and then some number more of people in Asia who play, which are counted as a sub even if they spent just a few cents. I think something like 95% of Blizzards WoW revenue comes from their western subs.
Edit: Western here being NA+EU. AUS is probably in there, too, even if they aren't technically "Western."
They have 10.2 million subs.
"wow has x million and the rest are asia" or whatever is just nonsense. No one that claims that ever has any actual factual information to back it up other than speculation due to how many asian territory subscriptions work.
And even if you want to get into semantics and pretend those players don't count as "actual" subs, they're a huge chunk of the player (and more importantly, payer) base. Every time blizzard has released sub numbers they have made it clear that those are active and paying accounts. Not trial accounts, not free accounts, accounts. That people pay to play for.
I don't know how many times over the years people have claimed that to try to downplay WoW's success and it's just irritating and not one person to claim it has ever backed it up.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Hit the lower number of mark ones first. Otherwise, get it up to like 4 or 5 where it removes the dark sigils. Makes it a lot easier. And bind quick save/quick load to easy to reach keys. When I don't feel like trying to do it myself I let the game attempt it and just reload if I fail.
It seems like the timing is way off on when you have to press the button, and there aren't nearly enough easy wards for me to get any practice.
Kind of a nasty contrast to lockpicking, which is exactly like in Skyrim but much easier. I doubt I'll be sinking a single point into that skill.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I wonder if it's bugged or something.
Keep going west and you will reach us! Yes, it includes the AUS&NZ numbers because AUS players play on the NA servers.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Putting aside the problem with crafted items just being far superior to everything you can find (exception being the Tears of Tirnoch, which I found I couldn't match with crafted daggers easily), 99% of the game I never bothered even looking at stuff after a while. I just junked every item I found and moved on. Why? Because it ceased to matter. The games difficulty is the major part of the problem here and crafting isn't the reason for the lack of difficulty. I wish people would stop claiming it is: Crafting simply makes the stuff you pick up irrelevant, but it isn't why the game is ridiculously easy and doesn't have any challenge.
The problem is that enemies don't have enough variety and eventually are incapable of doing enough damage to remotely threaten a decently geared high level character. Enemies all have incredibly predictable attacks, they aren't "mixed" together very creatively (only groups of spiders, sprites and such) and after a point more HP/damage doesn't scale against the player having far superior skill/powers. Compared with other action games, Hard on Kingdoms of Amalur was an extremely pleasant stroll in the park - so much so that I would play it when playing actually difficult games like Trials Evolution (most recently anyway). The fact that at the end of the game, I almost one shot the final boss is testament to just how lacking the difficulty was.
Compare KoA with another action game like Bayonetta. Hard on Bayonetta is not just easy/normal with more HP/Damage. It mixes up the rules of the game (some areas allowing witch time do not), it mixes up the kinds of enemies you face but most importantly, enemies attack animations are much faster and more relentless. For example, a Fairness will spit fireballs at you more frequently at range and does so much less predictably. Enemies in KoA become speed bumps after a period of time and not threats. At the end of the game, I was just running through the motions of clicking through dialog, then finding whatever I had to murder, murdering it and then continuing on. Without the difficulty to make the combat system engaging, it feels like a huge squandered opportunity to me.
The story was reasonably forgettable and I've sort of forgot the major parts, other than Gadflow is a dick and that I killed him in the dick. Unfortunately the most interesting aspect of the story was bought up at the end and then utterly forgotten! What a shame that was
None the less I still really liked the game and I don't regret any of the time that I spent with it at all. I do wish they had at least made the combat more consistent, because the base system is there and really great - just that the enemies variety/attacks don't make it engaging. Hopefully something they can improve in a sequel... if they get that far.
I would hope....none? Because otherwise, from my understanding (the money having been moved out of RI), Mr. Schilling could be in some legal trouble.
I think you may have that backwards. My understanding is that the MMO development team is the one in Rhode Island.
On this topic, I saw something interesting in the industry thread. Apparently if they can't pay back the money, Rhode Island will own the Amalur IP.
Joystiq has had a lot of coverage on it.