Did they actually break the matchmaking up by tier? Last I played it would just lump all the players together once you broke out of the newb bracket. So your tier 4 tank would be going up against top tier super heavies.
Matches are done by a bracket. So, say the game wants to make a tier 5 game. It will then attempt to create 2 teams of 15 people with equal scores from tanks that are allowed into a tier 5 game. This is tier 3 up to tier 5 tanks, except up to tier 4 SPGs. However, a tank is allowed into a great many tiers of games.
So a low tier tank can still end up the whipping boy in a higher tier match. A Hetzer, poor little tier 4 TD, can end up in games that contain tier 7 tanks. But, my experience is that those games are typically fairly uncommon and that the majority of games you join as a tier 4 tank are good. If you want to avoid these kinds of games, stay out of light tanks. The tier 4 and 5 light tanks can end up in the highest tier matches as "scouts."
Hey guys just a heads up, remember that action MMO game Rusty Hearts, with the great graphics and castlevania combined with anime looking art? Well guess what, Perfect World picked it up. Beta sign ups are on the site. This should really go under promising titles,
Because this
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Also i dont know if you guys are interested but i took a look at videos and such for ARGO Online, that steam punk one over at Apalaya, and it doesn't look half bad, actually. Lots of classes, nice graphics ect, even a bit of voice acting. If I wasnt so hooked on RIFT right now i'd try it out. Looks pretty nice for a free game.
I've been playing Battle of Immortals and its a lot of fun. It is a fun Korean style MMO, lots of repetition but hey, we're talking about free MMOs here. I have a hammer that shoots our ice and fire lol this is fun.
Rusty Hearts looks kind of meh. On a scale between Divine Souls and Vindictus, it's in the middle, leaning toward Divine Souls. But I signed up for the beta, so we'll see how that goes.
Rusty Hearts looks kind of meh. On a scale between Divine Souls and Vindictus, it's in the middle, leaning toward Divine Souls. But I signed up for the beta, so we'll see how that goes.
It's more isometric than those two though, isn't it?
Yeah Balde & Soul looks great. I've been hearing about it for few years now but still no release date set at all from what ive seen, only pretty videos and no real info =(
Both C9 and Blade and Soul were announced and demoed years ago, with years of development leading up to those announcements. These games have been in the works since the mid-2000s, and they're only getting CBTs in Korea this year or the next. Riding that hype train will only take them so far until another developer preempts their release by putting out something like Vindictus. Hopefully they survive long enough to make it overseas.
Actually I'm pretty sure C9 is at least in Korean open beta, judging by their site and this article (dated May 2009). It's probably the one I'm looking forward to the most, given its class progression and the fact that it looks like a more over-the-top Vindictus.
On the plus side Dragon Nest has an English teaser site (Nexon, so bad luck for a lot of people ) and it's in the same vein gameplaywise, but toony and cellshaded.
A few friends and I just tried ARGO online. I can't refuse a steampunk setting. And right now the game is really buggy as hell. There's only one server, which isn't a big deal because it's not very populated, but despite that my friends and I can never see each other in game. Attempts to friend each other took over half an hour. The quest system is buggy and the english is horrible.
For anyone else who'd like to try it, I say it's best if you avoid it for now. It's all around very, very, bad.
A few friends and I just tried ARGO online. I can't refuse a steampunk setting. And right now the game is really buggy as hell. There's only one server, which isn't a big deal because it's not very populated, but despite that my friends and I can never see each other in game. Attempts to friend each other took over half an hour. The quest system is buggy and the english is horrible.
For anyone else who'd like to try it, I say it's best if you avoid it for now. It's all around very, very, bad.
And the video looked so promising...thats unfortunate.
I've been playing Battle of Immortals and its a lot of fun. It is a fun Korean style MMO, lots of repetition but hey, we're talking about free MMOs here. I have a hammer that shoots our ice and fire lol this is fun.
BoI is a lot of fun until about level 60, then it's a grindfest. The "end game" primarily consists of open-world and arena pvp, and being competitive requires an enormous investment of RL moneys for gambling on pet/gear upgrades. Yes, you can use in-game coins to buy Zen (cash-shop money) via a convenient auction window, but you'd be farming for years.
But yeah, the art design is kinda different and rad.
So Mythos is cool and all, if overshadowed by Torchlight, but I gotta ask: what took it so long?
I mean the races, classes and skills are the same as they were back when Flagship was still sailing and they haven't been improving the graphics or anything. The only real differences are that they got rid of the overworld again, the quest and missions are different and it's engrishy as all hell.
Seriously though, I haven't played an MMO with such bad translation in a while.
Luckily it's still fun and the only F2P Diablo clone I know that's out now (though that'll change with Path of Exile and the TL MMO).
How the hell did they manage to take a game made in america by an american studio and make it engrishy...o_O That is an incredible feat for all the extra development time. I cant help but feel that if Flagship had released this before Hellgate they would still be alive. I actually was one of the people who enjoyed Hellgate, though honestly their subscription set up for the game was atrocious, and i think that was what killed it. I heard somewhere Hellgate was supposed to come back as a F2P game or something...
Having tried Mythos, I have no idea what they were thinking anyway? The characters have none of the charm they possessed in marketing material from years ago, the quests are the most uninspiriing bits of text I have read since book 4 of Dune and combat is ridiculously unchallenging [at least early on].
I have bought Torchlight on the cheap a while ago and that game is just so much better. The fact that you can play with random strangers does not make up for the sloppy execution of Mythos.
So today marks a special day: the first time I spent money on a free MMO. Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine is the lucky one. I've been enjoying myself quite a bit and the cash shop holds some nice items. There was a special deal going on, so in a few days I'll find some awesome stuff in my mail that blows nearly all other items I've seen for sale out of the water.
I must admit it's kind of a rush of the moment thing, but I feel like I can justify spending money on this game. It's a grind, but it's a SMT game, so that's what it's about. It's not trying to be anything other than SMT. There's a story that's interesting, but it's never trying to tell you that grinding is not a vital part of the game. I don't really mind grinding, because the fighting actually requires some skill to not end up dying all the time. Like, mobs even 5 levels below you can easily kill you, but you can also kill mobs 10 levels above.
What also helps is that the game has an active and talkative player base. There's only 1 server, but it's filled to the brim with people of all levels and it's easy to find groups and talk to people. I'm in a nice guild with a few higher level players who spend nearly all their time helping lower level people. It's not pure altruism, but the fact that they're taking along lowbies while they could go through it faster with more high level players goes a long way.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
Argo Online is, indeed, sliced butts in failsauce.
Played some LOCO and Divine Souls. The former reminded me of Savage 2 with maybe a quarter of the polish and the latter pissed me off, because I couldn't pick things up and hit people with them.
Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
So here's some more in-depth rambling regarding Divine Souls.
You have a choice of three classes. Fighter, Slasher, and Mage. They do pretty much what each says on the tin. The Fighter basically found a bootleg God Hand on eBay, so he runs around and punches shit. His style is heavy on the throws. He even has an Izuna Drop.
The Slasher is a wielder of chain-swords that slices shit up. Haven't played one, yet.
The Mage is cool, but kind of boring. You're a loli in a fancy dress that shoots fireballs out of a Cannon Staff.
Gameplay is your usual "Action MMO" fare. You have a few different control schemes at your disposal, including one for the 360 controller that I highly recommend reading up on in the configuration menu, since there are functions mapped to buttons that you may not have touched in days, if not weeks. It doesn't seem like you can remap any of that in-game, though, so you'll have to deal with an inverted Y-Axis unless you're already used to that.
The graphics aren't bad, but texture work in the environment is fairly poor. There are some glitchy animations here and there, though it's nothing too distracting. The music is okay. After a while, I switched over to some Gabriel & Dresden in order to get into "The Grind Zone". Yeah. Coming back to that in a minute.
Actually, no. Right now. Gameplay in Divine Souls is almost unimaginably boring. As a Mage, I find that my basic four hit combo is enough to take care of most enemies. Three fireballs spread out in a line ahead of you. Any mob besides bosses so far have been hit stunned and knocked back a bit, so I basically just mash my A button over and over until everything dies. Every so often, I need to reposition myself for some more mashing, but that doesn't happen a whole lot.
You get your traditional fighter-style combos in addition to active and passive skills. The combos are both offensive and defensive. As a mage, I have the usual fireball attacks plus some teleporting stuff and mid-air attacks that shoot me backwards so I can escape. The active abilities are your fireballs, frostbolts, heals, whatever. You can use SP earned from leveling to buy new combos and skills or to enhance your current abilities in combination with books that drop off of mobs. They're not class-locked, though, so expect to have piles of tomes that you can't use. In fact, expect to have piles of everything that you can't use. At one point, after running a few dungeons, I found that my bag was completely full. Opening it up, I realized that I could use all of four things stashed in it, including potions.
Fantastic. At least I made some money. I went to the Skill Trainer so I could enhance my fireball to level three. I failed and it sent the skill back to level one. Yeah.
Oh, back to the topic of running dungeons: You're going to be doing it a lot. After a really annoying tutorial with gigantic tip windows that you can't really deal with because the interface kind of sucks, you're plopped down into a starting area that's about maybe double the size of the Trade District in Stormwind. An NPC will give you a level one quest to go into the beginner dungeon and kill shit. He will continue to give you this quest, standing there with the icon shining brightly over his head, until the stars burn out of the sky. After you return, you'll be sent to talk to some other people who will ship your generic ass right back to the same dungeon.
Repeat for every single quest "batch" in the game. The quests give no really amazing XP by themselves, but they're measured out in a way that ensures leveling at a steady(snail's) pace. You'll go get a bunch of quests for this new dungeon that you're ready for, you'll run the dungeon and complete it on Easy difficulty, then you'll come back to turn everything in. Once that's finished, several of the people you just talked to will give you more quests to go back into that same dungeon. You'll run and beat it on Medium(if you want), then repeat for Hard. Afterwards, you're probably ready to run the next dungeon one thousand times.
Mob placement doesn't make any sense, either. Ever played a private server for World of Warcraft? You know how some of them have these weird leveling roads? For those that are unaware, these are basically just long stretches of mob spawns sorted into different groups of ascending levels. You'll run along, say, a random road in The Barrens as you slaughter fast respawning enemies in order to power level with the increased XP gain that's typical for free servers.
Anyway, every single fucking dungeon in Divine Souls so far has been just like that with a boss at the end. Oh, and I have to go out of my way to destroy bland objects in the bland fucking environment for a quest, because some fucker wants roasted chestnuts and this other cunt here wants a god damned wall built somewhere unimportant so that's why I'm wasting my time shooting fireballs at fucking campfires and wooden barricades instead of slaughtering those mobs over there that don't aggro you until you smack your dick on their face.
*deep breath* Hoo, boy. Sorry.
herculean summary: divine souls has some decent character design and okay graphics and sound, but the gameplay is kinda boring. the classes are uninspired. the combat and movement during battle is a little clunky and a lot of combos and abilities are useless in every single situation. the mobs are stupid. sometimes i can't hit things, because they're on an incline in front of me and i can't seem to aim slightly downward. dungeon runs are nerve-grating and they make me really fucking mad. all dungeon difficulty seems to do is increase the size of the map and make it so the end boss kills you in one hit instead of two or three.
not that dying is necessarily an issue. if you do die, though, pray that your character isn't bugged. you have revive stones. ten max. they're how you "continue" in dungeons. they're supposed to regenerate naturally at the end of each day. guess what's not happening for a lot of people? oh, and there's some kind of "fatigue" bar, too, which i'm assuming is a way to further restrict the amount of enjoyment you can get out of this game.
the questing system needs work. moving through the world is literally a matter of running across endless expanses of uninteresting, low-poly texture work in order to reach the next door that takes you to another connecting room. basically, think of a 3d dungeon fighter online without the appeal of the whole streets of rage mmo thing thanks to a whole host of design flaws including combat that controls about as well as ballz 3d.
I went to the Skill Trainer so I could enhance my fireball to level three. I failed and it sent the skill back to level one. Yeah.
I can't even begin to describe my distaste for these systems. They're in almost every asian grind MMO, the fact that this applies to your skills in this one lets me know I should stay far far away.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
I believe it's the same with your gear, as well. You have three different types of enchantment stones. The lowest tier enchants common and green equipment. The second enchants blue stuff. The third improves your purples. You require an increasingly aggravating number of stones to enchant things and, if you fail, the item is often reset right back to level zero. I believe the cash shop sells things that remove the chance of failure, but I'm sure that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone.
I didn't go into the other systems. Chat sucks and is filled with gold sellers that spam each available channel every few seconds with Engrish garbage. I tried blocking them, which is a really annoying process since there's no /ignore or anything, and it doesn't seem like the feature actually works. I couldn't find a way to leave certain channels, either. I assume there is one. I would hope there is one. Considering how poorly the rest of the game is made, however, I'm not keeping my hopes up.
The fatigue bar is something I mentioned in passing. It's basically what you'd expect: a poorly implemented method of limiting the grinding that you can do in a game that's all about grinding in every single aspect of its gameplay. Once the bar runs out, you'll need to wait for the next day in order to do any PVE content again. You can PVP for "bonus" fatigue, though, but I'm not sure why you would want to.
There's an Auction House of sorts. It's serviceable, I suppose, but not terribly well-polished. In fact, that describes the entire game.
Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
Ever had the urge to play Loong: The Power of the Dragon? No? Good. Keep things that way.
There's maybe one or two servers, it looks like, and they're both down constantly. Every couple of days, there's more downtime. Imagine, say, League of Legends on a big patch day. Now make that multiple times a week.
Once you do get in, it's about as bad as you can possibly imagine. Ever played a shitty free MMO before? I'm sure most people frequenting this thread probably have. Take everything that you disliked about these games and combine them. Play it in your head for maybe five minutes. Mentally uninstall it by watching an entire season of Teen Mom. Sorry, but it's the only way.
You've now played Loong, everyone! Enjoy the rest of your evening.
Apparently the guys that did Global Agenda have announced a new game called SMITE, it's supposed to be F2P... Not sure MMOish, but since Global Agenda does have some PvE content, I thought I'd let you guys know.
Hi-Rez Studios Announces SMITE
Gods vs Gods in 3rd-person DoTA-inspired Battleground
ATLANTA - April 21, 2011 -- Hi-Rez Studios, the award winning independent developer of Global Agenda, announced today they are developing SMITE, a free-to-play online battleground between gods. Players choose from a selection of mythical gods, join session-based arena combat, and use custom powers and team tactics against other player-controlled gods and non-player controlled minions.
"As a studio and as gamers, we love competitive multi-player games that reward teamwork and strategy", says Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios COO. "With SMITE, we draw inspiration from DoTA-style RTS titles, but leverage the Unreal 3 Engine to introduce original action oriented combat mechanics, great graphics, and a mythology-themed setting. These session-based games depend upon balanced class design, sophisticated stat-tracking, and matchmaking functionality. These are features we understand well from Global Agenda and our studio is excited to progress team-oriented PvP in new and original directions with SMITE. At this point we already have a really fun playable version of SMITE and we look forward to sharing additional details about the project in the coming months"
Ever had the urge to play Loong: The Power of the Dragon? No? Good. Keep things that way.
There's maybe one or two servers, it looks like, and they're both down constantly. Every couple of days, there's more downtime. Imagine, say, League of Legends on a big patch day. Now make that multiple times a week.
Once you do get in, it's about as bad as you can possibly imagine. Ever played a shitty free MMO before? I'm sure most people frequenting this thread probably have. Take everything that you disliked about these games and combine them. Play it in your head for maybe five minutes. Mentally uninstall it by watching an entire season of Teen Mom. Sorry, but it's the only way.
You've now played Loong, everyone! Enjoy the rest of your evening.
I quite enjoyed Loong, played it for about a week and left feeling satisfied with my time in the game. It looks gorgeous, the introduction areas are good, the classes are interesting and there's a lot of content (especially early on). I stopped playing because I didn't consider the game decent enough to hang around for the grind, but as far as free Asian MMOs go, this one was decent. I did not have any server down-time.
I've written about it at length in earlier posts and shared some screenshots in the Screenshots thread, in case anyone got interested.
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
I've become almost unimaginably jaded with everything, so you should probably listen to Aldo and not me.
Well, if they manage to find a way to fix the multitude of issues the first one had... I might play it for a week before I get bored.
As I remember, you had to unload basically all of your ammunition into a player to get them to die. Then you respawned and did it again.
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They should call the new one "Swordz: And the Fools Who Use Gunz".
A new Gunz?
Yes! Yessssssss!
I was part of the first group that helped usher in the K-Butterfly/shotgun shit state-side, and later figured out a wonderfully bullshit way to counter it. Bitches don't know about my akimbo uzi's and katana.
I cannot wait for this. They had better keep the damn ridiculously hard to do "violation of physics" features in. There was something beautiful about seeing a guy literally fly across a level toward's his foe, propelling himself along by firing his shotgun rapidly, and slashing the air with his katana.
And then just pulling out two sub machine guns, and diving past him as his slash/shot carries him past you, and unloading thirty bullets into the back of his skull. Momentum's a bitch, punk!
Picaroon - some sort of rts island building thing that claims to be massive/and or multiplayer, as well as free (cash shop style) I don't know, assuming it hasn't been mentioned yet, haven't seen it around.
Picaroon - some sort of rts island building thing that claims to be massive/and or multiplayer, as well as free (cash shop style) I don't know, assuming it hasn't been mentioned yet, haven't seen it around.
Will check back with impressions.
THanks, I've got it listed in my database, but it wasn't released at the time so I didn't bother adding it to this thread. I'm not very excited about it, but I'd love to know what it's all about.
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
I'm going to strafe in from the Global Agenda thread and mention that I'm really enjoying it.
I even went so far as to pay the $10 for the upgrade to the "Elite Agent" package (used a 50% off code to avoid the regular $20 charge).
I haven't even touched the PvP content yet, even though for many that seems to be the "reason" to play the game. I've mostly focused on the PvE content, and I really really like the 4-man instances.
It's like an amazing blend of a tactical action game, a class-based MMO, and a casual drop-in-drop-out game.
In each instance, it seems that it's less about what level you are and what gear you have, and more about how well you play. Your ability can affect the outcome, unlike many MMO's where you need X level and Y gear or don't even think about coming in here seriously.
The four classes each have a role they fit, and you're at your best when in that role, but all four (even the healer) can contribute offensively when the firepower is needed.
Oh, and there's a timer. I'm not sure how much time you have in the higher level instances, but in the lower ones (titled "Medium Security") you have 15 minutes to get to the end and take down the boss. So you're in, you're out. No need to plan a whole evening just to do one raid. Even with just an hour to play you can easily do three or four.
The elite agent package...well, I haven't really taken advantage of most of that yet. The immediate boost to me was extra XP / money / loot at the end of an instance. The other stuff you get (access to auctions, mail) I haven't really used. I'd probably still be getting as much entertainment from it even if I hadn't paid, but I was enjoying myself so much that I had no problem at all handing them a one time payment of $10, just to say thanks.
Metal Assault is in open beta now, and they've change a lot.
They've implemented a stamina system that limits the amount of co-op and story missions you can do (pvp is always free), made the co-op missions waaaaaaay easier -- like, you can always beat them first time round with 6 or 7 people, added new co-op missions and maps, and some other stuff.
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So a low tier tank can still end up the whipping boy in a higher tier match. A Hetzer, poor little tier 4 TD, can end up in games that contain tier 7 tanks. But, my experience is that those games are typically fairly uncommon and that the majority of games you join as a tier 4 tank are good. If you want to avoid these kinds of games, stay out of light tanks. The tier 4 and 5 light tanks can end up in the highest tier matches as "scouts."
Note: Haven't actually played it.
Because this
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Also i dont know if you guys are interested but i took a look at videos and such for ARGO Online, that steam punk one over at Apalaya, and it doesn't look half bad, actually. Lots of classes, nice graphics ect, even a bit of voice acting. If I wasnt so hooked on RIFT right now i'd try it out. Looks pretty nice for a free game.
Also: Is Giant Teddy Bear a playable class?
Edit: Today is the day Global Agenda goes F2P.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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It's more isometric than those two though, isn't it?
But the way the gameplay looks, definitely more on the spammy Divine Souls side.
I'm still waiting on Blade and Soul for the anime and wuxia inspired action spam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtA1jSreK84
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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In Korea.
There's also C9, which is in the mould of Vindictus, but stuck in the same development closed-loop as Blade and Soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gkFL7G8ow
Both C9 and Blade and Soul were announced and demoed years ago, with years of development leading up to those announcements. These games have been in the works since the mid-2000s, and they're only getting CBTs in Korea this year or the next. Riding that hype train will only take them so far until another developer preempts their release by putting out something like Vindictus. Hopefully they survive long enough to make it overseas.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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On the plus side Dragon Nest has an English teaser site (Nexon, so bad luck for a lot of people
For anyone else who'd like to try it, I say it's best if you avoid it for now. It's all around very, very, bad.
And the video looked so promising...thats unfortunate.
BoI is a lot of fun until about level 60, then it's a grindfest. The "end game" primarily consists of open-world and arena pvp, and being competitive requires an enormous investment of RL moneys for gambling on pet/gear upgrades. Yes, you can use in-game coins to buy Zen (cash-shop money) via a convenient auction window, but you'd be farming for years.
But yeah, the art design is kinda different and rad.
Hopefully no more fucking k-style
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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How the hell did they manage to take a game made in america by an american studio and make it engrishy...o_O That is an incredible feat for all the extra development time. I cant help but feel that if Flagship had released this before Hellgate they would still be alive. I actually was one of the people who enjoyed Hellgate, though honestly their subscription set up for the game was atrocious, and i think that was what killed it. I heard somewhere Hellgate was supposed to come back as a F2P game or something...
I have bought Torchlight on the cheap a while ago and that game is just so much better. The fact that you can play with random strangers does not make up for the sloppy execution of Mythos.
I must admit it's kind of a rush of the moment thing, but I feel like I can justify spending money on this game. It's a grind, but it's a SMT game, so that's what it's about. It's not trying to be anything other than SMT. There's a story that's interesting, but it's never trying to tell you that grinding is not a vital part of the game. I don't really mind grinding, because the fighting actually requires some skill to not end up dying all the time. Like, mobs even 5 levels below you can easily kill you, but you can also kill mobs 10 levels above.
What also helps is that the game has an active and talkative player base. There's only 1 server, but it's filled to the brim with people of all levels and it's easy to find groups and talk to people. I'm in a nice guild with a few higher level players who spend nearly all their time helping lower level people. It's not pure altruism, but the fact that they're taking along lowbies while they could go through it faster with more high level players goes a long way.
Played some LOCO and Divine Souls. The former reminded me of Savage 2 with maybe a quarter of the polish and the latter pissed me off, because I couldn't pick things up and hit people with them.
You have a choice of three classes. Fighter, Slasher, and Mage. They do pretty much what each says on the tin. The Fighter basically found a bootleg God Hand on eBay, so he runs around and punches shit. His style is heavy on the throws. He even has an Izuna Drop.
The Slasher is a wielder of chain-swords that slices shit up. Haven't played one, yet.
The Mage is cool, but kind of boring. You're a loli in a fancy dress that shoots fireballs out of a Cannon Staff.
Gameplay is your usual "Action MMO" fare. You have a few different control schemes at your disposal, including one for the 360 controller that I highly recommend reading up on in the configuration menu, since there are functions mapped to buttons that you may not have touched in days, if not weeks. It doesn't seem like you can remap any of that in-game, though, so you'll have to deal with an inverted Y-Axis unless you're already used to that.
The graphics aren't bad, but texture work in the environment is fairly poor. There are some glitchy animations here and there, though it's nothing too distracting. The music is okay. After a while, I switched over to some Gabriel & Dresden in order to get into "The Grind Zone". Yeah. Coming back to that in a minute.
Actually, no. Right now. Gameplay in Divine Souls is almost unimaginably boring. As a Mage, I find that my basic four hit combo is enough to take care of most enemies. Three fireballs spread out in a line ahead of you. Any mob besides bosses so far have been hit stunned and knocked back a bit, so I basically just mash my A button over and over until everything dies. Every so often, I need to reposition myself for some more mashing, but that doesn't happen a whole lot.
You get your traditional fighter-style combos in addition to active and passive skills. The combos are both offensive and defensive. As a mage, I have the usual fireball attacks plus some teleporting stuff and mid-air attacks that shoot me backwards so I can escape. The active abilities are your fireballs, frostbolts, heals, whatever. You can use SP earned from leveling to buy new combos and skills or to enhance your current abilities in combination with books that drop off of mobs. They're not class-locked, though, so expect to have piles of tomes that you can't use. In fact, expect to have piles of everything that you can't use. At one point, after running a few dungeons, I found that my bag was completely full. Opening it up, I realized that I could use all of four things stashed in it, including potions.
Fantastic. At least I made some money. I went to the Skill Trainer so I could enhance my fireball to level three. I failed and it sent the skill back to level one. Yeah.
Oh, back to the topic of running dungeons: You're going to be doing it a lot. After a really annoying tutorial with gigantic tip windows that you can't really deal with because the interface kind of sucks, you're plopped down into a starting area that's about maybe double the size of the Trade District in Stormwind. An NPC will give you a level one quest to go into the beginner dungeon and kill shit. He will continue to give you this quest, standing there with the icon shining brightly over his head, until the stars burn out of the sky. After you return, you'll be sent to talk to some other people who will ship your generic ass right back to the same dungeon.
Repeat for every single quest "batch" in the game. The quests give no really amazing XP by themselves, but they're measured out in a way that ensures leveling at a steady(snail's) pace. You'll go get a bunch of quests for this new dungeon that you're ready for, you'll run the dungeon and complete it on Easy difficulty, then you'll come back to turn everything in. Once that's finished, several of the people you just talked to will give you more quests to go back into that same dungeon. You'll run and beat it on Medium(if you want), then repeat for Hard. Afterwards, you're probably ready to run the next dungeon one thousand times.
Mob placement doesn't make any sense, either. Ever played a private server for World of Warcraft? You know how some of them have these weird leveling roads? For those that are unaware, these are basically just long stretches of mob spawns sorted into different groups of ascending levels. You'll run along, say, a random road in The Barrens as you slaughter fast respawning enemies in order to power level with the increased XP gain that's typical for free servers.
Anyway, every single fucking dungeon in Divine Souls so far has been just like that with a boss at the end. Oh, and I have to go out of my way to destroy bland objects in the bland fucking environment for a quest, because some fucker wants roasted chestnuts and this other cunt here wants a god damned wall built somewhere unimportant so that's why I'm wasting my time shooting fireballs at fucking campfires and wooden barricades instead of slaughtering those mobs over there that don't aggro you until you smack your dick on their face.
*deep breath* Hoo, boy. Sorry.
herculean summary: divine souls has some decent character design and okay graphics and sound, but the gameplay is kinda boring. the classes are uninspired. the combat and movement during battle is a little clunky and a lot of combos and abilities are useless in every single situation. the mobs are stupid. sometimes i can't hit things, because they're on an incline in front of me and i can't seem to aim slightly downward. dungeon runs are nerve-grating and they make me really fucking mad. all dungeon difficulty seems to do is increase the size of the map and make it so the end boss kills you in one hit instead of two or three.
not that dying is necessarily an issue. if you do die, though, pray that your character isn't bugged. you have revive stones. ten max. they're how you "continue" in dungeons. they're supposed to regenerate naturally at the end of each day. guess what's not happening for a lot of people? oh, and there's some kind of "fatigue" bar, too, which i'm assuming is a way to further restrict the amount of enjoyment you can get out of this game.
the questing system needs work. moving through the world is literally a matter of running across endless expanses of uninteresting, low-poly texture work in order to reach the next door that takes you to another connecting room. basically, think of a 3d dungeon fighter online without the appeal of the whole streets of rage mmo thing thanks to a whole host of design flaws including combat that controls about as well as ballz 3d.
Well, if they manage to find a way to fix the multitude of issues the first one had... I might play it for a week before I get bored.
As I remember, you had to unload basically all of your ammunition into a player to get them to die. Then you respawned and did it again.
edit:
They should call the new one "Swordz: And the Fools Who Use Gunz".
I can't even begin to describe my distaste for these systems. They're in almost every asian grind MMO, the fact that this applies to your skills in this one lets me know I should stay far far away.
I didn't go into the other systems. Chat sucks and is filled with gold sellers that spam each available channel every few seconds with Engrish garbage. I tried blocking them, which is a really annoying process since there's no /ignore or anything, and it doesn't seem like the feature actually works. I couldn't find a way to leave certain channels, either. I assume there is one. I would hope there is one. Considering how poorly the rest of the game is made, however, I'm not keeping my hopes up.
The fatigue bar is something I mentioned in passing. It's basically what you'd expect: a poorly implemented method of limiting the grinding that you can do in a game that's all about grinding in every single aspect of its gameplay. Once the bar runs out, you'll need to wait for the next day in order to do any PVE content again. You can PVP for "bonus" fatigue, though, but I'm not sure why you would want to.
There's an Auction House of sorts. It's serviceable, I suppose, but not terribly well-polished. In fact, that describes the entire game.
There's maybe one or two servers, it looks like, and they're both down constantly. Every couple of days, there's more downtime. Imagine, say, League of Legends on a big patch day. Now make that multiple times a week.
Once you do get in, it's about as bad as you can possibly imagine. Ever played a shitty free MMO before? I'm sure most people frequenting this thread probably have. Take everything that you disliked about these games and combine them. Play it in your head for maybe five minutes. Mentally uninstall it by watching an entire season of Teen Mom. Sorry, but it's the only way.
You've now played Loong, everyone! Enjoy the rest of your evening.
PSN: Kylogue
I've written about it at length in earlier posts and shared some screenshots in the Screenshots thread, in case anyone got interested.
A new Gunz?
Yes! Yessssssss!
I was part of the first group that helped usher in the K-Butterfly/shotgun shit state-side, and later figured out a wonderfully bullshit way to counter it. Bitches don't know about my akimbo uzi's and katana.
I cannot wait for this. They had better keep the damn ridiculously hard to do "violation of physics" features in. There was something beautiful about seeing a guy literally fly across a level toward's his foe, propelling himself along by firing his shotgun rapidly, and slashing the air with his katana.
Will check back with impressions.
Edit: Open beta hits on the 27th
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwuiYhmUwM
I even went so far as to pay the $10 for the upgrade to the "Elite Agent" package (used a 50% off code to avoid the regular $20 charge).
I haven't even touched the PvP content yet, even though for many that seems to be the "reason" to play the game. I've mostly focused on the PvE content, and I really really like the 4-man instances.
It's like an amazing blend of a tactical action game, a class-based MMO, and a casual drop-in-drop-out game.
In each instance, it seems that it's less about what level you are and what gear you have, and more about how well you play. Your ability can affect the outcome, unlike many MMO's where you need X level and Y gear or don't even think about coming in here seriously.
The four classes each have a role they fit, and you're at your best when in that role, but all four (even the healer) can contribute offensively when the firepower is needed.
Oh, and there's a timer. I'm not sure how much time you have in the higher level instances, but in the lower ones (titled "Medium Security") you have 15 minutes to get to the end and take down the boss. So you're in, you're out. No need to plan a whole evening just to do one raid. Even with just an hour to play you can easily do three or four.
The elite agent package...well, I haven't really taken advantage of most of that yet. The immediate boost to me was extra XP / money / loot at the end of an instance. The other stuff you get (access to auctions, mail) I haven't really used. I'd probably still be getting as much entertainment from it even if I hadn't paid, but I was enjoying myself so much that I had no problem at all handing them a one time payment of $10, just to say thanks.
They've implemented a stamina system that limits the amount of co-op and story missions you can do (pvp is always free), made the co-op missions waaaaaaay easier -- like, you can always beat them first time round with 6 or 7 people, added new co-op missions and maps, and some other stuff.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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