Preview – Page 3 – MMO Fallout

Impressions: Riders of Icarus

(Disclosure: Nexon provided a review key so we could get into the head start)

My initial reaction to Riders of Icarus fell into the disturbingly common pit of “oh look, another Korean MMO with a gimmick.” Several closed beta tests later, not to mention giving away literally thousands of keys, and I can safely say that this game definitely blew away my expectations.

Riders of Icarus allows for one of two keyboard setups, with the first geared toward TERA players and the second for fans of the more traditional MMO. Even if you’re sick of the World of Warcraft number roll, I suggest choosing that over the action-oriented system. Suffice to say, it is effective broken at the moment.

As you level up, combat in Riders of Icarus becomes more geared toward putting together combos anyway. Combo moves allow you to string together attacks in a way that is devastating while not forcing you to memorize your hotbar or move items around the screen. In addition, they are forgiving enough that if lag or a slipped finger hits the wrong button, you can generally pick up with another key stroke. Moves in Icarus pack a punch, and I never get tired of the crunch effect that plays when I kick a mob two feet into the air.

Given that this is a free to play game, inevitably the question comes to the cash shop. In 2016, can we finally have a newly released free to play game that doesn’t have a ridiculous cash shop? Absolutely. The cash shop consists of lucky boxes (skins for familiars), convenience items, boosters, and outfits. Cash shop items are bought with Ellum, which can also be obtained in game. The shop isn’t perfect, I’m sure many players will take umbrage with the 100% HP/Mana flasks that are sold.

Icarus also offers premium service, a subscription that can be bought in 30, 90, and 180 day packages. Premium offers daily potion stipends, 20% experience boosts, free use of transit shrines, bonus Ellum, and more.

Riders of Icarus is a blessing, or a curse depending on how you look at it, for collectors. Taming familiars is a major feature of the game, and there are a lot of creatures to collect. Running through each zone, effectively any non-bipedal creature can be tamed and collected. Right now my collection consists of two reindeer, two horses, two birds, a couple wolves, and a kangaroo-esque creature called a “Woodland Joey.”

Taming itself is where the game errs at Pokemon. You’re better off weaking your foe before you attempt to tame them, at which point the game turns into a rodeo mini-game that relies partially on pressing the right buttons when they show up and half on pure dumb luck. Higher level familiars will require more intricate measures of taming, such as collecting certain items or jumping off of a cliff onto them, but there’s nothing quite like seeing players zooming around above on their tamed dragons.

Familiars are a project in themselves, as they gain experience, level up, and geared up for combat. Familiar leveling adds a nice side-progression to the game since your familiar is constantly gaining experience through the simple act of traveling or just sitting around. They can be turned into pets, assisting players in combat, or sacrificed and used to gear up your equipment in the name of higher stats.

One of the largest issues facing Riders of Icarus right now is the fact that this is a Nexon game, and as such you can guarantee that gold farmers are numerous and not just operating unabated, but with help from the developer themselves. It took a guild member explaining why the ignore feature wasn’t blocking gold spam. Ignoring users doesn’t block global or regional chat, just whispers and party invites. In other words, it is completely useless and chat right now has been deserted sans the same five bots spamming their respective websites.

The other big issue is the fact that mobs have very small movement ranges, you’ll recognize this in other games where an NPC will pull back to its accepted area of movement and go back to full health. It doesn’t crop up as much on standard enemies, but fighting bigger boss monsters gets very annoying when you use a range attack and they rush up, hit you, then immediately run back.

Otherwise, Riders of Icarus is shaping up to be an excellent themepark MMO. If you’re the kind of person who hates questing being the main form of leveling, this game isn’t going to appeal much. For everyone else, Icarus is well deserving of its current “mostly positive” rating on Steam.

Right now my focus is on hitting the current level cap, 25 at least until the game goes into full open beta on the 6th.

Beta Perspective: I Can’t Heap Enough Praise On Overwatch

I don’t think a lot of people had much faith in Overwatch when we first heard of it, after all consider the circumstances. Blizzard just got done telling us that their MMO Titan was being canned because it wasn’t fun, but that the remains of the title would be stitched together in a Frankenstein’s monster-like fashion to create a new game. It makes you wonder what exactly Titan was, and why it sucked.

Functionally, Overwatch is what would happen if Team Fortress 2 and a MOBA made love and had a child. It is a 6v6 first person shooter with a massive cast of unique characters on numerous themed maps over several game modes. Rather than Team Fortress 2’s nine classes, Overwatch currently provides 21, split into four groups (offense, defense, tank, and support).

A Team Fortress 2 player would find themselves much at home in Overwatch. You have Pharah as the soldier with her rocket launcher and rocket jump ability, Torbjorn as the engineer capable of building and upgrading an automatic turret, Widowmaker as the sniper, Mercy as the medic with her medigun, D.Va as the heavy, Tracer as the scout, Junkrat as the demoman, and probably Winston as the pyro. There isn’t really an equivalent of the spy, the TF2 character that can disguise and go invisible.

Even Call of Duty fans have a dedicated character in Soldier 76, a hero who carries an automatic rifle that alt-fires rockets.

Even within each category, the characters vary pretty wildly and have a number of uses. In support, for instance, Mercy isn’t just a follow-and-heal character. While useless in combat, her staff can heal and it can also boost damage, while her ultimate ability can be used to resurrect characters on the spot. Lucio, on the other hand, is capable of using his offensive weapon to damage enemies or to knock them around. His Crossfade ability can regenerate health or amplify movement speed. Symmetry has a weapon that builds damage the longer it connects, while her sentry turret slows enemy movement.

But it still doesn’t reduce the versatility of characters. Even non-support characters have healing powers that vary from simply boosting oneself to providing area of effect healing and shield. They give every character the potential to just massacre the enemy team, regardless of their type. Roadhog, for instance, already being a tank with ridiculous defense and health, can bring enemies in close and then utilize an ability to heal himself. Widowmaker, with her sniper rifle and ability to scale to higher places, can be absolutely devastating in the hands of a sharpshooter.

The increase in characters allows for some devastating combinations. If you’ve looked up videos on Overwatch, you’ve probably seen the combo where Bastion (a giant robot) transforms into his stationary turret mode on the Payload objective and just mows down people while Reinhardt (a tank character) protects him with his shield.

There are three game modes planned for launch as well as a hybrid mode. Escort has one team escorting a payload while the other team runs down the clock. Assault has an attacking team trying to capture control points while the defending team tries to run down the clock. Control has both teams fight over control of capture points which control adds to a meter which, when full, ends the round. Hybrid starts out as assault and eventually becomes escort.

More updates are planned after launch, obviously, including new heroes and new maps, as well as new game modes. If there’s one thing you can expect from Blizzard, it is that the Overwatch that exists a couple of years from now will be massive in comparison to what we get at launch.

The only real downside of the beta so far is the prevalence of matchmaking throwing you into a guaranteed loss about twenty seconds before the match ends. It’s an inevitability in any game that has matchmaking, and Blizzard has alleviated the frustration by making it so you do not gain a loss if you backfill a match, however you can score a win if your team is victorious. It’s relatively simple functions like these that Blizzard is known to put in their games to make them a bit more fair.

It is a testament to these games when you can do poorly without going full tilt, even though the nature of the game demands a balanced team and I’ve had a few moments of shouting obscenities at my computer because my team was attacking on an escort map and my team just would not stop camping in their own spawn area or those public games when your team throws the game away because three members just wanted to be snipers. The game gives suggestions based on your team, but it doesn’t force you to pick a balanced list of characters so if you have a team of tanks and the enemy team is balanced, you’re screwed.

I see massive eSports potential from Overwatch, just from the litany of gifs showing up online. There are already tournaments planned, and hopefully Blizzard adds spectating tools in the same with Valve has with Counter Strike: GO, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2. I can’t wait for the full launch of Overwatch. If you haven’t gotten into the game yet, the beta was extended until May 10th mid-afternoon EST. Even if you can only get a few games in, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s been a long time since I’ve come out of a game this positive.

The game will also make a killing out of the loot system. Basically you have an overall level that is functionally meaningless, but every time you level up from experience gained in each round you get a loot box that is full of random skins, victory poses, sprays, etc. When the game goes live, you’ll be able to buy them with credits as well. Longer play sessions can lead to better experience gains, since you get a boost from staying in a match through successive rounds. You’ll also apparently be able to toss away the stuff you don’t want for credits to eventually earn the stuff you do want.

I never tell my audience outright to spend money on a game just because I told you I liked it, so I really recommend getting into the beta while it is still live.

Beta Perspective: Fantasy Tales Online

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It’s very obvious, or at least it should be, when you’re dealing with an independent MMO made with passion. Fantasy Tales Online, as I’ve been told, is being developed by a team of three people at Cold Tea Studio. Right now the game is gearing up for Steam early access, and I was contacted and offered a key to get in a little early.

As far as graphics go, Fantasy Tales Online is virtually future proof. It is retro-inspired but not basic, the kind of style that will still look good in ten years time compared to making a polygonal game that looks like it was born out of the early Everquest era. FTO advertises customization, dynamic raids, player housing, a massive world, and more. But can it live up to the hype? Sure, why not.

The sure sign of an addictive game is one that steals time, and somewhere along the line after booting up Fantasy Tales Online I lost five hours. I hate to make comparisons to other games, but it feels like a higher functioning RPG MO, which is in turn an homage to RuneScape Classic, which is probably why FTO set my clock forward the length of a short work shift. It also bears a strong resemblance to another game that is taking up a lot of my time, Stardew Valley.

FTO is played from a top down perspective using the mouse, keyboard, or combination of the two. You can move by clicking or using the WASD keys, and you can mostly disregard the mouse by enabling targeting which places a key binding over interactive objects on screen. A very handy tool that you don’t normally see in games, and as you’ll hear me say quite a bit in this game’s coverage, it’s the little things that go a long way.

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There are a lot of little things that make the world less stagnant and boring, while also giving players little hints on where they can go next. Walking through the mines early on, I noticed a rat immediately get smashed by falling debris, warning the player of impending danger. NPCs run around the towns, giving random bits of dialogue and pointing toward places of interest while actually giving the area a living feel. I accidentally said hello to one of the NPCs, I won’t lie.

Dungeons are where Fantasy Tales Online becomes something of a Diablo-esque romp. Each dungeon you enter is randomly generated at the start, a series of interlocking rooms with plenty of mobs to mow down and loot to obtain. There are traps, a few simple puzzles inserted so far, and bosses at the end that will probably knock you around the first few times you make your way through. The first boss you encounter has a trick that took me a minute to figure out, you have to knock out the support beams to destroy his armor. For some reason that makes sense.

I like how quests are written, if only because it’s a nice change from the usual first person view of quest text. Quest lines are a bit more like Dungeons & Dragons, written from the perspective of an outside narrator giving exposition. “Mayor Donnoville say this time he would like you to eradicate one hundred squirrels.” Now I read the quest dialogue in pretty much every MMO that I play, and I can get behind any game that strong-arm’s the player into reading the text to know what is going on. Quests are somewhere between standard and RuneScape, a bit heavier on the story and slightly more in-depth than you standard go here and kill the things until you get the stuff.

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Crafting is pretty basic at the moment with the most fleshed out area being the ability to create a wide variety of potions that boost health, strength, armor, etc. There isn’t much to say here other than that reagents can take up a large amount of space in your backpack along with potions and loot, and since you can only have one buff active at any time it’s best to travel light. Inventories at the moment can’t be expanded and you’ll quickly find them filled with loot.

Of course, the game is not without its flaws. This is early access, after all, and the only glaring issue that I can find at the moment is that your character’s attacks are rather unreliable, which the guys at Cold Tea Studio have attributed to a few unfixed bugs. While generally not a problem, your character will occasionally not engage in combat without multiple button clicks. It is semi-frequent and, if inattentive as myself, will probably get you killed a couple of times.

Another gripe I have is with the game’s crafting system, if only because it is different and I am inattentive. Right now, you need to manually remove your ingredients and final product from the crafting screen, not unlike Minecraft. If you don’t remove your items, they are wiped after about an hour (according to one of the crew in chat).

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With about eight hours of game time so far, Fantasy Tale Online is shaping up to be quite an entertaining game. I look forward to seeing what the small team can accomplish. For now, I will continue leveling and providing coverage.

MMOments: Nosgoth’s The Nest Map

I recently had the opportunity to play Nosgoth’s upcoming map, The Nest. If you haven’t played the game, Nosgoth is a team-based multiplayer game developed by Psyonix and set in the world of the Legacy of Kain games. It is the first in the series to be released in over ten years, with Legacy of Kain Defiance having launched in 2003 on the Playstation 2. Psyonix are best known for their recent smash hit, Rocket League, as well as its predecessor Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars.

My favorite aspect of Nosgoth is the fact that the two teams are not the same mirrored opposites that you find in many other games. There are drastic differences in how both teams work, and knowing how to play to those strengths and avoid their weaknesses is key if you want any chance at victory. The humans rely on more primitive means of offense, in the form of weapons like crossbows and potions that create fire and light. They fight best when able to keep their target at a length, peppering them with bolts and arrows. The humans rely on nodes across the map to replenish health and ammunition.

The vampires, on the other hand, are more up close and personal. They can scale the sides of buildings, pounce on victims or knock them to the ground, and even pick them up and carry them into the sky in order to inflict damage. Vampires perform best in the middle of chaos, splitting up the human team and picking them off one by one, or slamming into the group and scattering them around.

And the variety of characters is easily the greatest strength of Nosgoth. No matter which side you play, or which character, every class has their own unique play style to love or hate, and each character must be dealt with as an individual threat. The fact that the game is five vs five means that your contribution, or lack thereof, are all the more important to your team.

So the map we played on is called The Nest, it is a large map with about as many open spaces as closed. The layout is covered in medium to tall buildings, giving the vampire team plenty of places to climb up and escape danger or plot their next ambush. For the players, however, there were also plenty of open areas and buildings to enter, mitigating the threat from above. It’s also easy for the human team to get too close, putting the whole group at risk of area of effect attacks and ground slams from the larger vampires.

The most disappointing part of our play session was the, ultimately, it came to an end. Nosgoth looks great, handles well, and is fun enough that the time melts away. Unfortunately, the game’s matchmaking in my experience and as pointed out in the community, is a painful slog that often takes longer to find a game than most people are willing to wait. Much longer.

If you have some time to spare, I highly recommend giving Nosgoth a chance. Check out one of the rounds I played on The Nest below

Play Star Citizen Until September 5th

I know what you’re thinking: “I want to play Star Citizen, but I don’t want to have to pay like five thousand bucks for a ship I’ll probably lose on day one.” You’re in luck, because Roberts Space Industries has announced that attendees to DragonCon are being given a free flight week-end to try out Star Citizen’s Arena Commander module. With the pass, you’ll be able to walk around the hanger module, sit in a trainer ship, and take flight in arena commander. The pass is active until September 5th.

But Connor, I hear you say, I can’t afford to go to DragonCon! Neither can I, which is why regardless of if you actually attended the convention, you can head on to the link below and use the code DRAGONFLIGHT2K14 to get in on the promotion anyway. Check it out and tell us what you think.

(Source: Star Citizen)

Alpha Matter: Project Gorgon

“In this particular dungeon, there is a boss that can turn you into a cow.” All I need to hear, game of the year every year! My first moment of experience with booting up the Project Gorgon early alpha was reading a note warning me that bosses in the game can inflict curses upon death, curses which are incredibly difficult to remove especially for new players. The boss in the tutorial dungeon has the ability to turn players into cows, and not in the sense of casting a spell that temporarily disables your attacks and serves as a boss mechanic. Judging by the comment that, as a cow, you will have your own cow adventures with cow abilities and find cow equipment, you’re going to be in this for a long haul. Tough break, right?

The warning screen for your intuition is hilarious, by the way, and made me chuckle like an idiot in my computer seat. In my romp through the relatively safe tutorial cave, I couldn’t help but notice quite a few features that you just don’t see anymore in MMOs. As I fought off skeletons and collected random mushrooms and items off of the ground, my character would add to his list of skills, and there seems to be skills for everything. Not only does everything from picking mushrooms and eating food to even dying add experience to its appropriate skill, each skill has a tangible effect on your character. The “death” skill, as it is called, raises your maximum health every ten levels, while gourmand (an appreciation of food) increases the benefits of eating further food. Not only is there an expansive list of skills to acquire, you have to actually acquire them before they show up on your skills tab. Exploration, how quaint.

Upon entering the first town I saw outside of the tutorial dungeon, I traveled around talking to merchants to sell the trash I’d found and buy some new equipment. I couldn’t afford anything. Then I came across the tavern and found that there is a place where players can dump their armor and weapons for others to buy for a small chunk of change and use. You know, I’m starting to feel at home in this old-school world. My newly revived adventurer gets into town dirt poor and inexperienced, and now I’m getting my clothing at Ye Olde Goodewill.

Every NPC has a favor level toward the player, raised by performing quests and giving gifts. You have to give items that the person likes, which you can figure out with a little small talk. Oh they’ll still accept an item that they don’t particularly like, as I found out the hard way, you just won’t gain any favor with them. You can also really piss off NPCs by killing their livestock, which may make buying seeds from Farmer John a little tougher when he wants to murder you for killing his chickens.

Oh, and I have lice, I probably should have sanitized the hat I donated. In fact, I probably got the lice from the helmet I bought second hand. According to the game, this disease is permanent until I get it fixed, and in my years of Dungeons & Dragons I have yet to come across anyone selling that special shampoo and comb. Not as bad as being turned into a cow or spider, I suppose, but now I can’t get the guards to take selfies.

My favorite part of Project Gorgon so far is the fact that the game continues to surprise me, constantly. At first I thought all there was to combat was killing and looting creatures, but finding a skinning knife introduced me to the art of gutting corpses for meat. And that’s not all, later on I found an NPC who sold shovels which I could use to bury the corpses of the dead, not only ensuring that they would spawn faster but also granting compassion experience which raises my other stats. Just looking at the stat requirements for items I’ve come across shows a whole world of features I’ve yet to discover: Animal handling, necromancy, psychology, notoriety, cow, spider, dye making, battle alchemy, and even more that I haven’t come across.

What I’m trying to say is that I am enjoying Project Gorgon immensely, and you should too. Head on over to the Project Gorgon page and download the very early access client, and maybe donate to the game’s Kickstarter once you’re done being blown away. Seriously, this game needs all of the publicity it can get.

Beta Perspective: Destiny on PS4

Aren’t pre-order betas great? You throw $5 (refundable) down at Gamestop and, in return, you get what can nearly be called a preview copy of your game to play and figure out if it’s going to be worth buying. Where else can you get that kind of preview, apart from perhaps every other form of media? Given my status as fiscally conservative, which is code word here for “cheap bastard,” I generally come to the conclusion that a game is worth playing so long as the price drops from the initial $60. Red Dead Redemption was worth the $60 I paid for it new, but Timeshift was more than worth the $1.69 I got it for used. It’s all about perspective.

So I can say that, after playing the Destiny alpha, I went into Gamestop and not only secured my pre-order, I upgraded to the $99 collector’s edition. I won’t go as far as the $150 edition with the figurine, I like the game but not enough to buy an overpriced and mass produced chunk of plastic. Now, for the record I played the Destiny beta on the Playstation 4 (obviously). The beta on the Xbox consoles doesn’t come out until the 23rd, at which time I will not be previewing them because I do not own either system. Your mileage may vary.

I was already hooked on Destiny as of the first alpha test, so the beta was merely returning for another sip. Right now the beta caps out at level 8 with only the first handful of missions available to play and a number of features either inaccessible or unobtainable. There are three classes available with accompanying subclasses (at level 15, unreachable in beta), the Titan, the Hunter, and the Warlock. Each class is fully capable in combat, distinguished by the set of abilities afforded to them. My favorite ability is that of the Hunter, a special where he summons a three-shot pistol that can shred through most enemies like butter.

Weapons and equipment are picked up during battle and carry their own set of stats and special abilities. You can only have three weapons equipped at any time and each fall into their own categories that can’t be changed. The primary weapons include rifles and pistols, with snipers in secondary and machine guns and rocket launchers in heavy. Finding ammunition for the special and heavy weapons was a slow and painful process, with the natural expectation being that those weapons should be saved for more difficult battles. Equipment also carries special abilities, like a sniper rifle that can pick up ammo by shooting it, or a rifle that does more damage on the last half of a clip.

Destiny feels an awful lot like a smoother, far more serious Borderlands with persistent online interactivity. All of the action takes place on overworlds, sprawling areas of above and below ground zones filled with foes of varying level. The story missions act as a guide through this world, showing you a basic idea on what it has to offer without actually holding you by the hand and showing you its secrets. If you look around hard enough, you’ll find all that Destiny has to offer from its high peaks to low, hidden dungeons. In the beta, I even managed to come across several dungeons that went so deep that enemies eventually became “??” level. Frightening.

But Destiny is all about killing things in order to find better equipment with which to kill bigger things and so on and so forth. You pick from three classes with distinct abilities and eventually level them into their own subclasses, none of which were available thanks to a level cap of eight and a required level of fifteen. Choosing your class is a matter of taste, with the Titan focusing on brute force and tanking while the Hunter shoots from afar and the Warlock is more mid-range.

There is a wealth of content to explore simply in this small beta, with secret corridors around every corner. In addition to the dungeons available to explore, the overworld also plays host to numerous mini-quests, missions that are picked up on the fly and are often simple objectives like “kill these creatures for their data,” and “explore this dungeon.” Occasionally your exploration will be interrupted with a public event, generally involving a boss creature, where players absolutely must work together in order to succeed.

Death is very light in Destiny, there are no penalties for dying and resurrecting in the overworld. In dungeons, however, certain areas as well as boss fights are designated “restricted respawn,” where you must either be revived by a teammate or face having to start the area over again if the entire team wipes. According to other posts I’ve seen on the forums, there are hints in-game that armor will degrade upon death requiring repairs. Otherwise it is possible to die thirty-odd times fighting a giant mech walker boss on the overworld only to keep coming back and whittling its health down little by little.

Destiny’s PvP mode is the Crucible, where players can compete on deathmatch and territory control maps. If you have no interest in the rest of Destiny and simply want to battle it out with your fellow gamers, it is completely possible to level up in Crucible.

There isn’t enough content to fill up more than a day or two of playtime in this beta, but I consider my thirst quenched until launch, or at least the next beta phase.

A Beta Perspective: Elder Scrolls Online

Since the dawn of time, many have asked why the Beta Perspective has not yet covered the Elder Scrolls Online, and the answer is as old as time itself: Zenimax doesn’t regard us as a press outfit. I hold no grudges against them, I am merely pointing this out for the purpose of transparency. Factored in with unrelated events, I haven’t spend much time playing Elder Scrolls Online prior to the NDA being lifted because, frankly, I don’t have the time to beta test a game for the sake of bug hunting.

The absolute first thought that I had upon starting The Elder Scrolls Online was “this is certainly The Elder Scrolls.” One constant that has appeared in almost every game in the main series is that the player starts off in a prison, but ESO’s take on the series trope is quite possibly one of the most interesting. At the start of the game, you are dead. Not just dead, you were sacrificed in a ritual and are now stuck in a jail cell somewhere in the insane depths of Molag Bal’s district of Oblivion. With a conga line of NPCs running around me towards the exit, I had to soak in that just minutes into the game, I was taking part in a jail break out of hell. Even if the rest of the game turns out to be forgettable, you have to admit that it’s one hell of an opening.

The world of Elder Scrolls Online looks great, from the atmosphere to the lighting to the voice acting and the soundtrack. Upon returning to the world of the living, the player comes to a tutorial island of sorts, specific to their faction, to complete a series of quests and get a lay of the land before heading off to their faction’s territory.

From a mechanical point of view, I can understand why some Elder Scrolls purists will not enjoy this game. While certain facets of the series are still present, like much of the combat system, reading books and a multitude of boxes strewn about containing mostly crafting ingredients, certain sacrifices had to be made in the transition to an online shared-world experience. Gone are the days of pickpocketing or even killing random NPCs in the streets, friendly NPCs cannot be touched at all. No more breaking into stores in the middle of the night to steal their wares or loot an armorer. Enemies you kill no longer drop all of their belongings, a well equipped bandit might reward a couple of gold and a potion or cooking ingredient.

Going directly from earlier games to Online may result in the feeling that the game is openly mocking you with some of its restrictions, like throwing you into a bandit’s den strewn with large quantities of food, weapons, armor, and potions, and not allowing you to pick up any of it. I get it, Zenimax has a budding interior decorator on staff, but does everything have to be welded to the floor? I am also not a fan of the game’s restriction on sneaking, where you are physically prevented from crouching in certain areas because it “makes you look suspicious,” according to the in-game message. Jumping around like a madman is fine, so is unsheathing my weapon and trying to stab everyone, but I can’t sneak because it would seem suspicious. Right.

I’ve found combat to be mostly enjoyable in Elder Scrolls Online, with a slight exception to the fact that NPCs telegraph their special attacks with those red indicators on the floor. Since I played through most of my time in the beta in first person, however, the floor markings were rarely within my line of sight anyway. Minus a bit of intermittent server lag, combat feels well paced and fluid, and unlike Final Fantasy XIV’s three second lag, I never felt cheated if I missed a block or failed to disrupt a foe’s attack. As you level up you gain special attacks that add more variety to combat, like the ability to leap on your enemy or knock them to the ground.

And that is nothing to say about the PvP which I was unable to get into this weekend due to lag issues making the area unplayable. What I can say from previous experience is that PvP is insane. The map is huge, combat is frantic, and success on the battlefield feels less reliant on the roving bands of zerg squads found in Guild Wars 2.

After playing the last couple of beta weekends, I decided to go ahead and buy the standard edition on Green Man Gaming with a 20% off coupon. I fully suggest checking out the final beta weekend if you get the chance, when it rolls around.

Neverwinter: Getting A Beta Perspective

Like most of you, I’ve had my silent preconceptions about Neverwinter. After all, we’ve had two past releases from Cryptic to look at and base our assumptions off of, and I’m happy to say that most of them will be proven wrong. I enjoyed Champions Online when it launched and, seeing as how I have the progression speed of a dead opossum crossing the road, by the time I’d gotten bored of the game (around level 40), I never hit that wall of no content that many people complained about. My biggest complaint, and arguably the deal breaker, with Champions Online was, and still is, how clunky and unresponsive the controls are. I’ve always felt that the game could be best explained as someone else was controlling your character and you were speaking your commands to them, and they had taken three or four Oxycontin. Star Trek Online was an improvement, but is still pretty clunky.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before I proceed: Neverwinter is not Dungeons and Dragons Online. Not one iota of the two games are similar to each other, and as such they will no doubt appeal to completely different tastes in gaming. To put it shortly: Dungeons and Dragons Online is a slower, more methodical and strategic MMO: Closer to the earlier versions of the pen and paper D&D where small groups of adventurers take on stories and quests in a modular, instanced environment surrounding non-combat hubs. Neverwinter is more in line with what you might expect from a game like TERA, an action-oriented game set in the D&D universe with open worlds surrounding frequent solo/group instances.

Combat in Neverwinter is something of a mixture of several other MMOs. You use the mouse to aim your reticle and attack with abilities set to the left and right mouse buttons, as well as Q, E, R, with two “daily” abilities and a side bar for potions other other items. Many of the creatures that you fight will have special attacks that will either need to be dodged or blocked, and are indicated either with markers on the floor or distinct animations leading up to the attack. What makes Neverwinter’s combat so impressive isn’t so much its innovation, of which it doesn’t do a whole lot, but rather the responsiveness of the system. As I said, I had very little confidence that Cryptic’s engine could deliver a powerful action-oriented game, and I’m happy to say that Neverwinter has blown my expectations away so far.

There is a ton of content in Neverwinter, even if not all of it has been implemented for the beta. As you travel through dungeons, you’ll come across various skill plots which require either an appropriate skill or kit in order to open. The plots are essentially just extra treasure chests. There are always events going on every half hour, encouraging players to participate in everything from skirmishes, dungeons, pvp, training professions, and more to gain extra rewards. Then of course there is the player foundry, where players are able to create quests for others to play.

Since this is a beta, I tend to be more forgiving when it comes to bugs, although it is rather reassuring that the “top bugs” list in the report tool is quite empty. I’ve become stuck in an instance after the reward chest at the end refused to spawn and the game refused to allow me to leave until I looted said chest, but other than that Neverwinter seems to be in pretty good shape. Knowing Murphy’s Law, that could all go down the toilet once the game launches and the influx of players trigger yet-unseen bugs and crashes, but for now all is pretty hunky dory.

The only part of Neverwinter that has genuinely frustrated me so far lies within the group instances, in several respects. First off, there is apparently no role check in place for the dungeon finder. In most other MMOs, the dungeon finder has a specific set of requirements: one healer, one tank, generally one or two DPS, and then usually a wildcard slot. In Neverwinter, you can wind up in a random group that might have no healer, too many healers, no tank, too many DPS classes, etc. At this point, especially in cases where the group doesn’t have a dedicated healer, the players are better off just quitting since the dungeon is going to be virtually impossible, especially once you hit level 15+.

Another fundamental problem with dungeon grouping lies in the need before greed system. Players roll for higher value items, but these items drop in an unidentified state. You can tell if the item can be used by your class (incompatible items are shaded red), however there is no way of knowing if the gear is worth rolling for since the stats are hidden. I’ve also seen a demand in the forums to prevent players from rolling on items that their class cannot equip, either by not allowing them to roll “need” or not allowing them to roll at all. Every group seems to have at least one greedy person who will roll need on everything, often by waiting to see if the rest of the group rolls greed, thus ensuring the item for himself. I would rather see a simple requirement of having a compatible class to roll need on an item.

There is a LOT of content still not implemented in Neverwinter, from a considerable number of those half hour events I mentioned earlier, to the crafting system, and much of the game’s story mode. One thing I will say is that this isn’t so much an attempt to bring the pen and paper game to the gaming audience as Turbine attempted to do with DDO, but it’s an action MMO based in the Neverwinter universe with stuff from D&D. If you start making comparisons to the pen and paper game, or if you were looking for a more current version of Turbine’s DDO, I feel I need to make it clear now that you are likely going to be very disappointed.

I will have more to discuss in the future, but I have to say my first impressions have been very positive. There is no nondisclosure agreement in effect for Neverwinter, so feel free to drop us a comment on your experience or send an email to contact[at]mmofallout<dot>com.

Continuing City of Steam’s Closed Beta

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We are into yet another preview of City of Steam, the upcoming browser MMO by Mechanist Games. Since this is the third closed beta weekend I have played, this is around the time where the little things in the game start popping out and really nagging me. Since this is a beta, I’ve agreed under MMO Fallout general rules of engagement that I am not to talk about bugs, even if I did manage to break yet another character and render him unable to progress through the main story quest somewhere around level six. Instead, my critiques will be laid at City of Steam on a conceptual level, not a programming level.

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The first thing I did when booting up this week’s edition of City of Steam was to see if the Warder class (melee) is still frustrating to play, and whether or not the class is still as functionally inept at early levels as I had previously experienced. It is, and for a simple reason: kiting, and this fact of life waits for you to enter the first dungeon before it clubs you over the head with a harsh reality: You are going to die, a lot. This about sums up combat as a warder: Enter room with two mobs, target mob A and start attacking while mob B attacks with range. Mob A continues to move away every other hit, forcing your character into an endless game of catch up as mob A happens to run faster than you do. And don’t think that just because you got mob A all by itself that this will remain a one on one fight, as mob A will inevitably lead you into aggro’ing a larger group.

Enemies will always find a way to screw over a warder, whether they lead you to a spot that gets your character stuck, run away over impassible terrain where you can’t follow them, or attack you from behind barriers that you have to break before you can attack back. My dual-wielding gunner doesn’t have the same problems as my dual-wielding warder. My gunner hits harder, faster, and doesn’t have to worry about Mechanist Game’s godawful pathfinding to be a reliable warrior, and strangely my gunner can also take a much heavier beating from the mobs of equal or higher level while my warder has trouble fighting his own legs without tripping over a pebble and cracking his skull open.

So essentially the warder doesn’t really do what a warder should. While my gunner is off actually killing things and doing so efficiently, my warder is stuck in a game of grab-ass chasing mobs around the map while the others take potshots at him. He has poor DPS, considering dual wielding was made for just that, perforates like paper in a hailstorm, and since he has trouble attacking at all, would be terrible at holding aggro in a group.

I’m sure someone will say “well the warder gets better at later levels,” and I wouldn’t really doubt that. Call me old fashioned, but when I play a game I expect that difficulty will start out at a level so easy I could defeat a foe by blinking at them forcefully enough and get harder as the game progresses, not start out unbearably difficult and slowly make its way to a more tolerable state. The warder gains certain abilities to stun enemies, pull them in, or slow their movement, but these feel like a bandage on what is fundamentally a poor game mechanic.

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Heading back to my gunner, the game becomes more enjoyable and the rest of City of Steam’s problems become just a whisper in the night. I’m not a fan of how the game sounds start becoming quieter as your hit points get closer to zero. It wouldn’t be as bad if the actual volume was going down, but in my experience playing the game replaces the game sounds with an audible low pitched white noise. Then again, I have a sensitivity to low-frequency noise, so it may just be a problem with how the game handles the volume decreasing while the actual level remains the same. Regardless of the noise, the volume going down in the first place seems unnecessary and is kind of obnoxious.

Another little “feature” that grinds my gears is the five second wait while traveling between zones and entering dungeons. I have a feeling this has to do with how the game handles groups, and that the reason there is a timer and a massive pad to stand on is so the game knows who to transport to the right version of an instance. Again, this seems like poor programming, whether it is the fault of the engine itself or on Mechanist Games. It’s not really a problem, per say, but when soloing it can become an annoyance and it seems like a strange mechanic to disconnect from the standard implementation of changing zones (clicking on a door or entering a portal).

Otherwise, I am having a fantastic time in City of Steam, which is an odd statement considering I probably seem like someone who is incredibly shallow or very incompetent at gaming. There is a ton of stuff to do, from crafting weapons and gear to doing quests, running dungeons to gather more materials, and playing with the lottery machine, salvaging items, and more. As I said in the first review, City of Steam doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground, but that doesn’t stop the game from being enjoyable.

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One particular feature I’ve found myself playing through regularly are challenges that offer a reason to continue going into old dungeons. Each dungeon has three challenges which range from killing x creatures, killing specific types of creatures, finding chests or opening boxes. The challenges can be replayed several times over, but the real rewards can only be obtained once every cycle (once per day, I believe). As you progress, you’ll also gain points in the overall area’s challenge score system, which opens up new prizes and rewards. While the game requires 2 or 3 players to join some challenges, opening up the interface will automatically put you into a public group with anyone else who happens to be available. City of Steam delivers my public grouping the same way I enjoy my elevator rides: no eye contact or talking. Touch my stuff and I will shank you.

And once again, City of Steam has proven itself to be incredibly stable. I think there were one or two cases of the servers going down over the weekend, and personally the client crashed twice but that’s because I run 20+ Google Chrome tabs at once and run my computer to death, so those crashes are likely not due to anything wrong with the game. Lag was pretty bad sometimes, but it’s guaranteed when you have so many people crowded as closely as they were. Functionally, however, the game worked fine despite the lag in certain actions and the lag didn’t really cross over into the instances thankfully.

I look forward to City of Steam’s next beta weekend.

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