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A list of Pros & Cons for Prospective Players
Adun
Member UncommonPosts: 70
Having been around since beta, and now with the flood gates opening up and a free trial out, I decided I would write out a list of some of ER's positives and negatives, such as they are, so that prospective players will have a better idea of what to expect, and also hopefuly gain some kind of perspective as to why the things are the way they are in Earthrise, for both good and bad.
*** Please read both Pros and Cons before making your conclusion or commenting, as I try to explore both sides of the coin with my statements.
FIRST, WHAT EARTHRISE IS ABOUT:
Earthrise is a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic setting, sandbox MMORPG which revolves around player-freedom, open world PVP (a rarity these days), end-game sieging and politics, as well as an expansive, deep crafting system and subsequent economy, all supported by huge, unrestricted customization within the skill systems so you can play as you like. The main driving force behind ER is PVP, and this will always be the emphasis. Killmails ala Eve, bounty-hunting, monster mines as PVE/PVP hybrid hotspots, further advanced Territory War and politicking, and so on are things that are slated for and will fit into the type of game this is. PVE in ER is bland and will likely always be so, as it exists solely as a means to attain resources and XP (and is specifically designed for players to fight over spots in classic open-world fashion, for if you get ganked you drop your resources/etc that you got while farming, but you always keep your quest items and the progession you got from the camp) all for the ultimate goal of waging war and fighting for supremacy of the island, be it for a faction within the game, or a faction of players, or both. The game is about forging your own path as the story of Enterra evolves, eventually you becoming a part of it, whether as a criminal, an explorer, a cold-blooded PK, a rebel, a conti who strives for the belief of civilization and order, or just a neutral spectator with his own goals. This is the backdrop of ER.
NOW, HOW THE GAME IS PRESENTLY:
PROS
- Enormous, custom built, post-apocalyptic sandbox world and environment where you can jump over and off cliffs (and die from the fall), scale rims and peaks, and lay ambushes. Rich background story, built on a faction system of Conglomerate vs. Rebels vs. Neutrals vs. Criminals Vs. "Grey Line" Facs. Compete or work together, all while struggling for supremacy.
- Massive skill-based advancement system featuring myriad weapons, devices, abilities, tactics, all with no restrictions. Diversity is achieved through loadout; which means you can unlock the entire skill system over time, but you can only ever use certain combinations of it's elements at one particular time, intrinsically creating diversity through builds that you can alternate as your purpose alternates. Create your own "class" without the restrictions of a "class system". Builds for: Solo PVP? Siege? Healer? Rogue? Tank? Sniper? Etc. This also means that you do not need to grind everything to compete, but instead you just need to carve out your niche, and you won't fall behind "the vets".
- No tab-targeting combat system, aim all your attacks from the different types available; ranging from Aimed Attacks which must connect with a target's hitbox via leading, to Arc Attacks which operate on a 45 to 90 degree angle depending on the ability, meaning positioning will be key especially when manipulating effective ranges (each gun has several different ranges at which it operates optimally), to Splash Attacks which are AOEs with a fallout damage range, meaning you have to place them carefully in order of opponents you wish to damage the most in the seconds you have to get the attack off.
- End game revolves around Territorial Warfare, sieging, building up, breaking down, hoodwinking, managing, and maintaining the myriad bases in the frontier zones of the game. There's more than enough for many, many guilds and factions to compete over them. You can use politics or just brute force to attain your goals, this is up to you. Bases eventually yield the best resources in the game, which can be used to further your goals of conquest, or of just being the best PK's on the block.
- Extremely deep, expansive crafting system that allows everything in the game to be created by players. From TW structures, to weapons, armor, devices, vehicles, and so on. Guilds must work together to make the most powerful gear and weapons in the game, and in true sandbox nature, all the best items in the game are made only by the players, rather than dropped anywhere from the world.
- On a technical level, performance has improved vastly due to the last major patch/expansion. Many people with a decent system can now run the game far better, in some cases incomparably so.
CONS
- While the world is amazingly well-crafted and detailed, it still yet remains to be "broken into". There are many places that could be utilized far more interestingly and in the sandbox nature than they are currently, and some of it tends to come off as bland. Also, some parts of the geography, while finished physically speaking, have content that remains to be "activated" properly, like criminal hideouts, etc. Also, the faction system is not fully fleshed out as it was meant to be, and thus is less important then actual guild factions, which some would argue to be fine, but still the back story remains to be acted upon further, and given a more significant role in the world than it is presently.
- No cons on the skill system. It's pretty amazingly designed and allows for a new player to become competitive very fast. If you had proper know-how and the guidance of a guild, you could be wearing T10 armor and Weapons just like a Vet within 2 weeks. (Although keep in mind there are many forms of advancement).
- The combat system still needs to be fleshed out even further. Crouching and headshots are two things that are both "in the game but not in the game" in the sense that crouch exists in the controls but is not "activateable" at the moment, just like the head hitbox exists already on an avatar, but deals no extra damage when hit. Also, movement within combat mode can tend to be clunky when facing certain terrains, so you need to learn how to keep your footing. These are things I hope will be ironed out and expanded upon in the coming future.
- Territorial Warfare has just launched and so far our exposure to it has been fun. But there are issues with bugged timers right now preventing us from really getting into it as we should (slated to be patched this week) as well as some people having a general issue with timers being automatically dictated by the server within different time zones, rather than dictated by the players to their strongest time zone. However, there is still a discussion between the devs and community about what in fact is right here because if players were able to dictate when their bases went vulnerable, this could cause problems down the road and an unhealthy playing field, it is conjectured. For now, however, there are so many different bases which go vulnerable at all time zones, you just pick and choose what and where to assault.
- The crafting system is basically endless, which can be either a pro or a con for different people. It definitely is in the sandbox spirit where the players create all the items in the game, with only a few low quality weapons/armor/devices which drop early on to give new players some leeway, but it may be too much for some people in the sense that it certainly takes a decent amount of time to reach the top tiers. However, the good news is that, unlike the combat system, you can skip any tiers you like, meaning new crafters joining the game who have a guild that is already at the end game, can get right in and start contributing towards tier 10 gear rather than go through the lowbie stuff. Advancing in crafting in the game revolves around either playing the market well so you're always in stock, or finding good mob spots out in the open world which yield what you need, all while evading PKs. Crafting high end gear exponentially yields the highest CP gains, but the most efficient way to gain mass CP is to grind on lower level equipment which can be assembled and dissembled at will. Some may perceive this as a grind, while others will love the endless diversity and possibility with this system, so it can go either way. But again, the best items in the game, equivalent to your epics in themepark games, will only be in existence in ER created by its players, mainly through conquest and the acquisition of the best resources of the game, furthering your ends as you will.
- Performance, while much, much better, still needs work in several regards. Specifically, loading times aren't very stellar, especially when loading into zones via teleports, it may snag up on you often. Also, while certainly better, specific cities (albeit ones that aren't frequented very often) such as The Nest still could use some FPS optimization. Texture loading, especially from effects, need to be further optimized. They used to freeze you up pre-patch for up to 5-6 seconds even, it was absolutely horrid, but now they either seem to fly off seamlessly, or on occasion with a 1 or 2 second hitch. Thankfully, I haven't run into few-second freezes like before post patch yet, god willingly. And in general, performance could use a boost in most areas to make it more up to par with other contemporary titles, but really it is incomparable to how it was at launch, and is still quite playable if you know how to tweak your settings properly. Namely turning off shadows, environment particles, and HDR unless you have a truly beast machine.
BOTTOM LINE:
Earthrise has come a very long way since launch, with the major revamping of the crafting process, autostacking, major constant rehauls and rebalancing of the combat system and weapons and devices and armors, removal of exploits, redesigning the terrain and rebalancing monsters, adding an entire library of quest information that now shows you where they originate and where you must look, to smoothing out performance greatly and implementing the key feature of the game; territorial warfare. But with that said, the game has even a greater ways to go, with vehicles on the horizon, dyes, further balancing, tweaks for TW, further optimization, and so on.
The point being though, that now it is FINALLY in a stable state and able to be enjoyed for what it is, especially for those who love the sci-fi sandbox, open-world PVP MMO niche, such a title lacking since probably Pre-CU SWG, and to a lesser extent, Tabula Rasa. The game still has hitches you will need to contend with, namely bland PVE that you must be willing to overlook for the sake of the end game PVP & Politics, (for some this is harder than others) as well as getting used to the UI, and incomplete performance in various areas. But honestly I believe if more people gave it a chance and had less of a gross reaction to their first experience within the game and stuck around to see what it's about, they might find that it's really a great open-world PVP game at the core that just needs more time put into it but still has a lot to offer at even this point in time.
Ok, well, that's it for me now, if you have any questions at all about the game, please feel free to ask them in this thread, and myself or others who have been around I'm sure will be glad to answer. Those who are sticking around or have come back for good have a pretty optimistic disposition of the game, even though they acknowledge what needs to be done. We can only hope that it happens in a timely fashion, and in the mean time we'll wage war against one another, as we were meant to do. Cheers.
PLAYER RESOURCES
Consult here for all kill quests (not story) across all zones and their locations and rewards: Link
Consult here for general information: Link
Check this beta video for basics on UI/movement/combat: Link
Check this video for performance pre-patch vs post-patch: Link
Check this video for general info about the game: Link
Consult here for all Conti teleports: Link
Consult here for General Map: Link
Comments
thanks for that. Question though... i do not see this title on sale on directtodrive.com anymore.... not sure its worth paying full price of $29 when i hear people paid only $12... how do i get it for this price?
The biggest flaw within Earthrise is, that it is a massive Deathmatch without any worthwile content. Darkfall made the same mistake in that regard.
Furthermore, crafting ins't possible without a massive mob-grind. It's totally ridiculous and I was hoping for a system that let's us harvest ressources and fight for ressource-nodes. Territorial warfare adds some of this harvestable ressources, but the territorial warfare system with it's stoopid timers is just as bad. 24/7 FFA is what it should've been to begin with.
Nope sorry, but anything positive regarding the skill-system or dynamic combat is totally drowned by these two big design-flaws.
Here's hope, that ArcheAge will get it right or I'm stuck with EvE Online for another few years.
You do realize that you copy/paste the same exact reply in every ER thread? I'm also a little confused as to why you're posting here in general when you haven't played this game since beta nor do you understand what goes on. But it's funny reading literally the exact same reply from you time and time again. I do hope you're not a bot. In any case, I wish you the best in your spreadsheet MMO!
That was actually a few day promotion I'm afraid. It's still on D2D but for $29. You should check out the free trial though before purchasing to see if it's for you. I would recommend waiting until the starter zone lag is fixed with the upcoming patch, but that's your call my friend.
It's just my POV. And my experience with Earthrise isn't that long ago actually. I even managed to login after they patched TW which is (how surprising) completely broken currently with timers not working etc.
The only thing that has slightly improved in the last 5 month is the performance and they managed to fix the combat a little bit. However this simply isn't anywhere enough to make this game enjoable. 5 month with this little improvement is ridiculous actually.
"It's just your POV" basically comes down to the equivalent of trolling at this point because you communicate nothing constructive, nor new, nor even accurate, when people are trying to have an actual discussion of how things are going.
For example, read my explanation of how TW was implemented (fully functional but with bugged times, which while unfortunate was brought up and is being patched this week) and compare it to your description of "completely broken".
Fact is, you don't play, nor have you since beta for probably more than a few minutes, so you don't know what goes on and in addition I'd wager you know next to nothing about how the game is today except for some generalities you picked up when you were so bored of Spreadsheets Online that you had to resort to trolling several different forums for a game you don't play or even have an interest in, apparently. Sad stuff, friend.
I have played the game in beta, it was horrid, I couldnt even login at first... when I did.. oh well, its a really sad story I dont feel like re-telling.
I am playing now and I'm 70% enjoying myself 30% thinking of how awfully the game is programmed (it crashesh/freezes when you use the teleporter or when you login), it takes alot of time to load, the fps is quite bad (i have a HD 6850) on medium only HDR on.
It def got better since beta (release), but my only concern about it is that it took them 6 MONTHS to do it... half a year... to get the game from a raw beta state to a half-raw beta state... and during this time people were paying 15 eurs a month for a raw beta game, so thats 50 eur initial price + 90 eur in subs... looks like a scam to me.
This is not a troll post, I am really really interested in this game, but I really dont feel like paying for a game for another 6 months just to find out that we are in square one.
So my question to Adun is: did Devs promise any deadlines and what are their excuses for releasing such a poorly programmed game and WHATS TAKING THEM SO LONG TO FIX IT FOR FS SAKE?
You forgot some cons:
Solo play. Forget about it. Earthrise has nothing for the solo player. Move along.
Player housing, crafting that isn't dedicated in a straightforward way to the killing of other players. Forget about that, too.
Earthrise is not a sandbox mmo. Earthrise is an FPSMMO. Okay, it's third person shooter, close enough, stop being difficult. If you like team shooters and don't mind some pointless mob grind to go with it, Earthrise is a pretty game with a lot of players running around killing each other in it. Try the trial and have fun. But if you're looking for a sandbox, don't bother.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
This ain't actually correct. They did give every1 free extra time after their first month since the game was released in such a poor condition. I think it was at least one month extra for free. So it has maybe been 4 months paid by july. And they also gave us, the once that left, a chance to check it out again. They are even prolly gonna give the vets more free time to check out the new patch that is gonna fix the TW timers etc. So they at least do listen, and they have a really good contact with it's playerbase. I'm gonna sub for sure, cause now I can play the game compared to launch, and I'm having a blast. I recomend anyone to try the game through free trial.They only began charging a sub after 3 or 4 months or something, not immeaditely. As for promises and deadlines, feel free to read through the developer announcements yourself on the official forums, but what they have stated is that they will continue to tweak performance, fix any outstanding bugs, expand on TW, add vehicles and dyes which are coming to the public test server shortly, and much more. The game is going in an exceptional direction. I can tell you from being in since beta, ER finally has a stable groundwork from which to grow upon. Now is a nice time to join in. If you're looking for some super polished experience ala AAA titles like Rift, perhaps wait some. Anyway, now there's a free trial out and the client has been reduced to $14, so feel free to take a look for yourself.
I would have to strongly disagree. I've personally played solo since the launch of the game and have never run out of things to do, nor a PVP engagement that gave me trouble. I also have advanced to Tier 10 crafting solely on my own, have the best resources in the game available to me, and participate daily in the economy. Any mob spawn as well is no issue. When I don't feel like playing solo I can hook up with other guilds at my discretion, as well as these days running my own.
As for sandbox gameplay, Eve definitely has ER trumped in that regard for the time being out of sheer mechanics and nuances and interactions, but ER was created in the sandbox vein, where players are free to do anything they like, create their own content, advance through the combat and skill system at their own discretion, play any way they like, all items are crafted by players only, territorial warfare and politics are the main emphasis; so yes it is a sandbox but not particularly in the vein of UO and Eve, at the time being. And in general, PVP will always be the main emphasis of this game.
This is great information. Thank you for the write up. I really appreciate it.
The funny thing is there are people actually paying to play this beta.
Adun pretty much summarizes what Earthrise is all about. Oh and the game is very solo friendly, I do play and gain XP mostly as a solo player and I have no problems at all. The times when I need other players is when I need to get higher tier equipment because I am not a crafter and need to buy it from crafters. Armor and weapons don’t drop as loot, they are player crafted.
Either Earthrise has changed to the point of being unrecognizable since February, or you and I have a very different definition of enjoyable and viable solo play. I suppose with the game world somewhat emptied out since the first month of launch it might now be possible to wander near populated areas without getting ganged by other players. I suppose if you enjoy the crafting system (I tried to, but it quickly became about as interesting and challenging as organizing my closet, which is to say, deathly boring and nigh impossible), then you could eke out an existence crafting and selling combat oriented items on the market.
But even so, you joined a guild now. I assume it was for Territorial Warfare. Tell me, what place does the solo player have in TW? Last I checked, it was zero. Not even a tiny bit of content was added for solo players.
Entropia, despite the fact that it's too expensive for me to play in a way that I find enjoyable, is a sandbox in just about every way I can think of. Xsyon, despite needing a ton of polish and content, is a sandbox, with the ability to dig in the sand, no less. Contrast those games with Earthrise, and you will see why I don't call Earthrise a sandbox or solo friendly.
That said, if you like team-based shooters and don't mind a third person view instead of fps, get the free trial. I'm not trying to say, 'don't play this', hell, even if you're a solo player who hates pvp, it's a free trial, if you have the slightest interest, try it. But don't be surprised when you're the only player around with no guild tag and looking for your player house, because you'll need the former and won't find the latter.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Well, to give you a simple response, and since ER is all about PVP, here are some videos from my youtube channel of me PVPing entirely solo, from all stages of the game including launch up until now. So if one were to review these vids, I'd say a player definitely can in fact solo very well in this game in any aspect that matters.
Earthrise Month 1 PVP
Earthrise Month 2 PVP
Earthrise CI PVP
Earthrise Post-TW Patch PVP
It's solo friendly in the sense that the population is so low that one needs not worry about running into another player almost anywhere including capital cities...
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Last time I played back in June there weren't even players left in Sal Vitas.
As for crafting I initially liked it but ultimately I concluded that it's actually quite bad. Procuring resources is tedious and not even remotely fun and since items limit the type of blueprints they can accept there's often little to no individual item customization.
ER's crafting is still nothing more than assembling ingredients on a list and pushing a button at a craft station; it's a far cry from systems that are actually well done such as SWG's.
Lastly, the skill system isn't really all that great either. Despite what the ER proponents may say about this "skill based" game it's entirely level dependend, your level being a function of your gear (from 1-10). It's like any other stereotypical level/class based MMO in that regard; a player fighting another playing just two or three tiers above him have next to no chance to emerge victorious. This de facto level system really ruined a lot of the gameplay for me and before I quit I was on the top of the food chain with nearly all Tier 10 gear (think I lacked boots and that was it).
On top of that many/most of the weapon device skills are broken or worthless and as of June the Precision Rifle was still the only truly viable option for a regular PvPer; any other weapon left a player massively disadvantaged as the PR can two-shot nearly anyone in equal or lower tier gear from one of the furtherest engagement ranges in the game.
Anyways, whatever.
- Log into the game since the patch/trials and you'll see how the pop has changed. With the client reduction going live today and the awaited patch to follow, it will only continue to improve. Last time I was in SV there were 15 people just at the terminals, people are slowly coming back, and my guild itself has plenty of actives on the roster, all learning the game and soon to participate in TW. Same with RED, TGM, ND, CI, S&R, and others.
- Not much can compare to SWG's crafting system; it's unanimously considered to be one of the best ever created for an MMO. However in Earthrise things are more "pinpointed". The purpose of ER always stands to be PVP. As such, crafting is used for the ends of PVP, and in order to acquire top resources you'll invariably be participating in PVP at the top mob spots as well for example. Absolutely every thing in the game from vehicles to armor/weapons to TW structures is able to be made by players, so the point of ER's system comes down to the breadth, complexity of choices, and player-freedom of it, rather than the ingenuity.
- I think you don't understand what is meant by the "skill-based" tag or are just misconstruing intentionally. All it means is that there are no formal levels in the game but rather all advancement is done through skills. You say how a much lower-skilled player will be at a huge disadvantage to a top-tier player as if it's some kind of startling reproach to the game. In every single MMO ever created this has been the case, the only difference being how far it can be mitigated. And ER does a great job at that actually because a lower tier player can still easily influence a fight in a myriad of ways: they can land all status effects on vets, can root, snare, jam, disrupt, etc. Can heal others or use devices exactly like a vet player because devices have no tier requirements. They can get into a vet players "blind spot" effective range if for example they're hammering someone with a PR, the lower tier player can approach with Melee and force the vet to withdraw his PR and answer this new threat. But obviously a tier 4 player (which is what like a day or two in game?) will not be able to solo a vet. Shocking stuff.
- As for devices being broken, I have to call you on that as well. I've experimented with every device in the game and they are far from useless. Each has it's own niche, but because the game has suffered the many setbacks it has during development we haven't been able to utilize them properly in the appropriate scenario they would shine in. This isn't to say that many couldn't use fine-tuning to get exact numbers down pat, but there's so much diversity and so many uses for these things that we haven't seen yet because the real, large-scale PVP is only beginning in the game now thanks to TW.
- Finally, your assessment of the PR is also likewise wrong. As of June it was still one of the best guns in the game and stronger than it should've been but it was certainly not an alpha weapon as you represent it. I dueled all the time in that era and made good use of every single gun in the game against the PR. But anyway, it doesn't matter anyway now because PR as well as the rest of the guns were given even a more comprehensive balance pass with the TW patch and now everything is more or less in line where it should be, and definitely the greatest balance state we've seen in the game thus far.
seems its always the same 5 people defending this horrible excuse for a game let alone a sandbox mmo.Oh well guess the devs have to do something besides make promises they couldnt keep.
wink wink
I had my doubts about this game as well noticing how it got bad reviews, how horendous the bugs where and how inactive the official forum. But I took the jump and got the free trial last friday and played the game through the weekend.
Yes the game still has its technical difficulties, but is nowhere near a state that it can't be played and enjoyed. And there are a lot of aspectst he game can improve in. Especialy in explaining some mechanics like battle rank, spending battle points and crafting points. As at the moment you are just dropped into a dark hole and the tutorial isn't realy that much explaining.
And the few days I have been playing I had a feel that the GMs and Devs are following what their playerbase is saying and interact on that. Especialy noticeable on the official forums. However if this stays the same if the playerbase grows is to be seen.
So yes I bought the game at the lowered price and still don't regret it and as long as the I keep sensing the same connection between playerbase and developers I'm gladly to pay the sub. Though I can see that a few people are disgrunted that they have payed a few months when the game wasn't playable. But I guess MHS doesn't have the budget like Square Enix to do what they are doing with FFXIV offering it subscription free for the moment.
"If all magic fails, rely on three feet of steel and a strong arm"
When they listen to the portion of their playerbase asking for sand in the pretty box (and it is a pretty game, by far the best eye candy I've ever seen), I'll come back. Until then, they aren't listening in a way that matters to me.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
As much I have seen they listen to the players, but not everything players ask for is that easy to implement and takes time. Especialy with the small budget they have. It isn't like they got a team of 50+ devs. And probably that won't happen either pretty much soon.
I'm happy if they keep smashing bugs, implementing small changes asked by the players and take more time to work on the larger features and content so that when it releases it isn't bugridden all over. Only problem though is that they don't have the luxery CCP had with Eve-online, there is a lot more concurence out there these days then when Eve-online released.
"If all magic fails, rely on three feet of steel and a strong arm"
I recently tried the trial and my experience was as follows:
* Tried to enable anti-aliasing and my screen turned yellow.
* Load times were very slow. It was very noticeable at the start of the game because you zone a few times before getting into the world.
* There was periodic lag while running around. I think I probably could have ignored it.
* My character got stuck running a couple times. Logging out of the game and logging back in didn't fix it. I had to Alt-F4 to actually get out of the game. The next day I could move my character.
* I got stuck in a non-combat mode and had to swim out in the ocean to fix it.
* There was a 30 second to a minute lag in my chat showing up to everyone.
* I had shadows turned on in my settings, but there were no shadows. It made everything look like it was floating a little bit above the ground.
* Interface lag and mouse lag. Mouse was a bit jumpy and windows would get stuck open.
For the most part, the game wasn't playable. Not in any sort of a fun way. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but the only good thing I could see about playing this game was the environments looked good, if you didn't look at any running water and didn't try to move or do anything. To put this into perspective (from my perspective) I've never played a game that played worse than this game. That impression includes all the closed betas I've participated in.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.