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ArcheAge: Unchained Review in Progress: Drowning in Queues - MMORPG.com

SystemSystem Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
edited October 2019 in News & Features Discussion

imageArcheAge: Unchained Review in Progress: Drowning in Queues - MMORPG.com

ArcheAge: Unchained continues its pattern of instability into launch week, while Gamigo rushes to respond to player concerns. In-between the chaos and madness, join Emily as she dives in headfirst to and pray that she comes out of the queue for air.

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Comments

  • PsistormPsistorm Member UncommonPosts: 46
    So from reading over the article the gankfest that was mostly broken with the economy impossible to partake in due to all the ganking is still a gankfest, built to be grindy and tedious, and rewards daily logins like every other F2P game.
    Yeah still a hard pass. The community was horrible and toxic back then, I doubt that will change now, since they openly encourage ganking and griefing now. This was an absolutely terrible game focused only on zerg mechanics, clearly it's still the same.

    If you can only exist in this world as part of the bigger mob, what even is the point.
    onelesslight
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 32,780
    Psistorm said:
    So from reading over the article the gankfest that was mostly broken with the economy impossible to partake in due to all the ganking is still a gankfest, built to be grindy and tedious, and rewards daily logins like every other F2P game.
    Yeah still a hard pass. The community was horrible and toxic back then, I doubt that will change now, since they openly encourage ganking and griefing now. This was an absolutely terrible game focused only on zerg mechanics, clearly it's still the same.

    If you can only exist in this world as part of the bigger mob, what even is the point.
    And which open pvp world do you think did it better? Just for discussion's sake.
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  • UtinniUtinni Member EpicPosts: 2,209
    Sovrath said:
    Psistorm said:
    So from reading over the article the gankfest that was mostly broken with the economy impossible to partake in due to all the ganking is still a gankfest, built to be grindy and tedious, and rewards daily logins like every other F2P game.
    Yeah still a hard pass. The community was horrible and toxic back then, I doubt that will change now, since they openly encourage ganking and griefing now. This was an absolutely terrible game focused only on zerg mechanics, clearly it's still the same.

    If you can only exist in this world as part of the bigger mob, what even is the point.
    And which open pvp world do you think did it better? Just for discussion's sake.
    It does sound like this guy doesn't like open world pvp games. 
    FacelessSavior
  • hoenens1hoenens1 Member UncommonPosts: 320
    Well, i can tell you that the servers are damn active, and i love it! The wars in zones is nice to see, but a pain whe you qyest sometimes haha. But overal, it's nice!
    Jensynalkarionlog
  • TheDarkrayneTheDarkrayne Member EpicPosts: 5,297
    The PvP isn't even that bad. You lose nothing except a couple of minutes if you are killed. If you keep getting killed you join a raid or party, which is easy because the population is just about bursting. If your raid or party keeps getting killed you tell Nation chat what's going on and a bloodthirsty raid of level 50+ reinforcements is likely to appear within 10 minutes.

    People want PvP encounters because it's the point of the game and because it gets you Honor Points. Tell them where it's happening and everyone has more fun.
    alkarionlogMikehacheebaKyleranFacelessSaviorRemyVorender
    I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
  • alkarionlogalkarionlog Member EpicPosts: 3,584
    The PvP isn't even that bad. You lose nothing except a couple of minutes if you are killed. If you keep getting killed you join a raid or party, which is easy because the population is just about bursting. If your raid or party keeps getting killed you tell Nation chat what's going on and a bloodthirsty raid of level 50+ reinforcements is likely to appear within 10 minutes.

    People want PvP encounters because it's the point of the game and because it gets you Honor Points. Tell them where it's happening and everyone has more fun.
    try to actually do trade runs
    FOR HONOR, FOR FREEDOM.... and for some money.
  • TheDarkrayneTheDarkrayne Member EpicPosts: 5,297




    The PvP isn't even that bad. You lose nothing except a couple of minutes if you are killed. If you keep getting killed you join a raid or party, which is easy because the population is just about bursting. If your raid or party keeps getting killed you tell Nation chat what's going on and a bloodthirsty raid of level 50+ reinforcements is likely to appear within 10 minutes.



    People want PvP encounters because it's the point of the game and because it gets you Honor Points. Tell them where it's happening and everyone has more fun.


    try to actually do trade runs



    Done plenty. Get a few guildies, some to protect, some to move packs, take it in turns. It's not rocket science.

    I bet you were terrible at this game and that's why you hate it so much.
    MikehacheebaFacelessSavior
    I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
  • alkarionlogalkarionlog Member EpicPosts: 3,584




    The PvP isn't even that bad. You lose nothing except a couple of minutes if you are killed. If you keep getting killed you join a raid or party, which is easy because the population is just about bursting. If your raid or party keeps getting killed you tell Nation chat what's going on and a bloodthirsty raid of level 50+ reinforcements is likely to appear within 10 minutes.



    People want PvP encounters because it's the point of the game and because it gets you Honor Points. Tell them where it's happening and everyone has more fun.


    try to actually do trade runs



    Done plenty. Get a few guildies, some to protect, some to move packs, take it in turns. It's not rocket science.

    I bet you were terrible at this game and that's why you hate it so much.
    lol actually,

    I had my truck to transport several trade packs, alone, or worked with guildies doing merchant ship runs

    money never was a problem, had enough gold to support myself, the issue was always, grinding hasla because crafting become useless, and after being shafted with server merges who let hackers get land, plus only way to farm gold in combat was using coinpurses.


    the very reason you said this means you are a sorry dude who don't know SH!t about the game, its ok, you are free to be this naive, but take care sometimes its stop to being naiveness and being... well I let you go
    cheebaFacelessSavior
    FOR HONOR, FOR FREEDOM.... and for some money.
  • TheDarkrayneTheDarkrayne Member EpicPosts: 5,297
    edited October 2019






    lol actually,

    I had my truck to transport several trade packs, alone, or worked with guildies doing merchant ship runs

    money never was a problem, had enough gold to support myself, the issue was always, grinding hasla because crafting become useless, and after being shafted with server merges who let hackers get land, plus only way to farm gold in combat was using coinpurses.


    the very reason you said this means you are a sorry dude who don't know SH!t about the game, its ok, you are free to be this naive, but take care sometimes its stop to being naiveness and being... well I let you go



    Game's changed. Everyone keeps telling you this.

    Why would you even grind Hasla? that's a low level zone. Man, you mustn't have played AA for about 5 years LOL. You crack me up.
    alkarionlogcheeba
    I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158

    hoenens1 said:

    Well, i can tell you that the servers are damn active, and i love it! The wars in zones is nice to see, but a pain whe you qyest sometimes haha. But overal, it's nice!



    I agree! I'm a PvP junkie, haha, so I'm digging how active it is. I currently play on Wynn so it's a constant struggle, even when you're inside the safety of a town. There's some heated faction pride going on and I love it. I can understand why they're trying to keep the servers locked and low, they don't want to have to merge later or leave some servers empty-but it's really making things way more difficult on folks who just want to get in and play with friends.
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158


    The PvP isn't even that bad. You lose nothing except a couple of minutes if you are killed. If you keep getting killed you join a raid or party, which is easy because the population is just about bursting. If your raid or party keeps getting killed you tell Nation chat what's going on and a bloodthirsty raid of level 50+ reinforcements is likely to appear within 10 minutes.



    People want PvP encounters because it's the point of the game and because it gets you Honor Points. Tell them where it's happening and everyone has more fun.



    Yeeessss, callouts in Nation and rallying together for revenge and pushing out reds is so satisfying.
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,273
    How important is all the trade activity, that sort of thing bores me to tears and I avoid it? I always do gathering for the guild but that's it, what is there to do if you don't want to run a farm?
  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158

    Scot said:

    How important is all the trade activity, that sort of thing bores me to tears and I avoid it? I always do gathering for the guild but that's it, what is there to do if you don't want to run a farm?



    Trade was very important in old AA! You could get gold, gilda, resources, etc. But from what I know, Unchained has changed a little of how it works when bringing trade packs across the ocean to enemy territory. It's something I haven't been able to dive into just quite yet because of the resource-gate for my boat, but it is on my radar for the next review along with the specifics of what they've done to PvP to make it less zerg-friendly.

    You don't HAVE to trade a ton if you don't want to. If you don't want to farm or trade packs, build yourself a boat and go out into the world to explore. There's sunken chests and ships out in the water that you can search for and loot! That was my absolute favorite thing to do previously. You could also do sport fishing (there's ice fishing now!) or become a pirate and steal -other- people's hard-earned trade packs to turn in. If you want a break, you could go to enemy territory to hunt down their illegal farms-because you don't get in trouble for chopping down hostile trees. There's also dungeons, but they're your typical standard dungeons from what I remember.
    Scot
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
  • TheDarkrayneTheDarkrayne Member EpicPosts: 5,297
    Scot said:
    How important is all the trade activity, that sort of thing bores me to tears and I avoid it? I always do gathering for the guild but that's it, what is there to do if you don't want to run a farm?
    Trade runs aren't even needed anymore. They may have been when AA launched but not any more.

    You can make good gold doing plenty of other things; ArchePass quests, Dailies (there's a ton of them), Greater Dungeon Dailies, doing PvP and selling the things you can buy with Honor if you don't need them yourself.

    You can make decent gold from just chopping trees, processing them into lumber and then just selling them on the auction house. 1 Lumber (3 logs) is selling for 1 gold each at the moment on my server. That'll be inflated right now because everyone is building houses. That's just 1 of hundreds of simple crafting things you can do to make a lot of gold.

    Honestly, with the amount of time it takes to do trade runs I'd say they are the last thing you should be doing to make gold.
    alkarionlogKyleran
    I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
  • PsistormPsistorm Member UncommonPosts: 46

    Sovrath said:


    Psistorm said:

    So from reading over the article the gankfest that was mostly broken with the economy impossible to partake in due to all the ganking is still a gankfest, built to be grindy and tedious, and rewards daily logins like every other F2P game.

    Yeah still a hard pass. The community was horrible and toxic back then, I doubt that will change now, since they openly encourage ganking and griefing now. This was an absolutely terrible game focused only on zerg mechanics, clearly it's still the same.



    If you can only exist in this world as part of the bigger mob, what even is the point.


    And which open pvp world do you think did it better? Just for discussion's sake.



    Honestly I couldn't say, I could only give some general ideas. Archeage was my one big foray into open pvp, and I haven't met a player who wasn't a complete and utter dick just for the hell of it.
    To put it in perspective, walked into a mixed faction camp, full of enemy players. Everyone was leaving me be, precisely until I talked to the bank NPC and was occupied. THEN a dozen players pounced all at once. That one example pretty much sums up the entire experience ingame.

    As for what could be done better, make pvp meaningful. Give no honor for killing underleveled character, subtract honor for killing vastly underleveled chars repeatedly, OR normalize PVP power so level doesn't factor in so strongly and people can do something other than fall over after one hit.

    Even better, the idea of zone states is nice. Allow zones to fall into contestion, or outright war to fight for certain goals, where number differences are made up with by some form of global buffs to alleviate the issue of "the bigger group wins" a little. Once a zone is in peace, pvp kills are considered murder and carry a severe penalty such as imprisonment etc.

    Essentially, make the open PVP objective based and focus it toward that, and put hefty sanctions on just being a dick because you are stronger than people.

    In archeage you basically were fodder and nothing else, if someone attacked you, the first strike would kil you every time, so there was no sense in even trying to run. Higher level players had better resources and strategy due to more experience, and of course a massive gear difference. And let's not forget the literally 50+ players camping at harbors ganking everyone trying to come in to trade. Even large groups had not viable defense because people could just focus down the pack bearers with ease and steal the packs.

    So yeah, there needs to be a structure to it, rather than tossing two factions into a world and letting them do whatever. Allow a justicar player faction perhaps to pursue murderers, have murders carry a proper risk, such as public execution for the worst offenders. Might also add a thrill to being an outlaw, knowing you might face permanent character death for being too vile a criminal. Also might introduce a robbery mechanic where blunt weapons are used to knock out people. Less damage so fights are riskier, but won't kill the victims so you can steal trade packs etc. But instead of facing eventual execution, would just face a couple days of jail time. Would introduce a criminal vs the law kind of dynamic as well. Punishments might be predetermined or could be defined by GMs, and the justicar faction then tries to hunt down the player.

    I do like the idea of open PvP, but basically instead of a sytem where fighting and dying are meaningful in a way, all we get now is gankboxes, where strong preys upon the weak, the many upon the few. You fight for nothing, you kill for the lulz, you are encouraged to be a dick to others. If that makes me a carebear, well so be it, I'm not looking to get into PvP games anyways unless something awesome comes along (elyria looked VERY promising but that one seems to go off the deep end now sadly).

    But yeah. Add structured open PvP for objectives and real, important goals, include anti-zerg measures, have varied zone states. Allow peaceful areas and opt-in fighting etc perhaps via a civilian role. Could enable that, and not partake in any fights, but also get left alone lest you are murdered. Of course entering enemy lands or strongholds to try and spy would be treated as trespassing, thus the kill would be legal. But that would add espionage as an option, disguises etc. Many things that could be done.

    but thats enough of my rant, just throwing out ideas.
    alkarionlogcheyane
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 32,780
    Psistorm said:





    Honestly I couldn't say, I could only give some general ideas. Archeage was my one big foray into open pvp
    Ah I see. I though you had played open world pvp before.

    Generally, the idea is that there are no rules and the players rule themselves, fight amongst themselves.

    So, in my first open pvp game, Lineage 2, you could have a very high level hanging outside a new player city and taking out people as they left. Getting out and away could be a challenge. In truth it was a lot of fun.

    But that's the thing, if you are going to play an open pvp game then you have to be on board with the world and its rules or at least tolerate it.

    It's true, there do seem to be a lot more "less than great people" in pvp games of late so I've not been too engaged in playing them. 
    JensynHluill
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  • XatshXatsh Member RarePosts: 451
    Ques are hellish right now on AA that is 100% true. Many groups are also split because of the server locks due to overpopulation and the lack of the ability to server transfer your character that you used your preorder packs on. (They were a 1 time use)

    Gamigo underestimated the amount of people wanting to play it by almost 300-400% it seems atm with the amount of new servers they had to rush out. And the new server launched are already hitting que status in a days time.

    Honestly those is the main problem and the fact there is no grace period if you dc. 2-4hr wait to get in then another 2-4hr wait if you dc or have to afk for longer then 20ish mins.

    As for PvP atm it is sorta great every zone that goes into war has groups from each faction fighting in it. People are teaming up to quest for protection. Now if you are a pve only person your life is probably hell but that is the core of archeage.

    Currently there is no p2w at all in the game. Which is great.

    There is grind... alot of it. Archeage was never a race to the top game. And with labor and no p2w it will be even more so. But honestly this is a really good thing to me personally. I am not a fan of the current genre where people can get to max powerlvl in a few months like most mmos today.

    Other area that is an issue for me is the guild system now and several changes to content.

    The guilds start at a cap of 30 and increases to a cap at 50 after 3-4 months of grinding guild lvls. Upper end content in archeage is designed for raids of 30-50 ppl, especially those that are pvp contested events.  There is simply no possible way to do this with the guild cap the way it is. So guilds wanting to do upper tier endgame are forced to make atm 3 to 4 guilds to build up their ranks. And it is a logistical pain in the ass atm to manage something like that.

    If you were an old archeage player pre-3.5 I believe. You will be disappointing in the trade system. The new version of it is completely garbage compared to the old one. You lose the freedom to trade across the map and are forced to funnel everything into 3 points. Oversea pirating is mega nerfed as almost all the potatoes now just pay for protection and ride basically a floating nui (pvp disabled zone) across the ocean to a protected area in the enemy port. This is still one of the stupidest moves XL games have made. Only positive is this is universally hated in all regions and they are talking about modifying it in the future apparently.

    I am also really hating the new faction based seige system. This removes a large part of building a strong guild. And removed what could of been a large scale strategic fight into something that is going to devolve into a mindless faction zerg. Overall a horrible move. The side that will always win will be what ever guild has more faction heros so they can get their members into the siege and actually attempt to coordinate it.

    Also the change to Mistmerrow and Halcy are also a large negative to me. I understood instancing them due to low population and what not to get cross server ppl to participate. But you are not able to que up with larger guild groups.

    The above 2 might be me though. I always loved Archeage's focuses on guilds. It was one of the main draws to the game to me. If you built a strong guild you reaped the rewards of it. Unlike almost every other mmo today where a guild is nothing but another pointless chat channel. (looking at you ffxiv). So removing any guild focus and shifting it to a pug raid focus is a negative in my book.

    The last gripe I have is a positive/negative thing. And that is Hiram. It is a low rng but excessive grind method of progression. Most people do this because the gear is really good and with enough work you can guarantee you get what you want. This is a good thing. Less rng but more work.

    The bad thing. It has killed 50% of the economy. Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Leatherworking, Cloth are all more or less completely pointless. While yes Ereanor gear is higher tier then top tier hiram for some classes... the insane cost gold wise to tier it up and the fact you need to level a craft to 230k with 100% loss until that point means people will not even attempt this until they cap our their hiram which will take probably upwards of a year.

    The whole armor/weapon crafting system needs a overhaul and the gear needs to be more competitive to hiram and upgraded library gear.
    cheyaneJensynultimateduck
  • lucyluffy101lucyluffy101 Member UncommonPosts: 152
    I almost can't see the CR boss because there are 400 people in the boss. If they still allow to get in to the server the server is going to be broken. Even other mmo can't handle 100 people in the boss raid.
  • richghettorichghetto Newbie CommonPosts: 3
    The queues are really bad but it was to be expected. Go back and look at any article leading up to the release and you will see the comments/feedback were all like 80% negative. Based on that alone and all of the people claiming they weren't going to play assuming it would go p2w eventually, they could have never expected the population to be so high. The "hype" going into the release was actually more like negative hype.
  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158
    The queues are really bad but it was to be expected. Go back and look at any article leading up to the release and you will see the comments/feedback were all like 80% negative. Based on that alone and all of the people claiming they weren't going to play assuming it would go p2w eventually, they could have never expected the population to be so high. The "hype" going into the release was actually more like negative hype.

    Yup. I tried to warn folks that I was concerned about the instability I was seeing and the long queue times since I played originally (8+ hours in queue then) but they only seemed to care that the first RIP came from a PTS. What can ya do. I just get through it by doing chores around the house, exercising, reading a book in the living room, etc. This is the most productive week I've had in a while, haha.
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
  • vegetableoilvegetableoil Member RarePosts: 768
    same problem like the old one,sooo what's new?
  • BlacklabelcaliBlacklabelcali Member UncommonPosts: 24
    This writer is dramatic AF! lol never had to wait more than 15 mins for a queue to get in.
  • BonejokerBonejoker Member UncommonPosts: 67
    is there any signal of p2w?
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  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158
    This writer is dramatic AF! lol never had to wait more than 15 mins for a queue to get in.
    You must not be on a popular server or haven't been trying to get in since day 1. :) Try Wynn or Tyrenos. If you read thoroughly, you'd see that I mentioned it is getting better. But just because you haven't had that experience doesn't discredit the experience of the other thousands of players that have. I'm happy you're on a low pop server, you probably have a lot of chances at land! But some folks won't consider that option because they have already claimed their rewards on a high-pop server. Granted, it's their fault because they claimed it, but some people didn't know those servers would be so popular or just wanted to play with their friends. Now they're locked out of creating new characters on those servers, and can't get their rewards on a different server.
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
  • JensynJensyn Member UncommonPosts: 158
    I felt ill looking at the screenshots. that is how much this game has made made me hate it.

    I feel your pain. It was hard for me to push past how upset and angry I was for how they screwed us over last time. It still kind of stings when I'm gathering resources for my new boat, but ultimately I'm having fun. I'm still on edge, but I'm just enjoying it for what it is.
    cheeba
    Bookmarks are for quitters. 
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