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Beta impressions from a PvE carebear.
dtan27
Member UncommonPosts: 32
Yes, I'm a carebear. Hate me now, hate me forever. Don't really care.
I'm not a complete carebear though, in fact my first MMO was DAOC and I have many fond memories of RvR.
This will be a longish but honest review of the game. I'm going to play this when it releases, but I wanted to give people a non-fanboy's perspective on the game.
Let me say first off that the highest level I have is a level 12 swordmaster.
These are my impressions so far, I stopped playing Monday as I realized that there isn't much point playing too much until after release. (I don't want to "spoil" the fun for myself when the game comes out and just 'rush' to the end like most people tend to do). I know it doesn't take very long to get to level 12, I'm sure it can take people a few hours, but I was taking my time trying to get a feel for the game and whatnot instead of just rushing it.
For those of you who don't already know, there are two types of levels in this game. A "PvE" level and a "PvP" level. You need "PvE" levels to unlock abilities and you need "PvP" levels to get renown points (which improve your abilities) and gear to purchase.
I'll say this now, the "PvP" gear is far away much better than the "PvE" gear you can obtain and you can obtain the "PvP" gear alot quicker.
As a carebear I tend to play games as such and try to avoid PvP as much as possible. Having said that, you're kinda screwed if you don't participate in the scenarios (ie, battlegrounds PvP) and "grind" for your "PvP" levels in order to get your "PvP" gear.
Ok, game mechanics. Well, I've played most of the Order archetypes and the good news is that they all play fairly differently from each other, which should help make replayability fairly good.
One thing you notice VERY quickly in the early game is that if you party up with people while you are out questing is that you will NOT have enough money to buy your skills. I got to level 8 very quickly as a swordmaster, but getting there so quickly I wasn't even able to afford training up to level 5 skills. On top of that, you also would need to pay for any gear upgrades and you're always out of money.
One way to alleviate the money problems is to pick up one of the gathering skills. Butchering (for animals) and Scavenging (for humanoids) will help with some money problems, but you can't learn either of these skills unless you run a good ways down to the area where you can learn these things. It's not a big deal, but it sucks to level up and know you can learn new abilities and just not be able to afford them.
Public quests. Well, these are interesting things. I kinda wish they had a little more background to them though. They seem like they're just "there". You walk into them and you can help out, but there's not really any background story to drive the reason why you're doing it, other than just to max out your influence and have a chance at some boss loot.
Here's how public quests work. You enter the 'area', no zoning involved. You just kinda walk into an area and you'll see a 'public quest stage counter' which is typically a counter of how many objectives are left for this stage of the public quest. Of the PQs I've encountered they consist of 3 stages. When you get to stage 3 there is usually a boss fight which ends up with a tank and spank type fight. At the end when the boss is killed, the loot is given out. Each player that participated in the PQ is given a value determined by how much they participated. In addition each player gets to roll a random number (I think from 0-1000). This is added to their participation value and another value which is how much influence they gained (usually from killing mobs and picking up objectives). Anyway, the point is that even if you had the highest participation value and influence bonus, if you roll a 0 you're screwed out of the best loot. Anyway, if you win you have to loot a chest and pick up a bag, in which you can select an item from the bag, usually a piece of armor or weapon, or you can choose crafting ingredients or just money. Basically that's the gist of it. And the PQ will usually reset in a minute or two so you can do it all over again if you so desire.
Anyway, doing these PQ will net you "influence" for an area (or zone) There's 3 tiers of influence per area, and each tier you can choose a reward from the "influence" vendor. The first tier is usually a potion, second tier a piece of armor, and the third tier is a weapon. Typically you will need to participate in the PQ a couple times before maxing out your influence (depends on how many other people are participating too). In any case, these "influence" rewards you can only get one time per tier, and they are worse than the "PvP" gear of the same type.
RvR. Well, at level 12 me and a few friends tried out some RvR in Troll Country the other night. I really don't know anything about how RvR works in this game so I just kind of went with the crowd. We started out with a small group of 4 of us, around 12-15 and we started with some Battle Objectives. I guess easiest way to think of these are like "mini-keeps". You have to kill 5 'guard' npcs and capture a flag. This usually means killing 4 champion npcs + 1 hero npc. A champion npc is a tougher version of a regular mob. And a hero npc is a boss type. The champions in question were level 18 and the hero was level 20. In any case we were able to kill the champions fairly quickly (about 30 sec to a minute), but the hero would take us about 5 minutes to kill. In any case, we were able to kill the boss and any respawns (it seems like it takes 5 minutes for these things to respawn maybe), and the "door" opens up so you can take the flag (which means you just stand near it for a while. Anyway, after you "take" the flag, you have to "defend" the area for 3 minutes. I can only assume that this means repel any opposition from coming to take the flag back. I'm not really sure since no one came to take them back from us while we were there.
In Troll Country there are 2 battlefield objectives. Well, we were able to take these fairly easily enough and with enough begging we were able to round up 10 people. At this point since we were already there we decided to try to take the keep that was there. To make a long story short, Destruction finally decided enough was enough and interrupted our attempts to take the keep. I cant' tell you what is needed to take it because we didn't get that far, but I assume that you set up siege equipment. (There are 'pads' on the ground near the keeps where you can build siege equipment).
Anyhow, I think the worst thing that can happen to this game is a population imbalance. In all of the servers there are always at least 50% more Destruction than Order. This is going to make it very difficult for Order to get anything done. Imagine that while Destruction can have 2 groups out taking keeps, Order will only have enough to field 1 group to defend. At the end of the day you end up with Destruction pretty much owning everything out there.
I also noticed one thing while I was trying out a Destruction character. I created a "Chosen" to see what it was like and as I was playing through I had noticed that I was already at "PvP" level 3 when I never even participated in any "PvP". This can only mean to me that as your side wins objectives, your side also gets "PvP" exp. This will only make the population imbalance stand out even more as the "rich" get "richer" syndrome hits.
In any case, I hope that Mythic has some solution to this problem because as fun as it sounds to be the underdog, it gets demoralizing to always be fighting a losing battle.
Anyways I'm not the authority on the game, but I can and will answer any questions people may have. I've tried to give an honest perspective as possible. I don't hate the game, in fact it's starting to grow on me a little bit.
Comments
Great post and you have made me that sure to be buying the game and I'll also be Order.
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MMOs that I'm waiting for:
WAR
Aion
SGW
TCoS
Darkfall
STO
good post. should be an interesting game. would you be able to post on how the landscape feels to you? i've read a lot of the slayer series and other Warhammer books so i am keen to see if the world feels...warhammery.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Well, there are different ways to do RvR(PvP). First, they have 'scenarios' which you can join. These are small 'mini-battles' that take place in a different zone than regular combat, but with the same idea. You have 2 or more objectives that you try and capture. First team to 500 points, or whoever has the most points when the 15 minute timer runs down, wins. This is where both teams will more or less be most equal, as the population balance won't be able to affect it.
Further explanation of Scenarios - Next to your minimap is a button that you can click which will sign you up for a scenario. Each zone has a different scenario associated with it, so that again, higher levels will be unable to prey upon the lower levels. Your participation in these is totally voluntary and not needed. It's simply a quick way to get some RvR in, though it can take a while for the queue to fill up with enough people who want to do it. Up to 24 people per side can particpate, I believe, though the most I saw was around 15 or so. And I /think/ that the scenario won't start until both teams are even in terms of numbers.
Secondly, with regular RvR, there are areas with objectives that will flag you as RvR the minute you enter, giving you 10 seconds to get out if you don't want to be there. These have the objectives that matter, with the controlling team of most of them having control of the whole zone that they are in. Also, these zones are level controlled, such as the first zone is limited to lvl 11. If anyone above lvl 11 tries to enter the RvR zone, they get turned into a chicken and either get killed easily or have to leave the area and wait 10 minutes before they return to normal. With this type of gameplay, it behooves you to travel in groups, and preferably warbands, moving to control the area, otherwise you will get killed pretty quickly. If you encounter enemies outside of the official RvR areas, you won't be able to attack them unless they are flagged RvR, which can happen if they just came out of a RvR area recently, or if they healed someone else who is RvR flagged, or if they attacked someone on your team who was RvR flagged. So be careful if you see one red name among a bunch of orange names. Attacking that one red name allows all those orange names to attack you.
As far as the reknown goes, you do get reknown for controlling zones, which allows your city to level up and gives you reknown. You also get reknown for participating in RvR, whether healing or attacking. The reknown gear is good, yes, but not the best. I have gotten drops that were better, though they are rare, so RvR gear is easier to get better stuff.
As far as the order vs. chaos imbalance, they are supposedly implementing incentives for the underpopulated team to try and get the population back up, though what these are, I do not know.
Couple of things to say.
you tried PvP at level 12, thats incredibly low for tier 2 PvP. that may have made any PvP problems you had even worse.
and you are right, PQs do seem to lack story around them. however if you open up your tome of knowledge, there is a huge amount of story about each area, and I THINK it includes info on the PQs in that area... not sure about that one though.
.... free PvP levels? sounds more like a bug than anything. I know i've gotten to PvP rank 4 in a single "BG" but i can't recall ever getting free Renown.
One thing you didn't touch on is... too much PvE in each zone. Yeah, sounds weird but I outleveled tier 1 on 2 different chars and I missed around 30% of the content there. I did a good 90% of the content on the blighted isle (elf starting area) but missed a large amount in the shadowlands (2nd half of elf tier 1) because I hit level 12 and flagging for RvR turned me into a chicken.
its like the problem with TBC in WoW. the rewards in tier 2 are so much better than in tier 1, that as soon as you can go there, its hard not to. so you miss the ending content in tier 1. just like all the pre-BC end game in WOW is just collecting dust. I don't know if it holds true later in the game, but it was a big problem for me in tier 1.
there is something about going through your quest log and abandoning 15 or so quests because you won't be going back there.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
IMHO and as a long time Warhammer fan, this ius one of the things they did indeed capture well.
The Chaos areas are warped, the Orc zones have all kinds of Orky nonesense going on, etc.
Thanks for that write up.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Well, when your faction takes over an area you get a good amount of renown (I think it was 400~), so it is free Renown rank and enough to level him to lvl 2 or 3, but he must have logged in right when Destruction took over the tier. That is not going to happen often.
The second paragraph i copied I agree 100%. They even took out some quests in Tier 1 DE area 3.2 -> 3.3, and i still outleveled the content in Tier 1 due to simply PvE questing/RvR scenerio queing. I was lvl 12 before reaching the 2nd part of Tier 1 for the DE, and found it kind of a waste to do all the quests in the latter Tier 1 area. Thus I did what you did, maxed out influence in the PQ and skipped the rest of the content to go to Tier 2
One thing you didn't touch on is... too much PvE in each zone. Yeah, sounds weird but I outleveled tier 1 on 2 different chars and I missed around 30% of the content there. I did a good 90% of the content on the blighted isle (elf starting area) but missed a large amount in the shadowlands (2nd half of elf tier 1) because I hit level 12 and flagging for RvR turned me into a chicken.
Huh? In a properly done game, you should be able to reach max PVE level having explored about 20% of the PVE content. It's called replayability.
Very good post. Its as I feared with the Destruction overpopulation. I recall in SWG some servers had a huge imbalance in Rebels VS Imps, and it made playing on those servers boring, no matter what side you chose, because it was either easy win or no chance at all. I wonder how Mythic will deal with this.
<p>I absolutely can not wait for this game any longer. I've purposefully have not entered beta because I wanted the complete surprise on opening day!( I will be there for the head start of course)</p>
<p>Everything I got from your review can be summed up with 'choice.' You can choose to do this, this, this, or this!, or WAIT! There is THIS! And I love it.</p>
<p>As a side-note: Faction population doesn't really matter me if I'm having fun but yes an imbalance is not naturally == fun. Thats a given and I'm more than sure Mythic has something to combat that inequality.</p>
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"I'm really sick of elves, dwarves, and orcs. They can all climb into a pinto and back into a wall for all I care."
Your sig seems to state otherwise.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I'm not sure if Mythic can do much about the overpopulation, maybe they will give the underdogs some npc abilities to help them for awhile...but they cant really DO much, its all just chance...
Agreed. You really, really don't want to have to do the same quests over and over as you leve alts.
<p>Its just a sig! ^^;</p>
<p>I found it humorous, but yeah...I agree, the sig does suggest otherwise!</p>
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"I'm really sick of elves, dwarves, and orcs. They can all climb into a pinto and back into a wall for all I care."
don't worry he is angry about being an AoC fanboi
<img src='http://lotrosigs.level3.turbine.com/0320200000031cd29/signature.png'></img>;