Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Fallen Earth Beta Review - Long..ish
Sandblox
Member UncommonPosts: 180
I did not write this beta review but I felt it was spot on for many things that I felt as someone who has beta tested this game off and on since right when Alpha Ended. Only big thing is, I found the combat to be very disconnected and bland and he gives it some praise. I also did not find much good about the graphics or animations and found them dull and many poorly done.
Hello, to begin with, let me say that ive had Fallen Earth right from the beginning of Alpha and i have seen it grow and develop. While the game has improved leaps and bounds over the past year, in my opinion, it still does not have enough... well, it is hard to describe, but i will give you guys my opinion on why is just doesnt have that thing....
Also, FE is designed as a classless game so everyone can be whatever the want to be.<<<<problems with this
There are 45 levels and each level has 10 sub-levels. For each sub-level you attain, you receive 2 AP. By the end of the game, you will have 900, excluding the AP that you get for many quest rewards. More on AP later.
A major problem i had with the leveling was that every level took the same amount of experience, 10,000. That really took away from the sense of progression. And therein lies another problem, there is nothing special for leveling up, VERY rarely did i have a weapon in my inventory that i needed another level to use an i was anxiously awaiting my reaching of said level.
Every thing revolves around AP. Every player has Stats, skills, abilities, tradeskills, and mutations. This gets very confusing so try to hang on. Your stats are are like, strength, intelligence, will power, perception and things like that. For every single, stat, skill, ability ect., each one of those has a max value and current value. Adding point in to lets say, strength and endurance, will increase not the current value, but the max value. Increasing a stat one point costs 5 AP. Each skill is controlled by 2 stats, meaning that the number of pts in those 2 stats will determine the maximum amount of points you can have in a certain skill. Skills are pistols, rifles, armor use ect. Every stat has a max of 75, every skill has a possible max 150. Adding a point to a skill costs 1 AP.
So, 900 AP seems like a lot, but in reality, is is quite small. While you dont have to max both of the controlling stats to max a skill, it still takes 525 AP to max one skill(including pts spent on the stats to increase the max val of the skill). While there is some carry over with the stats, you will still have to invest in more than 2 stats and one skill to be able to survive. For example, if i wanted to be a rifleman with heavy armor, i would need to spend A LOT of points in endurance, dexterity, perception, and coordination. Then, i need to spend another 300 points to get the required skills. So it would take 1050 AP to do that, all assuming the person completely disregards crafting. The only way to get the much AP is to get the AP from quests, which i hear is around 200 AP.
Now, i mentioned crafting, i have some serious issues with the crafting in this game, big enough to make me not get the game. So, your tradeskills; scavenging, weaponcraft, ballistics, science, nature, armorcraft, geology and one more, blanking right now... So, they are just like the skills described above but instead of the current val being raised by AP, it is raised by crafting items of each trade skill. Nature, scavenging, and geology allow you to harvest nodes that are spread around the world. Each tradeksill, like skills, has a possible max of 150, and it is controlled by intellingence and perception. But, the thing about crafting is that you can do EVERY tradeskill, there is no specialization! So, at max level, the only use a person has for a crafter is one that has maxed out their crafting skills, requiring an investment of 375 AP in the intel and perception. Doing this though, SERIOUSLY hampers a persons combat abilities to such an extent that in order to gather the harvesting nodes to get the resources to craft, they need a person who has decided to go in to combat to help clear out the mobs that surround most nodes. So, that doesnt sound so bad, players relying on each other is how it should be. But if you wanted to craft and fight, you wouldnt be able to. 375 pts in crafting and ur a jack of all crafts, but you can still max one combat skill, lets say rifles. But EVERY combat person has maxed out armor use and one fighting skill. So you will have so little hp and armor that you get one shotted by just about everything, making you completely useless in pvp and pve. So lets say i want to craft and fight, what use an am i as a crafter if i dont have maxed out crafitng skills? and investing the points to get 1/2 maxed crafting skills will make it so i cant max 2 skills. So instead of being a great crafter and a shitty fighter, i will be a useless crafter and a second-rate fighter. This could all be solved by a respec system, but alas, the devs refuse to put one in. But the current system would work for the first month or two of the games release. Players would play their characters until they realized they wont be able to be very good and anything because they wanted to experience every part of the game without having to make another character. They will make a new char, go full combat, then make another char, go full crafting. So we will end up with every person being completely independent because they have their crafting chars and their fighting chars to do everything, not relying on others anymore.
You get abilities from skill books that are only attained through buying them from trainers. They can get fairly pricey but there isnt a serious problems with the abilities at the moment, they are balanced and add a little more complexity to the combat.
The combat is kind of sluggish, but it is more fun than the standard sit there and auto-attack.
In general, the game is very lackluster, the game world seems very dead. The barren landscapes and washed out colors do nothing to help the overall lack of excitement that you feel while playing the game.
Quests are plentiful and there is always a lot of loot to be had.
The graphics really are not bad, they are actually quite good, but the washed out colors and barren and dead landscapes make the graphics look terrible. But the actual texture quality is quite good.
Overall score: 4/10
Comments
HAHAHA! bro!
You may have rated this game poorly but to a sandbox player like me Near everything you wrote down is a positive.
With the exception of the Graphics and combat which are only your options the rest sounds great.
Skill system seems complex and the ability to just be a crafter and suck at everything else is a good thing.
Having a capped skill tree means people really need to think about their specs.
This isnt a themepark game here you shouldn't beable to Craft awesome shit and fight like a pro.
wanna be a crafter fine but you will need other players to help you kill shit, want to be a combat specialist, fine but dont expect to be a master crafter also.
You will need other players this isnt a solo game like WoW.
Oh holy shit your "negative" review has actually made me decide to get the game thanks!
just shows how someones trash is anothers treasure.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
LOL...I felt the exact same way while reading the review. Almost everything the guy throught was an issue are reasons why I chose to play this game.
I can see limitless possibilities for character development in this game. Most other games build deep game environments and then provide minimal character developement. As far as I'm concerned, a game is only as deep as the degree to which you can develop your character.
I played in the closed beta and I've pre-ordered the game. This was a really suprising find. It's been a long time since I've been excited about a game.
It is not overly complex just poorly thought out. The game is not super sandbox and what I posted even reflects that, you grind out quests and such just your normal theme park MMO.
As for people needing to rely on each other, read the post mate. All this system does is pigeon hole people into role types based on how you spend your AP. So what do people do when such hard limitations are imposed? The make alts, so they have their main character and then some crafting mules. I have played games that tried to have crafters work with crafters who work with adventurers and it never works, people are to anti social or power game minded and just make alts. So in the end having a classless system that was more open and allowed people to enjoy many facets of the game would be better then people just making a plethora of alts. Again, this goes against sandbox imo, why can you not make a t-shirt and know how to shoot a rifle as well? To akin to a hard class system with such restrictions.
As I said, I have been playing beta for a lot longer then most and was following the game prior to that for a long time. I wanted badly for this game to be amazing and in the end it is a boring, flawed, quasi sandbox with nothing really interesting to find or explore.
So your the reviewer from leakerz eh, anyways like others have said everything you dont like is what the everyone that plays the game likes mostly including me.
This guy seems like he just grinded his way up there, I like the leveling system you mentioned, and I have yet to play it, but for me I think i will fit in with this game, as long as the end game pvp/sieges and are implemented right LONG LIVE FE.
I thank you for the review I read alot of bad stuff due to client stability issues and bugs so I was going to wait 6-12 months to try this game but reading your review ill check out the beta and pre-order If the game has issues Ill cancel and resub in 6+ months.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
I do agree with you about PvP in that I hate this idea that if a game is Sandbox is must have FFA PvP. I honestly do not know where this narrow sighted idea came. Yes a sandbox is about freedom but also about a more virtual world and sadly the world gets ignored so people can learn hacks and be E-thugs. So in that regard, I give FE props for being able to see between the two. Still though calling FE a sandbox is a stretch, sandbox-lite maybe? heh
well people tend to call any game with freedom a sandbox game.
Look at Ryzom besides Gathering and crafting all you to is either grind or run missions.
Doesn't seem like alot until you actually play the game.
I'm sure if Ryzom is a sandbox, FE is a sandbox even if they both don;t have the freedom of an EvE, UO or Swg.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
A sandbox requires loss to function properly. The easiest way to facilitate loss is PvP. It also adds levels of politics and conflict, which are both important in a sandbox environment, otherwise the community gets bored... because, lets face it... Sandbox games just don't do PvE as well as themeparks.
This game has no loss. It's a heavy crafting based game/economy without a way of taking items out of the system. The economy will stagnate, the crafters will run out of things to do (besides make repair kits/ammo), and the game will get stale.
A sandbox requires loss to function properly. The easiest way to facilitate loss is PvP. It also adds levels of politics and conflict, which are both important in a sandbox environment, otherwise the community gets bored... because, lets face it... Sandbox games just don't do PvE as well as themeparks.
This game has no loss. It's a heavy crafting based game/economy without a way of taking items out of the system. The economy will stagnate, the crafters will run out of things to do (besides make repair kits/ammo), and the game will get stale.
That's why I laugh at the posters above.
They wouldn't be attacking the OP if they had actually been in Closed Beta as long as the OP has.
All what the OP described sounded like music to my ears as well about a year ago.
Now I have been in Alpha/Beta myself for over 7 months... all that music is gone and filled with dissapointment and aggrevation in how Icarus has screwed up so badly by poor exectution and implementation!
This game will be full of people who will treat this as a SOLO RPG! They just create 2 characters. 1 full combat specced and 1 full crafting specced. And they got all they need.
Then you hit the CAP. Seriously, sooner then later you will. And it isn't that hard at all. Leveling goes pretty fast! Even for a casual player!
... then you will find out that there is NOTHING further to do.
Flippable Faction Towns? It turns Warhammer Online into the best RVR game there is lol.
Faction System? One of the most horrible brain killing grinds I've seen so far!
Ingame Economy to make crafting actually fun and feasable? Non-Existent! Because items aren't removed from the game. No decay system whatsoever!
Clan system? Just as horrible and limited as the one in Tabula Rasa!
PVE? Just FedEx / Kill Quests and pointless dungeons without a loot system!
I can go on... but it just makes me sad and aggrevated at the same time.
Cheers
Besides the things mentioned here, I'm somewhat suprised no one has mentioned the customer service aspect of the game. I had an issue that needed attention. My character's name was changed due to a misunderstanding. When I wrote to the proper department, the reply was very curt and not allowing for any intelligent discussion on the matter. This, for one, won't sit well with people who pay for the game, then pay a monthly fee to play.
Someone misunderstood me in global channel and assumed I had used a song to name my character. This was not the case. However, my name was shortened, without any prior notice or discussion about it. I was offered no way to talk about it at all and was told there would be no discussion on the matter with the GM who made the change. I found out what department I needed to send a request for dialogue on the matter and promptly sent an email to them. The reply gave a completely different reason for the name change and made no sense at all, considering the name I was left with. So, if this is the way they choose to treat their customers, I doubt they will make many friends in the gaming community.
Holding a stance on an issue merely to avoid admitting you were wrong will not get favorable reviews later on. Especially since the whole thing could have been easily solved with a quick discussion about it BEFORE they had bastardized my character's name.
I won't be playing Fallen Earth now that I know how they choose to treat thier patrons as if they were two year olds. I prefer to game where I'm respected.
Actually, job specialization should be a focal point of modern MMO's and developers should look back at UO where no one was forced to be combat and that was not the only way to play the game.
There are probably a good number of other skills you didn't spend time looking at, so I can't rely on this review alone to determine whether or not this is quite the amount of sandbox gameplay that I would want, but I can say that as long as I can become either a fulltime Mercenary or a fulltime crafter, then this game could satisfy my needs.
There is no job specialization, your either:
1) a ranged combat character(pistols, rifles, or both)
2) a melee combat character
3) a crafter
Or some various mix of those 3. Crafters need not specialize, a single crafting character can make pretty much everything.
If you have a main combat character, and an alt crafting character... well you pretty much never need interact with anyone else in the game ever.
In a post apocalyptic world, one might imagine that there would be a lot of "long rangers". Those that support themselves, work off the land, etc. This won't be everybody though. Not everyone will keep their ballistics skill at maximum level, farming away at materials whenever they can just so that they can have the best rifle or pistol available. The majority of players will simply keep their skills high enough to do self maintenance (repair kits, or in the case of ranged weapons, ammo) and that is it.
So yes, some people will be able to play this game as though it was a single player, but I completely fail to see how that is a negative.
I sensed this coming as well. As I hit level 11, it occured to me that I wouldnt have very many points to put to my other abilities and wondered how to fix the situation. We asked if we would be able to redistribute our skill points if we felt our original choice was in error. The response was that there would be NO point resetting allowed. When players get to cap level and have spent most of their points in crafting and realise they can't combat, or they've spread points too widely into all the areas and so won't be able to max them later on....you're out of luck when yu figure it out. You've invested many hours in a character that you won't be able to use at the engame level and will need to start over with another alt or two... B O R I N G. The points system is pretty messed up if you can't at least choose ONE craft area and one combat to max together.
Also, the whole time I played the game felt unfinished. It uses an engine that makes the client feel choppy for a majority of players. Some towns are stutterfests and got very frustrating trying to get from one part of town to the other. This was NOT from my computer, as I play many other games just fine. The game has memory leaks galore that haven't been fixed and this was admitted on the forums.
Fallen Earth is no way near ready for release.
I'm fairly certain that by level 45, you can have multiple skills and stats capped. They key word there being multiple. How can you argue that because someone, while experimenting, dropped a few points into say rifle skill had their character completely ruined because they decided not to use rifles later on? Say you start off with rifles, switch to pistols, put points into intelligence, and then at last decided to go melee. You can still have your melee skill and its associated stats completely capped by level 45. People are ASSUMING way too much.
edit:
"The points system is pretty messed up if you can't at least choose ONE craft area and one combat to max together."
Honestly, what are you talking about? You can easily max a combat skill and a craft skill. You should know that even by level 11, as by that level you have left over AP even after maxing out 1-2skills and 1-2 stats...
Hm, despite fact I didn't like what I have seen in leaks and reviews, I give it a look. On a side note: no respecialization mechanics ?! Seriously ? Are they suicidal ?
EDIT:
I would try it, but some misunderstand meaning of open beta. Why is it avaible only for FilePlanet subs ? Can I be a free-user on fileplanet to download and get a key to "open" beta or I have to pay ?
as was stated by Sandblox on the first post:
But if you wanted to craft and fight, you wouldnt be able to. 375 pts in crafting and ur a jack of all crafts, but you can still max one combat skill, lets say rifles. But EVERY combat person has maxed out armor use and one fighting skill. So you will have so little hp and armor that you get one shotted by just about everything, making you completely useless in pvp and pve. So lets say i want to craft and fight, what use an am i as a crafter if i dont have maxed out crafitng skills? and investing the points to get 1/2 maxed crafting skills will make it so i cant max 2 skills. So instead of being a great crafter and a shitty fighter, i will be a useless crafter and a second-rate fighter.
--------
I based my opinion on the points in part with what I was seeing ingame and read the FIRST post in this review. The guy who wrote it took the time to figure out what points would be needed to max certain attributes. Did you bother to read that? He points out that there is in fact NO WAY to be effective at fighting AND crafting at max levels since you will gimp your armor stats and might as well be wearing paper towels for protection. You are either Melee combat, Ranged combat OR a crafter. There isn't really any way to have a character maxed out on two of those options. I don't necessarly wish to need an escort to go picking plants or scavaging rubish because I can't fend for my self efficiently. I even heard players griping about it in Global channel how they had max'd their crafting stuff and were getting owned in combat .
Also, not being able to redistrubute your points when yu find yu've made a mistake is a big drawback. Give a penalty for doing it but at least give the player some way to fix his points set up. It takes long enough to level up your character in the first place. I'd not want to have to start over just because I made a mistake setting points.
the guy who wrote that review shows a shocking ignorance of the game. a lot of the things he wrote about attributes and skills is plain wrong. raising an attribute raises the current lvl, not the max lvl, which is determined by your characters overall lvl. the fact he never had a weapon that required a charlvl to be equipped is quite obvious, since they need skill-lvl, not char lvl. and crafting does not need AP to be increased, it increases by crafting.
after so many severe wrong statements it's hard to take any of his statements serious, sorry.
btw, i'm not saying FE is a great game (it surely has its flaws and i also doubt it's ready for release), but that review is for big parts plainly wrong on facts and thereby totally misinforming.
My Signature
Also, not being able to redistrubute your points when yu find yu've made a mistake is a big drawback. Give a penalty for doing it but at least give the player some way to fix his points set up. It takes long enough to level up your character in the first place. I'd not want to have to start over just because I made a mistake setting points.
I give them a month after release and I can bet they will start implementing a AP reset feature.
It is sertainly going to be one of the major complaints and a lot of people are going to be quiting over it, when they worked their ass up to a high level, find out they made some mistakes and suddenly find out they have to reroll a new one!
This is one of those suggestions aka feedback we have been given to Icarus over and over and over these past months and warned them about. But like so many suggestions and feedback: IGNORED.
Ohnoes. No item decay or loss means no functional economy or market.
My expectation has dropped a couple of points.
What you just stated, and what you originally argued are two completely different points.
It is seemingly correct that if you want to max out every single craft available, you will not be, in some aspects, as effective as another character in combat. This will come down to either doing less damage, or taking more damage. I'm failing to see the problem here though. I mean, you aren't talking about being good at a particular combat (say rifles) and a particular craft (say ballistics). You are now complaining that you can't be a master of everything available ingame.
"ONE craft area and one combat to max together"
That is what you wrote. You can completely max rifles and ballistics for example. What you can't do is max rifles, ballistics, pistols, melee, armor, dodge, first aid, and social. If you max your rifle skill, and then put points into crafting, you will do just as much damage as any other player who uses rifles. Of course there are buffs to factor in from other lines, but that is a whole different argument.
Yes you might end up with lower armor skill or dodge skill and less hp, for example, as a crafter/combat than a pure combat. But if that wasn't the case, everyone would simply be a master of everything and nobody would be unique in the slightest. Besides, if someone is drawn to primarily being a crafter, they should have some idea that they might be a bit more group relient.
"Give a penalty for doing it but at least give the player some way to fix his points set up"
While I'm not entirely against this idea, I'm also not entirely for it. Limited respecs to correct "accidents" can be a good thing, but people hopping around to fotm builds is a big downer. The character should be designed based on what you like doing. We haven't really seen the pressure from other games, where if your character isn't built perfect for its role then it can't perform at higher levels. Like you said, you are level 11. Don't worry so much about life at 45 quite yet imo.
So to sum it up, if you want to be a full on crafter, you will have to suffer a bit in the combat department, and vice versa, otherwise everyone would be a master of everything. As a crafter, you can still put out just as much damage as a combat person while sacrificing survivability, or have the survivability and less damage. In a group situation, play to your strengths and you shouldn't have much of an issue.
I've tried out the instances, and went in as by far, the weakest member of my group in regards to defense/hp. The regular mobs inside would kill me in 4-6 hits. Solution: someone else took the damage (via taunt) while I dished out my fair share.
Don't really care to argue with someone about it. The game isn't finished enough to be enjoyable for MOST gamers I know. Not for long anyhow, and the fact that things like points reset feature arent implemented paired with the attitude they have toward the players in general will kill it in short order. People don't want to be treated second rate when they are paying for your paycheck.
In fact on the FE website I red that weapons decay for sure and you have to maintain them or they will fall apart. I am not sure what about other items.
In fact on the FE website I red that weapons decay for sure and you have to maintain them or they will fall apart. I am not sure what about other items.
Weapon / armor repair only works as standard money sink. But items not being removed from the game is a very bad thing. It means that everything stays in circulation forever. And that's very bad if you make a Crafting heavy game and want a thriving ingame economy!
Otherwise crafting is pretty much pointless, other then just a fully self sustaining tool, like it is now.
Cheers