Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Another tester's opinion
Rhykk
Member Posts: 1
I have been playing Horizons beta for a little more than a month, but regularly during this time. My opinion about the game is kinda split. There are things which are really implemented well in Horizons and there are others which are not, or which are even missing completely. Which brings me to my first major point:
I went in Horizons beta with lots of expectations. I had read many previews, dev interviews and reports about the game and according to these and the game's *announced* feature list I thought this game would be a blast. Unfortunately, most of Horizons features which would have made it unique were missing in the beta version of the game. I know Artifact claims to have those features in the retail version, but I seriously doubt it since they would need massive testing. Okay, those features e.g. like crafting items with particle effects and "millions" (quote) of combinations, flying dragons and the struggle of the undead could not be found in beta.
I'll try to judge the game from what WAS in the game:
Combat: Hmmm. Very unimmersive. Mobs hitting you from 50m distance, few tactics involved, very little variety in spells and attacks, mostly you get a couple basic ones which are just upgraded during your advancement. I'd like to see more variety here. You don't even have a mana pool, everything you use, be it spells or stances or moves are based on counters. In my humble opinion, combat in Horizons is one of the most boring I have seen so far. Which brings me to the next point:
Monster variety: I think this one is important to keep people excited and this one is extremely lacking in Horizons. The higher level areas were empty during beta, you could run for miles and dont have one pop. The newbie areas were all the same, even if the art set was totally different, the mobs were the same! Means you are killing maggots and zombies in the first 10 levels, no matter where you are. Furthermore, the monsters only seem to vary in hitpoints and appearance. No individuality like in EQ.
Crafting: Very nice. I was very impressed with the crafting, at least during the first week. Problem is that crafting becomes a bad grind when you want to reach higher levels and becomes very repetitive. But well, I guess this is the case in any game with crafting. I can say though this is the best crafting system I have seen so far in MMORPGs. Gather resources, collect formulas and craft items at the appropriate machineries. It's fun, at least in the beginning.
Quests: Not sure here, most quests are randomly generated carry or kill tasks, but I think the trainers have a line of quests where you have to complete on to get the next, this may get you invoilved in the HZ story quite nicely. Not as good as in EQ, but still a good quest system IMO. I'd like to see much more tho.
World: Not sure on this one. I have only seen very little of the whole game world, but what I have seen is okay. I am missing dense forests, the world in HZ is too "green" IMO. There is ice and desert as well, and some sort of jungle area. The floating island is kinda impressive too. All in all the world seems to be quite nice, once it is more populated with NPCs, monsters and of course players.
Well, of course it is up to you whether you buy the game or not. I won't, at least not for the next few months. I'd rather wait till they add the missing features and more content, I won't make the same fault twice *cough* SWG *cough*. But hey, it's your money... 
Comments
Lots of peeps seem to dislike the combat in Horizons.. butbut.. there was this little, pretty well thought an unbiased preview in IGN by Desire (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/441/441199p1.html?fromint=1%22).
He (or she, I dunno..) seems to think that combat CAN be very repetitive and tedious, but if done properly, can be very intresting, challenging and rewarding experience. What's he talking about?
Is the combat like in AC2? Cause that sucked major donkey balls imo. Chaotic, completely uncontrollable hack'n'slash.
I read the IGN preview and IMO it's being kind to the devs.
Hunting was monotonous, no ifs ands or buts. By saying you could make it more interesting is misleading. Switching up a couple o spells, does not constitute fun to me.
Also BIG THING people are not mentioning is the fact there is almost NO RISK to combat as you everyone can recall at any time...also being dead is no big deal doesnt really affect your character in any way.
That being said I'm not saying death has to create hours of corpse runs, but with no risk it really becomes not so scary and to me it means my character isnt really worth much. It feels like Ive entered some cheat code for GOD mode, and thats plain dull.
where were you throughout the whole beta? didnt you see the re-animated fiends, gnomes, skeltal archers etc etc, it was hard to miss the green eirie places with slimy pathways.The undead army attacked aughendel the last day of beta
DPs or Death points are a huge deal, i personally hate them, for each death point you get lowers ALL of your stats. they usually take >3 hours to wear off and food does offset the timer
==but yes you guys are right there pulling a we-have-alot-of-content-not-in-game-but-we-going-retail-anyway===
Yes as a beta tester of Horizon's as well...
The one thing I truly found cool and fun in Horizon's was the crafting system. The mining of the resources and such. The skill craft I focused on was Spell crafter and was just shy of lvl 22 in it. You could deconstruct you spells for experience and remake for more experience. As a very avid player of EQ, yes there were things in Horizon's that were a disappointment. The combat system, as most say sucked... but I didn't actually mind it really. I was on free movement and played a Knight of Creation, so pulling wasn't bad and once you got the stances working could use them to your advantage against the mobs. My second character I had with me was a Dragon Bloodmage, untill the abrupt change of the dragon class... as a team it was a cool combo. Also playing with my fiance and his two characters, the hydra group we created worked very well in a group environment. Like I say I didn't mind the combat really at all.
Just a prime example... yes I can understand the negative side of the combat system, and the fact that there was lack of challenge to it when fighting. But here, to show is how I ended up compensating for this lack. The group consited of a 27 Wizard, 27 Dragon Bloodmage, 27 Dragon Cleric and me the tank... 26 Knight of Creation. At this point in levels we were hunting level 40+ mobs. Now in a normal MMORPG game, you wouldn't be able to do this. Thus, the issue with the mobs in Horizon's, lack of level equivalency... you were able to fight higher level mobs being of lower level (in group though that is). Back to the group, yes we were hunting 40+ level mobs for experience. To give us a challenge I'd pull a lvl 55 mob and yeah, I did die out of that battle, but we did also kill the mob as well. It took a bit of tatic to do so... we'd go searching for those harder mobs so we had risk there. It is politically incorrect and shouldn't be this way in the game, but it's what was fun for us and why I didn't mind the combat as I said before.
For the crafting, the repetition... well isn't that in any kind of crafting system. You will always come to a point of repetition no matter what. So anyways... the interesting thing to the crafting system with Horizon's was getting to the higher tier levels. Once I hit tier 2... (slate) I knew where I could mine the slate... yes the resources were put into area's were there was some risk involved... mobs roaming around basically. Now due to the adventure level being high, I would die in one swing from a mob hitting me and majority of the time it ended up being a group effort going out mining. That was something I liked about the setup of the higher tier resources. There weren't necessarily put in easy spots to get to. Tier 3 resources, I ended up stumbling upon in various areas... heh, although never got high enough level to mine them, probably a good thing. But point is, the concept that the higher up you go in the tiers, a bit tricker to find and gather the resources to continue on crafting. Which is where the adventuring levels came into play. Well, yes it's all IMHO!
Now as for the lack of mobs and variety in them, well that is a different story. Not many areas that were populated and the ones that had a bigger number of creatures, you really had to search to find in the first place. When we'd go adventuring, it was to find a blight area since they seemed sometimes to hold the most for mobs... but no there isn't much variety of mobs at all. Zombies, skele's, spiders and some other oddities. Although, I enjoyed dodging half the mobs to take screenshots of majority of the blight areas. Coming from another mmorpg that has a high sucess, this game does tend to let ya down... even though it was beta... and I do (imho) feel it may have potential to rise... but it does need a bit of work in the process.
The story line behind the game is decent... no it's not the greatest mind you, but it's pretty cool. Everyone has their opinions over the game (all the beta testers that is) but overall, yes there are good points and bad points. As everyone knows from the tons of posts, lag is a big issue with that game, along with the major memory leak. However, the one update that was done... did slightly reduce the lag, wasn't fixed or resolved but it wasn't as hard core. I did see a slight difference in a couple towns that I previously couldn't run through.
Will I buy this game upon release... well at this point, honestly no I won't. Not because it's not good. Just would like to sit back and see how the progression on the game goes. As to most new games upon release there are always issues with them. It's a matter of can the company it'self pull out of it, fix those problems and issues and make the game stable and enjoyable for the people. Tis the true question. Yes I am waiting for EQ II. EQ was the first game my fiance got me into and I enjoyed very much, so of course I am looking forward to EQ II as well as some of the other's that are on their way. I just want to keep the door open so to speak.
But as for Horizon's, well I do wish it the best and did have fun in beta!
-- Tis the womanly nature to rise
Serenitee
"I've become insane
with long intervals
of horrible sanity"
-E.A. Poe