So the current beta weekend ends later tonight but I've gleamed all I wanted from it. I thought the combat from the original was improved to the point where it was hardly recognizable.. Still not quite as smooth as, say, TERA, but at least it doesn't suffer from rubber-banding/that weird 'sticking' effect from the original.
It does away with quests that send you out to kill things entirely, instead opting for you to help out people spread throughout the zone.. who want you to kill things and fetch things for them. Okay, but at least it lets you pick which of these things you want to do 10+ times for these people.
Class and weapon balancing seem to be a lot of what's left for this surprisingly polished game. For a game with a release date still TBA it's refreshing to see it so well put together in comparison with other games of the type. I found that even with my aging desktop there had to be several dozen players in the immediate vicinity for my computer to chug.
If you've been following the game at all you know that which kind of weapon (and/or offhand item) you have equipped sets the first five skills you have at your disposal. This works out pretty well except some weapon combinations are pretty useless compared to others. There's also the fact that certain weapons for certain classes provide skills that are boring as hell to play with. I'm sorry, but the longbow for the ranger shouldn't be that boring and the great sword shouldn't be the only fun and viable weapon for a mesmer to use while soloing. Even with all that, I would say the biggest problem with weapons is that you only get these same five skills with these weapons for-fucking-ever. Trait points you get at level 11+ let you specialize what these skills do, but if you're using your mace at level 3, you're going to be using it the exact same way 77 levels later. Lame. But I imagine easy as balls to balance.
The mesmer seemed like one of the only extremely unpolished things in the game but apparently was basically added in during this specific beta event so I guess that can be expected.
The story quests seemed to vary a great deal, varying with certain selections in character creation. While not quite up to snuff with the variety in SWTOR, the variations mean that you won't have to sit through the exact same thing if you roll the same race for a new character. There were also some daily missions that seem to be designed to give you decent rewards (by account, not character) for playing your character(s) for 1-2 hours a day. The unfortunate thing about these is that they don't seem to be trackable on the quest tracker and that they literally reset every 24 hours, as opposed to 7AM every day, which kind of defeats the purpose for adding an incentive to play daily to casual players.
The star of the show is the events and they typically don't disappoint. The variety here is impressive. The first person you need to help if you roll a human, say, has a farm. In order to curry favor you help out on the farm killing worms, feeding cows, watering plants...zzzzz... But if you're there in time for an event (which almost occur constantly when the zone is extremely populated) you'll get attacked by a giant worm the size of a dozen story building or have to defend the farm from a gigantic bandit attack. This stuff is well designed and plentiful, but there are a lot of holes experience-wise and farming events specifically to level is tricky. Luckily each race gets its own zones and you can pick and match your way through at least the beginning levels.
I see myself losing just as much time in this game as the original. Which was a ton.
Oh, and, crafting is about as cookie-cutter boring as it gets, but at least you don't park yourself at a forge for an hour crafting ingots since crafting duplicates of the same item goes from taking 2 seconds to a negligible amount of time awfully quick. There really needs to be more inventory space and bank NPCs for this to be feasible in enjoyment, though, otherwise it'll feel like you're spending too much time sorting inventory and waiting for the main city to load then killing the shit out of some centaurs. I think how they try to mix it up with crafting is that you have to experiment in order to gain access to different recipes. This could be interesting. I doubt it.
It does away with quests that send you out to kill things entirely, instead opting for you to help out people spread throughout the zone.. who want you to kill things and fetch things for them. Okay, but at least it lets you pick which of these things you want to do 10+ times for these people.
Class and weapon balancing seem to be a lot of what's left for this surprisingly polished game. For a game with a release date still TBA it's refreshing to see it so well put together in comparison with other games of the type. I found that even with my aging desktop there had to be several dozen players in the immediate vicinity for my computer to chug.
If you've been following the game at all you know that which kind of weapon (and/or offhand item) you have equipped sets the first five skills you have at your disposal. This works out pretty well except some weapon combinations are pretty useless compared to others. There's also the fact that certain weapons for certain classes provide skills that are boring as hell to play with. I'm sorry, but the longbow for the ranger shouldn't be that boring and the great sword shouldn't be the only fun and viable weapon for a mesmer to use while soloing. Even with all that, I would say the biggest problem with weapons is that you only get these same five skills with these weapons for-fucking-ever. Trait points you get at level 11+ let you specialize what these skills do, but if you're using your mace at level 3, you're going to be using it the exact same way 77 levels later. Lame. But I imagine easy as balls to balance.
The mesmer seemed like one of the only extremely unpolished things in the game but apparently was basically added in during this specific beta event so I guess that can be expected.
The story quests seemed to vary a great deal, varying with certain selections in character creation. While not quite up to snuff with the variety in SWTOR, the variations mean that you won't have to sit through the exact same thing if you roll the same race for a new character. There were also some daily missions that seem to be designed to give you decent rewards (by account, not character) for playing your character(s) for 1-2 hours a day. The unfortunate thing about these is that they don't seem to be trackable on the quest tracker and that they literally reset every 24 hours, as opposed to 7AM every day, which kind of defeats the purpose for adding an incentive to play daily to casual players.
The star of the show is the events and they typically don't disappoint. The variety here is impressive. The first person you need to help if you roll a human, say, has a farm. In order to curry favor you help out on the farm killing worms, feeding cows, watering plants...zzzzz... But if you're there in time for an event (which almost occur constantly when the zone is extremely populated) you'll get attacked by a giant worm the size of a dozen story building or have to defend the farm from a gigantic bandit attack. This stuff is well designed and plentiful, but there are a lot of holes experience-wise and farming events specifically to level is tricky. Luckily each race gets its own zones and you can pick and match your way through at least the beginning levels.
I see myself losing just as much time in this game as the original. Which was a ton.
Oh, and, crafting is about as cookie-cutter boring as it gets, but at least you don't park yourself at a forge for an hour crafting ingots since crafting duplicates of the same item goes from taking 2 seconds to a negligible amount of time awfully quick. There really needs to be more inventory space and bank NPCs for this to be feasible in enjoyment, though, otherwise it'll feel like you're spending too much time sorting inventory and waiting for the main city to load then killing the shit out of some centaurs. I think how they try to mix it up with crafting is that you have to experiment in order to gain access to different recipes. This could be interesting. I doubt it.
