So I kinda went balls out in anticipation in that older thread several months back for this game. I've gotten to play in a couple beta weekends. Is this game as good as I thought it'd be? No, but it's still pretty great. The biggest problem the game has right now is the UI but they're overhauling it before release and they've released a screenshot. The biggest problem with the UI is that the quest tracker has all the showmanship of a website from 1996. Hopefully the overhaul includes the tracker, but the screenshot has the tracker disabled to show off the other changes. Somewhat in the same vein, quest dialog is simplistically done - it's basically one or two steps up from the obsolete industry standard of a window with blocks of text. God knows I don't require full spoken dialog in an MMORPG, especially if they aren't pushing storytelling choices like SWTOR. There is (mostly good) humor in the blocks of text, though.
Combat is definitely what this game does right. The classes all feel very different and fill their respective niches very well. Every skill is a DOTA/League of Legends-style skill shot requiring timing and placement to be just right. This is definitely not a game where you stand still in combat and expect to live, and they don't ease you into it, if you stand still during 1-2 fights of the turorial then you WILL die. There is no way to automate attacks. Because of the skill shot-y nature there is also no need for tab targeting.
Graphics are good but they're on the more cartoon-y side of things (think WoW, but with tolerable/good/modern graphics). The map variety is high, even in the beginning. The four starter zones (once you're out of the tutorial) are wildly different in terrain/weather.
Questing is fairly standard fair for the most part, with certain shortcuts here and there to minimize time spent in quest hubs. The star of the show here are the 'paths' which are four (settler, soldier, scientist, explorer) options you choose permanently at character selection, and offer you a host of specialized quests in each zone. Most people at the moment play explorer and scientist since they tend to have the neater missions (i.e. jump puzzles/looking for entrances to secret areas unreachable by others for the explorer and getting exclusive lore entries for the scientist). I'll probably get on the explorer/scientist bandwagon at release but for now I'm giving settler a go since they're pretty neat. Their quests tend to involve picking stuff up as you quest and then turning them in in town to temporarily enable (powerful) buff stations that you and other players can use. Soldier is standard and I gave it a go last beta event - kill stuff, kill waves of stuff, defend something while you kill waves of stuff, assassinate people, etc. It's fun for what it is, even though I was hoping the path system would be better (although now that I give it some thought I have no idea how, thus why it is the way it is I guess). What the path content does achieve is the provision of quest variety even if you're an altaholic. If people further in the game than me are to be believed, at a certain point the game starts throwing too many quests at you per level so if you don't go crazy completionist there'll probably be 2-3 playthroughs before things feel stale, and since there's a completely different second faction, that means 4-6 characters that can level doing enough of a variety to keep things fresh.
Player housing is supposedly going to be really great in this game but I'm not investing that kind of effort when the beta wipe is still coming up.
I'm hoping to try out one of the group dungeons but it'll probably be some time before I get high enough, with this game only having weekend beta events every other weekend. Game is available for pre-order as of this week and gets you into all of the beta events. They're going for the EVE Online business model (monthly fee is the standard amount, but you can also buy an in-game item that gives the person who consumes it a month of sub time and sell it to other players). Standard MMO business models are clearly doomed to fail but with people with deep pockets constantly buying these items to sell to other players for ingame money there's a chance this game will work out without going F2P in under a year. On the plus side, there don't seem to be any microtransaction-y stuff being planned at the moment.
The class movie they made is definitely pretty great and it's kind of worth a watch even if you don't give a shit about the game:
There's definitely some Borderlands vibes from this cutscene which is definitely a good thing.
Combat is definitely what this game does right. The classes all feel very different and fill their respective niches very well. Every skill is a DOTA/League of Legends-style skill shot requiring timing and placement to be just right. This is definitely not a game where you stand still in combat and expect to live, and they don't ease you into it, if you stand still during 1-2 fights of the turorial then you WILL die. There is no way to automate attacks. Because of the skill shot-y nature there is also no need for tab targeting.
Graphics are good but they're on the more cartoon-y side of things (think WoW, but with tolerable/good/modern graphics). The map variety is high, even in the beginning. The four starter zones (once you're out of the tutorial) are wildly different in terrain/weather.
Questing is fairly standard fair for the most part, with certain shortcuts here and there to minimize time spent in quest hubs. The star of the show here are the 'paths' which are four (settler, soldier, scientist, explorer) options you choose permanently at character selection, and offer you a host of specialized quests in each zone. Most people at the moment play explorer and scientist since they tend to have the neater missions (i.e. jump puzzles/looking for entrances to secret areas unreachable by others for the explorer and getting exclusive lore entries for the scientist). I'll probably get on the explorer/scientist bandwagon at release but for now I'm giving settler a go since they're pretty neat. Their quests tend to involve picking stuff up as you quest and then turning them in in town to temporarily enable (powerful) buff stations that you and other players can use. Soldier is standard and I gave it a go last beta event - kill stuff, kill waves of stuff, defend something while you kill waves of stuff, assassinate people, etc. It's fun for what it is, even though I was hoping the path system would be better (although now that I give it some thought I have no idea how, thus why it is the way it is I guess). What the path content does achieve is the provision of quest variety even if you're an altaholic. If people further in the game than me are to be believed, at a certain point the game starts throwing too many quests at you per level so if you don't go crazy completionist there'll probably be 2-3 playthroughs before things feel stale, and since there's a completely different second faction, that means 4-6 characters that can level doing enough of a variety to keep things fresh.
Player housing is supposedly going to be really great in this game but I'm not investing that kind of effort when the beta wipe is still coming up.
I'm hoping to try out one of the group dungeons but it'll probably be some time before I get high enough, with this game only having weekend beta events every other weekend. Game is available for pre-order as of this week and gets you into all of the beta events. They're going for the EVE Online business model (monthly fee is the standard amount, but you can also buy an in-game item that gives the person who consumes it a month of sub time and sell it to other players). Standard MMO business models are clearly doomed to fail but with people with deep pockets constantly buying these items to sell to other players for ingame money there's a chance this game will work out without going F2P in under a year. On the plus side, there don't seem to be any microtransaction-y stuff being planned at the moment.
The class movie they made is definitely pretty great and it's kind of worth a watch even if you don't give a shit about the game:
There's definitely some Borderlands vibes from this cutscene which is definitely a good thing.
