Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Faxion Online: Caught Between Heaven & Hell
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In our latest review, MMORPG.com's Robert Fooks takes a look at one of the more innovative titles to arrive on the gaming scene, Faxion Online. Robert has a lot to say about Faxion Online including the fact that those inhabiting cardboard boxes in real life will feel quite at home in Faxion's game world. Check out Robert's review and then let us know what you think.
If you are homeless yet possess the ability to play Faxion, you just might feel at home in the digital world created for the game. Having already spent considerable time dwelling in cardboard boxes you are likely to be cozily familiar with a world made near exclusively of right angles. For those of us with the luxury of residing within a domicile which the words parabola, ellipse, conical or curve could be used to describe them; Faxion fails to impress. Put simply, the geometry in which the game is built upon is both overly simplistic and uninspiring.
Read more of Robert Fooks' Faxion Review: Caught Between Heaven & Hell.
)
Comments
It still amazes me to no end the sheer number of complete garbage MMOs that release and no one bats an eyelash or tears them limb from limb in a review. Then Faxion comes along and since its announcement people have torn into this title like it was so much fresh carcass during a zombie invasion. This game is no where near as bad as the opinion of this review might suggest. Aside from the lack of real longevity due to the current need for more to do at end game, the title is built upon a solid foundation.
The graphics are a style, nothing more. People rattle their cribs to no end over the visual direction this game took. They are not garbage graphics, they are a style. Personally, I think anything Andy Warhol ever did was unimaginative tripe yet people pay millions for them. It is a style, like it or not. The cash shop system is completely bypassable. I have two level 60 character both with maxed ranks and I never payed a dime for advanced skill speeds. If your an infant A.D.D. crybaby that has to have everything now now now then alright, maybe you will drop some cash but as far as value goes the GMs are in game all the time giving away free stuff so I find it difficult to have faith that this reviewer took more than a couple hours to look over the title.
Is Faxion the end all be all. No, it still has a some work to do but compared to the crap launches and POS titles it has a solid start and room to grow. I commend the team for trying something new and yes, as the reviewer stated. If you cannot get past your own religion and take a joke. Stear clear of this title. Much in the same way some people cannot stand comedians like Daniel Tosh or Carlos Mencia. It's comedy folks. Learn to laugh at life, and in this case death or you are in for a real sad time on this plane of existance.
This game is complete and uttershit, the graphics are terrible, the movement is crappy, and the PvP? almost non existent, When these so called territory battles take place, there is roughly 5-10 people in the area, Do not waste your time downloading it.
And that makes it any worse than the other 50 games that get released on almost a daily basis?
I played Faxion quite a while, and I was amazed at how poorly it ran on most systems. He mentions that in the article rather obtusely but its true. A system that should eat this game for lunch chugs along passably. It's been about a month since I stopped playing because , After 1 max char and a 2nd Lvl 50 with the main skills ranked I just got completely bored with it. The pvp was there, sometimes, but when there was no one there for territory control it was just a multi hour wait to see if you actually got completion for the pvp quest or if it bugged out....again.
Total MMOs played: 274|Enjoyed: 9. >:|
I know this is probably a pretty shallow thing to admit, but I've completely written the game off based on three Youtube gameplay videos. I'm all done with quest grinding.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I wanted Faxion to be the next game that I play.
But it's an empty void with piss poor pve, boring pvp and a clunky UI.
No end game.
A waste of programming time.
Seriously, how can dev's put out such crap and expect people to play their games?
Where's the pride?
Then I downloaded and played their other title - Mytheon - it's crap too.
Got my answer.
I am seeing some mixed responses to my review, which is great. That is why I love gaming because, as with film and other forms of art, people view them and experience them with different levels of passion which can be found nowhere else in the human experience besides artistic expression. I went into this review of Faxion knowing that people’s opinions of the game reside only in the most prolific of extremes. With that being said, when zymurgeist says "The quality of the game is about average. The quality of this review is below average. It's a litany of shallow complaints that provides little information about the game itself." we all must remember that a review of anything, no matter how objectively one looks at the product, no matter how far one distances themselves from the opinions of the self and others, remember that the heart of the most venerable of written pieces it is still an opinion piece as it comes from a creature that is hopelessly opinionated on a primal level. Find a reviewer you all tend to agree with and continue to voice your opinions! =D
/disengage text wall
Ouch - rough review. Some of it is pure hyperbole wrapped in pretention (the entire Aesthetics section) and some of it is just plain wrong (the Value section), but there are definitely factual elements, too.
Regarding the Aesthetics:
1) Cut the art snobbery
2) I think you're right in that players will either love or hate the character models. That being said, I think you're so far off the mark regarding overall world art direction that I question how long you even played the game or whether you traveled extensively within all zones (and there aren't that many zones)
Regarding Value:
Simply put, you're wrong. Faxion has probably the most fair and "free" revenue model of any F2P game I've seen in a long time. The entire game, including all zones, quests and content is free. No velvet ropes.
Even though you say "should they choose to", the implication in your statement is that high level players will need to pay to be fully geared. That is unequivically untrue. There aren't any weapons or pieces of armor you can buy for tokens that are any better than what drops in game, and pretty commonly, too. The "best" gear (Epic Armor) can only be found in game.
As for skill acceleration, you're also off the mark. First, it only takes 490 hours to reach Rank 10 in 5 skills, 480 if you apply the 10 free tokens you get from questing. 20 hours difference may not seem like a lot until you factor in that skill ranking is done offline (and it's only one skill at a time, not two - you simply queue one up behind another - they don't rank up simultaneously). A player that logs in for a few minutes a day to queue up skills can reach 480 hours in less than three weeks. Five max rank skills - the right five of which can make any player pretty competitve in PvP - in under three weeks. This is etremely friendly to the casual player. If, however, you're the type of player who needs to be max level and doing end-game PvP in a week then you have the option of accelerating your training with tokens. That's pretty damn fair, as far as I'm concerned.
Ultimately, it comes down to time vs. money. If you're hardcore and want to race to the end, you have the option of paying for it., otherwise you can play completely for free with a little time investment. 3 weeks to be reasonably competive in higher level PvP? No tbad at all, IMO.
The rest:
All that being said, I can't help but agree with several aspects of your review. I've been playing Faxion since Alpha day 1 and I definitely like the game and have fun playing it, but I'll be the first to tell you it has problems. I'm etremely active on their boards and am not shy about providing constructive feedback.
It should be noted that Faxion was built in just over a year against an engine (Hero Engine) no other live game uses and it was done on a very small budget with a very small team. The team has always been extremely dedicated and communicative with their player base. That being said, I feel the title launched before it was ready. It had far too many bugs and performance issues to launch when it did (and it still has significant performance issues for Radeon GPU users). Additionally, it has a lackluster new player experience (boring 1,2,3 stand-and-click PvE which doesn't accurately represent the core PvP experience at all) and had some major combat balance issues, too. I can only assume there was pressure from upper management to launch when it did. Faxion's staff was proactive in letting players/potential players know that the game was launching with a limited feature-set and would be improved regularly (and that has generally proven to be the case), but it's very hard to recover from such poor first impressions.
I really like Faxion, I think the team works very hard and I appreciate how well they communicate with the players. I also think today's game and performance (at least for Nvidia users) is better than it's ever been and definitely better than it was when beta opened up in March. Unfortunately, the game still needs a lot of polish in order to reach it's very significant potential.