Current state of the game.

Cronnix

Let me tell you about the state of the game, not as fan, but as a gamer. But please note that this is not the holy truth, but simply my opinion as beta tester.

First of all, I gotta say that game is very far away from being done. I am amazed by patience the community is showing, so I have to add it here too: If you are looking for some free gametime and enjoy the game in Open Beta, you wont get it. Judging by latest patches open beta will be no better then current state of the game, which is mild said "Bug testing mode". The only stuff in the game currently are the following (I will go trough them one by one in a min):

 

-Horses, and mounted combat.

-Taming.

-Simple housing, you can build house on a premade spot, and houses can be destroyed.

-Simple combat system. Just hit and hope for the best.

-Simple magic system with few spells (6-7).

-Simple ranged combat.

-Half done crafting system. The reagent mix is working as intended, however crafting is done by NPC.

-Very very simple gathering of those few rare herbs you may be lucky to find.

-Gathering of wood and stone, and refining it into better materials.

-Half done flagging system (Aka your murder count).

-Blood mix system for character stats.

-Few skills which can be trained up such as mining, strength, ect.

-Very basic guild system, it is basically just another chat and war declaration on other guild.

-Basic Netherworld (Aka ghost run mode after death).

-Moving around :P

 

That's it. That is all you can do in game at the moment. Craft, build houses and fight. If anything is not in the list, you can't do it (Except for obvious things like jumping and chatting). Now let's go trough basics of the game.

First person view:

I gotta admit MO done some nice work there, but imho there it is far from finished. Camera feels bit unnatural, sitting in the chest rather then in the head. You bow down with whole upper body in order to look down which results in you not being able to see your chest (Unless you are sitting on a horse). Apart from those things which may be considered as eye candies by some people, FPV seems to work fine. Animations mostly are well made, even thou the gathering animation is making you seasick, you do get a feeling of being in the game.

However, there is another aspect to FPV, Field off View. Which feels a bit off in MO. There been some discussion going on about it in MO forums lately, and seems that it mostly depends on monitor you are using, in short, people with 17 inc are screwed. None the less it feels bit cutoff at the sides, even thou SV did add a nice "fish eye" effect to it.

 

Combat:

Here, MO does have quite a few things to fix... The main problem of the combat is that currently you are running lot slower with weapon out, and you also stop each time you need to equip/unequip it. Makes sense, doesn't it? Sure does, however that results in you being unable to chase anyone at all, if they now decide to run for it (Which happens in 90% of cases of open world encounters).

 

However if you do engage in melee combat with someone else, it's not bad. The swings does feel way slower then they should atm, however I believe it will be fixed later on. Melee currently seems be using invisible small box or crosshair, so you can't hit two targets with one swing. Also range of melee weapons seems to be bit buggy time to time, even if you stand next to your target you can miss him.The blocking is in, but seems to have no animation, rather just being extra text in chat log. There are also several types of swinging, but apart from thrust which help if you got a spear, they seems to make no difference. With that being said, melee combat even if unfinished and bit bugged, delivers the feeling of melee combat, even thou it may not be responsible enough yet you get the feeling like it is you ingame, swinging that weapon.

 

Magic and ranged.. Not much to say there. Ranged is working more or less, with arrows having an arch they follow so you gotta aim often higher then your target is at. As for magic, that is one feature I did not try out fully because of the reagents needed. But it seems that your spell can fail, and you can precast it. However the magic seems to be far from done and does not deliver the feeling of you being a magic user.

 

Something I almost forgot to mention is mercy mode, when you bring down opponent to very low HP without one shotting him, he gets down on knees and you can either finish him off in quite a cool way, or let him live, he is stunned anyway.

 

Crafting:

The system which is currently in beta is half a placeholder. The material mixing seems to work as intended, however instead of you crafting the weapon a NPC does it. I gotta say I am impressed by the mixing system. Each resource have specific stats, which it forwards to the weapon. Also each type of metal can be refined several times into a finer and lighter type. Back to stats.. Some metal may do more damage, some may cost less to swing.

 

It is really fun to match and mix the materials for blade, core, and the handle and find the best blade which suits you. You can also mix different kinds of blades and handles to make some unique weapons. Pretty much the same goes for armour crafting. You have to balance between weight of it and the protection it gives. However, there is no more crafting then this in game atm.

 

The world:

Best graphics of the year award, huh.. Well, I gotta admit that MO done some impressive work on graphics considering the size of the team behind it. However it is far from done. While models are well made with some really good textures which add the depth polygons may fail to deliver, the world feels bit plain. All trees in the forest are the same, little details.. But I believe that is not their top priority at the moment and will be fixed later. Also there is talk about trees being placeholders too, which will be replaced by impressive speedtree later on.

 

World is seamless and there are no instances, so from few high places you can get a really nice view over almost whole currently available land, even thou trees and objects gets cut out due to extremely high distance. Overall world feels natural, even if it is plain it feels like a real world should. There are no maps, so you are forced to explore which I got positive memories from.

 

Monsters around the world are surely nice animated. They feel alive, rather then just standing still and waiting for you to kill them. While towns have only main NPC which are needed for beta to function, I think we can be sure to see some nice NPC there living their lives later on.

 

Sound in MO is quite nicely done too. I like that they decided to skip music in some places and instead replaced it with natural sound of the forest for example. Also most mobs such as pigs seems to let out ambient sounds time to time.

Oh yes, and not to forget imba looking sky, or fans will skin me alive.

 

Netherworld:

This is something that requires own topic.. MO's death system is following, that as soon as you are killed you spawn as ghost at your body (And probably will see enemy teabagging you), and then you will have to travel around in attempts to find a priest NPC, which you have to talk to in order to be resurrected. The problem is that your vision is really limited while in ghost form, and also have a kind of "water" effect to it. Nonetheless it all contributes to a painful experience. The main key to that pain is that you have no idea where priests are, unless you spend 3 hours at start to explore whole world an mark each of them on the map.

 

One way out is to try and remember way to nearby city, since there is always a priest in there, however that can become quite a problem if you for example were travelling to your buddies on other side of the map and is now familiar with surrounding. Some consider it hardcore, I consider it pain in ass. However I must add that once again the current system is a placeholder and they are considering adding some kind of beams of light above priests so it is easier to navigate to them. But be prepared for spending half a hour in attempts to find one till then.

 

 

PvE:

Little to be said here to be honest.. PvE seems to currently only exist for resource hunting. All animals drop leather which is needed for armour crafting, some is better then other. We don't see yet epic creatures, or one in a life time encounter bosses. There are few mobs currently ingame, and they are: Terror bird, Minotaur, Boars, Weasels, Wolfs (Those are hardcore bastards), Horses, and Bisons. They are all scattered across the world, often in large groups.

 

Housing:

Working as intended seems like. You buy a plan of a house from NPC, and can build a house on a premade spot (to avoid conflicts with other objects and not letting people build in stupid places). It takes a while to gather resources for house to be build alone, so get some friends with you. Also you gotta "work" on your house, stand inside it and "build" it. There are also several upgrades to your house, the latest is module D, so we got 4 tiers of houses in game atm. The higher is tier, the better the look (Or well, supposed to), and the bigger house is.

 

Once house is complete, your friends and guild can get access to it if you wish, and there is also a chest inside it for you to store your stuff in.

 

What is however interesting, is that houses are locked by a key (duh..) which can be looted from other players, or maybe stolen (If rumours are true about next patch). Needless to say, having a key anyone can access your house, but you also have option to change the lock on your house in order to avoid it. Also not to forget to mention it, anyone can destroy your house while you are away.

 

Taming & horses:

Here here boy... come come.. Well, seems to be working as intended, and even if we faced few bugs, and currently creatures cannot follow you across invisible areas which worlds is divided into, taming seems to work and is needed in order to get a horse.

Riding seems to be as realistic as rest of the features are trying to be. You have riding skill, and several types of speed. Galop, canter, or whatever they are called. Also horse can throw you off if you go to fast with to little riding skills. Mounted combat is also in, and seems to work quite ok.

 

User Interface:

Ouch.. I understand that it is beta and UI might not be their main focus, but the one currently ingame is plain pain and even UI artist seems to agree on it so it will be improved in the future.. or atleast I am really hoping for it. UI misses basic features such as aiming mode going automatically over in mouse interaction mode if you interact with NPC (Or atleast it is very bugged), and is not the most beautiful one. SV are doing improvements of UI lately, kudos to them, however be prepared for some annoying extra clicking, unless something changes dramatically in next few weeks.

 

Conclusion:

Is MO currently the most amazing, realistic game we all waited for? No, however it shows all the signs to become it, and with such detailed features as locks on houses I mentioned it seems that it will become quite advanced game. However the adding of new features goes quite slow at the moment considering there is about a month left till the release. It took a good while to fix the core of the game the first months so it would stop crashing every hour and people would not spawn in a very bugged lake, and since then I can't claim that development is going fast.

 

However, what do I know? Maybe SV got most features ready and just waiting for last weeks to put them all ingame? SV stated several times that they rather release several working but unpolished features, then few, polished but not fully working ones.

 

Currently the game feels raw, very user unfriendly and most features have minor bugs as the ones I mentioned in melee combat. SV seems to have big plans however, and some very interesting features ahead, so we can safely say MO will not be like other games, but main question is if SV will not fail to deliver those features. Which is honestly hard to answer at the moment. But what I seen so far, SV seems to be know what they are doing and what they want from the game, which is a positive sight.

Currently the game is not in state of free play time most betas of the MMOs are, but rather in a bug testing mode. Yet people seems be having fun.

 

bong_hit

 

So not amount of anything will fix this game, or was all of that (above) just your way of saying "Mortal Online is a great game, but it may take a few patches after release before I call it a hit" ..?

Just trying to place your agenda.

 

Ruyn

As a fellow beta block A tester I agree with OP's sentiment.

Cronnix

Originally posted by bong_hit  "Mortal Online is a great game, but it may take a few patches after release before I call it a hit" ..?

 

That one. But I'd say not just a few patches, but a great amount.

StrixMaxima

Great review, very informative and objective. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write it.