A shiny jewel buried beneath a giant pile of bad PR and timing. 'Racing to the endgame' types need

Dirkzen

In my MMO experiences, I was always 'somewhat' aware of this game hiding over in the sidelines,  beneath the shadows of larger MMOs and richer companies.  Truth is, despite my love of everything post-apocalyptic... I never really thought to give this game a second glance.  To me, even after browsing through the screenshots and glancing through the lore,  I gave it a 'meh' at best.

A couple years pass, and we now see it trying on a new pair of shoes with the 'f2p' hybrid model.

 

I'll go ahead and get the 'bad' out of the way here, since that may be what you're looking for.

Character creation and logging in was busted on day 1.  ....everything was broken on day 1.  You couldn't even log in until the next day.   Seriously.  Talk about some bad PR.

The server has went 'down' more times than  [insert obligatory dirty joke here]

Occasional disconnects.

Questionable customer service.

...and you just get the overall feeling that this game has suddenly grew larger than the developers ever planned for, and that the F2P patch seriously messed up something somewhere that they don't want to publicly admit.

 

VIDEO-------------

Right off, I had to scramble to turn down the video settings,  as the 'default' managed to turn my pc screen into a frame by frame slide show.    Its always a mystery to me how certain games can do this, while others manage to look so good without having to strangle your computer. 

I'm no expert at graphics or hardware or anything,  so i'll give you a comparison if you'd like -  My pc can run Crysis on 'medium',  smooth as silk,    yet this game still likes to drag in larger cities with everything turned down to the lowest settings.   Take what you will from that.

AUDIO------------

Very nice ambience and sound effects, and the npcs are pretty chatty when you take certain missions from them.  The music itself... eh..  you might like it better if you turned it down and played something of your own in the background.

INTERFACE----

The whole UI is 'very' customizable,  down to the chatbox,  where you can pick your own colors and font sizes.   Its all a little confusing at first,  but you get used to it.  The map... is a little strange.  You can choose from a somewhat-zoomed-in map of the general area,   or a larger map that looks like it was drawn on the back of a crumpled napkin,  complete with stains.

The skills look a bit deep and somewhat complex..  though still a step down from 'Anarchy Online'.   I'm still poking my way through them as we speak to figure out exactly 'what does what',  and where I should place points...  its never really explained in any depth.

GAMEPLAY-----

Leveling up is rather slow in this game.   As is crafting, and gathering resources. 

You're rewarded experience and skillpoints from exploring, trying new things, killing certain things, and speaking with new people to unfold the story piece by piece.   I don't think 'power levelers' would feel very welcome in this game.

I think I understand at least 'part' of the reason why this game hasn't fared so well against competitors.

There is no 'quick and easy' payoff in the wastelands here.  Everything is earned and fought for.  The game doesn't hold your hand or explain anything to you.

You're dumped in the middle of a scrapyard desert with rusted, banged up weapons and just the shirt on your back.   Victory is earned by scavenging through scraps and garbage to find pices of things to slap together and re-arm yourself,  before moving on to the next garbage heap.

There are no shiny castles or smiling citizens.  Its all dirt, and trash, and blood, and creatures and bandits who want to rip you several new asses, and then loot your remains.

Nothing about this game is warm, or inviting.  As a 'noob',  you're not given any special treatment.  You're just another traveler... who happens to die a bit more than everyone else.

PvP--------

Haven't tried it yet...  I think you have to be a certain level or something?

 

-------BOTTOM LINE-------

Looks rough as hell.  Graphics are questionable.

Crafting is addictive.

Bored?  Tired of shiny, nice looking MMOs that hold your hand?

Give this a try.

 

Lobotomist

Best indication of gam equality is the fact that you will see 0 comments about WOW or Waiting for SWTOR.

Means game is gripping people attention.

 

Also servers are laggy. More down than up.

Yet people are comming back every time. And more every day.

 

 

 

Wizardry

I wil ltell you the biggest reason FE turned me off.

The animations were sort of bad,but i can live with that IF,they didn't make their number one selling point so unrealistic>>>>CRAFTING.

I couldn't beleive they made it so lame that you could craft while you were fighting,i was like are you kidding me?How is that even remotely realistic?Should have just made it offline,so i would have never even tried the game.I don't hate the FE team,they are after all INDIE and need support, that is why i bought their game.

I would have also liked to see some sort of exploration to find crafting recipes,not just simple npc's.

The game almost totally reminds me of Eve,a game that COULD have been but is still so far away from what i want it to be.

I loved the over all thought behind the game post fallout and such,but every apsect of the game needs to be better.

 

someforumguy

Originally posted by Wizardry

I wil ltell you the biggest reason FE turned me off.

The animations were sort of bad,but i can live with that IF,they didn't make their number one selling point so unrealistic>>>>CRAFTING.

I couldn't beleive they made it so lame that you could craft while you were fighting,i was like are you kidding me?How is that even remotely realistic?Should have just made it offline,so i would have never even tried the game.I don't hate the FE team,they are after all INDIE and need support, that is why i bought their game.

I would have also liked to see some sort of exploration to find crafting recipes,not just simple npc's.

The game almost totally reminds me of Eve,a game that COULD have been but is still so far away from what i want it to be.

I loved the over all thought behind the game post fallout and such,but every apsect of the game needs to be better.

 

You noticed how long the crafting times are? At start its only 5mins for gear, but later on you get recipes which take a lot longer to complete. With vehicle parts even hours for one item. When you get to craft those, you will realise that it would incredibly retarded if you were condemned to some workbench during crafting time. This is why you can craft while out exploring/questing or even offline.

Apart from that I think that the game turned into a pile of crap with the later patches and the transition to f2p has completely borked the servers. Gamersfirst doesnt seem to know how to handle this game.

But at least the crafting used to be a positive point in this game.