This game potentially would be one of the best but the cap and the marketplace ball up it. Why? Because you finish sparks in 6 hours of game and after you must grind for 6 day holy text and equip in impossible dg(in pt of 3 to get blue equip). Too much repetitive to get nothing!
This game is totally P2W (WIN, NOT PLAY). Premium account is useless, to get cap you need 6 hours with premium, 10 hours normally. So why who don't shop is 17-18k and who shop is 35k? It is simple, he spent 200 euros to upgrade all chapels (to limit of greatness) and bought all rank enhancement stone.
What about PVP? "Noobs" cry against blood harvest of slayer and "pro no shop players" cry against who has the same prestige but double life and double Luck(shoppers)
If I have the same prestige as you but you "shopped" meaning paid to up all your temples to max level, I actually have a heavy advantage over you. Maxing out your temples artificially inflates your prestige, meaning your str, crit, might, etc... are all under-powered for your "level". It is even explicitly mentioned in the article.
Blood Harvest is a problem because it can kill a DPS class in a single cast with the right talents/supports, and there is nothing they can do about it. Later on it gets a bit better.
As for finishing your sparks in 10/6 hours, that can only happen if you are running all 2xs/3xs or otherwise trying to rush to end-game. at 11k prestige squad missions were giving me 200-300 sparks each, and I had a 10k limit. That means that it takes roughly 40 squad missions to hit the cap. Squad missions are likely taking you 15-20 minutes each unless you are downranking them to easy/very easy(which reduces your rewards), so you would need to run the 40 squads back to back with no break in order to hit your limit...
So tell me what exactly you do for a living that you can run 10 hours straight on a wednesday?
I actively followed this game pre-launch, and from everything I saw I thought there was more I wouldn't like than I would like. After having lots of people I know try it and try to convince me to play, I'm glad as hell I never wasted anytime in it.
Haxus Council Member 21 year MMO veteran PvP Raid Leader Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
I normally try to read all replies. I will say all are entitled to their opinions as I could not get through all the dislike here. Those opinions are very much right for that person. Just as mine is that I bought a founders pack that I am happy to have and thinking of buying the collector's edition. I greatly enjoy the game though farming for what I want can be a pain. Otherwise I play and have fun.
This does not feel like WoW to me. It is not truly action but it has the elements of more than just plain tab combat. I understand the frustrations and curious to see what things they might try and change. Like the idea of the grouping change that is coming in the next patch that boosts lower members of an adventure up to normal level stats.
Skyforge has lost me because of the grinding for sparks. Once you work your way to a more advanced class, the new class is starved for sparks. You are relegated to grinding instance dungeons for a few hundred colored sparks a pop.
Not sure I understand. Getting from the start to the path of your class isn't much in the way of colored sparks... After that you are using either class sparks(if playing that class) or sparks of evolution(If not playing the class). I unlocked slayer. Once I unlocked it I didn't want to play it at my prestige because with no abilities/talents it would handicap me. I filled in all the colors and about 60% of the other nodes without ever actually playing it... And then I abandoned it since my friends needed me to play a tank, and started dumping my excess sparks into Paladin(almost ready to start tanking with it).
Whether you "grind"(or just play the game) for experience or for sparks, it is the same difference...
"I also think it was a complete misstep to lock classes behind the Ascension Atlas "
I'll never understand why devs think locking classes is a good thing. It's like they didn't learn from EQ2's mistake of having advanced classes being locked.
Another negative for me was the UI. I absolutely loathe it. It's one of the worst UI's i've tried in awhile. I'm not talking about the look of it, but the functionality of it.
Bill, what prestige level did you obtain? Also were you in a Pantheon at all? I noticed you didn't mention the extensive Pantheon system (or the Order system) once. I appreciate your review and I have some random thoughts to contribute.
This game really opens up at later prestige levels. A review of the game up to 20,000 prestige is rather uncomprehensive and is like reviewing Wildstar by playing level 1-36. There's going to be some nice group content soon not the least of which is Pantheon Wars.
The closed (no trading) economy works well in Skyforge and it's great for shutting down gold farmers. The same type of system is used in World of Tanks and it's quite successful for Wargaming.
The game is not Pay to Win. There is nothing, including Argents, that can't be bought by simply playing the game. Sure, the people that purchase premium can reach weekly caps quicker, but so what? Free players merely need to put in more time.
The classes that available have a huge amount of parity, meaning for every class, there are groups that absolutely love the class, and those that dislike it. That is a sign of good game design. Also fully completing progression for an alternate class has benefits for your preferred 'main' class.
Admittedly there are some issues with the game. Queue's for PvP are lengthy due to poor programming logic (which will be addressed in a week). Once or twice a day I get a client crash. There are other issues that exist, but I don't think they're necessarily game breaking. I'm confident that the devs listen to the players and are actively working on our concerns.
It would be a shame for anybody to not give this game a try by simply reading this review. It is free after all so what harm can come? I recommend finding a good Pantheon as this game is best enjoyed in groups. However for you die-hard solo only players, you will still do quite well.
P.S. Thanks for the review Bill. I find your reviews to be the most entertaining on MMORPG.com.
Let's start with MSM (Mona Sera Monastary). You mean Mare Sacro Monastery?
I'm not sure if this is a glitch or intended, but I only did it 2 times so far. Both times I noticed we come up to a group of 9 monsters, 7 trash quick kills but 2 Nagas who are stronger. Or even a group of 2 strong Nagas and 2 fish shield guys. We kill off MOST of the group but get wiped on last 1-2 of them. We come back ALL MOBS ARE ALIVE AND WELL AGAIN AND WE HAVE TO START OVER??? WTF?! If it's dead DO NOT reset the entire group back to life! With no death penalty, they don't want people kamikazeing to knock out content that they can't do through attrition. It is a solid design decision. I've done Mare Sacro on every difficulty up to impossible so far...
Same thing with Kraken, we killed a few, died to 1 that went haywire, and like all 3 are now alive again!
Krakens are not linked and if you kill them they should stay dead. If they came back then that is a bug and you should report it as such. So just to be clear, you pulled them one at a time, killed the first one. Pulled the second and killed it. Pulled the third and died and all 3 were back?
Now I am Lightbinder, around 4200 Prestige, When I installed the game, I knew I would be either Cryomancer or Lightbinder. I thought it was great I love playing both Mage jobs and Healer jobs. Lightbinder is not a healer. They announced well in advance that there would not be healers and their trinity would be tank, dps, support
Now I have a huge complaint. GUESS WHAT? The "LIGHTBINDER" does not have 1 single heal spell at all!! That is because they aren't healers... there are no healers in this game.
I realize the bosses drop orbs, but not always often enough. NOR do I want to be a S.H.I.E.L.D agent and dish out shields only and 10 second "Power UP" spells. "Shields" as they are used in the game are ablative shields, meaning that they soak up damage and then expire. What, exactly, is the difference between an ablative shield that scales with the targets life, and a heal spell? Well, one is reactive and one is proactive. This means that you are basically doing preventative heals(you need to have it in place before they would take damage) rather than reacting... It means you need to plan a lot more, but so what?
Now again in MSM, the 2nd to last boss, the famous Kraken that continously spawns trash fish out at you, does not drop a single health orb EVER, in the 2 fights I have been with him so far. That's a little unfair to say the least. No way for me to heal, AND a boss fight they refuse to give us heal orbs in as well?
All boss fights, including the kraken, drop health orbs when you do a full bar of damage to them. The last time I ran MSM was yesterday and I can confirm that there were health orbs(since I accidentally ninja'd one from under the tank which caused some drama).
On the other hand, the good news is: I am in no hurry to get to other classes asap. I am taking my time, heading towards God Form now that we have a definite date for it in a week, even though that is 30.500 Prestige and I am only around 4200. I don't mind, I WANT those nodes open at least until I get that high, then I don't have to worry about it. I am also opening the smaller, easy nodes close to Paladin and Cryo on the Atlas, and the individual job atlases as well for the smaller gains in Stamina and Might and Valor.
Classes aren't the only thing to path towards on the upper atlas. You also have symbols and core slots... You need to look through the symbols and figure out what you want to get and then path towards them efficiently otherwise you may eventually get frustrated with the atlas. Examples - there are damage reduction or shield improvement symbols which scale for each node of them you take, there is a symbol(just below the warlock/witch) which gives you 30% run speed and 30% reduced damage for a few seconds every time you pick up a health node, etc. etc....
The game is not Pay to Win. There is nothing, including Argents, that can't be bought by simply playing the game. Sure, the people that purchase premium can reach weekly caps quicker, but so what? Free players merely need to put in more time.
They are claiming it is Pay to Win because you can buy argents, turn them into credits, and use those to buy holy texts which you can then use to artificially inflate your provinces which pumps your prestige...
What they don't realise is that doing this has a number of negative effects:
1) It reduces the pool of people you can play with leaving you with much higher queue times and a harder time grouping
2) It artificially inflates the difficulty of the content as you are put into harder and harder content with much lower level strength, crit, might, etc...
3) It removes a lot of your ability to progress once you have hit the spark cap for the week, leaving you with only cosmetic items and making it more likely you will get bored/burn out.
It isn't really P2W since even that is just Pay to Go Faster, but some people think it is.
I'm kinda baffled by some of the things stated in the review. For example - not being rewarded for playing. Skyforge rewards almost every kill with credits or class sparks and the progress in the open world zones is saved through sessions. It is true that you are rewarded the instance completion reward at the end of the dungeon but then again it is instance completion reward.
As for the "there is nothing to do but grind prestige", so what is there to do in other games? Crafting? Isn't the crafting's main objective to make you stronger? Housing? Well, yes, there is that in some MMOs but not in all and not in most initially. I see most of the progression as moving toward something in terms of skills, classes, symbols and not as a strife to improve a meaningless number. Apart from that you can also try to get costumes and consumables from the different zones which are quite useful in PvP and PvE. I also find the story quite nice.
Lack of tutorial and explanation... well, there are plenty. I think you are literally held by the hand about almost everything in the game, at least at first.
And can we stop with the "might is useless" propaganda. It is not and if you are missing on might you are gonna get worse results as a dps. It can be worse than the other attack stats down the line(when you can max your stat boosting symbols and secondary stats) but initially it is just as good.
The game is not Pay to Win. There is nothing, including Argents, that can't be bought by simply playing the game. Sure, the people that purchase premium can reach weekly caps quicker, but so what? Free players merely need to put in more time.
They are claiming it is Pay to Win because you can buy argents, turn them into credits, and use those to buy holy texts which you can then use to artificially inflate your provinces which pumps your prestige...
What they don't realise is that doing this has a number of negative effects:
1) It reduces the pool of people you can play with leaving you with much higher queue times and a harder time grouping
2) It artificially inflates the difficulty of the content as you are put into harder and harder content with much lower level strength, crit, might, etc...
3) It removes a lot of your ability to progress once you have hit the spark cap for the week, leaving you with only cosmetic items and making it more likely you will get bored/burn out.
It isn't really P2W since even that is just Pay to Go Faster, but some people think it is.
And can we stop with the "might is useless" propaganda. It is not and if you are missing on might you are gonna get worse results as a dps. It can be worse than the other attack stats down the line(when you can max your stat boosting symbols and secondary stats) but initially it is just as good.
Regarding the "might is useless" stuff, it isn't useless, but you are often if not always better off taking strength over might. Especially once you start taking accuracy chapels as might gives you worse returns when you have the % increases from accuracy. It isn't that might is useless, it is just that in a choice between might and strength, strength will almost always win.
Good review and hits the points about why I like playing and why I hate playing. I play for a few hours all the while enjoying myself, and then hit a wall, usually because I've spent 30 minutes on an adventure and can't take down the final boss and I'm screwed.
I hate putting on new gear or making any changes that alter my Prestige. Information about stats is so muddled--how is it possible to make a one-character game and create game mechanics that will make it unplayable--that my annoyance meter goes off the chart.
I'm working on the last 1000 class sparks for my Knight, who's sitting at around 8K Prestige and it has got to be one of the most painful experiences I've ever had gaming--doing Adventures I now despise and hoping sparks fall from the bosses. The whole rating system of the encounters has been put into a giant spreadsheet and for the love of God why in the hell should we have to have such a complex system to try and determine whether you will get any reward from an instance?
Please, Gods of Blizzard, just release Update 2.3 for Diablo 3 so I can go back to some sensible grinding.
I'm confused with the ratings myself. How do you rate "Longevity" as a 7 but then say:
"The problem is that beyond progressing your prestige level and working towards other classes, there’s just not a lot to do."
You pretty much say in the review that you are forced to grind the same content over and over and yet you rate that a 7 in longevity, maybe if you are a Korean I could understand that. I really wish this site would stop rating almost every game in the 6.2 to 7.8 bracket. If you rate most games the same, what is the point in your reviews anymore?
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
BUT THE REAL PROBLEM FOR ME WAS....the locked classes.... Not because they are locked but because you are limited to only 3 choices to start. It is an epic failure in design. The problem is if you are not interested in any of those 3 you simply won;t bother playing to the point you can unlock something else.
They should have let you pick 1 starting class to add to the trio (replace the category with what you picked) and then rotated that one out to be unlocked later if you chose. That way I could atleast start with a class that i think i would like and then I can unlock others that might peak my interst as I play. Right now if you dont like any of the 3 starting classes you are going to end up like me uninvested and just quit before you even reach the point you can even think about unlocked the class YOU ARE interested in.
Not sure I understand this... You start with a basic ranged DPS, a basic support/dps char, and a basic tank/melee dps char, which cater to at least the basics of all play styles between them... And they give you a solid grounding in how the game works.
Remember back in DAOC you started as one of 3 paths and when you leveled up enough you got to specialize... and I've seen that in many other games. How is this any different.
If there is a class you think you would like you can test it at any time in the testing center, they also have class test missions which allow you to play through a squad mission as the specific class...
This game potentially would be one of the best but the cap and the marketplace ball up it. Why? Because you finish sparks in 6 hours of game and after you must grind for 6 day holy text and equip in impossible dg(in pt of 3 to get blue equip). Too much repetitive to get nothing!
This game is totally P2W (WIN, NOT PLAY). Premium account is useless, to get cap you need 6 hours with premium, 10 hours normally. So why who don't shop is 17-18k and who shop is 35k? It is simple, he spent 200 euros to upgrade all chapels (to limit of greatness) and bought all rank enhancement stone.
What about PVP? "Noobs" cry against blood harvest of slayer and "pro no shop players" cry against who has the same prestige but double life and double Luck(shoppers)
If I have the same prestige as you but you "shopped" meaning paid to up all your temples to max level, I actually have a heavy advantage over you. Maxing out your temples artificially inflates your prestige, meaning your str, crit, might, etc... are all under-powered for your "level". It is even explicitly mentioned in the article.
Blood Harvest is a problem because it can kill a DPS class in a single cast with the right talents/supports, and there is nothing they can do about it. Later on it gets a bit better.
As for finishing your sparks in 10/6 hours, that can only happen if you are running all 2xs/3xs or otherwise trying to rush to end-game. at 11k prestige squad missions were giving me 200-300 sparks each, and I had a 10k limit. That means that it takes roughly 40 squad missions to hit the cap. Squad missions are likely taking you 15-20 minutes each unless you are downranking them to easy/very easy(which reduces your rewards), so you would need to run the 40 squads back to back with no break in order to hit your limit...
So tell me what exactly you do for a living that you can run 10 hours straight on a wednesday?
Shop players have Rank enhancement of Ring capped so they have STR and LUCK/SPIRIT boosted than you. In pvp Lightbinders shopped Oneshot with impulse damage, also berserker.
Blood Harvest can be beaten easily but the 80% of community is too noob in this game or have PvE build. He is powerfull when you have less than 50% and require 7-8 secs...so just kill slayer in less time(one cc and two, three skill if you dont shop). In a seriuos pvp i'm killed in 3 secs, i don't have the time to cast the stealth after the harvest.
With slayer i do Imp dgs in 8-9 mins, port naori in 3 minutes( ), and i have a good guild where do 5ppl dg to get x2 x3 sparks. In this wayi've capped in 6 7 hours(with cryo something more) for three consecutive week. Yes i've premium account but i bought before discover that it is totally useless if you play 10-12 hours in a week.
I am sorry but the review on stats is really misleading and is obviously taken from the crowd that cries about it; but just to keep in mind, only because everyone believe so, doesn't make it true.
You can only get might from weapon slot/upgrade, and only stamina from offhand slot/upgrade, the rest 4 major stats are from rings slot/upgrade and the bonus are only from rings. Each quality of rings have different set of bonus stats. Might is not useless, might is base stat, period. There's a reason why WoW removed attack power back then, to remove confusion. And might is more or less like attack power.
You can have a character that has 10k pres, 8k pres from secondary stats and 1k from stam, 1k from might. The result? The base skill dmgs might be 100-200 and the procs (crit/crush/impluse) might be 400-600 (x2-x4 range). Or someone who pulls 4k from secondary, 3k from might and 1k from stam, the base might be 100-300 and the procs might be 600-800. All these are not in game values but it's not hard to imagine that the return on might is proportion to the weight on secondary stats. Another example can be think of HP in league(might) and armor/mr(secondary stats). It's obviously true that 1 might doesn't equal to 1 secondary, but you can't be extreme about stats and don't mix it up well.
It's about the same calling stams useless. If you don't pull enough stams from the stats pool you simply cannot survive some encounter, no matter how good you're at dodging; on the other hand, higher stams might boost your stats pool "inefficiently", it gives you room for errors.
I'm working on the last 1000 class sparks for my Knight, who's sitting at around 8K Prestige and it has got to be one of the most painful experiences I've ever had gaming--doing Adventures I now despise and hoping sparks fall from the bosses. The whole rating system of the encounters has been put into a giant spreadsheet and for the love of God why in the hell should we have to have such a complex system to try and determine whether you will get any reward from an instance?
Not sure what you mean by a complex system to try and determine whether you will get any reward. EVERY instance tells you what reward you get from the end of it, and you get rewards from every boss(and most monsters) unless you are a) downranking it too far(I've had some downrank from normal to very easy and not drop) or b) you are entering an instance with a player who has much less prestige than you and they triggered the instance(pretty much the same as downranking it too far).
Personally, I think it is reasonable that if you downrank the content beyond a certain point that they don't reward you for it...
Shop players have Rank enhancement of Ring capped so they have STR and LUCK/SPIRIT boosted than you. In pvp Lightbinders shopped Oneshot with impulse damage, also berserker.
Rank enhancements increase your prestige significantly. You are matched in pvp against people in the same range as you... From everything I've seen in CBT and OBT someone who bought their way to the prestige vs someone who played their way there, the person who played it will be stronger. That being said, this is only true up to a point because eventually it all evens out. The person playing will max out their provinces and upgrades, and the person who bought their provinces and upgrades will fill in their atlas.
Blood Harvest can be beaten easily but the 80% of community is too noob in this game or have PvE build. He is powerfull when you have less than 50% and require 7-8 secs...so just kill slayer in less time(one cc and two, three skill if you dont shop). In a seriuos pvp i'm killed in 3 secs, i don't have the time to cast the stealth after the harvest.
If you are in AF, RoI, or basically anywhere else but 1v1 the slayers can drop that on you from behind or elsewhere and get out of there before you have a chance to target on them and start dropping them. As I said before, at later levels and specced for it you can deal with it... And it primarily works against DPS(as support and tanks can remove the dot or otherwise mitigate it)
With slayer i do Imp dgs in 8-9 mins, port naori in 3 minutes( ), and i have a good guild where do 5ppl dg to get x2 x3 sparks. In this wayi've capped in 6 7 hours(with cryo something more) for three consecutive week. Yes i've premium account but i bought before discover that it is totally useless if you play 10-12 hours in a week.
As for that video I watched it... And you took it on easy(I'd like to see you do that on hard or even on normal), basically skipped all of the content(which means all of the sparks, loot, drops, etc) to rush the bosses... Including suiciding to respawn past the trash mobs... But why bother playing if you don't want to play? What you did there is the equivalent of Pindleskin runs... except that this isn't D2 and you don't get to pray to the RNG gods...
And can we stop with the "might is useless" propaganda. It is not and if you are missing on might you are gonna get worse results as a dps. It can be worse than the other attack stats down the line(when you can max your stat boosting symbols and secondary stats) but initially it is just as good.
Regarding the "might is useless" stuff, it isn't useless, but you are often if not always better off taking strength over might. Especially once you start taking accuracy chapels as might gives you worse returns when you have the % increases from accuracy. It isn't that might is useless, it is just that in a choice between might and strength, strength will almost always win.
Well, there's the thing - you cannot take strength over might as they do not come from the same pieces of equipment. If you are not taking might at all best case scenario is that you will end up later at the same prestige as the one you would be at if you have taken might with 1/4 of might stats as strength, 1/4 as valor or some other attacking stat and 1/2 of them as as stamina. In the game you have a long way to go to have 2 of your stats be twice effective as might when it comes to stats to damage ratio so most of the time you end up with lower damage at the same prestige at a later time but with more health. Will that make the game easier for you? Not really - you will not be able to down the swarm mobs quick enough and the health benefit will not be enough to keep you alive long when compared to not having it so unless you are a tank or a support class you are gimping yourself quite a lot.
Excellent first paragraph, that's exactly the way I feel. And a very nice touch concerning the main issue of the game, the terrible prestige design.
One character,not being able to detele it, not being able to reroll, not being able to reset the atlas - many players are already at the point where they farmed "bad" prestige (stamina and might from the order etc) and are not able to do any content which gives them rewards. It's a massive, MASSIVE design flaw.
I welcome the games which let you mess your character, but having this "opportunity", combined with the fact that you cannot start a new one, are things which cannot go hand in hand. The game and the stats are so badly explained that messing things up happens almost naturally.
No worries. It's the Allods Team we are talking about. It's all deliberately designed this way and soon they will add some nice "expensive" pots/scrolls/whatever in their cash shop to "help" people undo bad changes, emptying people's wallets and filling theirs.
Yup, that's been my impression all along as well.
They're just letting players stew for as long as possible before offering the Cash Shop based "relief" !
I'm sure the team is watching their metrics like hawks. They're probably trying to sell as many Founders/Starter Packs as possible, before offering the "cheaper" options. As soon as the desired numbers are reached, they'll add some "convenience" items to the store. Players will be falling over themselves to buy them....
People seem to forget how they run their other game. What they are doing is sucking people in and when they are hooked that's when thee cash shop will become something you will have to spend money in if you want to compete. Check out how they run Allods Online for your selves. Best to get out now.
Come on dude, seriously? Where have you been for the past five years? News flash for you: Open Betas are no longer for debugging/balancing, they are designed to allow people to "try the game out" for free whilst deciding whether to buy it or not. Heck, even late-stage Closed Betas now are considered to be on the verge of release in terms of quality.
With the state of technology now, Open Beta = Launch, for all intents and purposes. Oh, and considering that they are selling Founder's Packs and who-knows-what-else-Packs, you bet your butt Open Beta is prime time for an official review.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
Agree with the score..fun instanced PvP (PvE less so) game that doesn't require dozens of hours of immersion and lvl grind prior to jumping in and feeling competitive.
It will hold me over nicely till B&S.
LOL at the people that think TAB tgting requires no skill yet "action" games like TEAR/ESO/WS,etc. do... They both require skill to be competent>good>top tier and in both cases all you really do is press buttons lol. I will agree the TOP tier skill cap in action is higher than TAB... based on being able to much more effectively 1vX... But common 95% of you are not in that tier and prob never will be.
If you want pure skill so badly play a fighting game.
Comments
If I have the same prestige as you but you "shopped" meaning paid to up all your temples to max level, I actually have a heavy advantage over you. Maxing out your temples artificially inflates your prestige, meaning your str, crit, might, etc... are all under-powered for your "level". It is even explicitly mentioned in the article.
Blood Harvest is a problem because it can kill a DPS class in a single cast with the right talents/supports, and there is nothing they can do about it. Later on it gets a bit better.
As for finishing your sparks in 10/6 hours, that can only happen if you are running all 2xs/3xs or otherwise trying to rush to end-game. at 11k prestige squad missions were giving me 200-300 sparks each, and I had a 10k limit. That means that it takes roughly 40 squad missions to hit the cap. Squad missions are likely taking you 15-20 minutes each unless you are downranking them to easy/very easy(which reduces your rewards), so you would need to run the 40 squads back to back with no break in order to hit your limit...
So tell me what exactly you do for a living that you can run 10 hours straight on a wednesday?
I actively followed this game pre-launch, and from everything I saw I thought there was more I wouldn't like than I would like. After having lots of people I know try it and try to convince me to play, I'm glad as hell I never wasted anytime in it.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
I normally try to read all replies. I will say all are entitled to their opinions as I could not get through all the dislike here. Those opinions are very much right for that person. Just as mine is that I bought a founders pack that I am happy to have and thinking of buying the collector's edition. I greatly enjoy the game though farming for what I want can be a pain. Otherwise I play and have fun.
This does not feel like WoW to me. It is not truly action but it has the elements of more than just plain tab combat. I understand the frustrations and curious to see what things they might try and change. Like the idea of the grouping change that is coming in the next patch that boosts lower members of an adventure up to normal level stats.
Not sure I understand. Getting from the start to the path of your class isn't much in the way of colored sparks... After that you are using either class sparks(if playing that class) or sparks of evolution(If not playing the class). I unlocked slayer. Once I unlocked it I didn't want to play it at my prestige because with no abilities/talents it would handicap me. I filled in all the colors and about 60% of the other nodes without ever actually playing it... And then I abandoned it since my friends needed me to play a tank, and started dumping my excess sparks into Paladin(almost ready to start tanking with it).
Whether you "grind"(or just play the game) for experience or for sparks, it is the same difference...
"I also think it was a complete misstep to lock classes behind the Ascension Atlas "
I'll never understand why devs think locking classes is a good thing. It's like they didn't learn from EQ2's mistake of having advanced classes being locked.
Another negative for me was the UI. I absolutely loathe it. It's one of the worst UI's i've tried in awhile. I'm not talking about the look of it, but the functionality of it.
Bill, what prestige level did you obtain? Also were you in a Pantheon at all? I noticed you didn't mention the extensive Pantheon system (or the Order system) once. I appreciate your review and I have some random thoughts to contribute.
This game really opens up at later prestige levels. A review of the game up to 20,000 prestige is rather uncomprehensive and is like reviewing Wildstar by playing level 1-36. There's going to be some nice group content soon not the least of which is Pantheon Wars.
The closed (no trading) economy works well in Skyforge and it's great for shutting down gold farmers. The same type of system is used in World of Tanks and it's quite successful for Wargaming.
The game is not Pay to Win. There is nothing, including Argents, that can't be bought by simply playing the game. Sure, the people that purchase premium can reach weekly caps quicker, but so what? Free players merely need to put in more time.
The classes that available have a huge amount of parity, meaning for every class, there are groups that absolutely love the class, and those that dislike it. That is a sign of good game design. Also fully completing progression for an alternate class has benefits for your preferred 'main' class.
Admittedly there are some issues with the game. Queue's for PvP are lengthy due to poor programming logic (which will be addressed in a week). Once or twice a day I get a client crash. There are other issues that exist, but I don't think they're necessarily game breaking. I'm confident that the devs listen to the players and are actively working on our concerns.
It would be a shame for anybody to not give this game a try by simply reading this review. It is free after all so what harm can come? I recommend finding a good Pantheon as this game is best enjoyed in groups. However for you die-hard solo only players, you will still do quite well.
P.S. Thanks for the review Bill. I find your reviews to be the most entertaining on MMORPG.com.
They are claiming it is Pay to Win because you can buy argents, turn them into credits, and use those to buy holy texts which you can then use to artificially inflate your provinces which pumps your prestige...
What they don't realise is that doing this has a number of negative effects:
1) It reduces the pool of people you can play with leaving you with much higher queue times and a harder time grouping
2) It artificially inflates the difficulty of the content as you are put into harder and harder content with much lower level strength, crit, might, etc...
3) It removes a lot of your ability to progress once you have hit the spark cap for the week, leaving you with only cosmetic items and making it more likely you will get bored/burn out.
It isn't really P2W since even that is just Pay to Go Faster, but some people think it is.
I'm kinda baffled by some of the things stated in the review. For example - not being rewarded for playing. Skyforge rewards almost every kill with credits or class sparks and the progress in the open world zones is saved through sessions. It is true that you are rewarded the instance completion reward at the end of the dungeon but then again it is instance completion reward.
As for the "there is nothing to do but grind prestige", so what is there to do in other games? Crafting? Isn't the crafting's main objective to make you stronger? Housing? Well, yes, there is that in some MMOs but not in all and not in most initially. I see most of the progression as moving toward something in terms of skills, classes, symbols and not as a strife to improve a meaningless number. Apart from that you can also try to get costumes and consumables from the different zones which are quite useful in PvP and PvE. I also find the story quite nice.
Lack of tutorial and explanation... well, there are plenty. I think you are literally held by the hand about almost everything in the game, at least at first.
And can we stop with the "might is useless" propaganda. It is not and if you are missing on might you are gonna get worse results as a dps. It can be worse than the other attack stats down the line(when you can max your stat boosting symbols and secondary stats) but initially it is just as good.
They are claiming it is Pay to Win because you can buy argents, turn them into credits, and use those to buy holy texts which you can then use to artificially inflate your provinces which pumps your prestige...
What they don't realise is that doing this has a number of negative effects:
1) It reduces the pool of people you can play with leaving you with much higher queue times and a harder time grouping
2) It artificially inflates the difficulty of the content as you are put into harder and harder content with much lower level strength, crit, might, etc...
3) It removes a lot of your ability to progress once you have hit the spark cap for the week, leaving you with only cosmetic items and making it more likely you will get bored/burn out.
It isn't really P2W since even that is just Pay to Go Faster, but some people think it is.
Regarding the "might is useless" stuff, it isn't useless, but you are often if not always better off taking strength over might. Especially once you start taking accuracy chapels as might gives you worse returns when you have the % increases from accuracy. It isn't that might is useless, it is just that in a choice between might and strength, strength will almost always win.
Good review and hits the points about why I like playing and why I hate playing. I play for a few hours all the while enjoying myself, and then hit a wall, usually because I've spent 30 minutes on an adventure and can't take down the final boss and I'm screwed.
I hate putting on new gear or making any changes that alter my Prestige. Information about stats is so muddled--how is it possible to make a one-character game and create game mechanics that will make it unplayable--that my annoyance meter goes off the chart.
I'm working on the last 1000 class sparks for my Knight, who's sitting at around 8K Prestige and it has got to be one of the most painful experiences I've ever had gaming--doing Adventures I now despise and hoping sparks fall from the bosses. The whole rating system of the encounters has been put into a giant spreadsheet and for the love of God why in the hell should we have to have such a complex system to try and determine whether you will get any reward from an instance?
Please, Gods of Blizzard, just release Update 2.3 for Diablo 3 so I can go back to some sensible grinding.
I'm confused with the ratings myself. How do you rate "Longevity" as a 7 but then say:
"The problem is that beyond progressing your prestige level and working towards other classes, there’s just not a lot to do."
You pretty much say in the review that you are forced to grind the same content over and over and yet you rate that a 7 in longevity, maybe if you are a Korean I could understand that. I really wish this site would stop rating almost every game in the 6.2 to 7.8 bracket. If you rate most games the same, what is the point in your reviews anymore?
Not sure I understand this... You start with a basic ranged DPS, a basic support/dps char, and a basic tank/melee dps char, which cater to at least the basics of all play styles between them... And they give you a solid grounding in how the game works.
Remember back in DAOC you started as one of 3 paths and when you leveled up enough you got to specialize... and I've seen that in many other games. How is this any different.
If there is a class you think you would like you can test it at any time in the testing center, they also have class test missions which allow you to play through a squad mission as the specific class...
Shop players have Rank enhancement of Ring capped so they have STR and LUCK/SPIRIT boosted than you. In pvp Lightbinders shopped Oneshot with impulse damage, also berserker.
Blood Harvest can be beaten easily but the 80% of community is too noob in this game or have PvE build. He is powerfull when you have less than 50% and require 7-8 secs...so just kill slayer in less time(one cc and two, three skill if you dont shop). In a seriuos pvp i'm killed in 3 secs, i don't have the time to cast the stealth after the harvest.
With slayer i do Imp dgs in 8-9 mins, port naori in 3 minutes(
), and i have a good guild where do 5ppl dg to get x2 x3 sparks. In this wayi've capped in 6 7 hours(with cryo something more) for three consecutive week. Yes i've premium account but i bought before discover that it is totally useless if you play 10-12 hours in a week.
I am sorry but the review on stats is really misleading and is obviously taken from the crowd that cries about it; but just to keep in mind, only because everyone believe so, doesn't make it true.
You can only get might from weapon slot/upgrade, and only stamina from offhand slot/upgrade, the rest 4 major stats are from rings slot/upgrade and the bonus are only from rings. Each quality of rings have different set of bonus stats. Might is not useless, might is base stat, period. There's a reason why WoW removed attack power back then, to remove confusion. And might is more or less like attack power.
You can have a character that has 10k pres, 8k pres from secondary stats and 1k from stam, 1k from might. The result? The base skill dmgs might be 100-200 and the procs (crit/crush/impluse) might be 400-600 (x2-x4 range). Or someone who pulls 4k from secondary, 3k from might and 1k from stam, the base might be 100-300 and the procs might be 600-800. All these are not in game values but it's not hard to imagine that the return on might is proportion to the weight on secondary stats. Another example can be think of HP in league(might) and armor/mr(secondary stats). It's obviously true that 1 might doesn't equal to 1 secondary, but you can't be extreme about stats and don't mix it up well.
It's about the same calling stams useless. If you don't pull enough stams from the stats pool you simply cannot survive some encounter, no matter how good you're at dodging; on the other hand, higher stams might boost your stats pool "inefficiently", it gives you room for errors.
Not sure what you mean by a complex system to try and determine whether you will get any reward. EVERY instance tells you what reward you get from the end of it, and you get rewards from every boss(and most monsters) unless you are a) downranking it too far(I've had some downrank from normal to very easy and not drop) or b) you are entering an instance with a player who has much less prestige than you and they triggered the instance(pretty much the same as downranking it too far).
Personally, I think it is reasonable that if you downrank the content beyond a certain point that they don't reward you for it...
Well, there's the thing - you cannot take strength over might as they do not come from the same pieces of equipment. If you are not taking might at all best case scenario is that you will end up later at the same prestige as the one you would be at if you have taken might with 1/4 of might stats as strength, 1/4 as valor or some other attacking stat and 1/2 of them as as stamina. In the game you have a long way to go to have 2 of your stats be twice effective as might when it comes to stats to damage ratio so most of the time you end up with lower damage at the same prestige at a later time but with more health. Will that make the game easier for you? Not really - you will not be able to down the swarm mobs quick enough and the health benefit will not be enough to keep you alive long when compared to not having it so unless you are a tank or a support class you are gimping yourself quite a lot.
People seem to forget how they run their other game. What they are doing is sucking people in and when they are hooked that's when thee cash shop will become something you will have to spend money in if you want to compete. Check out how they run Allods Online for your selves. Best to get out now.
Come on dude, seriously? Where have you been for the past five years? News flash for you: Open Betas are no longer for debugging/balancing, they are designed to allow people to "try the game out" for free whilst deciding whether to buy it or not. Heck, even late-stage Closed Betas now are considered to be on the verge of release in terms of quality.
With the state of technology now, Open Beta = Launch, for all intents and purposes. Oh, and considering that they are selling Founder's Packs and who-knows-what-else-Packs, you bet your butt Open Beta is prime time for an official review.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
Agree with the score..fun instanced PvP (PvE less so) game that doesn't require dozens of hours of immersion and lvl grind prior to jumping in and feeling competitive.
It will hold me over nicely till B&S.
LOL at the people that think TAB tgting requires no skill yet "action" games like TEAR/ESO/WS,etc. do... They both require skill to be competent>good>top tier and in both cases all you really do is press buttons lol. I will agree the TOP tier skill cap in action is higher than TAB... based on being able to much more effectively 1vX... But common 95% of you are not in that tier and prob never will be.
If you want pure skill so badly play a fighting game.