Statik's goodbye

Statik, when leaving, gave his feedback on the game:

 

 

STATIK's Goodbye:

 

Just wanted to share my thoughts and perhaps enlighten a few people before the last chapter of Fury ends (at least for me), and hopefully the next step of PvP gaming begins. I started out in this game a half-year ago by making half-way decent posts, I don't want it to end with me bashing and flaming people (though it was fun =O) left and right. So here ya go...

 

1. A daring vision coupled with an unclear execution…

 

Simply put, this game had a recipe for disaster just waiting to boil over. Fury is a game where players can only fight other players, an MMO where you waste enemies and not time, a competitive game in which items are crucial yet randomized, a game where people could play to prove their worth through skill but at the same time a game where the winner gains an edge by receiving loot and spoils.

 

Auran was going places where developers had rarely tread and where no one knew what to expect. Adding to this, they really had no clear-cut vision of what to do. This is plainly seen in the many re-vamps the game has gone through up until now. What started out as a half turn-based fighting game (where animations played out against other animations), is now a free-to-play shell of its former fast-paced self. Auran threw down big money on the game with no guarantee of the smallest success. I respect that, I truly do. It was daring and certainly progressive, but there were too many mistakes made, and many conflicting incarnations of the seemingly same vision of the game around. Fury had to be executed perfectly to really win the crowds over. We now see the aftermath.

 

2. A cut-throat PvP game created for carebears…

 

When most of us read about Fury, we were hoping that Auran would stay true to their words of the game being a truly competitive medium. Their vision of the game certainly did not match up with many of the players that they had (perhaps by accident) attracted. We imagined a game where skill and strategy were the dominant factors of winning. We imagined a grind-less battleground where customization had very little limiting factors and where people foreign to the genre could simply jump in and enjoy. This was going to be the Counter-Strike of RPG PvP games. An MMOPvP game that was going to go competitive E-sports. That’s what people like me had hoped.

 

What we really were presented with was a PvP game made for those who enjoyed eye-candy over smooth running, grinding instead of fighting, never losing instead of being challenged each and every fight, and reaping virtual rewards from wins instead of enjoying the intensity of being able to beat another equally-footed player in and of itself. I mean, we should’ve seen it coming. With the trial system in place, and Auran being HELL BENT on implementing the “Realm vs. Realm” setup where one would not able to compete against those on one’s own server, how did we not see the carebearness just emanating from this game? I mean, who doesn't remember the many different Sanctarums we've seen throughout the development process (with it progressively getting more and more laggy) and all those forced excursions into the school areas just to unlock our skills. It’s our fault for buying into their mission statement without analyzing the aspects of the game that showed its true colors and ultimately what the developer(s) wanted it to be come. Fury literally became a PvP-only game based around PvE ideals. The tried and true formula of PvE-centric games only works when your game is based around PvE. Just because there’s only a one letter difference between PvE and PvP, it doesn’t mean the same things will work.

 

I'm going to say the same thing I said a few months ago, I quote, "Only PvP does not = no GRIND!" Obviously the bigger message of that debate didn't come through since UAA is only one of the aspects of the issue. Now that there are bots running around everywhere to congratulate players on beating them up and providing them with loot, I can safely say that this game indeed has a grind (though I've said it all along, and was hoping the grind would be cut to nearly nothing in the future). It is what it is. By the way, putting in a slight (I don't care how slight) grind and hoping someone is going to pay 50$+ just to get around that grind is a good idea...............NOT! The way Auran tried to setup the UAA and gold card situation was simply the wrong thing to do. I understand what they are doing now as the game is free to play, but before the Age of the Chosen, those were simply poor choices that are unforgivable.

 

3. A potential step forward becomes a sprint in the complete opposite direction…

 

So what is to come after this? The future of Fury itself is dim, and in general the failure of Fury is hard blow to the RPG PvP scene. You won’t see developers (and especially smaller companies like Auran) try anything progressive or anything at all in the PvP-only market. There is probably now a wrongly-placed mistrust upon the hardcore and casual competitive RPG PvP players. Companies will be forced to continue pushing out Harry Potter games to secure their financial needs rather than going out on a limb to please a crowd that has shown how brutal they can be. You can bet that Auran is hoping to somehow salvage what’s left of Fury by going back to conservative formulas and hoping they can somehow finally reconcile the PvP game with its PvE foundations (it seems they're trying this via making the game more PvE-oriented). Trainz 10 is more likely to be made than Fury 2.

 

Developers will see the player population who enjoy PvP games as a bust, but I hope people learn what really happened and continue to experiment in the market to finally create the game that will reach the true potential of a PvP-only game. Alex Weekes made a really interesting post over on the MMORPG.com boards. He explicitly stated that he believes the the PvP market is still very viable and “salivating” for that breakthrough game that will make games with mission statements like Fury a lot more common.

 

4. What we want is certainly not what you THINK we want...

 

I just don't think the industry yet understands the game this so-called "niche" population is looking for. In my opinion, people are looking for a game that plays like an FPS (fast-paced, easy to startup and get into) and combining that with the combat style of RPG-type games where there is more thought and strategy put into the game rather than just reaction times and aim. Combat in games like Fury provide a very different type of tactical warfare where pre-mediation and awareness account for everything.

 

A game like this can bring in a wide array of players obviously starting with the competitive players that are familiar with the genre but have had to play second fiddle to a larger PvE picture (WoW Arena, Guild Wars), RTS players who will enjoy employing tactics and not be overwhelmed by certain twitch factors (Starcraft, Warcraft, especially Warcraft: Defense of the Ancients All-Stars players), and FPS players who are wanting a bit more player depth and something a little different (Battlefield, Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2, Quake Wars).

 

All of these players share the same underlying ideals; fast, pickup and play, skill-based, team-based, strategic, and competitive gameplay. I can safely say that all of this "niche" population want MMOPvP done right are playing one of the aforementioned games right now. Hopefully the code can be cracked soon and the formula adopted to put out some really great games for us to play.

 

5. Riding off into the sunset...I mean the Fade...=O

 

In closing, I’m hoping that very game will be Guild Wars 2. Arena Net has gone through the pains that Auran has gone through and had other things to fall back on. I believe they have and know what it takes, and hopefully they can create the dream game we all want.

 

I’d like to say that there were certainly many enjoyable and memorable moments during the time I spent playing Fury for these 6 months. Intense Vortex matches, last second Bloodbath wins, and stacking 4 players on top of each other in Elimination were awesome. I’d like to thank Auran for trying what they did, and hope that they can recover and find eventually find some success here and/or elsewhere. I hope everyone learned from their mistakes here and moves on with what they need to do. This will probably be my last serious/half-intelligent post on these forums for a good while, I’d like to say farewell and thanks to the devs and players who made the game fun at its peak. Hopefully I’ll see some of you guys in the coming years and beyond.

 

Happy Holidays all!

 

- Statik