For those of you wondering what Albion Online is like. I have recorded bits and bobs of my playtime over the last 10 weeks, I decided to make a small gameplay trailer using said footage. I hope it provides a little insight on a gameplay perspective, also hope it nudges you over that fence and make's you want to get involved in Albion Online!
Enjoy and of course criticism is always welcome.
Rigan
p.s Buy Now!
https://albiononline.com/?ref=BXK8TMWP9G
Comments
Honestly as an ex uo player Iove it and I'd like to try it.
But also, being a pvp player I remember the enormous amount of time I had to spend to be competitive and I don't have that time anymore.
So the big question is: how long does it take and can a casual player get into pvp fairly quickly? And how much farming/crafting do I have to endure to be able to enjoy more pvp and dungeons?
I'd honestly would love to try it but
"The World of Albion offers your character to be upgraded to Premium.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
So you mean that if I specialize in a path I can pvp kind of fairly in about a month? And what about items and kills to learn how hard is it to have competitive gear considering full loot?
Or does gear not make such a big impact / is fairly easy to have
~~ postlarval ~~
For everyone else, you might as well ignore it.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
The fact the game was designed to work on mobile device kind of further accentuates this parallel, but the game doesn't actually run very well on any mobile device.
My experience comes from a few months of play through beta and release, having bought the highest tier package at 100$. The game was fun for a month in beta, but the repetition / grind and microtransaction focus turned me off.
I just focused on staffs, and a mixture of armors and got them up to where i could wear t6 if I wished. each weapon type has its own set of skills and such. read up on them, pick one you want to go with, and use it as you wear the types of armor you please. Youll be able to wear t5 in a few weeks of solid playing, perhaps even less. I did not spend or waste any of my time on crafting. All mats i gathered as i killed stuff to level my armor and weapons, i sold on AH to buy new gear as needed. T4-t5 gear is cheap on the trader. run dungeons, level up, go pvp.
The time sinks come with getting the currency or mats for higher tier gear, and to level up your crafting if you wish to do so.
Hope this helps, this is all feed back from the first month after launch. I have not played since.
How would you know? It's not out on iOS yet.
~~ postlarval ~~
- Contrary to what you hear, you can be PVP viable REAL quick, there is no NEED to grind and grind in order to fully participate in anything in the game really. And that's being honest.
Characters work by Tiers, high end-game tier is T8, entry level PVP is T4 (which you can get in less than 5 days playtime). How gear works is rather brilliant on the grind side of things. As soon as you can wear T4 items, you are good to go!
All equipment tiers has variants (enchants), so for example, you might fight a guy who's wearing T6 gear, but as long as you bought and equipped Tier 4.2 (there are 3 enchant levels that gear can go to), then your items power is near enough on par with that T6 guy.
Same for wearing T5 stuff, if you buy T5.2 then you are near enough on Par with someone who put in over 100 hundred hours and levelled to T7.
I really don't understand why people moan about this grind, it's only a grind if you make it so. But you really don't have to do any grinding beyond T4/5. Hell, most people in the blackzone still to this day only risk T5 equipment cos they don't want to lose more.
Now if you people said you weren't full time PVP/PVE'er, that's an argument I could get behind. This game doesn't have anything to offer you unless you are a dedicated PVP'er and that's what you are searching for in a game.
1.) The game is still a griend fest, personally I don't mind it so much, but this game still has issues, for example, as the video shows there is farming, but last time I actually played this game which nothing has changed you have to have a premium account to get Energy, or Labor Points just like in Arche Age, and you spend at least $10 a month, to even harvest your crops properly you need to use energy, and even with one fully upgraded island there simply isn't enough to fully manage and harvest it all yourself, let alone having 3 islands you need a minimum of 3 patron accounts paying I think $14 a month for each character to be able to manage even two of these daily considering you keep things planted and on a timer like I do in games if like $10 a month x3 isn't a problem then the game can be for you.
2.) The destiny board is a grind fest, this is one feature that turns me off from this game all together once hitting tier 3, anything above generally speaking tier 4, and up requires farming or fame, this is a turn off for people who want to strictly hop directly into PVP for example one of my least favorite parts when I did play Albion was having to farm monsters that drop silver (BORING) the AI is really generic, the game play felt bad, the only thing I enjoyed was the PVP straight up PVP is fun but then it gets to the point where this game gets to be nothing but a MOBA like League OF Legends, Smite, HOTS, Overwatch, or any other games like that because its strictly like 10v10 or something like this during black zone or clan battles whatever they were called.
You generally can't just hop straight into PVP and level up or anything like this and this turns some players away from the game.
3.) The Developers decisions in general really turn some players away from this game too, for example putting Anti Zerg mechanics into the game is stupid, the game is supposed to be Full PVP, at least this is how I played it during the very first Alpha test, but instead the developers are doing things like putting role restrictions on arena because healers are too over-powered, and because they can't get balance doen right or anything, and this is the wrong direction to go this being the latest issue.
4.) This game over-all could have been designed better for PC Users, and Mobile App users, personally I think this game should have opted in for better graphics, and instead of allowing people to fight or PVP using a mobile device, should have made an APP that tied into the game, and allowed users to manage their crafting, skill-up, and progression via the Albion Online App, and kept the graphics looking good, I mean if you look at games like "Heroes OF Incredible tales its got better graphics, although I am told its not possible to do this with Albion because of the way it was designed, but I am sure it could have been done better, and keep all the fighting to PC Users, unless making a Mobile exclusive app given PC users have a huge advantage over mobile users anyways due to the resolution issues and smaller screen size.
5.) No free economy (My biggest concern for a sand-box game, based off the Terms of the game, a user may not accept currency with nothing of equal value in return, yet the developers of this game have allowed a guild or group of people called The Bank OF Albion, in game to accept investments and trades with nothing of equal value in return, while banning others, even at one point making threats to banish anyone from the game with a notice whom accepted currency, or items if it traced back to an illegal source, just for accepting a trade in a free economic game which a person may belive is legitimate aka gold sellers who purchased founders packs with stolen info and gave away the mounts / items to other users as free items.
The biggest problem of it all being the developers knew about all these issues during the final beta, didn't do anything about it to prevent it, and so the Iron Bank incident happened, many people were upset, drama, and from what I hear now the population decrease, and so they are stuck trying to get players back using "Trial Key Invites".
6.) It's true that Albion has improved, and some will say to look past the game company's bad choices, that is fine, personally I can not look beyond the issues I have had with this game, company, or development decisions made, and still being made by the company such as the 2 healers issue which might restrict one healer per arena match, its not my idea of PVP, as PVP should not have restrictions.
From a personal aspect, I find PVE in Albion Absolutely the worst, most boring I have ever played in an online game, the only thing I really loved about Albion is the gathering, and crafting aspects, but even Albion wasn't the best, because IMO ArcheAge was better but AA has Trion being Greedy, although for casual PVP its a great game, but with the forced PVE this is what is a turn off from this game, although crafting is a good way to make money anyways.
DarkFall for example, can somewhat be compared to Albion Online, although the great thing that still makes the game awesome first of all is the Music in game / Theme song I always found absolutely amazing, the game is outdated, but the PVP, as well as the in game PVE feels absolutely better than Albion it has more of a realistic feeling in a fantasy world at least to me.
Personally I don't really like BDO because of the Anti Cheat functions, but even that game has Node Wars with 30 vs 30 or more in combat, the graphics are absolutely amazing compared to Albion, and the game still has a huge active player base, and for those who don't like BDO I hear there are two upcoming games in 2 years called Ashes OF Creation & Crow Fall, both these games could also be great if tied into Mobile Apps to allow certain functions such as crafting, monitoring of character progression, even offline skill training etc so a user can always feel like they are playting in an online world, and this is how Albion should have been.
But really in 2 days I'm already T5 which for what I've seen is what most people run in pvp. (I've only been in safe areas so far).
Farming dungeons has been decent enough though very repetitive and will get old quickly to me but I also hope the game will really shine out of safe zones (kind of like L2 did).
The grinding is ok but I have already spent more than half my veteran's pack learning points and I should be able to level the crafting/gathering I need with the remnants.
The game itself... well... I don't think is worth 30$. Like, at all. I really don't care about graphics but the core system/combat is not as good as I hoped. I really don't think that a long cd system when you only have 5 skills cuts it for a competitive pvp mmorpg. Sure it can be good for MOBAs but if I wanted to play a moba I'd play a moba.
Only pvp I did was Arena, and while I can see the good side of combat the arena system itself is so bad it hurts my eyes. I honestly don't know how after millions of mmorpgs came out with the most various battlegrounds system a 2017 mmorpg can come out with something so boring and stupid and ugly and umbalanced.
I usually hate crafting in games but here it's fine enough. The grind up to T4 is not so extreme and I can see how people can like it. Though I guess past T5 it will be a real nightmare.
Also I think the game will be pretty much unplayable without premium bonus but with the starting pack I should be fine for pvp which is what I'm in for.
So now I'll look for a pvp guild and see how that goes I guess it could be fun. Not sure what kind of open world pvp content there is but my hopes go into it because the rest of the game has not impressed me much.
I haven't tried BDO because I'm sure the grind would be outputting for me
BDO, for example you mention its not really a big grind as you describe it, and its not the best game either, but you can go from level 1-52 within no more than 1-2 hours given you use XP boosts, if you are a total newbie this can be a bit harder, although if you join a guild or find someone they can boost you to level 52 in 1-2 hours max.
Then from there you simply spend a few days grinding to hit 56 which id personally recommend getting like at least a +15 weapon, or PRI/ DUO and hitting level 56-57 within a few days 58 is where the grind starts but its only like 3 levels of grind to hit level 60 that is the biggest grind but not really that bad when you look at it.
Gear is what matters getting everything to TRI Grunil armor IMO is easy, getting the boss gear is a bit hard, but there are multiple ways to get boss gear from BOSS drops for example, or from night vendors, or market, which is easy to get, but if you want to really enjoy the game like pay 2 Enjoy you spend lots of money.
If you want a BDO trial key, I still got some left, as well as packs are on sale right now, also if you want power leveling, feel free to send me a PM, and I know a good guild / community that is newbie friendly.
https://www.blackdesertonline.com/gamepass Also the game is 40% off if you decide to buy it.
https://imgur.com/a/nD5Qt This is what a Boss Fight looks like in ultra HD Graphics.
btw sadly I really like isometric view. Damn uo nostalgy makes people hella delusional (elseway I would have NEVER spent 30$ for a game I already knew wasn't worth them)