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stucool
Member Posts: 134
What is the deal with AA? I read some flames, but mostly good things about the game. I see the pops are low when I play. But, I just don't get it. AA is a fun game. Yes, it is mainly blasting stuff up, but most MMO's are a bit repetitive, even the ultra successful WoW. Did the marketing dept. just not promote the game? Or, are people reluctant to shuck out 50 bucks for a "apocolypse" themed MMO? I have played most of em, and to me, AA is the most fun. Granted, I am only at lvl 41 with my biomek,and I am a "casual player", but I am baffled at the apparant lack of subscribers to the game. I also read that some see it as a solo friendly game. Are those the same people that think DDO should have solo content?
Comments
- No Auction House
- No Mailing System
- Very repetitive gameplay. I do love blowing up stuff to get crafting items, though. Muuuch better than picking flowers to potions.
- Community needs improvement- but it is not beyond horrible. You will run into as many assholes as you will nice people-- but you will run into even MORE people who just dont respond at all.
- Is it just me or do other people feel VERY sick when they are in towns? I almost feel like puking... I can't say exactly what it is, but the way you walk around in towns would need to change before I ever go back.
- Game was released before it should have been.
- Respec feature should have been added in the first month.
- Level 40+ = where are all the quests? Even on the human side it is very slow at this point. No excuses, please.
I played up until level 44 and got very bored with the game. I thought it was a nice change of the regular stupid elves and swordsmagic mmo's out there. I especially like that when you run into buildings and such you get crafting parts, blah blah blah. There is ALOT missing from this game. It's enough that you will eventually cancel your account and wait to see if they even add them in there. Auction houseMailing system = late 2006early 2007. Don't expect it before then, either. The development team seems to be working at a very slow pace compared to alot of other games. I just don't feel the justification of spending 15 dollars a month for this game. Very low population and they are VERY untalkative.I know there was more I wanted to add but I can't think right now. Sorry if anything I said came off as offensive. I just wanted to state my feelings on this game, not offend anyone.
I really loathe the idea of having to mic myself just to play an MMO. Voice ruins the whole thing for me personally.
Maybe if it were free, I could justify it to myself as a single player game. But if I have to pay a box price and sub fees for a game where there is a built in expectation that we are mic'd, then its no dice.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
its great fun at first, for a change of scene.
i got the 14 day free trial, first day i thought man this is a great game.
so i went to ebay and bought a brand new, sealed AA game(for 12 bucks, not 50).
but by the time my trial was over, which actualy it isn't even over yet 2 more days, i am not even going to activate my game. it just got very boring very fast. plus noone really talks. for some reason i got lvl 40 people chasing my lvl 14 quest mobs for hours which is really annoying and i don't understand why.
ill save the free month for down the road if it gets better or to give to someone as a gift.
IMHO, the problem boils down to it being a really badly designed MMO. i.e. It sucks.
At first, it does seem like fun to some players. More of a niche, with the whole vehicular combat angle, but a sizeable enough niche. Problem is, most of that niche then gets bored and moves on. Most of them during the end of beta, before the game was even released. So in the end, the pops are low because they've got a playerbase that's like a niche within a niche.
I'd say it's failing really depends on what sort of game its trying to be. It depends on how you look at it, because it fails in any number of ways. As an action game, an MMO, as something new and different, or something old and familiar, etc. It could be any of those, if it were designed to be, but it wasn't.
To look at it as your standard repetitive levelgrind MMO, I'd say the problem is primarily social. That's what allows other MMOs to be so repetitive, while still being a little new and different every day. The players we interact with. Even most soloers like to feel that they're soloing within a big MMO community, but AA is not designed for player interaction. Players are barely even aware of eachother's existence.
NetDevil can add better convoy options and the like, but that'll never cut it. Its designed as a single player experience from the ground up, and I don't just mean a lack of grouping, but next to nothing to support any feeling of community, either. Just tossing in better grouping options won't change that. In order for it to be effective as a more social MMO, it would need to be different in all sorts of ways.
I'd could go on and on, about specifics, or other ways it failed, if they were trying for something innovative and different, maybe more action oriented than social, or whatever, as I've been a part of the AA community for almost a year now. but I'll spare you, I've rambled too much already. I'd say the lack of social framework is the game's most distinct and fundamental failing, if you look at it as a MMORPG.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I don't pay monthly fees for single player games. It's not the community that's the problem, it's how it was designed. Everyone just goes about in their own little world, not talking, selling, discussing or anything else because the game wasn't designed for such. People are too busy with the game. With some tweeking it would make a fun single player offline game and I don't think I would notice much of a difference.
It's not the "apocolypse" themed MMO though, people would love that.
The main problem with AA, I think, is that it doesn't play like an MMO. There is not much need to interact with others (it was intentionally designed that way), and the gameplay actually hinders you from interacting with others because it is fast-paced and requires both hands to manipulate the interface whilst you are actualy playing. You actually have to stop and take a break in order to type text to someone, and of course most people are actually playing the game, so they aren't going to respond because both hands are busy interacting with the interface ... and so that's that. It's a very single-player game experience. i think that's the main thing that disappoints people who even like the game when they start to play it.
In terms of why it hasn't attracted more people, i would have to say that I think the reason for this is that any game genre outside of the cookie cutter swords-n-sorcery mode appears to be a niche game at the moment. The MMO market, the "fat" part of it, is dominated by swords-n-sorcery, and any other genre, be it sci fi, cars, etc., is going to have a limited market off the bat. CoH/CoV was able to overcome this in part (but only in part, because total numbers never peaked like the top fantasy games) because at least CoH has human avatars that run around and kill things ... I honestly think when you get (1) away from fantasy genre and (2) away from human avatars (as in EVE and AA), you get far, far fewer people interested in your game, and it becomes more of a niche.
I agree with those saying that it is like a single-player game that you must pay a monthly fee for. Many of my single player games, in fact, have had much more 'content' to them, like missions/tasks/quests/goals/etc. More to do. Blowing things up is certainly fun, but you can do that on games without monthly fees. Plus, the novelty of it gets old quick.
I played only the one month time that was included, playing less the 3rd week, and was not motivated to log on at all the 4th week. I even tried the crafting system, to extend my experience, but that also got tedious rapidly. Leveling up was easy, at first, then it became difficult to always find the exact level of broken item I needed to practice on. Combat was ok, but like I say, the novelty of the whole system got too repetitive, even more so that I felt when I tried GuildWars. Combat was mostly me pressing down the mouse fire button and spinning in a circle to hit everything, I was too often out of power from draining mobs like the Net stuff to ever use my abilities, and many of my abilities (I played a MasterMind the most), became useless almost right after I had gotten them.
Anyway, I could go on and on, and repeat things that previous posters have said, but it boils down to being too simple, released too early, and it never felt like a mmorpg more than it did a single-player game.
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Played: Age of Conan, DDO, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, DaOC, MxO, EQ2, and so on...
Wish List: Jumpgate Evolution, Star Wars: TOR, Star Trek
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I played the free trial and I must say that it was fun for a while. But from what I saw I think the 40,- Euro to buy the box and an additional sub fee to play it, is way too high.