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My Archeage thoughts of the minute.

tr1age

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Staff member
So I am just going to through my thoughts as they come to me here so you can all get an idea of what it is like through my eyes.

There won't be any crazy thought out posts just random blurbs.

Also if you have any stream requests just ask and I will do my best to show you :)

For instance today I went to the main city and looked at houses and drove a boat.

But here are my thoughts for this minute:

Arggg not loving Archeage. Combat and movement are big ones for me. And the movement in this game is pretty.... uhmmm sluggish.. Age of Conan meets a laggy version of Tera.movement... feels like it belongs in a pre-wow mmo via animations and such... blah. That could break it for me. They went almost too realistic with mounts and turning is liek a real horse where you have to turn and not strafe. The housing looks awesome and the deco is really cool. I ran across a town and was suprised as a GOAT farm... looked stupid. But the farming ones with trees and plants were pretty. The GRAPHICS oddly enough are not as beautiful as I thought they would be. It is not as attractive as Age of Conan was and it is dirty enough to feel old and not realistic. The faces and characters are odd too the sliders give you too much control making it so most choices that are not presets make for an ugly in game character. Hair is blurry and has a strange aura. The cat people are pretty awesome. The feel of impact of your attacks on monsters is not rewarding. It feels like you are attacking air most of the time and all keys are Tap to attack not tap and let it auto attack. Which makes running and attacking very much like WoW but without the feeling of impact so it feels off.
 
I realize many might say the following: You cannot compare this game to GW2 or WoW or AoC etc etc and it has just released give it time.

Well here is my issue.

Trion is Publishing the game, not re-doing it. I would HOPE they would incorporate their Rift housing model into it for extra depth but the combat also needs the same.

With games LIKE GW2 and WoW setting the bar high for how a game should "Look and Feel" it would be doing a disservice to myself and others to not compare them. When the bar gets raised other companies in every other field need to get their shit together and match or better, same in my mind with games.

Yes content could be a driving force and there currently are no games that pull off the sandbox themepark mmo like Archeage but does that mean it is playable? That is yet to be seen but as first impressions go, no.

If I want my old UO housing feel I would rather play UO than a newer game that is built on old mechanics.
 
Glad to see your opinions on the matter. Is it animations or combat in general. Also keep in mind you are on the east coast of the US...the servers are in Korea. At any rate, looking forward to seeing what happens up until Trion is ready for a beta/release. There should be both patches by XL fixing things and maybe polish/suggestions by Trion that is implemented, I hope.
 
To me watching the game in action was like buying a burger at McDonalds only to realize that the pictures on the menu looked much better than what you've just unwrapped.
 
Aww. And I was just getting kind of hyped about it- though I did notice that the combat looked boring. I'll keep looking at it, but I can't help but think of..
 
Didn't realize you could get into beta. Shame it's so disappointing.

He is not in beta. The game is live in Korea, and he has some friends over there. Watching it doesn't seem so disappointing to me. Besides the combat animations and the supposed sluggishness the other animations seem good, graphics are good, lots of stuff to do idk yet.
 
So after todays play session I must say there are some things I did enjoy. The environments while kinda muddy and flat and textures being very low even on high, felt immersive with birds chirping and animals wondering.

The story.. well other than it being in Korean the cut scenes are just bad. Really bad 2.5D animations. So story may be rough. I have heard the story is bad from Korean friends.

Houses are just cool. Explored a lot of them and they are amazing. The boats look great the combat on boats seems good.

The water is debatable. It has a great motion for up and down waves, where you bob in the water. But the water itself looks like saran wrap.

Underwater is murky like real water. Kinda cool. Seems the deeper you go the clearer, yet to be confirmed though cause I would drown.

Movement still feels off. Animation tweening doesn't exist, mouse smoothing doesn't exist, mount movement is aweful, flying gliders I haven't tried yet but some look amazing!

One thing to take note of, Characters no matter WHAT you do will look asian. So do not expect to go into this game and NOT feel like you are in an Korean MMO. Weird quests, weird characters, high pitch voices, etc.

The sound effects for attacks are overused and old. There are even some old sounds from EQ. That is not a good thing. They get bothersome after awhile. Very tinny on sword attacks instead of blunt and heavy, or too heavy for smaller attacks.

The music is pretty.

Weapon distance for attacks is hard to gauge. There is about a 3 person gap between hit block and weapon swing so you can be really far to hit someone. Melee feels weird compared to ranged. Ranged is not as dynamic as say GW2 and more static in place.

NO combat is splash damage cone effect, meaning if you swing a hammer you will not hit the people infront of you, you will hit ONE person. There are AOE spells, but that is the only way. Personal preference but for me that is a big one. I do not like Action MMO's or tab targetting MMO's... I like Radious MMOs where your attacks can hit multiple people depending on where you stand but you can still tab, select a main target.

Thats it for this minute.
 
Today has been a better experience. I made a human and the human areas are def much prettier. The weird thing is the game still feels like a feature loaded remake of say Everquest in terms of graphics and combat. But once you get over the single target nature it gets a little more fun.

The koreans are extremely nice too. They do their best to speak english and help out.It makes me kinda hate american players :p I met an english speaking guy today and he opened my eyes to screenshots as well as how to get my 2nd and 3rd skill trees.

I haven't had enough points to put into them yet because the leveling up is GRINDY. Literally kill X number over and over. Really horrible. But the quests progress you properly through zones and the gameplay is paced out nicely so it doesn't feel like a rush. It takes more time indeed.

I am interested in seeing a mixture of skills like swords and then buffing and heals. Or something along those lines but right now I am Magic Control and Healing.

I wonder if I am playing a glorified Farmville* though with housing and boats as end game and fighting mobs being really weird and 1 dimensional. Reminds me of combat is UO.

Ooo I found out why people are found everywhere running in circles with their mounts. It levels them up :p

Here are the SS's of my day:
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*TM Zevrix
 
End game is kinda none existant. Castle sieges are a thing that happen maybe every now and again. From the chatter in guilds it seemed they worried more about alliances and broken promises than they did with end game. There are no real BIG dungeons, and the ones there are not many people do. The world is the dungeon but the world is not very populated and the mobs are often spawned strangely.

It is based on interactions with people like a coffee shop where you own the shop.

The houses have chairs you can sit in, lights that interact, music that plays on radios.

There is even a hidden social media function built into the game that I found today that lets you share screenshots and vote for them such as reddit.

One of the english speaking people I ran into today basically said, combat gets better at higher levels around 25. I asked him why, he said well it doesn't change you just have more buttons to press. So that to me was a shame. But I am going to continue leveling because I truly want to at least experience higher level combat.

If it is what i think it is: Essentially UO combat, "semi Aggro" "Semi dedicated healers" "pure dps" then it would kinda be like a step BACK in the MMO industry in my mind. With games like GW2 stepping the game up with how a game can be PLAYED and not just lived in for the sake of a subscription, I am still skeptical that this game is ready for prime time at least in an American Market where not every person is wanting to chat and be helpful, and we worry more on #'s, face paced action, and "end game". This game however reminds me of UO in the terms of time period. Korean games are kinda behind in the genre so the fact that a game like this is popular kinda fits the mold.

Will keep updating thoughts as they come. Maybe even a wrap up with some videos :)

Oh and that armor on my horse I bought it started out naked. Thought that was kinda cool. Not sure why you need armored horses when you can't mount in combat or fight, but maybe there is a reason, lik ehaving it follow you and if someone takes off you can drop combat jump on the mount and get em faster.
 
Good thoughts... I thought there was or was planned to be mounted combat. It still sounds interesting to me regardless.
 
Good to hear that your impressions are getting better, and kudos for giving the game a chance (I would have lost patience a loooong time ago).

It's nice to hear that the Koreans are so friendly (opposed to the usual "ffs speak English or gtfo!" you're used to on our servers - but on the other hand, you can't read Hangul, so who knows what they're saying behind your back, hehe).
I'm curious though, why do you say: "Korean games are kinda behind in the genre so the fact that a game like this is popular kinda fits the mold"?

Oh, and you should totally get a pony instead of a horse. *ponylaugh:
 
So it sounds like we are still waiting for the perfect MMORPG storm.

WTB MMO with GW2 interface, WoW dungeons and raiding, AoC graphics, and ponies as a playable race.
 
It's nice to hear that the Koreans are so friendly (opposed to the usual "ffs speak English or gtfo!" you're used to on our servers - but on the other hand, you can't read Hangul, so who knows what they're saying behind your back, hehe).
I'm curious though, why do you say: "Korean games are kinda behind in the genre so the fact that a game like this is popular kinda fits the mold"?

Yeah I realized that was confusing after I wrote it last night.

What I meant to say was that in terms of releases they have not adopted the same games we have. They are built more around an EXTREME competitive culture OR the same culture that wouldn't play Blizzard games unless they could do it one handed with a cigarette in the other hand. So extremely casual and socially. That is what Ultima Online was. The one handed game. The Social Game. And that is what ArcheAge feels like. More emphasis on a farm filled with goats and sparkled over their heads than on dungeons and monsters that make much sense.

I switched over to a warrior first profession and am planning to mix it with healing and buffing, a sudo paladin. I want to see how in your face combat feels as well as VERY fluffy spell effects. So we shall see how that goes now.
 
So I have been trying my warrior/paladin type build. It is much more fun in terms of animations and a little aoe attacking.

My issue is this, if you log into GW2 then into Archeage you feel like the controls are made of tin cans. The sound effects are annoying with every hit making your character grunt. The world is bland after about 10 levels. You just get bored of the grind.

The PvP looks really bad due to the bad animations and considering PvE is non existent I really REALLY don't feel this game is ready for a western MMO title.

Hosuing sure, but even the housing is dated and korean. (weird dolls and shit to decorate) the choices for decoration are not very good, at least you can use the chairs you plop down, but that is about it.

Do I think Trion will change this. Nope.

That is why I am slowly getting less and less excited for this game.
 
So I have been trying my warrior/paladin type build. It is much more fun in terms of animations and a little aoe attacking.

My issue is this, if you log into GW2 then into Archeage you feel like the controls are made of tin cans. The sound effects are annoying with every hit making your character grunt. The world is bland after about 10 levels. You just get bored of the grind.

The PvP looks really bad due to the bad animations and considering PvE is non existent I really REALLY don't feel this game is ready for a western MMO title.

Hosuing sure, but even the housing is dated and korean. (weird dolls and shit to decorate) the choices for decoration are not very good, at least you can use the chairs you plop down, but that is about it.

Do I think Trion will change this. Nope.

That is why I am slowly getting less and less excited for this game.


*ponywahh: Help me Wildstar, you are my only hope....
 
Yeah I can;t put my finger on ONE exact thing that turns me off to this game. I feel like I should love it. But then you run around and it feels sluggish and like you are running more than enjoying too much. And the characters just seem off. Blah.
 


Watch this video the middle of it she fights. You can hear the moaning while fighting and the weird pacing of combat.
 
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