Bay 12 Games Forum

I think giving moddability to any "major" title makes it better in the long run by allowing players to make up for any shortcomings, shortsightedness, or attempts to make it more accessible to a wider array of gamers (see: removing stats a la Oblivion, removing spears, throwing weapons, Mysticism, spell crafting, etc). Really adds a lot to replayability when you can have a completely different game between playthroughs.

I don't think that every major title ends up having feature that make them major titles, they just appeal to the masses better.

It feels quite like Guild Wars 2 in the skill selection system and somewhat active combat, with the ever present WoW etched deep into the surface. The button layout takes some getting used to, with Q and E acting as active, cooldown based skills. DnD has very little influence on the game as a whole, with a small roster of typical classes (Rogue, Warrior in both Damage and Tank flavors, Mage, Cleric) restricting you into specific roles, rather than giving you the flexibility of being able to choose your path.

Gameplay wise, it's an MMORPG that's trying to copy success where it can find it. The Feat system is highly reminiscent of WoW's pre-Kung-Fu-Panda Talent Trees, in that they give tiny percentile increases rather than affecting your gameplay in any dramatic or meaningful way. There appear to be three "Paragons" for each class, which just mean you focus a little bit more toward certain skills and playstyles, with such great things as 10% more damage (after five points invested) from breaking stealth.

Early levels are spoonfed to you so you can adjust to the game in baby steps, as is normal for many games of this day and age. I haven't noticed a measurable increase in difficulty as I went along, and rarely need to dodge the big red circles that present themselves as anti stupidity measures for people who can't gauge the swings of enemies or the drawback time on an errant arrow.

I haven't played PvP yet, and will likely update this post at a later point once I figure out how to get through the somewhat obtuse interface to do so.

The decision to drag the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights storyline is confusing at best, as it only serves to give some background flavor to veterans of the series, and get in the way of the point of an MMORPG of this sort of caliber. That is, to level and get better numbers as your brain is rewarded with flashes of light and sound indicating a level up, or a bigger critical, or collecting fifty bear asses.

To quote Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee (regarding World of Warcraft, though it applies here as well):

I asked someone who raids,"'Why do you raid?"
"To get the best items," they said.
"What do you use the best items for?" I asked.
To which they could only answer, "To raid with!"
But it's not about items, is it. You don't honestly care if your new Crystal Nether Sword is going to clash with your Elite Boss Clogs, it's about the numbers. You want the items with the best numbers so you can use your numbers to decrease the enemy numbers until your numbers are the best in the land.

Overall, it's not different or engaging enough to warrant much attention from me. Maybe I'm simply burned out on MMOs, like a reformed con who went too hard for too long and I'm sick of the genre. But it is free to play (with Microtransactions to make your time investments come quicker!), and who knows, you might find something you like in it.

If you're expecting an MMO rendition of 3.5e, 4.0, Pathfinder or similar fare, prepare to be disappointed.

Does it have to be on motorcycles?

Nope, it's still fairly active. I've got a friend in PANTS, and the goons seem to have calmed down a bit now that we went from an average of 40 players to 20 over the holidays.

The issue is mostly that it goes from a reasonable "use skills to get better at them" to a silly "kill things to get xp to pay for skills" system. Sure the original was grindy, and it didn't offer much benefit, but I see no reason why not to make it still possible to gain IP through using skills in addition to learning skills from teachers.

There are a few benefits to not having the system... for example, have you ever spent an amount of time grinding some skill, only to get ganked by a rival corporation, or die to an unexpected gangbang of mobs? You lose whatever experience you might have gotten, as well as any IP towards the skill you were attempting to grind.

Now, you just get the experience, learn a raw, get your clone updated automatically, and are good to go. It's a little more user friendly, though I'd rather still have some form of the grinding system myself. The jobs make getting experience almost laughably easy, with certain ones (Deliveryboy and Pusherman come to mind, early on) having no cooldown at all while giving a good payout in terms of experience and cash. Also, they removed the benefit to grinding, insofar as simply buying a full skill costing the same as it would have been to grind it in HATE.

Now, you'll mainly be wanting to grind kills for drops (turtles in the sewers, the trees for their bark, etc) and getting kill journals, as the amount of experience you can get from jobs alone outweighs the time investment you would need to do to sustain grinding kills. Which is how some people are nearing the 100k experience mark already, aside from the obvious "no life" jokes, considering the game has been out for about a week now.

I'm in, as I always do in every HellMOO variant, as Chaz. Is anyone else playing?

I'm playing, my name shouldn't be too hard to guess.

It looks like NDY is back with a vengeance, this time as Rahul_Ghandi, and leading the RAHUL corp, ganking newbs and such.

Feels just like HATE already.

I rather liked grinding, gave skills a sense of progression to them, but this does make it more worthwhile to seek out a player to teach you or spend too much money trying to get stuff.

On the bright side, Helliday Inn has plenty of free spots. Bit expensive to start, but if you know what you're doing $1000 a month is chump change.

Teemo or Darius as a top lane is the bane of most AD melee bruisers... that's understandable.