Albion Online

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Eidal

Molten Core Raider
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I'll write more later when I have some time, spent all morning playing. Take everything with a grain of salt. Enjoying it so far. I think PVE-focused people will definitely find fun to be had. The world is enormous and the team has already said they plan to make it bigger. What I gathered from the forums is that PVE players can definitely make dives into the PVP zones and get loot and get away. Reminds me a lot of Eve and its exploration mechanics.

Or, if you aren't a total lonewolf, you'll find a guild and do PVE stuff in guild controlled territory with all the benefits that entails (scouts, intel channels, etc etc).

The toughest thing to do in games like this (Eve/SB) is play completely solo and expect to compete with people who group. That being said, "competition" in a sandbox is a hard metric. What really matters is if you can have a fun and productive play session without feeling like you're just a walking resource to be harvested by PVPers. Time will tell.
 

Rangoth

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,528
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What really matters is if you can have a fun and productive play session without feeling like you're just a walking resource to be harvested by PVPers. Time will tell.

I'm not a lone wolf on purpose, but I don't know anyone playing this game(hence the thread). I didn't even know it existed until I saw it here. But yea, you hit the nail on the head there. I just don't want to be a walking resource. And I've never quite enjoyed PvP in games where everyone isn't on equal footing. Especially as my playtime gets reduced as I age.
 

Bondurant

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,831
4,776
Albion Online is as sandbox as the current "niche PvP MMO" market is, "a game you can be a major asset to your community anytime" and by anytime they mean taking a dump or watching your SO shitty tv show while checking how much ressource your toon is gathering. Combat gameplay is awful and there's so many changes every month it's like their development is a fortune wheel.
 

Balroc

Molten Core Raider
1,064
229
This game is unwatchable on Twitch. Every stream I tune into it's "clop...clop...clop...clop."
 

GuardianX

Perpetually Pessimistic
<Bronze Donator>
6,690
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This game is unwatchable on Twitch. Every stream I tune into it's "clop...clop...clop...clop."

LoL I was noticing that when watching a couple guildies stream. Shit is so calming, like I was literally falling asleep to it.
 

Swagdaddy

There is a war going on over control of your mind
1,960
1,870
yeah cant watch it on twitch if your in game send me a whisper on swagdaddy i can answer al questions if you have any
 

Rangoth

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,528
1,641
Ok, so I got in to the beta tonight and played. I will try to keep this mostly objective though I'm sure my personal opinions will influence things a little.....

  • The game is very very grindy. Instead of levels for your character there are levels for "actions". Crafting leather, crafting plate, fighting with staff, skinning animals. In theory you could one day max out everything but it's going to take a long time.
  • Don't care what the officials said in the reddit AMA, it is 100% pay to "win". Maybe not in the literal I buy a +1 sword you can't get. But the bonuses for paying are significant. Combine that with the grindy nature of things and yea....it's huge.
  • You can buy the "premium", which is like a membership ala monthly fee. It's early to say for sure as I've only played one night but at the current prices it seems you could spend the money you earn daily to keep premium status. Probably even easier if you are one of those market playing folks.
  • Speaking of markets, I do dig it. Think basic AH, but local to each town. On top of that when you go to sell...say your 15 wolf pelts, someone may already be listed as a buyer for that item. So you can choose to sell it right away to them or post it for sale at your own price. There is no buying/selling to NPCs. I think this is kind of neat. Add in the region thing and people willing to move gear around to different towns can get rich fast. Not sure how this will play out long term, but whatever.
  • So on the concept of items and AH. There is durability and all that. You can repair from an NPC, but at least in tier 1-3 items it seems cheaper to ditch and rebuy than repair. I'm sure this will change if you have some epic shit.
  • Items/Weapons/Stuff: You can 100% play this game without ever farming or crafting a thing. Just buy your stuff in the AH(or guild or whatever) and keep on slaying. You do seem to earn decent silver from kill quests and dungeon mobs so it is viable. Don't feel like you must gather or craft
  • Gear is bland. Tier 1-X(think 6 or something currently?) In one night I was able to get to Tier 3 mostly and starting to poach in to tier 4. So far I've seen nothing special or anything to indicate special. Each tier is just +more. I suppose this makes sense in a PvP focused, lose your shit when you die style game. As a guild/pvper you'll basically want 2-3 of everything in the event that you die. Rare special items don't fit that mold.
  • From what I can gather you are in "safe" zones up to tier 4. The "zone" is safe, no the gear or player. So you can choose to go out and try to get cool shit or just linger in the safe zones which was nice for new players.
  • Speaking of new players. Holy fucking confusing. No tutorial, no helptips/tooltips. Log in and have fun. Took me a good 30 minutes just to figure out what the fuck was going on and what I was supposed to do.
  • Travels blows monkey nuts. So a "zone" will have a list of what tier and what resource it drops(for instance tier 2-3 wood, tier 3-4 skins, tier 1-2 ore). Obviously the further from home you go the higher the tier. Makes sense. Except either I am not getting something or horses are rare/expensive and you move like a fucking snail. So to get back to the "newb" town(where everything is free or cheap, more on that in the next line), you've gotta really fucking spend time running around. It sucks. To people that bitched about PoP's portal stones and how travel is important you can go fuck yourself.
  • Ohhh, cool fact, on that note of travel. This game has weight. Remember when you were a monk and people split a shit-load of copper on you as you pulled so you went full stop with 6 mobs on your ass? Yea, welcome home. If you JUST adventure and kill you probably won't have any weight issues but if you do ANY gathering or crafting you are fucked. I spent most of the night running out one zone to skin foxes only to have to run back in to town every 30 minutes or be unable to move.
  • Which brings me to my next point....as I started to hit tier 3-4, well yea, like I mentioned earlier the newb town is too far and travel sucks so I moved to a player town. Neat! Built by people, shops run by people. The whole deal, cool concept. Aside from some minor flaws like the built-in minimap not showing what stores are where(which you can see with the big map just annoying it's not in the mini) it seems like it's functioning well. Only the player run shops charge an arm a leg(ya ya I know, supply and demand) to use their "crafting stations". So i basically pissed away all the money I earned crafting in the player town(1 zone from tier 4 stuff) so I wouldn't have to run 4 zones away to craft in the noob town. Remember how you can't carry dick and weight matters? Yea, running 4 zones would blow.
  • There seems to be some anti-farm shit where if you kill/gather/whatever in the same area it drops less shit. For instance a tree untouched for X hours may give 12 wood, but if you(and others) farm the spot right out of town it will only start giving 2-4. I'm ok with this though it did suck a bit today as there seemed to be a million people on and of course they were all clustered. I'd imagine in time this would even out.
  • On gathering it sucks that you cannot see the tier of something until after you try to gather it. I feel like if I played a month this wouldn't matter as each resource and tier has a unique look to it, but sucks for a new person. I wish it said what tier when you hover the mouse over it.
  • This one is subjective but I don't know how else to describe it other than the old "WoW is polished" phrase. You know how in WoW/DotA when you press a key or move it just feels good? Like an immediate natural response that matches animations and input? Yea not here in this game. I can't describe it but it's just off. That and when you try to move around you get stuck on every-fucking-thing imaginable. Trees, bushes, boxes, it's annoying.
  • You'r spells/skills are determined by gear. Generally speaking your boots give you some type of movement/dodge thing, weapons give attack skills, etc. Neat concept but it does not seem to allow for much variety. Maybe in the late game it gets better? Unknown.
  • I didn't get the chance to PvP but based on the lack of "polish" and response and the limited skill sets I don't think this will be a very deep PvP style game. It seems like this will all be about power/guild/numbers. ala Shadowbane


Overall, and of course in my opinion, it's not a bad game and potentially worth the 30$. I probably will not continue playing though I may pop on to do random shit from time to time. I have a feeling this will become a very niche, but moderately successful game like EVE. As was mentioned earlier in this thread you simply cannot play alone in any meaningful way and the grind is asinine. Especially with the slow travel, weight limits, and lack of resources due to thousands of people being squished in the same areas.

Eventually some super power(s) will rise and own certain areas and servers. I'm sure it will be a blast for those involved with mass guild v. guild warfare over contested resources or dungeons, but these type of games will always push off new and interested people by the nature of their design. As lame as the PvP in games like WoW/Rift may seem to many hardcore folks, it allows new blood in to the game, which is healthy for everyone. This game will not. Again I do feel like it will stay afloat and have it's little niche following but it's never going to be more than that. The grind is insane, the mechanics and gameplay confusing, and unless you are part of some elite guild you will be strong-armed out of anything worth doing.
 
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GuardianX

Perpetually Pessimistic
<Bronze Donator>
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The grind is insane, the mechanics and gameplay confusing, and unless you are part of some elite guild you will be strong-armed out of anything worth doing.

Yeah the grind is nuts...like months and months of grinding for +1 betterer gear.

The gameplay is horrifically boring, in diablo or torchlight you at least had cool abilities to use on things to kill them, here they threw you the most vanilla abilities ever and said, "Have fun!" It takes decades to travel anywhere unless you go into horse breeding, which is time gated like every freemium game ever that was based on raising a farm...OR you could shell out 50-100 USD and skip that bullshit and get to boring fights / harvesting faster ><
 

Eidal

Molten Core Raider
2,001
213
Good write up, Rangoth. I disagree on some points but thats simply because I'm drawing comparisons from Eve.

tldr; this game doesn't sound like its for Rangoth. No idea if its for me, but Eve is my favorite MMO and its hitting the right chords so far. Dev team can do a lot with gameplay mechanics given their approach to art (lol). Incoming quasi-shill post... EDIT: to reiterate, it remains to be seen whether I stick around or not. This sounds shilly because I have desperately wanted to see more work done in this MMO-space -- we need more sandbox MMOs.

PW2: By your definition, Eve is P2W. No Eve players genuinely think that. No one cares that someone can buy $100 plex and buy whatever the fuck he wants. The way the game is structured, it'd take an unfathomable amount of dollars to make any noticible impact either on a small or large scale. Game knowledge and social aptitude is 1000x more important than currency. That being said, there are many people who do call Eve P2W because you can trade cash for isk. Everyone has to make their own appraisal.

Grind: I don't know what you're expecting here. You played for how long and somehow feel qualified to comment on your rate of progression? Where are you now progression wise and where do you think you should be? A proper MMO should allow a player to feel as if they're progressing towards their goals at a reasonable rate of speed.

Gear: Agree with gear "blandness", but they're modeling this off of Eve where people are either custom-designing their kit for a specific task or they're flying what their leaders tell them to fly.

Travel: Definitely is slow without a mount, just like all MMOs. That being said, its day 4 and mounts are already on the AH and are easily affordable after a decent play session or two. Prices will only come down. Tangentially, from an efficiency standpoint, running back and forth with fox hides is a silly way to play. Do whats fun but if the travel time is killing you, don't try to gather/craft yet, smash mobs for silver and buy a mount in a few days. Similiarly to your gripe about crafting. Just like every MMO, crafters with guild support will dominate soloists early on. Again, from an effiency standpoint, finding some friends and smashing mobs for pure silver is a simple and effective way to progress early on.

Abilities: it doesn't seem like they want you to ever have triple hotbars worth of skills. Whether or not the 8 hotbar slots are enough to make combat interesting remains to be seen. I haven't really studied any theorycrafting so I have no idea. However, MOBAs make it work with even less.

PVP: There are anti-zerg mechanics in place, I beleive. The more targets an AE spell hits the more damage it does, AND, the more people focus firing a single target the less damage he takes. If you want to control territory you'll likely need a mid-sized guild, but thats par for the course and small groups can set up instanced stuff in the carebear lands. Regarding super-groups and dominating a server, there is only one server and Eve has managed to keep the dynamic interesting over the last decade despite the rise (and fall) of periodic super-groups.

Random: Tier of resources is clearly visible by both its color and the number of "dots" it has. T3 ore is purple with 3 spikes; T4 ore is green with 4 spikes, etc etc.

Final Thoughts: I have no idea how you ended up so confused by this game. Its far more simplistic than the MMO community has come to expect; there may be depth (and I think there is) but it is literally click and go, and the few questions I had I was able to find an answer either in public chat or on a forum.

Ultimately a sandbox game is going to cater to a few groups, and for most players, its the social aspect that keeps the game fun. This isn't a game to log in weekly and raid. This is a game to do things with friends, whether it be getting wealthy in carebear lands by PVE stuff or by holding territory in the outlands (think 0.0 from Eve).
 

Rangoth

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,528
1,641
Good write up, Rangoth. I disagree on some points but thats simply because I'm drawing comparisons from Eve.

tldr; this game doesn't sound like its for Rangoth. No idea if its for me, but Eve is my favorite MMO and its hitting the right chords so far. Dev team can do a lot with gameplay mechanics given their approach to art (lol). Incoming quasi-shill post... EDIT: to reiterate, it remains to be seen whether I stick around or not. This sounds shilly because I have desperately wanted to see more work done in this MMO-space -- we need more sandbox MMOs.


I agree, not for me but I also wasn't trying to bash the game in to the ground or condemn it. Just providing my honest experience. As I said I think this game will kind of survive as a niche game but it will fail to draw in and hold new people to the genre/specific game.

PW2: By your definition, Eve is P2W. No Eve players genuinely think that. No one cares that someone can buy $100 plex and buy whatever the fuck he wants. The way the game is structured, it'd take an unfathomable amount of dollars to make any noticible impact either on a small or large scale. Game knowledge and social aptitude is 1000x more important than currency. That being said, there are many people who do call Eve P2W because you can trade cash for isk. Everyone has to make their own appraisal.

I don't know eve, but you are probably correct. Again not crying about this and I even said you can buy the "premium status" with the daily earnings if you wanted to and I'm sure it will either get easier to do that as the market inflates or they will modify prices.

Grind: I don't know what you're expecting here. You played for how long and somehow feel qualified to comment on your rate of progression? Where are you now progression wise and where do you think you should be? A proper MMO should allow a player to feel as if they're progressing towards their goals at a reasonable rate of speed.

I actually did not comment on my personal rate of progression. I actually think I made it quite "far" for one day. I was commenting at the mechanics and style of progression. We could certainly argue all MMOs are a grind(and be correct), but this has the feel of standard Korean style grind. Literally it's a do X to get better at X, not shortcuts outside of being premium(where this makes a huge huge difference). Maybe it's like FFXIV class system where in a year everyone has all classes to 50 and people in Albion will be maxxed at everything. I just disagree with the implementation personally and felt like people should know it's grindy. Even guardianX, who seems to like the game, agrees.

Gear: Agree with gear "blandness", but they're modeling this off of Eve where people are either custom-designing their kit for a specific task or they're flying what their leaders tell them to fly.

Agreed. It is very bland but I will actually defend the game here and say it makes sense for the mechanics and style of game, that being death and looting people. No one will want to grind out Staff of Unique awesome if lag or anything else could kill them. But with the tier system you can have your guild bank/crafters ready to feed the horde army new shit.

Travel: Definitely is slow without a mount, just like all MMOs. That being said, its day 4 and mounts are already on the AH and are easily affordable after a decent play session or two. Prices will only come down. Tangentially, from an efficiency standpoint, running back and forth with fox hides is a silly way to play. Do whats fun but if the travel time is killing you, don't try to gather/craft yet, smash mobs for silver and buy a mount in a few days. Similiarly to your gripe about crafting. Just like every MMO, crafters with guild support will dominate soloists early on. Again, from an effiency standpoint, finding some friends and smashing mobs for pure silver is a simple and effective way to progress early on.

First mounts right now are going for 150k silver. That's not a "decent play session". I will concede the prices MAY go down...but if everything is lootable then maybe not as a death means new mount(can mounts be looted?). You say do what's fun and we are getting in to a more subjective view point, but combat isn't fun. I actually found smashing mobs to be MORE boring than trying to craft stuff and move it around and sell it or gather resources. Maybe this is because of the "bland" gear and skills or back to that "polish" concept I tried to talk about. I just did not find combat fun. Solo killing shit like a newb in any MMO was about equal to any other game out there, did a few group things and didn't really see the appeal. While it has DotA style view it isn't even close to DotA style fun/combat.

Abilities: it doesn't seem like they want you to ever have triple hotbars worth of skills. Whether or not the 8 hotbar slots are enough to make combat interesting remains to be seen. I haven't really studied any theorycrafting so I have no idea. However, MOBAs make it work with even less.

I actually like the limited abilities. No complaints here. I'm sick of the 30 hotbar thing new games do. have 7-8 or whatever it is was nice and refreshing.

PVP: There are anti-zerg mechanics in place, I beleive. The more targets an AE spell hits the more damage it does, AND, the more people focus firing a single target the less damage he takes. If you want to control territory you'll likely need a mid-sized guild, but thats par for the course and small groups can set up instanced stuff in the carebear lands. Regarding super-groups and dominating a server, there is only one server and Eve has managed to keep the dynamic interesting over the last decade despite the rise (and fall) of periodic super-groups.

There are anti-zerg mechanics. I read those too. And maybe you didn't play Shadowbane/UO, and maybe you just want to call me a liar or incorrect, but it's been my experience(and I believe statistically true) that 90% of PvP in games like this is not an awesome, heart pumping, action filled, combat session where two rival guilds battle it out for control over X. It's a guild of 15 dudes running around raping individuals from other guilds or raiding a town in the middle of the night, etc. People keep wanting this open world sandbox PvP style game to flourish but back to my earlier comments that this game will not welcome or hold new people and once the sheep are gone it will be mostly boring. PvP games where people are not on level footing will ALWAYS be niche. If that is YOUR niche then great, but don't expect a big crowd.

Random: Tier of resources is clearly visible by both its color and the number of "dots" it has. T3 ore is purple with 3 spikes; T4 ore is green with 4 spikes, etc etc.

I did mention this, that in a month I'd probably have all of the trees and rocks memorized but that doesn't change that a mouse over tooltip for a new player wouldn't kill anyone.

Final Thoughts: I have no idea how you ended up so confused by this game. Its far more simplistic than the MMO community has come to expect; there may be depth (and I think there is) but it is literally click and go, and the few questions I had I was able to find an answer either in public chat or on a forum.

Ultimately a sandbox game is going to cater to a few groups, and for most players, its the social aspect that keeps the game fun. This isn't a game to log in weekly and raid. This is a game to do things with friends, whether it be getting wealthy in carebear lands by PVE stuff or by holding territory in the outlands (think 0.0 from Eve).

You call the game simple but I just must disagree. You get tossed in the to world, no quest, no tooltips, no guidance. It tries to shuffle you along but ends up weak. There is no explanation that if you want to be archer/mage/fighter you need to equip that weapon. Or if you want to craft you should take this course or that course. No guidance on where to go or how to look for items. That's great you read the webpages and wiki and maybe I'm just old and bitter but I want it in game.

At some point it became expected that in order to play a game I have to watch 15 hours of youtube boss fights and read the forums to understand that my sta caps at 200 even though the game let's it go to 300 in my character sheet. What the fuck? I'm sorry but I make a pretty hard stand on that shit. I just want to play the game. I'm ok if that means I'll never be in the top percent or be the best player, but it is a game and I want to enjoy it, not spend my time studying it just to do the most basic actions. If min/maxers want to do that stuff power to them, but to the common player everything you need and accurate and clear information should all be in the client.
 

Swagdaddy

There is a war going on over control of your mind
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1,870
Biggest problem with Albion is once a zerg is established it can effectively choke everyone else so efficiently that wipes are pretty much a requirement to retain interest

I'm okay with that and I wish a lot more MMO PVPers would get aboard the seasonal/ladder train
 

Eidal

Molten Core Raider
2,001
213
Biggest problem with Albion is once a zerg is established it can effectively choke everyone else so efficiently that wipes are pretty much a requirement to retain interest

I'm okay with that and I wish a lot more MMO PVPers would get aboard the seasonal/ladder train

I wonder what differs between AO and Eve so that a zerg can dominate in AO but not Eve. Maybe it's ratio of game space to player numbers. Eve has seen some big dog alliances come and go, but I don't think there has ever been a time where a smaller group couldn't carve out a little piece of the open space for themselves.

I think devs need to figure out a way to really make logistics be the bane of larger groups. Just like real life.
 

uniqueuser

Vyemm Raider
1,737
4,888
Development Recap: Entering 4th year of "beta" testing because we're creatively bereft millenials who're at a loss when our copypasted game mechanics don't work out the way they do in the games we've copied them from
 
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forge

Lord Nagafen Raider
68
3
Development Recap: Entering 4th year of "beta" testing because we're creatively bereft millenials who're at a loss when our copypasted game mechanics don't work out the way they do in the games we've copied them from
These guys have done more 360s than tony hawk. They have no game world to speak of and need to scrap what they have currently.
 

Chersk

Trakanon Raider
1,338
1,195
I want this game to be good because I love me some open world sandbox but I don't think the devs deserve success at this point.
 

zombiewizardhawk

Potato del Grande
9,315
11,901
You call the game simple but I just must disagree. You get tossed in the to world, no quest, no tooltips, no guidance. It tries to shuffle you along but ends up weak. There is no explanation that if you want to be archer/mage/fighter you need to equip that weapon. Or if you want to craft you should take this course or that course. No guidance on where to go or how to look for items. That's great you read the webpages and wiki and maybe I'm just old and bitter but I want it in game.

At some point it became expected that in order to play a game I have to watch 15 hours of youtube boss fights and read the forums to understand that my sta caps at 200 even though the game let's it go to 300 in my character sheet. What the fuck? I'm sorry but I make a pretty hard stand on that shit. I just want to play the game. I'm ok if that means I'll never be in the top percent or be the best player, but it is a game and I want to enjoy it, not spend my time studying it just to do the most basic actions. If min/maxers want to do that stuff power to them, but to the common player everything you need and accurate and clear information should all be in the client.

This might be the first time i've ever seen an argument that there should be MORE handholding and complete lack of freedom in games, especially from someone who says "maybe i'm just old and bitter" when games had literally none of that stuff back in the day...

As far as watching youtube/etc for boss fights, I think the only people who do that are people who want to be the 1% but actually aren't the top 1% (cause the top 1% are the ones making the guides that they study and the videos they watch). I haven't watched youtubes or looked up guides for how to do any bossfights in my history of gaming and i've gotten along just fine. The only time it's ever been an issue is when content is old and on ez-farm pug status when people get mad at a dungeon taking 10 minutes instead of 6 because someone dies.
 

Swagdaddy

There is a war going on over control of your mind
1,960
1,870
the devs have progressively devolved this game into a shitter and shitter state over the past 2 years, they change their mind about what they want it to be every 3 months

total disaster project

I'm not kidding it was a better game 18 months ago, every patch made it worse