Archeage

moontayle_sl said:

I saw your feed yesterday when you were climbing that mountain and ran across someone's saplings. I think it really highlights the wild west mentality that nothing is truly safe.

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Sutekh_sl said:

I'm trying to find a nice sequestered mountain top to grow a shit ton of wood for my boat. But I'm scared, tree seeds are fuckin expensive man

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Draegan_sl said:

I was thinking about writing something about combat and tab targeting, but I'll use this reply as a segue to it.

At first glance, I was negative on ArcheAge, or at the very best, leery. It had two things I absolutely hate about MMOs these days: Tab Target/Hotbar Combat and Treadmill Quest leveling content. Personally, I could do away with level as a system of character progression, but that's a discussion for another day. When I first jumped in in one of the Korean betas 1-2 years ago, I really couldn't get into it. It was fine enough, but I like English. I tried several other times since then and it wouldn't grab me. I finally got into NA Alpha and my leeriness persisted.

But because Kedwyn, Pyksel and others were really hyping it up I gave it some honest effort. I've really changed my tune on the combat. Combat, in this game are about combos and really feeling the "oomf" behind them. The tempo of combat is really far away from hitting 111112223454311111 for normal NPCs in combat. Early on it's pretty boring with having only a few abilities, but it begins to open up at 10 and again at 15 and 20. You really have abilities that I would consider "base attacks" that set up other abilities to do more damage or increase their effects. Play around in some of the builders and you'll get the idea. You can really create a flow chart of effective combos.

The big thing here is that the cooldowns are longish - 15-60 seconds. From outside looking in, that appears to be a pain in the ass and begins to remind you of EQ2. Well, since mobs die pretty fast, you don't need a combo every single NPC. Combos actually feel good when you pull them off (See a lot of League of Legends champ design theory). The contrast to this is Wildstar. You spam your builder and you drop a spender where you toss in some other abilities along the way. Wildstar's combat is very much throw shit out there and do damage. In Archeage, it's closer to fighting games where you want to be positioned or time your combos properly and when you do, it's a huge pay off.

The only sore part is that it's tab target and there really is no aiming.

In any case, I really have to take back the negative review of the combat. It's really satisfying to set up your class selecting to pull off some cool effects. I'm sure it'll be more interesting with gear and weapon choices down the road.

As far as questing is concerned, it's still shitty. To level up, you're primarily going to be doing quests all the way to cap. Yes you can level off crafting/farming/trading etc, but the core chunk of xp is questing. It's a shame really because the tired old form of questing to level is really hiding some really amazing systems in this game. Why can't the game focus more on crafting, gathering, being a pirate, killing bad guys without having to guide you through 50 levels with treadmill quests?

That's my main complaint in any case. I would love to see GW2's event/heart system in this game in place of all the bullshit quests. Leave quests in for the instructional stuff like farms and things. The only saving grace is that you can turn in quests early or over-worked and you're not stuck with shitty spawns.

Of course the questing portion of the game is very fast, easy, and painless (if not dull). I really hate game design that stick in old tropes just because everyone does it, especially when you have games where you say "the game begins for real when you...". In this game there are a lot of fun things you can do before level cap, and at least that is different.

If only the sandbox became more prevalent a few hours into the game, instead of 10-20 that it takes to hit 30 or whatever.

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Draegan_sl said:

I was thinking about writing something about combat and tab targeting, but I'll use this reply as a segue to it.

At first glance, I was negative on ArcheAge, or at the very best, leery. It had two things I absolutely hate about MMOs these days: Tab Target/Hotbar Combat..

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Vitality_sl said:

Your small and large farm full? You can get a couple hundred logs a day from them pretty safely. Grow Aspen, it produces the most wood. Bazinga.

Also the PVP housing area seems to be a decent place to kind of hide things. I've got a Bay Tree grove that's gone untouched so far.

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Sutekh_sl said:

Don't have a large farm yet, I don't think I reached that quest as I've mostly been gathering while friends are offline, don't want to get ahead of them on quests. I heard Banana trees were the best so I've been getting those, they give 4 wood each, how much do Aspen give?

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Abefroman_sl said:

I have to admit I was confused by your initial impression of AA. I thought in previous discussions you wanted something similar to a MOBA with abilities meaning more and non-spammable. That was my first impression of the combat system.

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Vitality_sl said:

8 or 9 wood each, bananas are part of the chain to get your large farm, so hang onto that crap.

The chain goes:

Turmeric (2-4 Yield)>Cotton(6-9 yield)>Banana (Who knows?)>Stone Brick(3 to 1 conversion)

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Oloh_sl said:

What did I miss? I've been playing on Korea servers and I thought everyone here poo pooed this, but it looks like the tide is turning. Are people in Alpha or playing in russia?

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Pyros_sl said:

It's the tradepack questline I believe, order was wrong on vitality post, it's Tumeric > Cotton(gives a donkey) > Stonebricks > Bananas(give large farm). I think at least bananas give the farm, I'm still on the bricks. It's the blue sand quest guys that give all the craft/trade quests, so like in tigerspine for catpeople/asians.

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Draegan_sl said:

Just because I like to defend RIFT, but RIFT had more content at release than Vanilla WOW (unless you want to count different leveling paths for newbie races).

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Pyros_sl said:

It's the tradepack questline I believe, order was wrong on vitality post, it's Tumeric > Cotton(gives a donkey) > Stonebricks > Bananas(give large farm). I think at least bananas give the farm, I'm still on the bricks. It's the blue sand quest guys that give all the craft/trade quests, so like in tigerspine for catpeople/asians.

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shabushabu_sl said:

Can't tell if serious. Because of freakin Greenscale ? leveling was probably 5 times as fast with 5 times less the content not to mention less dungeons ( they were all retreads ) at end game... and yes, the fact that you cant see the whole world with 1 char... i.e. there are more ways to go.

WoW killed rift on content.

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Rescorla_sl said:

What other alternatives for combat design are there? Almost every MMO I have played has used tab target/hotbar combat. TESO used mouse targeting and tried to incorporate some action elements into combat and people still complained about combat in that game. What MMOs do you think actually got combat design right?

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Sutekh_sl said:

Bitches trying to hold catbeard down.

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