Archeage

Hartsman_sl said:

Hey. I've logged an unhealthy amount playing it since just before xmas. Not sure where that info came from, but it's very fortunately not the case.

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I mean no disrespect at all and I am not one to call out anyone promoting their game, but if you look at my post history, you will find that I really, really like Korean games. I play most of them in Korea and played Archeage in Korea with some of the members / former members of your team. I got an account before Trion was announced as the US publisher from newgameway and played to max level. Since it went free to play, I set up a new account but haven't played much. Maybe some stuff has changed in the last 6 months, but I don't think so.

In my opinion, the honest good points on the game are:
(1) that it is probably one of the best looking games I have played. It has significantly better looking environments than TERA, but less awesome, but still very good, character models/animations, and
(2) its feature set is something out of a 12 year old dreamer wish list, with all kinds of crazy off the wall stuff you can do (treasure hunting, sea combat, hand gliding, growing pets, robust housing, gardening, raising sheep, racing cars, etc.....its feature set that is really all over the map in a good way).

The above is probably enough that I will play the game in the U.S. for a while, but what is keeping me from being excited about the game are some very significant downsides:

1. The combat is really basic and very last generation. It is pure tab targeted, very simple abilities. In my opinion, the combat system alone relegates what would be an extremely exciting game to mediocrity. Full action combat like TERA would be amazing for this game, but even if it cant be that, some sort of hybrid Wildstar, GW style is a must. Straight basic tab targeted was a major disappointment.

2. The leveling is WoW quest hub progression. You will log in, walk up to a quest NPC with a yellow question mark over his head, get a quest, and collect rat asses until you are max level. The one good thing about this is after level 30 or so, there is a decent amount of PvP, even on the Korean servers, and that the overland monsters actually get to be challenging after a while. Not challenging in a I need to be good way, but challenging in a they respawn fast and adds can rape you kinda way...still better than the snooze easy mode leveling that WoW offers, but a far cry from the direction of some current generation games leveling (pick the style you like, SWTOR's acting style, TERA's BAM hunting, even "GW2's collect them all!" style...all are superior than pull a mob, kill it, collect X, rinse repeat).

3. The dungeons are very simple and very straight forward. Tab target the mob, tank, heal, dps, don't stand in fire, etc. There are plenty of videos out there if anyone cares to look to find them. Its same old same old. You could drop the dungeons and encounters in any MMO that has released since WoW and it would be fine.

So, is the game bad? No. It is not bad. It is just an extremely niche game that will not likely appeal to most of the members of this board because of its lack luster PvE theme park / progression experience. Here are the people that will like the game:

1. If you played SWG for years and were beat up that the servers shut down, Archeage will be a great game for you to try. I almost guarantee you will love it.
2. If you are in a PvP guild, liked Shadowbane, the WvWvW of GW2 and generally like to team up and dominate a server, you will probably like this game.

Here is my advice for what it is worth. The game does not have a chance to compete on its mechanics/PvE content. It's just not that good in those areas, so don't focus on them. It has a chance, however, to succeed in the West with the Eve Online / Shadowbane / WvWvW crowd. I would run with that if I were you from a marketing angle. Find out who the really good PvP guilds are out there, invite them to test the game as soon as you can, and let them post their videos of PvP / naval battles. Promote who is wrecking who on the official website and gear your marketing to them.

The very first thing I would do, actually, is talk to Tuco from this board about getting PRX into the western version of the game ASAP. Ask them who their biggest competition is PvP guild wise and invite them as well. Put them all on the same server and let them talk about the game. Get that community fired up about your game and it will have the best chance to do well.

Just my two cents. Take it for what its worth.

Glad to see you're lurking around these parts still.

And if you possibly can, listen and do what Oloh just said. You could easily get some great word of mouth from PRX and rival guilds if you get them into the alpha/beta and let them have abit of slack on NDA. It shouldnt be that strict anyways since the game is already out in other countries, right? The game will really appeal to the pvp crowd imo, and should be your personal invites into the game to spread good word of mouth. My experiences were of their korean beta period, so Im sure stuff have changed and I'll easily give the game another go, but Im not as hyped as some of these guys are.

If there is one thing this genre needs right now is a successful sandbox sequel to Shadowbane.

Then I misread what you were saying, Oloh - I interpreted your post as: "There's no content other than a grind of machine generated stuff like <old sandboxes>, so there's nothing to do if you're not PvPing." That's what surprised me. Apologies for that.

I think your thought on quests is exactly right. The quest paths are there. They're fine and perfectly fun enough, and even add a couple new little innovations, which do work well. (Over and Underachieving quests, multiple-method quest completion on the ones that have that)

But those are definitely not the high points. The high points are the parts that make it unique. Overwhelming amount of crafting, Economics, Trade gameplay, PvP, Sieges, Boats, Buildings, Gliders, Farms, Livestock ... etc.

Thoseare the reasons we were interested in AA and the things we'll be pushing on. We see it as a complement to the PvE MMOs, not a comparable, and that's a good thing.

We appear to be agreeing.


The one place we may partially disagree is the combat - Yes, it absolutely does have a classic feel - I kind of look at that as part of the charm. It's definitely not the game you play if you want revolution in combat, and I think that's perfectly fine.

The way they do combos is going to be new to a lot of people, and their version of mixing/matching/levelling classes has been fun so far. Those two things alone have made it more interesting to me than I expected.

PRX has been great. We've been chatting on and off since I got back to Trion.

- Scott

Hartsman_sl said:

Then I misread what you were saying, Oloh - I interpreted your post as: "There's no content other than a grind of machine generated stuff like <old sandboxes>, so there's nothing to do if you're not PvPing."

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If I created that impression, it was by accident. To be clear, the world itself is very, very pretty and both the content and the world are 100% hand crafted.

Is the PvE-Content contested or mostly in instances? I love to fight over content, similiar to EQs and VGs PvP.

Oh wow! Scott's here! Man, is that a breath of fresh air.

Our PvP guys are chomping at the bits for this game. We are really looking forward to the US beta because we've heard so many different reviews of the game.

I'm not against "classic" combat personally, as long as there is class balance going into any type of a PvP experience I really do not care about much else. I do not know exactly what Archeage combat entails but the style is irrelevant to me as long as the overall experience is enjoyable.

I've heard nothing but great things in regards to the visual and music so that's a plus. It is just really hard to make any major judgements until we get into the US beta and see some the tweaks and improvements that i'm sure have occurred over the last few months to even a year.

Scott, my question is how much is Trion (your team) involved. Are you playing and giving suggestions? Or are you guys involved at a deeper level?

Really looking forward to what you guys are working on!

Hartsman_sl said:

The high points are the parts that make it unique. Overwhelming amount of crafting, Economics, Trade gameplay, PvP, Sieges, Boats, Buildings, Gliders, Farms, Livestock ... etc.

The one place we may partially disagree is the combat - Yes, it absolutely does have a classic feel - I kind of look at that as part of the charm. It's definitely not the game you play if you want revolution in combat, and I think that's perfectly fine.

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This board seems to be split evenly into those who prefer classic combat and those who want actiony more twitch stuff. I personally hate twitch and actiony. Wildstar is fun, but the combat is why I probably won't be playing it.

Overall, the game sounds fantastic. Any guesstimate for release?

If you want to step into a minefield, would love your thoughts on Brad's Kickstarter...

I'm level 50 in my first set of classes, second set are ~L37, haven't even gotten into PvP yet, there's still static quest content I haven't touched, and I haven't seen about 1/3 of the world. Haven't fully mastered any craft skills, have been dabbling in about half of the 20. Have two boats, a house, a farm. Haven't played much of the economic game. Have played with the exploration (treasure maps, raising treasure chests from shipwrecks). Have been playing the trading game. Haven't composed music. Have only done a couple of the dungeons. Actually needed to do crazy things like "use CC." Really want to do more of those.

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Interesting. What kind of time we talking here? When you log in can you tend to the house and farm after a PVE grouping stint before logging off? I understand you are probably testing and getting pretty in-depth but I was curious how much you can accomplish in a hour? two? or four hours?

Edit: A couple things some folks here might appreciate more than talking to press:
1) One of my first combos I tried included their Songweaver (Bard). I twisted three songs, old school style. Laughed when it worked.
2) A lot less BoE/BoP than I expected. Surprised me, they deal with item exits differently. Another system I'm looking forward to seeing at scale with a full economy.

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Twisting songs? CC? You are dropping some pretty old school terms? What does this game feel like to you without getting into comparisons? You think players like me who have been around since the late 90's with MMO's are going to see some familiarity to the old school mechanics or a lot of something new?

Gecko_sl said:

This board seems to be split evenly into those who prefer classic combat and those who want actiony more twitch stuff. I personally hate twitch and actiony. Wildstar is fun, but the combat is why I probably won't be playing it.

Overall, the game sounds fantastic. Any guesstimate for release?

If you want to step into a minefield, would love your thoughts on Brad's Kickstarter...

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Its not even that I dont LIKE twitchy or action gameplay. When I play an MMO, I have a toddler climbing up on shit, punching buttons on my keyboard, wife yelling at me to weigh in on which color hand towels make the coutertop "pop", etc. I LOOOOVE tab targeting slow ass combat in MMOs. I play mmos for crafting, dicking around, socializing, and general time wasting. I play dayz if I want to sweat.

Ridas_sl said:

Is the PvE-Content contested or mostly in instances? I love to fight over content, similiar to EQs and VGs PvP.

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This is what my post was directed above at. The Dungeons are instanced, so its not like EQ's PvP. There are Korean style world bosses scattered throughout that drop good loot and will likely be contested.

Dungeon:


World Boss:

This game doesn't have raids (in the traditional PVE sense) does it? Not saying it's a make or break feature, but I recall reading that.

Muligan_sl said:

Interesting. What kind of time we talking here? When you log in can you tend to the house and farm after a PVE grouping stint before logging off? I understand you are probably testing and getting pretty in-depth but I was curious how much you can accomplish in a hour? two? or four hours?



Twisting songs? CC? You are dropping some pretty old school terms? What does this game feel like to you without getting into comparisons? You think players like me who have been around since the late 90's with MMO's are going to see some familiarity to the old school mechanics or a lot of something new?

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First Question. You can get a lot done in an hour. The questing is like WoW, with the mini map and quest markers. Whole 9 yards. I don't speak a lick of Korean and was able to complete all quests to max without many issues. Where I did have issues, some Google Fu with a language translator did the trick (for example, one quest you have to kneel before a NPC, so that took me a while to figure out, since I didnt know what hey were looking for). Think WoW, basically when it comes to content compartmentalization. You can also tend to your sheeps and plants in an hour if that is your thing.

(Note, depending on the pricing model they roll out in the U.S. crafting may or may not be available for free. When it was a sub game, you had a separate "crafting mana" that regens slowly. With the implementation of the free to play model in Korea, the tweaked the crafting system in a way that makes it hard to mess with in the west. Namely, you cant regain crafting mana without paying and paying with a western credit card is risky.)

Second Question. The combat is, oddly enough, a mix between WoW and EQ. The "classes" and skills arent as well defined/polished as in WoW, so the synergies between skills are pretty basic. In WoW terms, you get three talent trees. Each one is a fantasy archeype, so there is like an enchanter, bard, necro, warrior, archer, etc. So, you can be a Necro/Warrior/Bard, which ArcheAge considers your class. You can change these up freely and level them independently (ie, can level up the warrior tree, then bank it and come back to it later at the same level). The trees have pretty much has what you would expect. Life drain, mana drain, knockback, summon a flock of birds Swain style, etc. There is nothing new about the combat, other than the fact that you can basically build your class by selecting separate talent trees. It is WoW combat 100%, but just a little less synergistic and polished because of the flexibility that the system gives you. When you design skills within a clean box, its easy to make them work well together. When you dont know what the box will be, you can try to make them work together (and ArcheAge didn't do a bad job of it), but its just not as "clean" of an integration.

gogojira_sl said:

This game doesn't have raids (in the traditional PVE sense) does it? Not saying it's a make or break feature, but I recall reading that.

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As of the time I played it, there were no "raids" in an EverQuest/WoW sense...i.e. get 40 well geared people, fight through a progressive dungeon and kill a boss that is designed to fight 40 people. There are plenty of Korean style raids, such as the Kracken and other bosses, like the dragon linked above.

There are also no battlegrounds, which is a double edge sword. They had one in beta for testing PvP balance, but I am told (as I said, I dont read/write/understand Korean) they have since officially stated that there will be no battlegrounds. They don't want to shrink the world and suck the PvP out of it. I say it is a double edged sword because on one hand that approach is dead on and is exactly what a world PvP focused game needs. On the other hand, it really makes it so that the only "PvP on demand" is to go to the populated areas and gank people. I guess on the balance, for the type of game ArcheAge is, no BGs is probably the best move.

Oh, its also important to note that it is team based PvP, although I heard that the intent for the future (maybe already in?) is to be able to break off of the standard teams and create your own, stand alone teams that fights both sides. A lot of PvPers in my guild were really excited about that feature.

Remit_sl said:

Its not even that I dont LIKE twitchy or action gameplay. When I play an MMO, I have a toddler climbing up on shit, punching buttons on my keyboard, wife yelling at me to weigh in on which color hand towels make the coutertop "pop", etc. I LOOOOVE tab targeting slow ass combat in MMOs. I play mmos for crafting, dicking around, socializing, and general time wasting. I play dayz if I want to sweat.

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mkopec_sl said:

YEah Ill pass on the new fangled twitch style combat as well. Fuck, who am I kidding, Im getting old and cant compete with the whipper snappers anymore. MMO combat, IMO should be all about tactics, and integration and meding of your skills with your groups. There is plenty of innovation that can be made in the oldschool trinity + control slower combat models.

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With both of you. Remit I've got a 4 and 2 year old that love doing that too.

When I want actiony/twitch combat I play a FPS or something , much prefer tab target/slower combat in mmo's.

By the way, you really don't have to take my word for it. It is trivial to get on and play. It costs $11.90 for aperma accounton the Korean Servers. If people start playing, shoot me a PM and I'll coordinate servers. The game is worth the download for sure.

Oloh, thanks for the responses. Very helpful.

This leads me to a big question personally. Because you have various trees to level or whatever, can you customize yourself out of being useful? The only part that does not sit well with me in regards to having so much freedom in developing a class is you can create something that groups do not prefer. That is one aspect I like about more simplified classes. I know I have played games that would ask if you have ability X or want to know the amount of points you have in each tree, etc. I guess it is that way somewhat with AA's as groups/guilds would have a minimum AA amount.

Additionally, I have never really found a point in this type of gameplay as most people end up researching "builds" and just copying the most effective ones. Thus, you wind up with 2-3 primary builds with minor variations so why not just make those 2-3 classes instead of creating over 120 variations?

I guess I do not know enough about how Archeage works and i'm just generalizing based on other experiences.