Trove: Scott's Trion on voxels

I think its hilarious the people jumping on trion, but just excuse SOE. Hell at least they gave some of their cash shop credits with the packages(curious how much that is out of the prices). Oh well, gamers only have themselves to blame. Before it was "well it's just $100" now lets see what those people have to say, since they pretty much invited this type of behavior.

@ Ukerric. You realize Landmark was literally a "oh shit we have these tools we use, lets give them to players as a separate game that we can make more money off of and use all the shit they make in EQ:N for a fee". How is that not "how do we get quick revenue from the voxel genre".

yeah. I think they are crazy. Trion looks like they are actually making a game.

Sony looks like they are throwing a tech demo into the wind, and hoping a game emerges from it. Maybe it will. but I see alot of incredibly VAGUE empty promises.

cinge_sl said:

How is that not "how do we get quick revenue from the voxel genre".

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Because what EQ:N is attempting is far beyond the complexity of Cubeworld and Trove. I'm pretty sure SOE could shit out a blocky voxel builder, but they're clearly trying to make a current-gen world builder, instead of resorting to what's easy (blocks and pixels).

They're in the "world building" genre, obviously, but they could put in a lot less effort for a "quick cash grab". It seems like they want EQN to be a flagship product that lasts for many years, not a brief money grab that dies out soon after launching.

cinge_sl said:

I think its hilarious the people jumping on trion, but just excuse SOE. Hell at least they gave some of their cash shop credits with the packages(curious how much that is out of the prices). Oh well, gamers only have themselves to blame. Before it was "well it's just $100" now lets see what those people have to say, since they pretty much invited this type of behavior.

@ Ukerric. You realize Landmark was literally a "oh shit we have these tools we use, lets give them to players as a separate game that we can make more money off of and use all the shit they make in EQ:N for a fee". How is that not "how do we get quick revenue from the voxel genre".

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How many people are working on Trove, 10? Not even comparable to what SOE is trying to do with Landmark.

Iadien_sl said:

How many people are working on Trove, 10? Not even comparable to what SOE is trying to do with Landmark.

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Only because those are the only 10 employees to survive the layoffs

free beta keys up at
Trove Alpha Key Giveaway!

will need to make a free mmorpg.com account, only 500 left will be gone in an hour or less

Iadien_sl said:

How many people are working on Trove, 10? Not even comparable to what SOE is trying to do with Landmark.

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Pretty sure Trove started out as 4 guys who work at Trion who decided to try their hand at doing something different. I don't think it started out as a Trion game initially. I could be wrong. Trove is just supposed to be light fun if I get the gist of it correctly.

Another round of free closed beta access went out last week. Got in.

This... isn't bad.

The game plays and feels ALOT like Realm of the mad god in 3d. And then building on top of that.
Crafting progression is ok atm. A good amount of biome themed decorations.
Good system of collecting gear, then sacrificing it, to save its costume design, to be applied later to any item you wish.
Not 100% sold on color block system.
Like, you do not have ice, and snow, dirt, grass, etc. you have primal grey blocks. Primal purple blocks, etc. Grey blocks are then refined into white, lightgrey, black, etc.
You do have veins for special crafting minerals, though. And biome specific materials.

gogojira_sl said:

Got it, too, but didn't even bother.

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Ditto.

Realm of the mad god you say? Is it really that twitchy and fast? RotMG is great for what it is but it's hard to picture that translating into a 3D MMO, although I guess technically it already is an MMORPG.

yeah, lets see a brief current rundown.

Tutorial is kindof bad.

Basic game system.
1. you claim a "cornerstone". A cornerstone is a 16x16 plot that you and only you can build on. this plot actually moves with you. When out adventuring in the world, you can find cornerstone plots in the wild, which you can summon your cornerstone to. Mobile base of operations. it vanishes from the last place you had it. Currently, can not port back to it, short of manually suicide.
You can build your crafting things on it though.
2. Then you can build a clubworld. wiki on this is a bit out of date, as club worlds, used to be homeworlds, etc. This is a private world you build. starts out small with 1 biome. you need to craft more sectors to make it bigger. can also invite friends, to join your clubworld, and they can build in it as well.
3. the hubworld. Acts like the town in realm of the mad god. trading, portals to random players club worlds. you can place your cornerstone here as well. trade bench, cosmetic, etc.
And portals to the adventure worlds.
4. Adventure worlds are split into level groups. 1-3, 3-4, 5-6, etc to 10+.
(level 20 is cap)
Adventure worlds have monsters, and crafting components from biome spawns. undead and fey areas spawn enchanted treestumps, fairies in ice, and fae drop fairy dust, etc.
5. in adventure worlds, there are random monsters, and quest areas.
A quest area will be a tower looking thing, themed to the biome. sometimes a small jumping puzzle +boss, other times just monsters+boss. Dungeons rae larger complexes with multiple bosses.
Quite a few designs. Although mostly just cosmetic really.
6. 5 classes atm. 2 are free from start. (knight and gunslinger) all can be unlocked via daily quest gold gain.
Mounts are also via daily quest gold, in the cash shop.
7. loot is aoe shared regardless of party. If I mine a golden soul, and you are standing near me, you get one too.

And no, not quite that twitchy. meant more in terms of the world designed class design. 3 "skills", one of which is an ultimate. 5 classes atm, but really I expect them to keep adding ala, rotmg. The portals to adventure worlds really feels like ROTMG's instances. Then running around looking for bosses/quests. dungeons are not quite like rotmg's dungeon portals, but not exactly super dissimilar either.
Combat is definitely slower, and there are not that many creatures, and no bullet hell at all.

Have not gotten to shadow arenas yet. So if those are like ROTMG's farming, not sure. would be funny if they were.

The colors just hurt my eyes. It almost looks like play doh. To me, Minecraft is still a better experience. EQNL is the next step (maybe even an extreme step but the next step nevertheless). I just do not see if a player base even exists for this type of game? Maybe people "looking" for something more than Minecraft but less than EQNL but I wouldn't see the point. Maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised. I have a friend or two at Trion than I believe in and typically Scott does not disappoint. Rift was a huge let down for me over time but it's not like it was a "Rift thing" but really just the direction of the genre as a whole.

After the way Trion handled the publishing of ArcheAge I'm not even going to touch this title.

Tried it at a friend's house. Comparing this game to EQL reminds me of when people compare Hearthstone to Magic:Gathering or one of the deeper CCGs, except a Hearthstone that's not as addictive.

There's some interesting ideas but it all seems themeparkish in feel which is weird, and that's not really what I'm looking for in a building game. A lot of the stuff seems dumbed-down so that anyone can pick it up, which isn't a bad thing I guess but longterm, I just don't see the appeal vs something like EQL where the players have to build everything, not "Here's Adventure World! Here's Cowboy World! Here's PvPWorld!" which I can see them adding later on. Seems kinda like it's reaching for the basic type of player, not really the super-creative.

Also, where are the people? I think I saw 10 guys during the time I was on. Maybe they were in different worlds or something but was so deserted. The way the world is (feels like you're in a jar/container vs an open world like EQL) makes it feel even emptier. The best thing is also the worst thing for me; you can make your own private worlds but you're never going to see more than 2 people over an hour because of that, even if there's a way to allow others in. This makes it more like a single player game than what it seems EQL is trying to foster which is a player-made world as a open community MMO.

Trove doesn't feel like an mmo at all to me.