Thus far, having rolled five characters
LIKES:
- I like the “comic book/cartoon” look. So sue me.
- I like the ability to have different default poses.
- I like that the main display shows what level you are. Genius!
- In answer to a couple of common criticisms, I did not feel that my powers were repetitive (vs., say, a low level CoX character), nor that the sharded zones were underpopulated.
- Gameplay was very similar to CoX. Well, maybe even more similar (in my limited MMO experience) to LotRO.
DISLIKES:
- The character design light source shines down on the chest awfully hard, making viewing of detail and true color difficult.
- 8 alts? 8 freaking alts? Very disappointing.
- Shards/instances aren’t in numeric order, and aren’t consistently ordered in any fashion between two machines. So, “Okay, let’s choose shard 145” means the other person’s going to be doing some searching around.
- Running animation (male) is awful. The lumbering gait resembles that of the Huge figure in CoX. Bleah.
- Looting.
- Waiting for things to repop in non-instanced missions.
- Equpping stuff – very LotROesque, slotting various types of gear into different types of roles. I’m sure it will eventually all come automatically, but at the moment it’s sort of shrug and drag it. How different attributes affect different things is purely intuitive to me at the moment, and I’m sure I’m not maximiizing the potential of the character.
Overall: I like, though there are things I don’t.
I got used to the cartoon graphics (especially when I cranked them up full blast), and they do fit this genre. The character creation is waaay better than at first glance…I had my son point out a few options and things that I was missing, especially on how the colors work.
I’ve made it all the way through the first desert scenario with a character, and it’s pretty fun. I’m not seeing myself buying a lifetime subscription or anything, but I’ll spring for 6 months to get the Star Trek beta for sure.
Finally made it on! I decided to uninstall everything and start again with the updated client on FP.
I jumped on for about 30 mins just now and my first impression is… interesting.
The character creator looks to have some really nice looking peices, which I look forward to playing with soon. However, I was really struggling with navigating the long lists of items. Is there a way to scroll through them all without having to keep going to the side scroll bar – it was really bugging me.
I then got to the point in the tutorial where you level up. To this point it feels a bit strange, but hopefully the controls and things will become more familiar pretty quickly. I’m not sure about the cartoon look yet, but that’s partly because I haven’t sorted the graphics options properly. My graphics card is struggling with the higher resolutions on my 22″ Widescreen monitor, so I need to get into the detailed settings to try to find the right balance.
So yeah, interesting…
Haven’t leveled yet.
I appreciate what they’ve tried to do with the organization of costume options. I don’t know what I’d do differently, but it does seem that there’s a bewildering mix of icons, titles that are drop-downs, body part options, multiple drop-down lists for each body part …
The creator does a better job of remembering options as you shift from one costume type to another.
I’m annoyed by the small mask that comes up by default for each character.
I’m annoyed that eyebrows are a separate option *and* they don’t default to hair color.
I like the variable zoom-in. I wish we could zoom in on parts other than the head.
I like that the used colors get listed by themselves on the pallette. That makes it theoretically easier to get all the colors consistent.
I too ran into trouble with the long scroll bar for some of the pieces. Like CoX, not all options are available for all pieces, so sometime you don’t know what you are missing until you try a different piece.
Hate the like on the chest!
I found it hard to move around the rubble. Small things were obstacles and jumping is limited. I never thought I would miss sprint.
I can really see how this is console driven. It is designed around a limited number of buttons to push. I hate having to click z to interact with things. I have a mouse I should be able to just click on them – bleh
When I have more time I will look into the various key mappings to see if I can find something I like.
Is recaptcha telling me something?
would-be dropped
Mouse scroll wheel works in those long lists, but I hear ya.
One of the first things I did was re-map the Z key to clicking my mouse scroll wheel, but I found out that you can right-click on a person to interact and double-click on an object to interact.
I’m trying to think of any MMO game that doesn’t have looting.
Actually, come to that, I can’t think of any FPS that doesn’t have looting.
Even CoH has looting – it just happens automatically. (Inspirations, enhancements, and ingredients.)
Sounds like CO needs that LotRO added awhile back – autolooting.
Que?
I do not understand what this is supposed to mean.
Ahh, so they haven’t mastered 6 year old tech yet, pity. In EQ2 there were three ways of doing this. 1). Player could select the instance upon zoning, highest # was the newest. 2). the group leader could pull players into the correct instance. 3) players could all select an instance on a pull down menu and all show up in it. EQ2 had the best multi-instance control I have seen thus far.
AoC is simular, but a player either needs to be near a rez pad to switch themselves to the new instance, and the instances are named things like Thor, Nu, and so on.
What do you possibly have to loot in the game? Is it like CoX? Are there “Need/Greed” or “Round Robin” looting options or is a free for all?
In CoX, there’s no way to tell what level you are currently at without going into one of of two entries in the Menu. So two clicks and a window gets pulled up (one of them full-screen), just to confirm what level you are. That’s stupid.
On the shards, the tutorial seems to be presently capped at 30ish players. At the moment, for obvious reasons, there were probably a hundred different instances. I expect that will go down, eventually. In the meantime, it’s a pain. You can still choose one upon zoning, and I believe (but don’t know) that you can hop over to one on the fly, but the list itself isn’t sorted. That seems like an easy QoL improvment they can make.
The looting in this case, as I recall, was intersting swag from a fallen opponent. A little “!” floats in the air, and you have to run up (if you’re a blaster) and type “z” to recover it. Irksome, though not unique in the MMO world by any means.
I’m not sure how it gets shared, distributed, or stolen.
I agree with Margie that the terrain was not trivial to maneuver on. Part of that is familiarity, part of that is travel powers or lack of same. Part of it was, of course, running through / across / around / over a lot of rubble, but I just had a lot of times when I seemed to get stuck on something and had to jump or move around it.
I agree that it’s not Looting (in terms of getting stuff from critters) that’s the problem, it’s the lack of CoX (and now LotRO) auto-looting.
Btw, that reminds me of another criticism that I was reading, that there was too many “go get X of Ys” or “go defeat N of Ms”. There’s a fair amount of that in the tutorial, but, honestly, no more than CoX (“Go. Hunt. Kill Skullz”). Fewer door missions thus far, and we did have the annoyance of one outside mission that we needed to wait on a repop for, but, again, nothing that grievous.
For me having to look for the loot indicator and then z it was a big break in continuity. For someone engrained in autolooting it was hard to remember to look for the ! especially since it was not a common event. It is even more anoying when the ! is for a mission goal. With all the stuff going on in the area the little grey ! were not always obvious. At one point I saw one tried to z it only to determine it was a mission drop for Dave – who had moved on. Who knows how many extra kills we did last night because we missed them.
Ahhh, okay. Yeah, I can see it if you are use to auto looting, that actually having to actively loot something is a bit a problem. EQ2 was a doulbe click on the chest that dropped, AoC is a right click on the bag/chest that drops. Both bring up a little box with all the lootables inside and you decided what bits you want and move on. Very quick and dirty way of dealing with it instead of hunting for a key to hit.
Also, most MMOs allow the group leader to set the looting options (usually a right click on the group window, select what you want and go). Need/greed usually works, except for the WoW ninja looting kiddies that Need everything. Best way to deal with that is to boot them from the group, or tell the rst of the group to need all rolls since X is being an asshat ninja looter. Round robin is nice since it rotates between each member of the group, and if the player doesn’t want their drop, it goes to free for all fro the rest of the group.
Also, I think that CoX is the only MMO that does *not* show your toons level somewhere right on the screen, that is why I was confused. Heck, most games now have it where you can show your level right there on the on the name floating over your toons head.
I’m pretty sure you can double-click on the exclamation point and avoid the Z key.
My biggest problem with Z is that it’s too close to the Windows key and I would keep popping out of the game to the Windows menu.
Actually, the key that I was having trouble with was the Shift key (to do a Block). I might remap that to whatever’s on the left of the [1] on my home keyboard.
I’m also feeling the confusion over the various types of slots that the various looted and reward items can go into. I’m sure it’s clear as day what they are, with practice, but again it’s not got a good analog in CoX.
Two more things of note.
1. The zone felt busy — which is what you expect from an alien invasion, dagnabbit. But, in particular, there was none of the “okay, there’s a mob over there, two lieuts and three minions. Okay, after them, there’s the next mob over there …”
Instead, there were patrols, and Qularr lurking all over the place. Stand still, or not pay attention, and you’d start getting shot at.
That’s a good thing.
2. Women’s boobs are — portrayed a lot better than in CoX, wherein they look more like bell jars of different sizes perpendicular to the female chest. Here they’re actually a bit sexy. Overlarge by default, but that’s the genre; they can be minimized pretty well as one sees fit.
Noted purely for purposes of game evaluation, mind you.
#1 is something I was especially impressed by. It kills my sense of being in the game when I can count on a mob standing in a specific spot until I aggro it. That’s one thing I really hate about LotRO. Here, I felt like I was always in danger of being jumped if I didn’t keep my guard up. Heck, I was even attacked in a “safe” area talking to one of the contacts! I can see someone complaining about that, but I thought it was great.
What? None of CoX’s ’52 Cadillac bumper bewbs? =P
@Solonor – Agreed. I was chatting with someone, and she kept shooting at invaders that were coming in.
Sometimes the chaos got a bit much — at the battle around the cannon was difficult to figure out what we needed to do at times. But, in general, that was nicely immersive.
@BD – No, the ladyfolk actually look kinda sexy, in a cartoony way.
Hey, you can have 16 character slots if you buy a lifetime subscription.
Having played World of Warcraft (and not CoX or LotRO) for the last couple years, some of the issues you mention (looting, re-pop, maneuverability) were things I could easily transition to. Considering that 11+ million members of the target audience are familiar with WoW controls, this is not unexpected.
I agree with you on the ordering of shards. A method of sorting the shards in numerical order (for coordination purposes) or capacity order (for finding the emptiest/fullest shard) should definitely be on their to-do list. The system will show you which shard your team and supergroup members are in, but if you’re both wanting to zone in, coordinating can be awkward.
Most quests in MMOs are of the “kill X of Y”, “collect/interact with X of Y” or “escort X to Y” varieties, especially at early levels. I hope they come up with some more dynamic ones, quests that actually effect the shared world (a la the “Wrathgate” quest chain in World of Warcraft) as one levels up.
The gear management thing is still a little confusing. Though I like the fact that if you hover the mouse over an item, it pops up boxes showing what you have equipped in the upper and lower slots.
Quibbles I have, which may just be my ignorance about the interface:
1. I can’t find an easy way to respond to a tell without doing a “/t @account message” command. There should be an easy / command to reply to the last tell, but I can’t figure it out for the life of me.
2. If you accidentally sell an item to a vendor, there’s no way I could find to cancel the transaction and get my item back.
Oh, and I’m @reythiest. You and Margie should add me to your friends lists in-game. 🙂
I think you can reply to a tell by hitting backspace.
@Solonor: Yes, like in CoX. I spotted that in the controls the other day.
Btw, I like that the video options are consistent between characters. I wish the other options screens were, e.g., control changing Shift to “`” for blocking, or the HUD settings (I like seeing my name, and I like having life status bars in the center of my vision — the “show life bar immediately after damage” is an interesting option I’m playing with). The option to save option settings and load them with new toons (as in CoX) would be a nice added feature.
@Rey: Hey! I need to add your name, yes. Also a few others folks. Haven’t quite figured that out yet.
I don’t think I’m going to do a Lifetime sub. I am toying with 6 months, though.
Being a CoX addict, I’m used to inadvertently selling stuff and not being able to undo the transaction, so no worries there.
Agree with pretty much everything else you say. I like the two options for sorting the shards you suggest. Again, I suspect the number of shards for any given zone will drop once Beta and the initial land rush end and players get spread out. But it’s still a royal pain.