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Kendrik
Thin Blue Line
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 550
Location: England |
Just curious what other people think of this MMORPG/FPS. I don't think there is an NDA now (I didn't read one anyway) but I'm not particually interested in specifics, just what people think in general.
Personally I'm still getting used to it but it seems a bit slow however there appears to be plenty to explore.
What server do most of the RPGdot'ers play on?
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"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
~Member of The Nonflamers' Guild~
~~Champion of the (Unofficial) RPGdot Text Signature Contest 2002~~ |
Tue Aug 27, 2002 12:36 pm |
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vaticide
Put food in here
Joined: 21 Feb 2002
Posts: 1122
Location: One step behind a toddler bent on destruction. |
What?! An open beta I missed out on? Do you have a link for it?
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Tue Aug 27, 2002 4:42 pm |
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Vergillius
Village Dweller
Joined: 27 Aug 2002
Posts: 3
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Well, it still sports its fair share of bugs. But, strangly enough, there is virtually no lag. Not even when there are a lot of players in the zone. Totally unlike AO at that time in it's beta.
Levelling goes rather slowly. They still have their work cut out in balancing the game. Unfortunatly, having a public beta is fine for stressing your servers, but not for balancing the game in the higher levels. Most folks running around are low to midlevel, never high level. That, in my humble opinion, is a mistake all developers make. It makes that a game is usually well balanced in the first levels, but higher levels meet several bugs or game disrupting balancing faults.
At lower levels, there isn't much difference in the different classes you can play. I suppose being a Psi-monk differs the most.
Moving around in the city can be confusing. It's a veritable warren. I've only taken a peek outside the city since it was too dangerous for me to travel far. Unlike AO, you are really hit by the dark once the sun set (not as bad as being a human or barbarian in EQ but still) but you can use a flashlight to light your way and it really works well. Nice touch that.
Visually speaking the engine is not on par with AO, but it works well enough.
One of the most annoying bugs I still encounter are the 'closed doors'. Doors that lead to adjoining sectors often don't open. That is annoying since the sectors are rather small and you cross them regularly. It's not that the other zone is down. At least, I don't think so, you just can't cross into them.
Ocassionally, the server or the zone you're in crashes, but you can reenter pretty fast.
well, that's about it so far. I'm not much of a writer. It's an interesting title that should be able to carve out a niche in the growing market. However, Anarchy Online was also a promising title. Unfortunatly, it stayed a promise for a large part.
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Tue Aug 27, 2002 5:28 pm |
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Kendrik
Thin Blue Line
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 550
Location: England |
I must admit that I am impressed by the speed that the game runs (I'm only on a 56K modem and I'm happy with the game speed).
Whilst this game may carve out a niche for itself I'm still concerned that it may fall into the training treadmill that all MMORPGS seem too. But now I have played it I can make more sense out of the dev notes and balancing discussions at on the Neocron boards
A link to the main site is http://www.neocron.com/
_________________
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
~Member of The Nonflamers' Guild~
~~Champion of the (Unofficial) RPGdot Text Signature Contest 2002~~ |
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Wed Aug 28, 2002 12:21 am |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
How the heck did you download 1.2 GIGAbytes over 56.6k modem?
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Wed Aug 28, 2002 12:31 am |
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Kendrik
Thin Blue Line
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 550
Location: England |
quote:
Originally posted by MoonDragon
How the heck did you download 1.2 GIGAbytes over 56.6k modem?
Very, very slowly 
Nah, I got it off the DVD that came with the English PC Format this month. (I think the English PC Gamer has it next month as well)
_________________
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
~Member of The Nonflamers' Guild~
~~Champion of the (Unofficial) RPGdot Text Signature Contest 2002~~ |
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Wed Aug 28, 2002 12:39 am |
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Provis
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 872
Location: Middle of the Forest |
quote:
Originally posted by MoonDragon
How the heck did you download 1.2 GIGAbytes over 56.6k modem?
I used to download stuff that >or= 1.2 gigs on 56k. It took about a week per 650 megs. 
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"Yea, so what I didn't like Planescape: Torment, what are you gonna do about it?" - Provis |
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Wed Aug 28, 2002 2:13 pm |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
heh. downloaded it in less than 2 hours at work
To answer the original question, my currently favourite account is called Joy on Saturn server (I think--it's the middle one of the 5).
The game is pretty interesting once you get the nack for it. Lack of proper documentation--probably because they do major changes to gameplay with daily patches--is a bit of a hassle. On my current server, there is also at least one griefer guild already. But that also made me make some "friends." The game is... buggy. Not crippling buggy, but annoyingly buggy. There is a bug to be encounterd every 30 seconds on average. I am forced to restart the client myself every 15 minutes--by being stuck or having features disappear/get disabled--or it does it on its own. On the positive side, I like their crafting skills very much.
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Sat Aug 31, 2002 2:28 pm |
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Bach & Baroque
Village Leader
Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 86
Location: United States |
The game looks pretty good to me. I downloaded the 1.2 GHz client (over the course of 3 or 4 days, thanks to stop-and-resume of GetRight), and was impressed, really. A lot people have complained about a supposedly "dated" graphics engine. I can't quite understand that myself, as I think they look fantastic for the most part. Rich detail, good lighting. Kinda weak character models, yes, but otherwise good. My main beef with the game so far is movement speed. Even running seems to be nothing more than a slow, slow shuffle. May have been my characters athletics, but I didn't see anybody else running much faster.
Perhaps they've considered altering this aspect. "We shall see what we shall see." |
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Sat Aug 31, 2002 4:35 pm |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
Bach, it's a mixture of athletics, your current hp and your carrying capacity vs load. My char can generally walk as fast as most other characters run. Just make sure you up athletics and transport skills.
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Sun Sep 01, 2002 5:17 am |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
After having few days to try it out, I have better opinions.
Basically, it boils down to this: The game designers absolutely rule, the graphical artists and world builders are excellent, the code developers are mediocre (or rushed), model builders (both player and some monster) suck, and I don't think they have any sound people. If they do, they should flay them alive. The sounds sound like something I would do at home. No, actually, I'm quite positive I can do a better job. Maybe these sounds are stubs for actual sounds that will appear in the game. I sure hope so. The player models walk and run as if they just pooed in their pants. And selection of character models ranges from bad to horrible. So basically, there are like 3 character models running around. The city design is very interesting. At times frustrating, but intriguing to say the least. Code is buggy, to the point where I don't think they'll be able to polish it sufficiently until release. Unfortunately, some of the bugs are rudimentary. Like for example, yesterday, I would crash every single time I attempted to open an ammo box for the first time. Lag sneaks in, badly, from time to time, and code doesn't handle it well (crashes when you try to use the item second time before the first use has completed, etc). With all those shortcomings, I have to admit I am absolutely enamoured with it.
The leveling is skill based. There are 5 sets of skills, each with its set of abilities. Skills are Intelligence, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and Psi (Psi is magic counterpart). When you use abilities connected to a particular skill, you get skill xp. Once you level your skill, you get 5 points to distribute among associated abilities. Different classes have different maximum values for their skills (300 points total, distributed across 5 skills in a radically different manner). Since skills are leveled by using their abilities, very few of them require fighting. In fact some skills do not get raised by fighting. Crafting is generally a good way to power level your skills (except Constitution, which requires you to be hurt in order to increase). Your relative power rating (ranking you are assigned) is actually based on the equipment you have. Therefore, if you were to take all your implants out and take all your armor off and de-equip all your weapons, you would end up being rank 1. Even if all your skills are maxed out (AFAIK). Add to this your various faction allignements as well as your karmic soullight rating (scale of how good or bad you are) and you got yourself a pretty complex and interesting system to work with.
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Tue Sep 03, 2002 7:02 pm |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
3 of the 5 beta servers have been taken off today. I believe this is to facilitate the game going retail in Germany. The other two servers are supposed to remain in beta until 16th(?). So, if you wanted the check the game out and see if you can tolerate the bugs, you got 10 days left.
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Thu Sep 05, 2002 3:17 pm |
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Kendrik
Thin Blue Line
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 550
Location: England |
quote:
Originally posted by MoonDragon
Therefore, if you were to take all your implants out and take all your armor off and de-equip all your weapons, you would end up being rank 1. Even if all your skills are maxed out (AFAIK).
For some reason your Strength rating also affects your Rank (I think this represents that fact that you do more damage unarmed. Thats great for my Psi Monk who has a Psi of 25 and an Int of 23 who can strip off and look like a rank 1 
I play on Saturn as well - My Psi char is Nalfein but I have a number af alts - I'm trying to test out all the different character classes/ideas. There is talk that when the game is released over here you may just be able to patch the beta client instead of having to download the whole client again. This will mean no manual but it is fairly easy to pick things up - and I have found the community to be quite helpful ( I must admit to being somewhat hesitant to begin with as I thought it would be full of l33t d3wdz - but I was tahnkfully wrong). I even went so far as to remove my LE chip (anti PvP chip) and didn't get killed once over a 3 day period. Then I heard of some greifers around and just reinstalled my LE chip for a while.
I must admit that I'm somewhat hooked on the game (will be even better with vehicles) but I suspect that after a while it may go the same way as most MMORPGS and just become repetative. One major problem I forsee is tha lack of content (not that many differnet weapons or Psi modules) but this may change on release.
Overall I would advise people to try it simply for the cyberpunk setting but be aware that it's not actually that different (in terms of gameplay system) from games such as Ultima Online.
_________________
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
~Member of The Nonflamers' Guild~
~~Champion of the (Unofficial) RPGdot Text Signature Contest 2002~~ |
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Thu Sep 05, 2002 6:21 pm |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
Today's patch was an absolute disaster... Instead of eliminating bugs, they just multiplied them... 
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Fri Sep 06, 2002 5:54 am |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
They fixed many of the showstoppers that were introduced by now... But now they've taken the servers down for like 3 days to "tweak the firewall." If you want a good laugh, go to official neocron boards and read up on some threads in Newbie forum.
Anybody here got the German retail version? Care to share with us the juicy details?
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Mon Sep 09, 2002 8:53 pm |
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