Post by iBishyT on Aug 11, 2010 8:49:39 GMT 10
MMOs. A great idea in concept, yet surprisingly hard to produce decently...either that, or most MMO developers are complete dolts who think too little about actual content and too much about DLC. As such it can be quite hard to find a fun, free/cheap to play MMO that genuinely makes you WANT to purchase content, as opposed to feeling forced to.
This topic is for those who wish to discuss MMOs in any context. Whether it be to praise a diamond in the rough, or vent your gamer fury, all discussion is welcome.
Keep in mind we're discussing MMOs in general, not specifically MMORPGs, so feel free to talk about online shooters and RTS games too.
~~~~~
To start things off, i'd like to introduce to you S4 League by Alaplayer, a fun free to play MMOTPS (Third Person Shooter). It is, at first glance, yet another anime styled game from Korea, but it is much more fun and addicting than I anticipated.
Graphics: Cel shaded anime. It manages to look quite nice without being a major drain on your system. As a bonus it actually supports higher resolutions (such as my 1680 x 1050), something which is surprisingly lacking in some other competing games (such as Battlefield Heroes).
Customisation: Pretty good. It's quite easy to make a nice looking character even without going the way of premium content, with a nice variety of clothes, hair, faces, and accessories that can be bought using PEN (money earned by defeating opponents and winning matches). Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of colour options (especially skintone...no black people allowed), though surprisingly some clothes and hairstyles have physics applied to them.
Gameplay: Really fun and fast paced. It plays similarly to GUNZ, except you can't wall run (you don't really need to though, once you're familiar with the controls). Two of the four current gamemodes are typical fare; deathmatch and touchdown (essentially CTF).
The other two modes however, MAKE this game.
First you have Arcade, a mode where you and a bunch of other people work together to defeat oncoming hordes of robots, before being confronted by boss monsters. If played with a large enough group of people, this can be especially fun.
Then you have the wonderfully creepy and intense Chaser. In this mode one randomly selected person is possessed by this horrible looking demon, giving them a large amount of additional health, and it is up to everyone else to try and survive for the allotted time. Should at least one person survive by the time the counter reaches 0, the Chaser loses. If the Chaser manages to kill everyone, they win. In every round, the highest scoring person who isn't the chaser is made The Target, with a little target overlapping them so that the Chaser can easily find them. When killed, the Chaser receives additional points, the next highest scoring person is made the target.
It starts to get especially creepy however, when YOU become the Chaser. Suddenly, everything looks duller and more grey than before. The music is different. And everyone looks like horrible, fleshy demons. Aside from looking downright awesome and helping to add to the mood, this is also done to stop the Chaser from being able to easily find specific players. The only thing aiding them is of course The Target pointing out the highest scoring player.
Combining this, the tense moment when you become the target, as well as one of the Chaser maps being a dense foggy forest where it's easy to get yourself stuck in a dead end, makes for a wonderfully creepy and fun mode.
The Korean version also has an additional mode, which will hopefully be making it's way into the English version soon; Battle Royale, the free for all mode.
Weapons: You can equip up to three weapons and one skill before battle (and the weapons can be of any type, so it doesn't have to be the typical gun-gun-melee setup). The weapons themselves are what you'd expect if you mixed Team Fortress 2 with Megaman, giving you a nice choice between heavy machine guns, shotguns, plasma swords, arm cannons, baseballs bats, pistols, and even sentries (thankfully there aren't any spies to sap them).
Skills: You can equip one skill before battle, and they include both automatic (additional 30 health) and manual ones (shield). One of the more fun ones is the wings skill, allowing you to fly.
Learning Curve: The game is really easy to learn. It probably helps that every weapon you can buy requires you to earn a "license" (read: complete it's own tutorial plus target practise) before you can buy it the first time, so you never go into battle without knowing how a weapon works. Also, whenever you earn a license, you will be given a free trial version of the weapon/skill that lasts for 5 hours, so you never do that thing where you buy a weapon only to find that it's crap.
Hackers: They unfortunately exist, and reporting tends not to do much. Thankfully they bore easily, and tend to leave as quickly as they came.
Premium content: There are three ways to gain items in the game. PEN, AP, and Fumbi.
PEN is the ingame currency, earned by defeating opponents, completing missions, and winning rounds.
AP is the premium currency, earned by purchasing with real money.
With AP you can buy all the same weapons, clothes, hair, and faces that are available with PEN (of course there are premium only clothes and hair as well), with the added benefit of being able to choose additional designs/colours. However, regardless of how you bought it, all items have a time limit before they evaporate (this appears to be common practise these days in MMOs).
The Fumbi is a roulette service, played by paying PEN. In Fumbi you have the chance to earn AP only items (including the aformentioned additional designs/colours) with a special attribute applied to them (such as +def). After a certain amount of spins (read: after paying more than 4000 PEN), you can even choose what you want. The only downside is that items gained from Fumbi tend to last for about an hour tops, though apparently it's possible to earn permanent items if you're lucky enough.
It should be noted that for the most part the timed items are handled fairly. The time for weapons and skills (which can last for up to 30 hours depending on how much you paid for them) only tick down when using them in battle, so they can last a really long time. Clothes and such however (which go by days rather than hours) tick down as soon as you purchase them. Since all weapons can be purchased with PEN, which you earn by simply playing the game, this means you only ever pay with real money for avatar aesthetics (which is how it should be).
Sound: Brilliant rock music, and nice sound effects for the most part. The announcer is pretty cool, though unfortunately the avatars themselves have really annoying voices when they taunt.
All in all it's a fun game that is rather addicting.
Now, I was also going to include a rant about Battlefield Heroes (which practises the horrible idea of forcing players to shell out real money for decent weapons), but this review of S4 League turned out to be longer than planned. God my fingers are tired.
This topic is for those who wish to discuss MMOs in any context. Whether it be to praise a diamond in the rough, or vent your gamer fury, all discussion is welcome.
Keep in mind we're discussing MMOs in general, not specifically MMORPGs, so feel free to talk about online shooters and RTS games too.
~~~~~
To start things off, i'd like to introduce to you S4 League by Alaplayer, a fun free to play MMOTPS (Third Person Shooter). It is, at first glance, yet another anime styled game from Korea, but it is much more fun and addicting than I anticipated.
Graphics: Cel shaded anime. It manages to look quite nice without being a major drain on your system. As a bonus it actually supports higher resolutions (such as my 1680 x 1050), something which is surprisingly lacking in some other competing games (such as Battlefield Heroes).
Customisation: Pretty good. It's quite easy to make a nice looking character even without going the way of premium content, with a nice variety of clothes, hair, faces, and accessories that can be bought using PEN (money earned by defeating opponents and winning matches). Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of colour options (especially skintone...no black people allowed), though surprisingly some clothes and hairstyles have physics applied to them.
Gameplay: Really fun and fast paced. It plays similarly to GUNZ, except you can't wall run (you don't really need to though, once you're familiar with the controls). Two of the four current gamemodes are typical fare; deathmatch and touchdown (essentially CTF).
The other two modes however, MAKE this game.
First you have Arcade, a mode where you and a bunch of other people work together to defeat oncoming hordes of robots, before being confronted by boss monsters. If played with a large enough group of people, this can be especially fun.
Then you have the wonderfully creepy and intense Chaser. In this mode one randomly selected person is possessed by this horrible looking demon, giving them a large amount of additional health, and it is up to everyone else to try and survive for the allotted time. Should at least one person survive by the time the counter reaches 0, the Chaser loses. If the Chaser manages to kill everyone, they win. In every round, the highest scoring person who isn't the chaser is made The Target, with a little target overlapping them so that the Chaser can easily find them. When killed, the Chaser receives additional points, the next highest scoring person is made the target.
It starts to get especially creepy however, when YOU become the Chaser. Suddenly, everything looks duller and more grey than before. The music is different. And everyone looks like horrible, fleshy demons. Aside from looking downright awesome and helping to add to the mood, this is also done to stop the Chaser from being able to easily find specific players. The only thing aiding them is of course The Target pointing out the highest scoring player.
Combining this, the tense moment when you become the target, as well as one of the Chaser maps being a dense foggy forest where it's easy to get yourself stuck in a dead end, makes for a wonderfully creepy and fun mode.
The Korean version also has an additional mode, which will hopefully be making it's way into the English version soon; Battle Royale, the free for all mode.
Weapons: You can equip up to three weapons and one skill before battle (and the weapons can be of any type, so it doesn't have to be the typical gun-gun-melee setup). The weapons themselves are what you'd expect if you mixed Team Fortress 2 with Megaman, giving you a nice choice between heavy machine guns, shotguns, plasma swords, arm cannons, baseballs bats, pistols, and even sentries (thankfully there aren't any spies to sap them).
Skills: You can equip one skill before battle, and they include both automatic (additional 30 health) and manual ones (shield). One of the more fun ones is the wings skill, allowing you to fly.
Learning Curve: The game is really easy to learn. It probably helps that every weapon you can buy requires you to earn a "license" (read: complete it's own tutorial plus target practise) before you can buy it the first time, so you never go into battle without knowing how a weapon works. Also, whenever you earn a license, you will be given a free trial version of the weapon/skill that lasts for 5 hours, so you never do that thing where you buy a weapon only to find that it's crap.
Hackers: They unfortunately exist, and reporting tends not to do much. Thankfully they bore easily, and tend to leave as quickly as they came.
Premium content: There are three ways to gain items in the game. PEN, AP, and Fumbi.
PEN is the ingame currency, earned by defeating opponents, completing missions, and winning rounds.
AP is the premium currency, earned by purchasing with real money.
With AP you can buy all the same weapons, clothes, hair, and faces that are available with PEN (of course there are premium only clothes and hair as well), with the added benefit of being able to choose additional designs/colours. However, regardless of how you bought it, all items have a time limit before they evaporate (this appears to be common practise these days in MMOs).
The Fumbi is a roulette service, played by paying PEN. In Fumbi you have the chance to earn AP only items (including the aformentioned additional designs/colours) with a special attribute applied to them (such as +def). After a certain amount of spins (read: after paying more than 4000 PEN), you can even choose what you want. The only downside is that items gained from Fumbi tend to last for about an hour tops, though apparently it's possible to earn permanent items if you're lucky enough.
It should be noted that for the most part the timed items are handled fairly. The time for weapons and skills (which can last for up to 30 hours depending on how much you paid for them) only tick down when using them in battle, so they can last a really long time. Clothes and such however (which go by days rather than hours) tick down as soon as you purchase them. Since all weapons can be purchased with PEN, which you earn by simply playing the game, this means you only ever pay with real money for avatar aesthetics (which is how it should be).
Sound: Brilliant rock music, and nice sound effects for the most part. The announcer is pretty cool, though unfortunately the avatars themselves have really annoying voices when they taunt.
All in all it's a fun game that is rather addicting.
Now, I was also going to include a rant about Battlefield Heroes (which practises the horrible idea of forcing players to shell out real money for decent weapons), but this review of S4 League turned out to be longer than planned. God my fingers are tired.
