I have it.   And as usual, its a chain reaction.  I’ve been swamped at work, with some major things going down, that probably won’t be resolved fully for another month or so.

Artwork by Dale Wicks, visit his site and see his other awesome prints!

And once I get hit at work, it pushes my game time.  In part because I have less time to play, and in part because by the time I get home, get family stuff done, and hit my usual playing time, I can’t bring myself to do much more than stare at the computer screen.  I’m either so stressed or so exhausted that its hard to get over that hump.  It helps having a good corp in EVE that I can just log on and chat with.  Even if I decline to do much of anything with them, they understand, presumably because they’ve been there before too.  (The two month long long marathon to Cruiser V/Med. Turret V/Weapon Upgrades V/Hull Upgrades V doesn’t help either, esp. coming after the corp required two week long starbase gunner training.)

So the best way to break malaise is with something new and exciting and shiny right?  I’m sure the two weeks of Conan will pass pleasently, but unless I stumble into a good guild, I don’t think I’ll be resubbing there at the moment.  Honestly, I’ve contemplated two paths.

There's no giant yellow question marks or red dots - how do I know which way to go?!

One is Everquest II.  Its still by far the only fantasy MMO that has “the complete package.”  Fun crafting, solo and group adventuring, housing, and tradition behind it (I get goosebumps and flashbacks when I hear the main theme redux on the loading screen).  And I have a waiting guild invite.  It would mean either transferring my character or starting fresh (tempting here is the new box version at Best Buy – start a new account, with two months free, and all expansions, and 500 Station Cash, for $20).   I could also go the Access Pass route, tempting because this is my favorite time of the year to play Vanguard (Randolph the Free Flying Mount!), which still has my favorite class to play out of any game out there.  Plus, Pirates.  On the flip side – if I start a new account for EQ2 , it won’t be linked with my Station Pass sadly.  And none of it is really new – so will it help my malaise?

The other option is a pretty oddball one, but it might just work.  I missed the glory days of DAoC.  And I still kick myself for it.  WAR is really nothing more than a stripped down kiddy version of DAoC.  I asked around on the forums and it seems there might be a few guilds left kicking over there that would be willing to take a complete noob in and help him level and show him the ropes.  The downside is that population is down, and so finding friends to just go explore and grind with might be difficult.  As one responder said to me “Most people PvE to powerlevel. Almost no one does it for the content anymore because everyone has done it.”  So there is the inherent frustration – what will be new to me will be ho hum to all others.  I don’t suppose I could convince some one out there to go in with me to make for a better experience for us both eh?  Normally I’d drag my brother in, but between EVE and FE and WoW he’s got his hands full already…

So there’s my dilemma in a nutshell.  And what good is having a blog if you can’t share your dilemma’s and find aid for your DMD (decision making disorder)?  Even if you don’t respond, if you’ve made it this far, I feel better just knowing that through transference I might have a chance at another saving throw to overcome this Paralyze status ftw.  ::wink wink::

(ETA: I *know* I hit PrntScr a number of times in the two weeks, but the folder is empty.  Whether this a bug in the game, or some version of user error, I don’t know.  In any case, my apologies.)

With all the hullabaloo in the last year over review processes and what constitutes a review, I’m hoping the quotes keep me out of trouble.   Nevertheless, this IS my review of my time in Fallen Earth, if you have a problem with it, just save yourself some heartache and move on.  The review comes in four parts: The Good (what I liked), The Bad (what I didn’t like), The Ugly (what needs work), and The Tilt (the x factor, stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere).  Ready or not, here we go:

The Good

For all the supposed bugs and problems, once I was in the game itself, it was an incredibly stable platform.   I crashed only twice in two weeks, and once was due to my internet connection going down.  Compared to other games, this is great (I still disconnect once a night minimum from EVE – “socket closed” my foot…) and a good start.  The tutorial does what it should do – guiding you through the basics of the game and letting you practice.  The storyline was an added bonus I thought – it meshes well with the rest of the game.

Speaking of storyline, the lore and the atmosphere are fantastic.  It easily gives a solid vibe thats a mix of Wild West and Mad Max, and that is not a bad combo for post-apoc at all.  Contributing to this is the sheer amount of stuff you can find, use, and create in the game.  Kudos to the developers for not creating this smorgasbord, and then artificially limiting it by making some items clearly better than others.   People were using everything from closet rods to rusty dress sabres to golf clubs as melee weapons.  Armor is not quite as robust, but there are still several options available.

Quest hubs are easy to find and not overwhelming in their sheer number of arcs and tasks.  In the three areas I visited, the tasks were spread out 360 from the township, allowing for a good flow of traffic and keeping any one place from getting to crowded – many games don’t even attempt this basic design philosophy.  Quest rewards and drops themselves are good, I found myself equipping and using a mixture of both to good effect.  And as a sideline to this – transportation done right.  No instantly jumping across the entire play area, and fast travel has economic and logistic limitations beyond a “once and done” ridiculously high cost for a mount. 

The Bad

This can be summed up in two words:  Crafting and Economy.  Crafting consists of picking a recipe, hitting a button, which sends it to a queue with a timer.  The timer can be shortened if you stand around an area where a workshop is.  But since you can’t do anything else in that space, other than perhaps to chat or sell off extra stuff, your best bet is to head right back out into the big bad world and keep collecting things.  The only time the workspace benefits you is for long time items when you log off.  The crafting queue keeps rolling even if you are offline, much like EVE’s manufacturing slots – which is fine for a factory building a starship, but is a little hokey when you think about grilling your chicken salad while offing radiated mutants.  The queue also holds up to 25 items, further encouraging the queue and go mentality.  Even more vexing for crafters – every single crafting skill is based off of one attribute – Intelligence (with a minor bump from Perception).   Since your attributes govern your max for tradeskills, that means that you might as well throw some bullets in the queue with your chicken salad, because as a crafter, you are equally good at producing both.  It may be that at higher levels, the sheer time of the recipes limits your specialization – but devs should never underestimate the amount of time players are willing to waste on a game.

This ties directly to the economy.  Unless you are a hardcore PvP player, its well worth the invested points to bump your Intelligence so that you can produce your own gear rather than buying it.  The vendors sell the same items you can make, often for a huge markup over the cost of the materials – which are literally lying around on the ground for you to pick up, free of cost.  Since crafting requires no time investment seperate from adventuring,  even if you hate crafting, its not a burden at all to max it out.  Particularly if you plan to use gas powered vehicles (so you can make your own fuel) or guns (so you can make your own bullets).  There’s alot of speculation about what this does to the economy in crafting.  The only check and balance in place is that you can buy any mat from the right vendor for a set price.  So the auction house prices for mats will never inflate, tied to that max number as they are.  I’m guessing that they are betting that players will pay money to acquire particular items now as opposed to waiting a few hours, days, or weeks to craft the item (and yes, some items take that long).

The Ugly

While the game is stable, or at least was to me, there are a number of irritating bugs - items you should be able to craft not updating correctly with your skill, requiring a re-log.  Running to a harvesting node on the map, only to find that its bugged and no longer works.

A new type of quest – a tracking quest – is being tried out in the game, which basically involves traveling a bunch of way points before hitting the quest goal or target.  This is beyond irritating, especially since more than one that I did led me in a circle back to nearly where I began – and that was one where I was following a blood trail.  Apparently he was delirious enough from the blood loss to cross back and forth over the same area (ie, the enemy camp) several times.

That great variety of gear?  Yeah, that doesn’t exist with transportation or with ranged weapons.  Until you hit the second tier of areas, the only thing you will be wielding is zip guns or crossbows.  Apparently regular bows no longer exist.  Or throwing weapons.  And no one has thought to go back to muskets and arbesques yet. 

Combat is vaguely SW:G-esque.  You can zoom in with a scope on someones head, but why bother, when its not going to do any more or less damage then hitting them in the torso would, and it takes alot more time to aim and you have less of a chance of hitting your target when they start moving.  Switching between first and third person takes some getting used to, but isnt bad.  Switching weapons though, is a nightmare.  Only equip what you plan to use, would be my advice.  If you want to carry other stuff, fine, just lleave it in your pack.  Other than aiming and shooting, you can use the occasional skill.  At level six, having finished one crafter starting town, one combat starting town, and one support starting town, I had one skill for melee, one for pistols, and none for rifles.  Its not a bad thing necessarily though – its a tried and true system, and combat involves a lot of duck and weave movement, so trying to track whack-a-mole buttons is tough.  Still, its missing something.

The six factions are so badly stereotyped its almost impossible to empathize with any of them.  Its basically the treehuggers, the barbarians, the scientists, the military, the do-gooders, and the merchants.  And I must be missing something somewhere.  The best gear is supposed to  be faction gear – ie, the barbarians (ChotA) have the best melee weapons, etc.  And to gain faction with one group means losing twice as much with the opposing factions.  Which means your group/guild/gang/whatever will eventually be KoS in each others home towns…how is that supposed to work exactly?

The Tilt

With all that, I’d love to tell you that FE sucks and you should go do a different game.  But I can’t.  Its just too darn fun.   There is something great about the game itself that transends alot of the individual elements.  Some of it was visual – at level 6, I at least *looked* like a badass mofo.   Some of it is the character potential – the MMO market is ready to go classless, and this game is a great example of that.  I know its harder to balance, but seriously, its time for someone to get it done and get it done right.  One of the things FE is supposedly implementing to help with gimped characters is remapping – only this remapping will be done slowly – over the course of a week or two.  This keeps PvP from going nuts, but still allows for a surprise – pull your best healer off the line for a week and watch your opponents surprise when the meet him next!   And it promoted experimentation within reason – a big, big deal.  Players will play what they want, secure that they can make corrections or tweeks later, but few people will go out of their way to try outragious combos because it will suck away their play time.

And then too, is the setting.  This is a truly unique game right now, and it has a nice niche that will hopefully allow it to survive until it finds its footing.  The community is helpful and has their big-boy pants on, which is nice.  Part of this charm may fade too – the game truly feels post-apocalyptic right now, but as more and more player guides and maps and such come out, it will lose some of that mystique, and losing that will hurt this game more than it would say, your stock fantasy adventure. 

Final Tilt:  This is a game developed by a smaller company, and is a labor of love.  As a result, they listen to feedback (GM’s are on and vocal 24/7), are actively improving the game’s mechanics and content.  Given who they are, what they have accomplished here is that much greater.  Its worth buying the game even if you don’t keep going beyond the first month, because it rewards the gaming community in the long term to encourage this sort of approach and dedication to game making.

So, get to it.

TL;DR Version:  A flawed, but fun game, with a bright future ahead of it.  Give it a try.

I got a notice from FunCom that I have 2 weeks free of Conan (also heads up: a free week of LotRO starts tomorrow).  But that wasn’t the interesting part of the email:

Subscribe for 3 months and get guaranteed access to the closed beta test of The Secret World + the reward above*

Oh shame on your FunCom!  You tempt me to send you money for a best test…I’m wise to your ways.  But am I strong enough to resist?

So…I’ve been loving this Armageddon thing.

I saved more than intended for my first battleship, the Apocalypse – less drones, but it did have the missle tube, which I thought was cool, and it was more of a sniper ship, that fit with my usual missioning buddies sniper Megathron.

But since we lost both my Apoc and that Mega in the war, we went back to the drawing board.  My buddy had already been working on a Level 4 Solo Dominix fit, and he just went ahead and used the insurence payout he got to finish it out.  Me, I ended up with the Geddon, for simplicity and cost sake.  But I do way more dps and tank way more dps than I did with the Apoc.  Think that might be an indication that I either a) didn’t have the skills or b) didn’t have the right fit?

Might be wrong, but he still does more dps than my Apoc did...

So the last week or so I’ve been pacing through Battlclinic, talking with other pilots, using EveHQ.  And spending some money this time – something I really didn’t do with the Apoc.  The end result has been satisfying.   We took it out on a level 4 a few nights ago – the Domi, my Geddon, along with a Raven.  A minute later my buddy said “man, those new turrets sound…evil.”   I zoomed in close – and they did.  They sounded like frickin lazor beams.  It was coooool.  Sorry, little boy and his toy moment there.   But also, I was destroying people.  800…1100…1400…the damage numbers floating across my screen were great.   After the mission they were eager to test me out, so we did a little shooting back and forth.  The Domi held up well, but that’s to be expected with dual repping going on.  I was ahead of his repair curve, but we could tell it would be a really drawn out thing.  The Raven was the most suprising.  I guess because Amarr does EM/Thermal, I was ripping the shields of the Raven very quickly.

The downside is that I can’t engage beyond 50km, and I really need to be within 20km to open up my best dps.  After some discussion, while the ship already had an official name, the corp has decided to call it the shotty, short from the sawed off shotgun description we agreed was pretty accurate for it.  If I can get Weapons Upgrades finished and Advanced Weapon Upgrades started though, it will open up a whole new world of pain with that boat as it would free up space for better armor and allow me to swap for a dps or optimal range rig.

FE trial should end either today or Monday, so expect a post/review on it Monday.  Alganon I confirmed I am under an NDA and the  game doesn’t launch until Dec. 1, so it will be a while before you see anything about it.

We're Doin' It Right.

Some quick updates:

Fallen Earth: I have about a week left on my trial key, and I’ll have a write up ready to shoot to you all with my take on the game.

Alganon: I’m not sure what kind of NDA I’m under for this game (not alot of good communication thus far, as you may have noticed). I believe the game releases Dec. 1, but whenever the NDA is lifted, I’ll have a write up on this one as well.

EVE Online: Coming Soon ™ a new post: Battleships…I was doin’ it wrong.

It occurred to me, as I play through these two Betas – ok well one trial and one beta, that I hadn’t gotten around to telling you what happened to end our little war.

The day after that whole double cross went down, I logged back in, to do some mining and moneymaking so that I could restock my lost ships.  I was greeted with a host of corp mail that came as a bit of a shock.

The corp that had war dec’d us had withdrawn it – the war would actually be ending early.  On top of that, our corp leader had received mail from their corp leader:  they would be setting us to blue and had invited us to participate in pvp ops with their crew (we got invites into their fleet organizing channel a few days later as well).  With the mail came praise for our “coolness” and skills.  We had – impressed them.

In the days since then, though I have not been able to talk with the ones we battled that night to confirm this 100%, our understanding is that it was not a planned double cross.  It was more along the line of “OMG I’m going to lose my Faction-equipped Sleipnir to a bunch of noobs, come help quick!”  Yeah that Sleipnir out there, turns out it didn’t have anything on it that didn’t start with “Republic Fleet.”  They had clearly underestimated us, and it did not want to pay the price.  And…I can’t blame them really.  That Sleip had to have been worth over a billion ISK with the gear that was on it.  If that had been me, I would have been screaming for help too, deal or no deal!

In talking it was probably the best thing that could have happened.  Remember our corp goal?  Provide weapons and ships to low sec pirates – be a sort of black market arms dealer?  Well, with a little investment and a week of war, we have accomplished that with one of the bigger pirate corps in the area.  And as we do some pvp ops with them, that blue status will hopefully begin to spread.

To celebrate, we spent all day the day after the war closed mining and rebuilding.  My wallet is at pre-war levels, and the only thing I’ve lost in net is trading down from the Apoc to an Armageddon, and that was my choice, not because I couldn’t have had the Apoc.  Well, I still need to rig the Geddon as well, but still, a small price to pay.  The next step is to grab either an Assault Ship or an Interceptor and do some pvp ops.

The hesitation – and the downside of this?  We may find that its not a good thing to be the buddy of the biggest bully on the block…

Follow, if you will, the sequence of events here, especially those highlighted in RED:

SilverElf4,You have been added as part of the last wave of Alganon beta testers before its launch on October 31, 2009. Your MyAlganon account “SilverElf4″ has been upgraded to have immediate beta access. You don’t even need a beta key! Simply login to your MyAlganon.com account and click the “Beta” button to get instructions on how to download the client. Once you are finished downloading, installing and patching the beta client use your MyAlganon login account name and password to login and play the Alganon beta.

Greetings,

 

I received my invitation to the last round of Beta testing before launch and was very excited.  I have downloaded the client from http://www.myalganon.com but when I run the client and put in my account name and password, it tells me that the information is invalid and will not download the installer.

 

I’m not sure what to do.  I used the same account name and password as I used to access the page with the beta client as supplied in the email.

Just a quick note. I’m doing Fallen Earth now, which while its technically not beta…it basically still is. And I got an invite on Saturday to participate in the last round of Alganon Betas before its launch.

And I’m sad to say, despite having had the FE client for 4 days, I’ve yet to be able to play the game. But kudos to theirs support team for their timely responses and aid, even if there is no end in sight to the bugs I’ve encountered.

Alganon on the other hand, needs to get its stuff together. As of this morning, I still can’t even download the client. And I haven’t heard back from their support team *at all*.

More on EVE and the ultimately bizarre and yet awesome conclusion of our first war dec later on.

One of these things is not like the others.

Snagged one of the free 15 day trial keys for Fallen Earth today.  My brother bought the game at the beginning of the week and has been loving it and gave me a head’s up.  As its been patching today I had a few minutes to skim the patch notes.  And I begin to wonder exactly what kind of game this is…

How exactly would one equip….nevermind, just…nevermind…

Basically, everything they did this week thus far was a lie, to get us to go to sleep so that they could issue a full fledged beat down.

We had a Sleipnir and Taranis off station, the usual camping duo, and had been working on fits to take them down.  We had it down on paper when they both logged.  We told them we were ready, but they demurred in the face of wife aggro (so they said).  We took the ships out, and our one T2 pilot brought his Sleipnir out and we tried out our tactics.  We were wrapping up and docking up for the night when the Taranis pilot reappeared.

She was impressed at how quickly we were adapting, and hovered just outside our range on station, so we knew she was calling in the troops.  We stayed close by to see what they would bring, eyes on the gate into system.  Sure enough, another Sleipnir appeared.  We all docked up except our newest pilot, in his brand new Hurricane, who somehow, and I’m still not clear how, got himself  aced and limped back in his pod (I *think* he had warped off and was trying to warp in at 100 to catch the Taranis, without telling us what he was doing, and arrived, unfortunately, about the same time the Sleipnir did).  That blew our setup to hell and we had to go back to the drawing board, all with them doing their usual friendly but still irritating smack talk.  Our new pilot (as in, less than a month old) asked if he could collect his loot.  Up until now this had not been a problem with them, but suddenly it was.  In addition, a Scimitar had shown up, and they were complaining it was five to three.   Our corp leader, being diplomatic and contining the friendly banter we had been engaged in all week, offered to fight 3v3 if they let our rookie have his gear back.  They dumped his gear just outside the dock and we took a minute to finalize our plan before we undocked in unison.

It was their Sleipnir, Scimitar, and Taranis vs. our Sleipnir, Megathron, and Prophecy.  I was going to bring my Apoc, but the truth is my skill set now lets me squeeze more DPS out of the Prophecy.  The strat was simple – the Sleipnir was fitted with its usual autocannon compliment – and three heavy neuters.  The Mega had its usual rails – and a hold full of ECM drones.  The Prophet had its usual pulse lasers - and  a tracking disruptor.

It worked like a charm.  The Taranis went down in a blaze of glory within 60 seconds.  She got enough of the ECM drones before she popped to allow the Sleip to lock onto me and start pounding.  We shifted to the Sleipnir, and his shields started dropping fast.  My Prophecy was in armor, but he was so locked down that he wasnt able to shoot at me again.  And thats when all hell broke loose.

An Ishkur undocked from the station, flown by one of their pilots, who apparently had docked it there beforehand when none of us were on, and he was waiting in a neutral alt for the signal.   He crapped all over the ECM drones in no time flat, and the double cross was on in force.  I called my brother out but their wasnt much the Rifter could do other than draw fire.  With the ECM off, the Sleipnir started pounding me again and I didn’t last long.  I docked up in a hurry, not certain how far the double cross was going to go (we had refrained from podding during the war by mutual agreement).  I was pissed as hell though, and the Apoc was undocking 30 seconds later, about the same time a T2 fitted Thorax from their corp joined the fray.  We pounded the Ishkur down, but we knew it was a lost cause and decided to bail.   The Mega went down finally and I couldnt quite finish off  the Ishkur before I died.  I tried to warp off, because we apparently had either confused or damaged their only remaining tackle device, but somehow I had drifted into the station itself, and battleships do not unstick easily.  I tried to dock but I was scrammed and webbed and for some reason, when I hit the docking button it gave me the “your being squeezed out, it will be another 30 seconds before you can dock again” – (thats twice now this week and EVE glitch cost me a ship).  It didn’t take long for my pod to go.

Just when we thought that maybe theiy weren’t griefers after all, just a corp that liked PvP, they taught us another invaluable lesson.  I’d warn you off, but even putting their name here would be too good for them.  Local chat was…difficult.  With griefers, if you complain too much, they get off on it, and then we get another week of war dec status.  If you say nothing, they get pissed, and you get another week of war dec status.  So we tried to be proud and gracious and not too sore about it.  But it was hard.

There were some bright spots though.  When I undocked the Apoc, I became the new primary, and so our corp leader’s Sleipnir managed to escape.  And both my ships were insured.  Don’t get me wrong though, it hurt.

My Apoc, Dead by Sunrise, was fully rigged, and no insurance payout will cover that.  And since I don’t have a JC, there went my +3 implants, all five of them.  But, we fought hard, and we did the best we could with what we had, and we made sure they understood that, because that will probably be the only thing that keeps us from getting griefed again.

The good thing about EVE though, is that unlike other PvP games I’ve played – trying to “be a hero” does have its rewards.  I didn’t have to undock with my pride and joy, and I was the only guy who lost two ships and got podded.  I went all in and laid it all out there for my corpmates, and they are saying thank you – the corp leader is building me a new Prophecy in return for saving his beloved command ship, and my buddy is giving me a spare set of +3’s that he had acquired from storyline missions, since he has a JC and uses +4’s these days in his non combat clone.

I’m still not sure what to make of the evening though, both tactically and just in terms of my feelings.  Alot of that may have to do with the fact that I laid it all out in another sense too – I’ve only had three and half hours of sleep.  So perspective may not be soon in coming, at least not until I get a chance to sack out.  On the bright side, I don’t really need to log in the next two nights until the war dec is (hopefully) over.   ‘Cuz I don’t really have any more ships to lose!