f13.net

We'll forgive you if you haven't yet heard of ArcheAge, an in-development MMORPG from XLGames. You probably have heard of lead developer Jake Song, though, or at the very least, you've probably played one of his games. The native South Korean is the brains behind the original Lineage, and he worked with Richard Garriott on Tabula Rasa. Also while at NCsoft, Song lent his talents to the conceptualization and creation of an MMORPG called Lineage Forever, which subsequently morphed into Aion. (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/12/archeage-closed-beta-announced/)

I dunno, I am kind of interested in bringing down a row of archers sitting on a wooden platform. From the articles I have been reading, seems the combat is twitchy.

As for the player models, I would not go by the videos really:

I read this thread as Archie Age, and now I'm disappointed I can't visit Riverdale online.

Because that's how explosions work in real life?

I did the same but never commented.  I figured nobody would recognize the reference.  You have restored my faith. 

They probably shouldnt be producing SS's of gay men, thats all I see in that pic :P

Playing Aion somehow reduced my desire to play anything similar, no matter how pretty.

I'm too old cranky for punishing grinds, I think.

I see Housing and I immediately think of instancing. Also, Labor Power + Housing reminds of me of ATiTD. Also, thinking about ATiTD gives me that ... building and development itch.

Thinking about ATitD makes me weep.  I LOVED that game (particularly in the first telling) but cry for all of the lost potential. 

Afraid there will be a grind but the limited information looks interesting at least.

According to an interview with Kyung-Tae Kim, the lead planner at XLGames, the second closed beta test of ArcheAge will be focused on battles at sea. Not only firefights, hand-to-hand combat is also available on the open ocean! Many more features are still in development, such as fishing in the middle of the ocean, housing on a deserted island, and hunting sea monsters.

Ships will be operated by players. One person should drive the ship while the others adjust the sails and fire the artillery. Of course one player can do all of these tasks, but it would be extremely difficult. The ship will be unsummoned when players disembark just like mounts (so no one can steal it).

The housing system will not limit players from building what they want to, but house types and sizes will be classified. Houses will have either a garden, a farm, or both. Players can put a farm tile next to the house later just like "WeRule" allows (a game for smartphones).

The wall of a castle will be constructed in a method similar to working with LEGO blocks. There will be no limitation since the wall will divide one’s territory from others. Players can also hire NPCs to inhabit their buildings.

A crime system will be also introduced for the first time. Players can report PKers by looting the blood of PKees, and the PKer will be debuffed and sentenced to jail for number of PKs comitted. Debuffed players cannot do anything but work in the jail. The funny thing here is that players can randomly loot a spoon and may break out of jail with it just like in the movie The Shawshank Redemption!

Among ArcheAge's many new systems is signposts, a pretty awesome and potentially unique feature. With this system, players can help each other complete quests by sticking a signpost near NPCs. Players can write walk-throughs or locations on the signpost or even teleport people to a specific location for a small fee. This keeps players in the game, not wasting time on third-party wikis or databases.

The registration for the second CBT of ArcheAge is ongoing and ends on the 31st. Servers will be up from November 4th to the 7th. The new build will feature new battle and craft skills and fixes the awkward movement animations of players characters. The UI will also be tweaked during this test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5RUDtslVVk

First thing I thought when I saw the cities was, "Hey, looks like it'll take me 30 minutes to go from the entrance of the city to wherever I need to go."

Signposts, where you can "give instructions".  I don't see any problems with that.

From the guy who was a lead designer on Aion, this surprises you?

I dunno, I am kind of interested in bringing down a row of archers sitting on a wooden platform. From the articles I have been reading, seems the combat is twitchy.

As for the player models, I would not go by the videos really:

Beside the two big projects (GW 2 and TOR), this is the MMOG I'm looking forward the most

A long (8m 14s), in-game trailer showing various game features, like sieges, naval combat, labor, destroyable environments and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alk-c8J9PXA

Thats rather amazing.

Detailed closed beta report (in english, with screenshots):

http://community.archeage-online.com/topic/96-archeage-review/

Note to Korea: a girl that looks like a malnourished sub-Saharan child is not, in fact, attractive.

I find it curious that this was released for a major Korean trade show with such obvious bugs on display (ex: half the arrow flights in the siege freeze in midair before hitting the ground).

Is it too much to hope that this game won't have either horrible grinds or a stupid cash shop attached?  yea...it probably is.

Apparently this is the Lineage designer, Jake Song, at work.

CBT3_Teaser (http://youtu.be/3UEc5P5OJAY?hd=1)

I did the same but never commented.  I figured nobody would recognize the reference.  You have restored my faith. 

It's ... driving me crazy.

Funny how little things like that rope climbing have quite an impact when you see them.   If the airship isn't pilotable someone needs a kick in the nuts.   Also WTF rabbit eared kanagroo mounts.

She has bouts of sanity.  We must crush those.

It looks like a normal Korean grinder from that mid-level gameplay video. I shut it off after a few minutes. It made me not interested in the game.

I like how the guy knew exactly where to stand when the bridge blew up.

ArcheAge 3CBT review (http://www.aaportal.net/en/archeage-cbt-reviews/3-cbt-reviews/cbt3-review-aaportal.html)


Some parts that poped out to me:

By the way, about the dangers - the grind in ArcheAge is pretty interesting. Two monsters create a nasty problem for the player, and he will sweat trying to kill them. Three monsters without a proper preparation and kite (they allow to kite themselves with impunity yet), they are simply impossible to kill. So, if you suddenly discover yourself at the mercy of three evil monsters, it is recommended to immediately run for cover.

Ha. Ha.

They have two man horses yah know.

I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around a game like this in today's 'solo-friendly' environment.  The premise is great, don't get me wrong...I would love to play this game as much I would love to play EVE.  But to put so much of your content and gameplay on the ideas of group-play?  And then pin on some 'hard-core' elements?

One could take 'ArcheAge' out of that article and replace it with 'EVE' easily.  'Horses' with 'ships'.  'Uninteresting quest system' with...ok, that's spot on, look the point is that I'm just not seeing the appeal here.

"omg not solo friendly" - the review meant the sandboxy BIG features. YOu can't sail the ship alone, you can't really build a village out of one house and you certainly won't participate in the whole political hijinks, build castles or be the dictator alone.

And 100% friendly community willing to go out of their way to help complete strangers, i'm sure.

Yes, thats what I said.

It is quite implicit requirement for the two man horses to be of any use to a guy who finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere. And i think we both realize what that means in practice.

(sorry if you meant the original comment to be green, if so i've misread it)

They also have RvR. Title is being made by one of the old Lineage Developers.

The appeal? The features of the game I suppose. Not everyone needs to make a single player online. The idea of crewing a ship with my friends is highly appealing, a far contrast of, say, POTBS and Eve. The rest of the group play required was talking about the same stuff a group is always required for. This GROUP OF PLAYERS, wrote a closed beta impression. So, its best to take it with a grain of salt.

A clarification by one of the group:


I'm sure we can have yet another multi-page thread about Group VS. Solo if needed. But its a stupid argument.

More sexy in game videos. http://youtu.be/yraYIpxxLoI

That's a lot of swimming.

I only skimmed that article but it didn't look like he spent any time discussion how long this stuff takes.  I'm guessing you can't just go and plop down your house anywhere in the game on day1, etc.  (If you can, I'm buying), but he didn't seem to acknowledge any of that stuff.

Other than time needed, I'm not sure how grindy it could be.

You pretty much just described the entire concept of grind right there.

Well, no. I consider grind to come in many flavors. Such as, Repetitive tasks, Non-compelling reasons to be doing X, ETC.. I do not consider simply having a progression system, a grind.

Having the option to not quest at all and still progress overall helps a great deal. The more distinct activities a game offers the less grind they are in one aspect. So, having what is traditionally separate advancement systems, at least impact one another, does help IMO. Of course none of us know how any of the advancement systems will be ranged, so it could be a huge time investment. From what I am reading, cool stuff happens rather early, Horse, house, so there very well could be many distractions to fill your time masking any 'grind' there is.

I'm not sure how much i will care about leveling as i am blowing people off the deck of ships with my cannons! ( Yes, you can hit players ON the decks of ships, not just the ship )

The game is a odd mix of Sandbox and theme park with both sides of that coin seemingly optional. "OMG ITS KOREAN" is no longer an instant "Its going to be a pointless grind". People "Grind" because they care more about some point in progression, more than they care about what they are doing right now.

Unless all you care about is getting to the highest level the fastest, there is no help for you then.

And the iOS app seems creepy more than useful. :ye_gods:

Well for one, you can get off your ship, and also have friends on your ship.

 :awesome_for_real:

Still not understanding how this game > EVE and other sandboxes that came before.  If anything, it seems they keep taking points away from advancing the MMO genre and the lessons learned from the past and present in order to put more points into SUPER AWESOME 4D GRAPHICS FROM THE FUTURE OMGZ!!1!  :drill:

Another trailer for the Great Last Hope of us, sandbox junkers  :grin:

http://youtu.be/YCL0K3RLH3U

Dude, you obviously haven't seen Nausicaa then.  It's a Miyazaki film.  He deserves to thump you on the head for even suggesting it.

I will reorganize your furniture until you surrender.

The Interior League's MO was to break into an unsuspecting victim's house in the middle of the night and rearrange all of the furniture while the family slept. While this practice seemed fairly harmless, there was an inexplicable quality to their arrangements, one that triggered psychotic breaks in those who viewed their handiwork. One victim named John Cade, after seeing what the Interior League had done, beheaded his wife, then took his own life by impaling himself with a sharpened leg from a coffee table.

Too bad it will be grind from Korean hell.

You know, the more of a sandbox a game is, the less I care about whether it's grindy or not.  Since I don't care about end game raiding and so on, if I'm having fun farming, building, exploring, and so on, it matters little to me to get to the part of the game I don't much enjoy quickly.

That's what macros are Minecraft is for!!

Curses, my plan is foiled. I'll just have to give up on society and become a Romantic Bandit (Combat+Artistry+Calling).

Arche Age - Destroy (http://youtu.be/rtuDSnAfR2w)   

Combat looks fun in this video, presumably this is a newer video.

I dunno, looks like standard MMO combat to me.  Good or bad based on preference, but doesn't seem to be anything special from that video.

Under and Overachiever System
In ArcheAge, you can complete a quest even if you haven’t fulfilled all of its requirements. There are times when you no longer wish to complete all the goals of a quest,
but are reluctant to abandon the work you've already done. If you have completed more than half of the quest goals, you can compromise with the quest NPC to treat it as semi-completed. You can still collect a reward for your efforts, although it is only part of the initial reward given if you fully complete the quest.

In contrast, if you overdid the work of the quest goals more than 150%, the quest will be marked as "Overachieved" and you get an additional reward. The Under and Overachiever system represent the flexibility of ArcheAge, which allows you to quest exactly as much as you desire. You can always check the state of your current quests in the Quest Log window.

I seriously do not understand lack of excitement over this. 

Huge beautiful world? -check  .
Player built houses and cities? -check
Custom classes providing variety for templates -check
Quality production values ? -check
world pvp including pirates! -check


And yet that SWTOR thread is god knows how many pages when everyone knows it will be another wow clone. With as much innovation as RIFT and only ones who will be playing it long term will be SW nerds.

   Building a city and running and town and adventuring out with people and all that jazz is great on paper.  

The popular game with that mechanic is called Minecraft.

We live in an era where people just don't have the time to commit to doing the long-grinding stuff for little personal return and the ever-present risk that it all can be destroyed in mere moments.  That's the instant turn-off for me.  Building a city and running and town and adventuring out with people and all that jazz is great on paper.  In reality, the open PvP mechanic is a blessing and a curse.  It's great for those who want the adventure and the excitement and open/free-willing play.  It's a curse that unless you can offer the gameplay to those who want nothing to do with PvP AT ALL, esp. non-consensual PvP, you will NEVER garner the amount of publicity, let alone the actual subscribers to make the game work the way the devs envision.

People are smarter nowadays.  15+ million people cycled through 6+ years of WoW will do that, for better or worse.  They know more about what they want in game now than they did previously, and right now the way the game is portraying itself, it's EVE Online without spaceships.  When they change their tune and try to widen the base, they'll have my attention.

I suppose I am making one too many presumptions about the game at this point

Ugh, that one legged, floppy eared mount reminded me of a gungan. What korean dev looked at Jar-Jar and said "Hey, I wanna ride that." ?

Ugh, that one legged, floppy eared mount reminded me of a gungan. What korean dev looked at Jar-Jar and said "Hey, I wanna ride that." ?

What an amazing catch.  I'm surprised no one's noticed that yet.

When you get a large enough group of players together all dancing, party lights appear out of nowhere.

Regarding how grindy, the answer may be in the quests section:  they seem to only have fedex quests (which screams grindy to me).

They aren't guided experiences though, first of all.

Build walls (unofficial beta video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGk8fucSMJg

Was that an army of slave labor PC's waiting for rocks to SPAWN, carting said rocks to the construction site, then pounding hammers on boards for 1 minute in multiple stages?  :ye_gods:

Whether you are online or offline, and regardless of your level,
you will regularly gain something called labor power.

This labor power can be used for production, construction, crafting and other entertainment activities. The labor power can be lent to other users, and in that sense, if you are in lack of labor power, you can borrow it from somebody else or hire servant NPCs. The labor power required to be spent varies depending on the activity.

In ArcheAge, you can complete a quest even if you haven’t fulfilled all of its requirements. There are times when you no longer wish to complete all the goals of a quest,
but are reluctant to abandon the work you've already done. If you have completed more than half of the quest goals,you can compromise with the quest NPC to treat it as semi-completed.
You can still collect a reward for your efforts,although it is only part of the initial reward given if you fully complete the quest.

In contrast, if you overdid the work of the quest goals more than 150%,the quest will be marked as "Overachieved" and you get an additional reward.
The Under and Overachiever system represent the flexibility of ArcheAge,which allows you to quest exactly as much as you desire.
You can always check the state of your current quests in the Quest Log window.

"Grind ALL the rats... AND THEN SOME!"

Seriously, the harder you're trying to sell this game, BW, the easier it's getting for me to ignore it   :why_so_serious:

It only took Korean bots 4 months to farm materials for those siege weapons.

It only took Korean bots 4 months to farm materials for those siege weapons.

ArcheAge may be a distant dream to those of us here in the West, but a few of the folks who have been playing the game's extensive Korean beta tests are at least keeping us informed about the sandbox title's niftiest features.

Case in point is a new underwater treasure hunting guide on the ArcheAge Source forums. The info has been translated from a Russian fan site, and it's accompanied by plenty of screens and video (including a map, since this is a proper treasure hunt). The process is pretty involved, and requires a ship, scuba gear, and plenty of air bags to lift chests to the ocean surface.

The guide posits that treasure hunting is more profitable than traditional gathering based on preliminary beta testing, but it also cautions that resource prices may vary quite a bit. Head past the cut for a couple of underwater exploration videos, then head to ArcheAge Source to check out the guide.

Hasn't this game been in testing for like thirty years?  Is it even coming out in NA/EU?

Some Western fans have asked for PvP servers, and many of our commenters are very interested in ArcheAge but are turned off by the fact that it has open PvP. Most sandbox games default to free-for-all PvP these days, leaving these sandbox PvE fans with nowhere to play. Are there any plans for dedicated PvP servers or will it be left up to the players to avoid FFA areas on all shards?

I know that some players like PvP and some don't. ArcheAge features a half-open PvP system. If a player kills another player of the same faction, he/she will get penalty points. If a player's penalty points (blood prints that appear after killing a player work as evidence of a crime which leads to penalty points) reach a certain level, he/she will be summoned to court, will receive a trial, and might be imprisoned. Though ArcheAge is half-open PvP, it is not the main fun feature. It will be developed as a game that PvE-lovers could enjoy too, while also enjoying the PvP system.

For Trion, the deal is a big coup, said Lars Buttler, the chief executive of Redwood City, Calif.-based Trion, in an interview with GamesBeat. He described ArcheAge as having an “incredible amount of polish.” Trion aims to launch the game later this year in North America, Europe, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand.

Trion will translate the title and make changes to suit Western audiences.

Changes would be things like UI elements and experience curves and other quality of life stuff.  I doubt they have the ability to alter the game that much.

Damn it. Now I have to start paying attention to this again.

Agreed :). Plus, I think that the F2P conversion of TERA, SWTOR and TSW (and the launch of GW2) put a final nail on the coffin on the  "subscription only" model as a viable starting strategy for any MMOG, at least above the $10 price range. Guess they might take a more "hybrid" approach right from the start (same with ESO).

This is more of a success for Trion because they are selling their Red Door program to a major game release.  I think the only other outside game that is using this platform is Wargames(?), which I don't know anything about.

I don't think you need that anymore.  Thought I read about it somewhere.

I think that the F2P conversion of TERA, SWTOR and TSW (and the launch of GW2) put a final nail on the coffin on the  "subscription only" model as a viable starting strategy for any MMOG, at least above the $10 price range. Guess they might take a more "hybrid" approach right from the start (same with ESO).

Red Door is a full-scale publishing and development solution enabling unprecedented flexibility and control for game monetization teams.

If that means anything at all. I wish I  was on a Game Monetization Team. It sounds... monetizing!

Making a Korean account isn't that hard these days. Understanding enough Korean to enjoy the game is a different story though. Or is there an English patch already somewhere?

What am I missing? Is this just a link to the Korean client download? What's the point without an account?

<presses F to speak with the crotch>

Or is that to be left speechless by the crotch?

Beta applications for this game opened today, at http://www.archeagegame.com/.

If you sign in to your Trion account from that page, you'll automatically be entered into the beta.

I haven't logged into Rift in a very long time, and don't recall changing my password, but it doesn't work. So I entered my answers to my secret questions but they don't work. I logged in to chat with their customer service reps, and got this:

 You are currently number 144 in the queue. You should be connected to an agent in about 58:30. The average amount of time a customer has to wait is 58:43.

What the hell, over?

I don't remember changing my password but apparently I did at some point without writing it down, nor did I write down the secret questions but now I have and I'm all squared away.

An hour in the queue for customer service online chat. I wonder if this is normal or if everyone is trying to sign up for beta?

Rift is going F2P today. That may or may not have something to do with it.

You mean you will automatically apply, cause I got no beta invite after I did that yesterday.

Hey everyone,
 
It’s been a while since I made a post here outside of the Shoutbox so I thought I’d make it one about a topic that I’m sure is on many of your minds. “When will the wait be over?”
 
I wish I could give you the date and time today – but the ones we have in mind could still change, even if they are the best laid plans of mice & men!
 
A little bit about those plans
 
There’re many things we need to accomplish in order to successfully release ArcheAge to players in North America in Europe. Some hurdles are bigger than others and, in some cases, determine our ability to move forward towards launch.
 
The first really big one, in progress right now, is working with XL to integrate the game itself with our account/billing platform. This is essential to enabling server access for anyone outside of our office – we do not pass GO, we do not collect $200 until this very important phase has been completed. It is the top priority but, as you can imagine, it is extraordinarily complex with many people and moving parts involved.
 
To a similar end, XL Games is coming over here very soon and is helping us to set up our server architecture to run ArcheAge according to its design.
 
Of course, we also need to localize the game so you’re not playing in Korean. We’ve got the first large chunk of localization done, and we’re working on the updates and doing edit passes to make sure that the localization is as good as we can possibly make it.
 
Once these significant milestones have been accomplished closed testing can begin – our plan is to be at this point within the next few months!
 
Testing & You
 
No doubt the very mention of testing gets some of you excited! Perhaps you’ve even just clicked my name with plans to send a brief PM explaining why you would be the perfect candidate (it’s easier to sign up at www.archeagegame.com, but I do appreciate the letters). We’re just as excited to get to the point where we can invite external testers but expect the closed testing period to last at least a few months.
 
What’s changing?
 
I realize that no shortage of your eagerness for more info has to deal with what aspects of ArcheAge we are modifying or changing.
 
Know this: Any “Westernization” that occurs will likely be very minimal and done to improve usability/understanding of mechanics based on conventions we’ve grown accustomed to that differ from those of Korean gamers.
 
Don’t expect entirely new features exclusive to the NA/EU release or sweeping changes to mechanics – what you can expect are small tweaks to the way some existing features function. ArcheAge is already an amazing game, that’s why we have always been excited publish it.
 
It’s also very important to keep in mind that this game is constantly changing. There have been so many awesome features since ArcheAge launched in Korea and we want to make sure we have as many of them as possible available at release. Changing around mechanics and the fundamental systems that fuel the game would only increase the amount of time it would take to incorporate new and future updates – not a good thing!
 
While we’re on this topic, I think it’s important that I point out where the most significant change and work is going to take place: The Text.
 
We’re talking over 1,000,000 words AND climbing!
 
It’s no small feat to achieve and the biggest challenge here is the fact that there are many distinct differences between Western & Korean cultures that we need to take into account. Everything from value systems to how we greet and interact with people based on our relationship to them is different. This matters a lot to language and the way things are written/expressed which means that localization is not as simple as running everything through Google Translate - at least not if we want an entertaining experience… well, one we can understand that is :)
 
What’s next?
 
Expect things to stay quiet for a few more weeks at least - until accounts are able to login to the game through our platform we’ll be busy planning live streams and the future roll out of content, not to mention reading a lot (A LOT) of text. You’ll know when things are really getting going, the noise will be deafening!
 
Until then, keep the feedback coming & thanks as always for your continued support of ArcheAge – I realize after possibly YEARS of waiting this may not come easily to some but enjoy these early days, cherish them even. They will not last, I guarantee it :D
 
Cheers

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/02/rumor-xlgames-eyes-restructuring-after-disappointing-archeage-p/

We need more big budget sandbox failures  :drill:


My god the comments are delicious!

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SANDBOX PVP GAME WITH A SUBSCRIPTION FAILED!!" I can almost hear the heavy mouth breathing through every sentence.  :awesome_for_real:

They do have a working, fully featured and beautiful-looking game, as far as I can tell. So as long as XL doesn't actually go out of business, it should be possible to continue with the transfer to Trion in the West, even if the prospect of major future updates starts to look a bit slim.

Maybe I'm just hoping  :cry:

Black Desert is the next one to look forward too. Or, you know, EverQuest Next.

Then I asked Scott to sort of clarify the way ArcheAge uses both a traditional quest structure and mixes it with the sandbox to ease people into the freedom it presents. There is a content path, a main story from 1-50, but you’ll only see about half the world while progressing through the story.  You start out in an area with quest hubs, quest progression, in your own racial starting area.  This is intended as a way to introduce you into the world. Within one or two quests, you wander into a mine, and you start picking away at rocks, start leveling up that tradeskill.
Then you start seeing vegetation in the world, notice you can pick it. Then you find you can chop trees down, and realize you’re carrying all of these bits and pieces to aid in tradeskilling. It all opens up as you progress.  There’s a whole other quest overhead for tradeskills, and farming, which leads you quickly into owning your own farm. So you’ll get a safe place to make your own, pull up water from a well, and water your crops.  Or if you want to just plant stuff in the wild, be ArcheAge’s version of Johnny Appleseed (or Joe Sunflower as Scott called it), you can.  Right from level 1, you could ignore the quests and story, and just go off and work on your own. Scott mentioned that Amary (Associate Producer on AA, formerly Rift) went from 33-40 JUST tradeskilling over the break.

It'll appeal to a different audience than the other big MMOs coming out.  EQ Next is going to be it's closest competitor.

MMOZG.net: And the last question as there's no more time left. Let's talk about localization. There are no any news about western localization. Can you tell something about your work with Trion?

Jake Song: Well... (long pause) We may launch it with Trion this year. (pause) I hope.

I hope.

I just got access to this today. I might even try to stream it for shits and giggles.

The US version? That's hopeful.

Your Class is composed of three Skillsets chosen out of a possible ten. There are no restrictions on which Skillsets can be paired with each other, resulting in 120 uniquely-named Class combinations of varying functionality (and efficacy). Want some bard skills alongside your dual-wield melee and your archery? There’s a name for that: Bloodskald.

So lets see if I can correctly summarize 4 years of infrequent and incomplete info:
Open world Pvp
Quests and quest hubs
Significant level-dependent power differentials
Flexible character development
Pretty graphics
Long grind?
Complex and significant crafting
Safe housing/farms
Unsafe resource gathering/transport

Sounds kinda like EVE without the SPAAAACE but with panties?

Or am I missing something?

Quick, somebody talk me out of this. I have $600 in my gaming account and a strange desire to get the alpha founders pack.  :ye_gods:

Subscriber time? they are charging a sub?

I really want to play it before putting down money, even if it's something I'm looking forward to.  That's what I hate about these founder's packs.

I had to spend most of last evening arguing myself back from an impulse purchase. My arguments were 1) FFA-PVP and 2) the last MMG I preordered (GW2) I quit after three weeks.

I long for the day developers realize that when most people say "I want a sandbox" they don't mean "I want Shadowbane and EVE" - they're saying "I want Skyrim and Minecraft."

I long for the day developers realize that when most people say "I want a sandbox" they don't mean "I want Shadowbane and EVE" - they're saying "I want Skyrim and Minecraft."

Soo.... EQ Next?

I really want to play it before putting down money, even if it's something I'm looking forward to.  That's what I hate about these founder's packs.

The newbie and lower-level areas of the alpha server are packed with players now. The server used to be fairly empty, and the lowbie areas were even emptier because most alpha testers had got through them already. So it appears that Trion sold hell of a lot of $150 founders packs.

You can easily go play o  the Russian server. There are guides out there if ya Google it.

If you're asking for money for a product, I'd like to sample your product.  I'm interested, not obsessed.  With the latter I'd have been playing the Korean version when it came out.

Off the cuff, I'd guess because the PvP is construed as the "most exciting" part, while the "builder/socilaizer" folks are the ones most likely to invest long term in a sub.

I've already said this one's not FOR me, so I'm not criticising, but I am curious about what seems to be a blind spot in the business model of Arche Age in particular and many of these pvp sandbox games. Since all of these games depend on attracting enough sheep to keep the wolves from getting too bored, why are they charging for the builder portions of the game, but not charging the pure taker/destroyers? Shouldn't that go the other way, where sheep activities are free but you have to pay to prey?

By the way, I'm not going to try to talk you round on the game but it's not quite as dog eat dog as perhaps I may have suggested earlier. I mean, it's nothing like Darkfall or pre-Trammel UO. I imagine many players will stick to the safe zones, especially crafters.

Ah ok, thanks.  I'll (re)scratch it off the list then.

Can people raid your farm/house? Can they do so while you aren't online? I don't mind PVP but I'm not playing fucking Travian.

It sounds like in the longer run once the game goes live hitting 50 is pretty trivial, though? And there's no raid game after that to mess with us PvPers?

You can just make a guild and then do whatever is necessary to create your own faction so it's you against the world. Or be a Pirate.

Man, that client-side stuff happens to an awful lot of Korean MMOs. I don't get it; if you're developing something in South Korea where the country is pretty much wired for fast ethernet speeds or higher why offload anything to the client when latency (at least there) is no object?

I wonder if there might be an element of sociology involved.

In the US, we assume that if any opening is left to cheat and exploit, of course people will cheat and exploit to better themselves, and "our bad" for leaving a way for that to happen. It's a uniquely American attitude of "anything not explicitly outlawed must be okay, so I will do it, and fuck you if you don't, loser - you deserve it."

In Korea, there seems to be more an attitude of, "we're not going to go out of our way to make this airtight, but if you abuse our trust, we will shun you," kick you out of the community and take away everything you hold dear in game. And maybe the threat of banning means more in a country where people invest more heavily in their MMG of choice, and where punitive levels of grind and "everyone in the guild must be here" PVP are accepted parts of game design.

But I'm slightly drunk, so maybe I'm just being stupid.

Oh my God why did nobody mention this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ga3s0n1O8

 :rock_hard:

Oh my God why did nobody mention this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ga3s0n1O8

 :rock_hard:

I made a film that gives a taste of naval combat in the game. It shows a 20 minute naval battle between two rival guilds. Lots of boarding boats, blowing up boats with cannons and similar stuff.

Marvel at my lousy PvP skills and watch me target the enemy boat instead of enemy players in this film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjqpLJbFvw

Ew, graphic wise it looks on the level of DAoC/Everquest 1. I know the game can look pretty, but in that particular scenario it really feels like we are back 10 years.

Ew, graphic wise it looks on the level of DAoC/Everquest 1. I know the game can look pretty, but in that particular scenario it really feels like we are back 10 years.

I said 10 years, not 15.

I have to ask if you are blind in two eyes. (http://www.mmonotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/rathe-boat4.jpg)

ArcheAge to Launch with Patch 1.2!

If you've been following ArcheAge , you may have heard about a game update simply called Patch 1.0.

Initially released in Korea, this update has been the source of no small amount of concern from our ArcheAge community since we announced the game was coming to North America and Europe. Upon seeing the behavior of the patch's changes in the wild, the game's developer, XLGames, agreed that ArcheAge's balance and feel had shifted in an unintentional direction. Behind the scenes, we've been carefully following public feedback over the past few months, and had a chance to exhaustively test out the update on our own internal servers. While there are a number of gameplay improvements, we agree with their conclusion.

Both Trion Worlds and XLGames are eager to maintain the game's sandbox nature. Our mutual, overriding goal has always been to release the best quality, most fun experience possible. Toward that end, members of our ArcheAge Team visited XLGames this past week to discuss Patch 1.0. Together, we've forged the best possible path to launch for Trion Worlds' version of ArcheAge.

We're thrilled to announce that both Trion Worlds and XLGames have agreed that it's best for us go live with Patch 1.2's amazing improvements when we launch with English, French, and German languages in 2014. Launching with Patch 1.2 is a challenge as it adds over 70,000 words to translate. Since we want a complete English translation before introducing a larger audience to the game, this does mean that our Beta schedule has shifted by a few weeks. That means that we can't announce a specific date for the first Beta right now, but we wanted to get the great news about the game itself out as early as possible.

Patch 1.2 also introduces a host of exciting improvements on its own, including increased experience per Labor Point spent, a searchable crafting folio that works with recipe or ingredient names, significantly reduced (from Patch 1.0) glider turbulence on the high sea, and the ability to earn experience from crafting with maxed-out professions and participating in PvP during a war. Additionally, the Marketplace (in-game store) will be available before Beta begins and we'll grant testers sufficient currency to test it out.

So what exactly happened? I'll let KeksX, the author of the aforementioned review, explain. "Crafting in ArcheAge is a really controversial topic. In CBT3 (or 4? I forget), the crafting was really different," he wrote. "There was great item decay, synthesis and all that funsie stuff for hardcore crafters. But because of exactly that, Jake Song and his company decided to put it out. They replaced it with a system that has RNG and not that much item decay anymore; also the item synthesis is out."

Song addressed the controversy directly via his Twitter account late last year. "Most users didn't like the system except hardcore crafters. So we removed it. Sorry," he wrote.

Source: Massively (http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/11/lost-continent-should-we-worry-about-archeages-crafting/)

There's a lot of (blatant) dodging in that statement... what sucked about 1.0 and what's so miraculous about 1.2?

Anyone know?

pay to prey

They need to balance the game to incentvise pvp and player interaction.

They need to choose one - they can be SB/Darkfall, or they can be UO/SWG.

EDIT: I think the unusual level of excitement about this in NA comes from people expecting the latter. But I could be very wrong about that, since I happen to be one of them.

So Trion are saying, "don't worry because we are skipping that horrible mistake and going straight to the later patch, and we've also had that later patch tweaked a bit to make it even cooler".

I can say that it did not do enough. The 1.2 patch has been horrible when compared to the earlier version so far. It seems like they had two goals in mind. The first one was to strip away as much sandbox as possible and replace it with themepark. The second was to make everything more labor intensive so that players have to purchase labor potions from the cash shop. Even as a subscriber/patron you will burn through the small amount of labor you get each day in 30 minutes - 1 hour. I'm sure someone will come up with the average cost per minute of gameplay after they reveal the cash shop prices.

If I don't want to personally touch crafting in the slightest, I don't have to, right?

Once you run out of labor the only activity to do is PvP. Everything else costs labor. You can PvE but every drop I've gotten after the patch requires labor to "open" before it can be sold or used.

Honestly, this kind of info could kill the game for me before it's even released, and I *am* their target audience. I understand TRION can only do so much, but I really hope they'll find a way to turn this around.

I mean, the way you describe labour points they are exactly like energy and that kind of shit in Facebook games, am I wrong? Cause I don't want to even glance at a game with such a mechanic.

ii) the idea is to sell "labor point restore potions" in the cash-shop. This may sound like scaremongering but actually it's what's happened in other regions.

Just want to highlight this. Since the patch, mobs very rarely drop loot directly. Instead, they drop a "coinpurse" which contains the loot, but it costs labour to open this coinpurse.... You can run out of labour just farming mobs and opening coin purses.

I mean someone who only plays an hour or two a day.

Is there a subscription option for infinite labor? Also is this game full on PVP or are there safe zones? Specifically I don't want to be crafting and get ganked.

I think we are mostly talking about subscribers. Free players don't get to own land and their labor only regens when they are online. They get 5 LP per 5 minutes they are logged in, or 1 LP per minute. So 4 hours of game time will get you just enough mine 24  mining nodes or open 2.4 of the chests that drop during pve.

I think we are mostly talking about subscribers. Free players don't get to own land and their labor only regens when they are online. They get 5 LP per 5 minutes they are logged in, or 1 LP per minute. So 4 hours of game time will get you just enough mine 24  mining nodes or open 2.4 of the chests that drop during pve.

I think we are mostly talking about subscribers. Free players don't get to own land and their labor only regens when they are online. They get 5 LP per 5 minutes they are logged in, or 1 LP per minute. So 4 hours of game time will get you just enough mine 24  mining nodes or open 2.4 of the chests that drop during pve.

I'm just sort of skimming this thread because my brother pointed me at this game based on my love of Minethings and it sounded interesting.  It sounds like they've completely missed the positive part of "labor points" (energy points, whatever) if you only regenerate them while logged in.

You will have to do something to generate gold at some point. PVE does not pay very well unless you get lucky with drops. A mob kill gives very little money. Instead you get a "coin purse" every few kills. There are 5 grades of coin purses i think (1 labor point to open the lowest and 5 for the highest) one. The low level one gave about 3-5 siver before the patch and the highest one gave around 30 - 35 silver. After the patch they drop a little more frequently (like 1 in 3 instead of 1 in 5) but they max out at like 4-7 silver for the top end coin purse.  They also added some sort of chest drop (at least on the hard to kill mobs in diamond shore) thats like a 1 in 30 drop that gives around 2 gold for 100 labor.  

I don't know about 1.2 but labor is never an issue unless you really try hard to spend it.

I don't know about 1.2 but labor is never an issue unless you really try hard to spend it.

So 4 hours of game time will get you just enough mine 24  mining nodes or open 2.4 of the chests that drop during pve.

Ok, so fuck that.

While this is an immense bummer, as Archeage is the only MMORPG I was looking forward to, I am happy that for once they screwed it before I could even buy it, instead of getting me hooked to the game and mutate it into a tentacle money-greedy monster while I am at it.

While this is an immense bummer, as Archeage is the only MMORPG I was looking forward to, I am happy that for once they screwed it before I could even buy it, instead of getting me hooked to the game and mutate it into a tentacle money-greedy monster while I am at it.

Out of curiosity, what other games specifically have actually mutated like that after release (in a given market)? That Russian one that was still in beta outside Russia when it went full-bore greedy grabby is the closest I can think of.

No offense, but I think you are better known for your joyful exuberance than for rational analysis (much less cynical deconstruction) during the early stages of a game. :grin:

It's a whole system that forces you to micromanage and pull you out of the game, which is just failboat written all over it.

I think the shockwave from the thud this thing is going to make when it launches might produce an ELE. Is there still time to unfuck it?

It's an Asian-themed sanbox with PVP. I'm not sure what they could do to make it not crater, but it certainly seems like they are not doing whatever that would be.

Correction, it's a system that forces you to spend money in the cash shop in order to be able to do anything. Although I won't argue about the side-effects :why_so_serious:

I meant pulls you out of the game immersion wise.  It forces you to constantly stop playing the game for a second in order to figure out if you want to whip out your credit card or not yet again.

What do you get for the 880 bucks?

This is the main reason I hate free to play.  It makes every time I play a game a potential transaction. 

They even make you spend labor points to report bots and hackers. The real money cost is about $0.20 per report.

This cannot be real. I refuse to believe this. Please substantiate or my head will explode.

I think the most depressing thing about all this is that from what I know of Hartsman, he hates this sort of thing.  I could be wrong, but that was my impression from what I've read from him in the past.  So it sucks if this happens anyway.

Blown away by what I'm hearing here.

They just need to reduce labor point usage and the game will be fine again (more than fine imho, I think it has the potential to be great).

The game always had labor points and it was loads of fun. It's just that the recent patch ruined the game by ensuring you can run out of labor really fast.

There's still time . . .  I don't think they are going to fix it though :(

You guys are pretending that even if you had every single potion in the game that you'd actually play this game enough in a single day to make use of all of them.

Wait, $150 gets you a lifetime sub?

My point is that the game LC and I are playing and moaning about is what you get if you pay a sub. If you bought labor potions too, it would be on top of your monthly subscription fee.

Meaning F2P will be an absolute dickpunching nightmare.

I've got a spare key for the second closed beta event that's coming up if any of the regular folk are interested in being horribly let down.

The good news is, if they realize that their fun game is a dickpunching nightmare that nobody wants to play due to this system, they can easily adjust the system down the road to render it impotent and 'un-break' things.

In addition to traditional guilds, ArcheAge also features a Family System. In many ways a Family is similar to a Guild but designed for smaller knit groups of players; ranging from 2 to 8 people. The family system runs parallel to the guild system, meaning you can be in both a family and guild!
Family members may share property rights. Allowing members full access to houses and farms.
Families have their own chat channel.

Creating a Family

To create a family, a player just has to access the community icon on the bottom right and select family. Then select the first person to invite.
When creating a family, the founder may give it a name as well as set roles and titles for invited members.

I suppose you could get yourself a teleport bot for leveling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Ot9_WIwhM

A teleporting botter I found in hellswamp. I would report these bots, but it would cost me several days of labor to get them all.

A teleporting botter I found in hellswamp. I would report these bots, but it would cost me several days of labor to get them all.

I'm sure there's a term for a game you desperately want to like, but at every turn it disappoints and infuriates you. A term aside from "MMORPG," I suppose.

This game is clearly a winner.

I'm going to continue ignoring my beta invite until they unfuck it some.

I'm sure there's a term for a game you desperately want to like, but at every turn it disappoints and infuriates you. A term aside from "MMORPG," I suppose.

because particpating in a car crash is more fun than witnessing it or something.

If labor truly was in there to help stop gold selling, it wouldn't be required that you spend labor points to fucking reports bots and cheaters.

I can see it as consistent, from a certain point of view. If there was a problem with hardcore guilds accusing one another of botting, there may have been a response of, "Okay, you're wasting our GMs' time, so if you want to do that, you have to sacrifice some of your time."

I have to turn my brain backwards to fathom it, but if you're coming it at with the perspective of, "All players are hyper-competitive PvP'ers, so they will always cheat to get ahead, so we must make it as hard as possible to cheat without driving them away, because for some reason keeping the revenue from those cheating, griefing asswipes is more valuable to us than the money of other players who might suffer collateral damage and be driven away."

No matter what your opinion of labor is, the first time you try to do something and suddenly understand you can't because of labor its a huge turn off.  I don't give a shit if it helps the gold selling problem  because as a player, the harm gold selling does to me is far less than finding out I'm done opening loot bags because I crafted something.  Also, I refuse to play any game that encourages me to stay logged in when I'm done.  If labor goes I will probably play this, if its still in in any form no thanks.

Testing the hypothesis: did Darktide take up a disproportionate amount of GM time in AC1?

I think you get a couple right in that range IIRC.

Does the beta wipe every time? Haven't logged in to check.

Beta was pretty crowded today. To the point where the server I had my CBT 2 characters had a queue of like 1000 people. So, I made a new character on another that didn't have a queue (yet) and there were so many people trying to kill the same mobs as me that I just logged out. I'll try again tomorrow when everyone and their uncle aren't playing at the same time.

I wish this game had some instancing of the newbie areas. There were at least 10 people jumping on every spawn and hundreds in a tiny area trying to kill boars for an early quest.

IKR.  Everyone is going on and on about the great sandbox full of open pvp and then you spend your first 30 hours playing World of Warcraft.   Still, I am interested enough to probably buy into this long enough to actually see the sandbox...I can't say many others will have the same patience.

IKR.  Everyone is going on and on about the great sandbox full of open pvp and then you spend your first 30 hours playing World of Warcraft.   Still, I am interested enough to probably buy into this long enough to actually see the sandbox...I can't say many others will have the same patience.

So, I've been playing this for a bit and today marked a few milestones.  The first was finally being able to build and sail my own clipper.  The second was accumulating enough infamy points to become wanted and to possibly go to jail if I'm killed in pvp from someone collecting the bounty. :awesome_for_real:  In my defence, all I did was harvest about 30-40 tress someone had planted in a fairly secret location that I stumbled upon by blind chance.  All and all I'd say I have no regrets even if I do end up going to jail just because it helped me get my clipper that much quicker.  Totally worth it. :grin:

But if you want to know the horrible truth, it's that the thing to do is to level up to 50 and get stuck into the sandbox side of things after that. Which is indeed a major flaw.

I don't think I can do it. I got my character to level 11 and was logged in Sunday night while waiting for the f13 draft to begin. I couldn't muster the energy to continue doing quests. Just the thought of clicking on more dudes with ! over their heads sapped my will to give a fuck. The game is pretty. The combat isn't bad. The game throws a shitton of things at you that don't make any sense unless you slow down and try to grok them (and I daresay a lot of it is utterly unnecessary for the level I'm at). PvE content like this in MMO's just kills me these days. I don't have any desire to do it for the 30+ hours it'll take to get to the parts I might actually be interested in.

Two months before the "sheep" go 'fuck this, imma go back to WoW now WoD's launched'. Sorta doubt that's going to be enough time to make their localisation money back.

I am sorely tempted to go whole hog for the Archeum package. I will blow that much in the cash shop eventually anyway. I think this will be a fun run with the goons for at least a couple months.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the only thing wrong with this game the labor points thing which they can turn off in a flip of the switch if they realize it's costing them major subs? I think they're aiming for more than fair-weather WoW players, this isn't 2011 launching Rift and WoW isn't the lodestar anymore.

Finally starting to pay attention to what you folks been talking about, but I only started at page 15 :P Can someone offer a synopsus of why this is worth checking out?

It is a WoW/Rift-clone with some things on top of it. Specifically:

- Open PvP with some territorial conquest and sieging.
- Consequences for open murdering, like going to jail.
- Justice system, players can do a quest to become judges and actually roleplay a triel where they have to decided how much jail time a criminal will have to serve.
- Extremely detailed open housing and crafting and sandbox activities like livestock farming, gardening, or actually stealing all of it.
- Seafaring and pirating. Build your own multiplayer boat and engage in various activities at sea, including attacking other players on trading routes to steal their cargo.
- Rift custom class system on steroid. You pick and match any 3 classes out of 10 to a whopping total of 120 possible combinations, each with a specific name (http://archeage.gamepedia.com/Classes).

That's mostly it. They combined your usual DIKU with lots of sandbox stuff. It's pretty cool if you are not burned out on MMORPGs, it's biggest major flaw is the "lbor" system which regulates how much activities you can do outside of combat every day. It's like a Facebook game kind of "energy" mechanic, and you can replenish it by staying online or paying real money. Either way, it's bullshit and could totally kill the game. We'll see.

Thanks!

Is the game a box purchase/subs or purely f2p? The energy meter approach is interesting and it certainly works for mobile/Facebook games. But I think they work on mobile is because those aren't multi-hour sessions. They're a lot of occurrences of very short sessions around the lifestyle of that kind of game player (make moves while on the phone/bus/sidewalk/etc).

But for a game you expect to sit down and play for a few hours at a stretch, energy crap doesn't feel right. Sounds like combat isn't tied to this, which is a plus I suppose. But locking all the unique aspects of Arche behind this kind of gate would seem to dilute it's chances of getting noticed as anything but another diku.

Which skimming recent pages is what I think you've all been saying? /johnnycomelately  :grin:

Ah cool. I'll give it a shot on the 4th when it goes open beta. Not sure how much I'll get into crafting or housing. I always think I'll want to but then end up back right into my comfort zone of questing and PvE.

Strong enough PvE here? Or is it mostly focused on PvP?

Strong enough PvE here? Or is it mostly focused on PvP?

The PVE isn't anything you haven't seen elsewhere, but it is certainly competently done.

I don't think I can do it. I got my character to level 11 and was logged in Sunday night while waiting for the f13 draft to begin. I couldn't muster the energy to continue doing quests. Just the thought of clicking on more dudes with ! over their heads sapped my will to give a fuck. The game is pretty. The combat isn't bad. The game throws a shitton of things at you that don't make any sense unless you slow down and try to grok them (and I daresay a lot of it is utterly unnecessary for the level I'm at). PvE content like this in MMO's just kills me these days. I don't have any desire to do it for the 30+ hours it'll take to get to the parts I might actually be interested in.

What? This game has the most vapid, and pointless questing I have ever seen in a MMO. There is literally no connections to NPC_Enginear#45 and NPC_Enginear#46, there is zero reason to care about any quest or giver in this game, you spend literally 5 seconds with what may as well be a faceless NPC. None of them have a drop of character in them, and the writing is that of a child's book and standard tropes. Not only that, but about 90% of the "quests" have the quest objective 5 feet away. I Don't think I have ever seen such a tight, pointless collection of menial tasks that take less than 4 footsteps in the on rails direction of travel in my life. There is a quest that has you pick up SHIT 2 feet from the quest giver. Oh fucking joy of joys! There are quests, in 2014, that require you to stand with 20 others in line to kill an objective NPC that is right next to the fucking quest giver. I had more fun dicking around in mirage island with friends than I did in the entirety of my leveling to 15. This game DEFINES pointless busywork questing. Most of this shit was phoned in. Boats are impressive ( Multi-grids FTW ), housing is some form of industrial torture process where chickens stand in grids and plea for help across the countryside. What may be fun in this game, is locked behind possibly one of the most skinner box vapid questing experience have ever seen.

Playing with my lion cub was the highlight of the game, and that was a montage.

Sperginess

I Don't think this answers the root question, but it does seem like there is some interesting questing to be had.

I said competent in that there didn't seem to be bugs, the combat mechanics were decent and it didn't seem any worse/grindy than any of the other MMOG's that have almost exactly the same type of PVE content (ESO, Wildstar, WoW, etc.). The "isn't anything you haven't seen elsewhere" means it's stuff we've all seen before, there are no attempts to put any new spins on PVE (public quests, heavy lore). It's just boring.

If you are playing AA for the PvE content you are in the wrong game. Farmville or PvP or both, but PvE is just XP and cash pellets.

Yeah, that was my problem with it, because that PVE gated me away from the PVP. And I just don't have the patience to wait that long for the game I want to play.

If you are playing AA for the PvE content you are in the wrong game. Farmville or PvP or both, but PvE is just XP and cash pellets.

There seems to be no choice, And I personally refuse to go though it to get to something I may enjoy. I do not hate myself enough to do that. I Had too keep asking myself, if this is the quality of quests in this game, why did they even add it. Questing is also apparently how you get the tokens for ships and shit. Fuck you AA.

This shit is refined pointless questing.

If you are playing AA for the PvE content you are in the wrong game. Farmville or PvP or both, but PvE is just XP and cash pellets.

Are they handing away max level characters when you buy the game? no? then this is bullshit.

How's the crafting/gathering system?

Waite. You have to get to 50 before this ends? /uninstall

There seems to be no choice, And I personally refuse to go though it to get to something I may enjoy. I do not hate myself enough to do that. I Had too keep asking myself, if this is the quality of quests in this game, why did they even add it. Questing is also apparently how you get the tokens for ships and shit. Fuck you AA.

How's the crafting/gathering system?

Okay, I installed this when I went to bed last night and played it about an hour this morning. It was okay, combat was decent fun. However: I mined two iron nodes in the tutorial area which completely drained my labor points. It regenerated up to 5, but not any farther. I spent the rest of the hour waiting to regen labor points to open shitty level one loot bags 5 at a time. Since I could kill 10-15 things in the time it took to get back 5 labor points I have a billion unopened loot bags. I don't see this mechanic getting any better. Labor Points are the cancer that will kill this game.

If Bloodworth hates it this game is going to be a sleeper hit! :awesome_for_real:

Okay, I installed this when I went to bed last night and played it about an hour this morning. It was okay, combat was decent fun. However: I mined two iron nodes in the tutorial area which completely drained my labor points. It regenerated up to 5, but not any farther. I spent the rest of the hour waiting to regen labor points to open shitty level one loot bags 5 at a time. Since I could kill 10-15 things in the time it took to get back 5 labor points I have a billion unopened loot bags. I don't see this mechanic getting any better. Labor Points are the cancer that will kill this game.

That's weird because as far as I know f2p players get 1000 labour points.  Theres no way 2 iron nodes cost 500 LP each unless they've changed it since closed beta/alpha.

Ok I gotta be completely honest, and normally I don't do direct shoutouts. But NrBloodworth has probably saved me a lot of time. I don't recall ever seeing you so pissed off about a game. About other people sure, but never about a game. That alone is enough to save me the download.

Back to Divinity then  :grin:

I don't know if patron status has anything to do with it, but the first time I logged in I had 1000 labor points.

Paying users are called patrons for a reason, there is an expectation it seems that free to play users are surfs to their noble. The game, at a few occasions, suggests you make friends with a patron to use their land and such as a sharecropper ETC.. Its a built in E-peen, right in the mechanics for money. 2 class system right off the start, that's surprisingly appropriate for the setting, but sad as part of the sate of gaming.

And I don't have an answer for that. I can say that once I got my scarecrow and planted my first crop

The real game is at the endgame

If the body of your work is not fun, you have failed.

So, you paid. I Cant place a farm, so i have to plant flowers in out of the way locations, and shooo plebs away. Also, I have to sit AFK to even craft.


Said about every MMO ever to get that sub money, and while it was not true then. This game made it a real feature.

If the body of your work is not fun, you have failed.

I do not disagree with you.

I think the problem with "free to play" games is that they don't have the guts to find better wording for what they offer. I think this would be a good game and probably "worth" (depending on your idea of 12€ worth of stuff) a monthly sub. But they can't afford to risk another TESO and miracles like FF14 don't happen every day. So, this gets out as "free to playe" but it is actually instead just confusing, teasing, and ultimately rage inducing. If they simply said "you can play the demo of the game indefinitely, or pay some monthly bucks to unlock to full version" it wouldn't get all this heat.

I didn't know the Koch brothers backed this game.

The body of the game is loads of fun. The body of the game is not doing quests. The questing is more like a tutorial, and you can stop once you reach level 30 or so and just concentrate on growing flowers or whatever.

Also, it's just wrong to say that PvP is gear based. It's largely *build* based but that's a different thing. You'll also find that some builds are better than others in different situations, eg a tank with a lot of crowd control is really useful in group v group pvp but much less so in 1 v 1, a melee DPS is likely to be good in 1 v 1 , etc . . . but any class can be useless if the player has chosen bad skills or hasn't thought about how to use the skills they chose (characters can learn every class in the game eventually, although you can only have three loaded at once, so there's plenty of scope to test out different builds).

It's Gear VS Gear, or else this would have a horizontal progression, instead of a vertical power progression. Movement does not matter, you can not dodge things. That's all up to the RNG. Same as it ever was. The Whales will win.

I heard that, contrary to many MMORPGs, lower level characters can actually hurt higher level ones. As a result, a bunch of lowbies can defeat a solo level 50. Is that true? *IF* that is true, then while gear will always matter a lot, it is possible that they made it so group play and tactics, as opposed to gear, account for a higher % of success than usual in these games. Palmer?

EDIT: Are you also saying that they nailed down the "custom class" system that Rift fumbled on? The systems are very very similar (it actually looks like a Ripoff of the Rift one). Does this actually allow for creativity as opposed to the Rift one were the options were only theoretical, but anything that wasn't the cookie cutter OP build was useless?

The whole "labor point" mechanic doesn't seem so insanely stupid once you are a patron (meaning you pay the monthly fee), and the "cap" mechanic isn't that terrible from a design standpoint (when you are a patron) as a way to keep the economy healhy and prevent inflaction, and most importantly to hinder botting/goldfarming activities.

That's just not correct. Gear can make a difference but a player who knows what they are doing can defeat someone who doesn't regardless of gear. It's not about running around (although that sometimes matters - some classes can kite, some abilities do more damage from behind), it's more about knowledge of the game mechanics. You can get some idea who you are facing by mousing over their health bar, which shows you which classes they have loaded, and to an extent by what they are wearing and what weapons or weapon/shield they use. The tactics for defeating them will depend on their classes and your classes. Sometimes you might decide your best bet is not to fight them at all, eg plate tanks are weak against mages but strong against archers.

That's just not correct. Gear can make a difference but a player

So it makes a difference, thus it's Gear vs Gear.

The problem with this is looking at f2p games as "games not good enough for a sub".  It's more like "games that realized the sub model is dead".  F2p can be just as profitable as sub games if your model is right, games like LoL or Marvel Heroes are making tons of money and you don't have to spend a cent if you don't want too.  Make a good game, let people play the whole thing for free, more than enough people will be happy to spend money on your game if it is fun to play.  You can't even call this a demo because players will run head first into the labor point system and never want to spend a cent.  "This game is fun, I'm going to spend money on it" is a viable model, "this game would be fun if i spent money on it" is never ever going to work.

There's a bigger problem apparently regarding crafting. If anyone with more expericne can clarify this for us, it would be great. Anyway, from what I heard, to craft anything you need a component called "archeum". This material has been another gating mechanism, to prevent people from crafting too much, too early, too soon. Basically, you can't grow in crafting too fast because you will always have a shortage of archeum if you try to do so. And that would be fine.

Except.

Except it looks like no matter the limited labor points or the difficulty of getting the right materials, because the scarcity of archeum makes sure that you will pretty much NEVER be able to craft a piece of gear for your own level after level 25 or so. The amount of archeum, which is a random rare-ish drop, needed to level up the profession and craft items is so high that it is impossible not to fall behind. Eventually, once at level 50, you can focus on becoming a good crafter to craft your own level 50 equipment, since the best stuff in this game is crafted, but it's sad that you can't do your own stuff while you level up. And -needless to say- the archeum needed for level 50 gear is insane. And those drop values are locked by the Korean developer so Hartsman can't do anything about it even though he's aware this is another thing that it's hurting the game. He publicly said so and told XL that they need to change the drop rate, but the Koreans want more data before considering the change.

In the meantime, looks like the sandbox MMORPG that is supposed to have deep, meaningful and useful crafting, has its crafting part kind of crippled. But as I said, this is only what I read and I'd love for someone more informed to chime in.

I think the problem most people have with it is:

(http://i.imgur.com/drRuL4B.png)

While you can buy some expensive chests full of crap, including some archeum, the amount of it found in the boxes is negligible to the point even the whales are pissed off cause not even their credict cards seem to help. No, as Miasma said, this seems to be a stupid overlook from the Korean devs who simply don't give a fuck about the game's health in other corners of the world. What amazes me is this "lock" on everything that prevents Trion from making changes as simple as a drop rate. What kind of a fucked up deal did they sign?

There's a bigger problem apparently regarding crafting. If anyone with more expericne can clarify this for us, it would be great. Anyway, from what I heard, to craft anything you need a component called "archeum". This material has been another gating mechanism, to prevent people from crafting too much, too early, too soon. Basically, you can't grow in crafting too fast because you will always have a shortage of archeum if you try to do so. And that would be fine.

Except.

Except it looks like no matter the limited labor points or the difficulty of getting the right materials, because the scarcity of archeum makes sure that you will pretty much NEVER be able to craft a piece of gear for your own level after level 25 or so. The amount of archeum, which is a random rare-ish drop, needed to level up the profession and craft items is so high that it is impossible not to fall behind. Eventually, once at level 50, you can focus on becoming a good crafter to craft your own level 50 equipment, since the best stuff in this game is crafted, but it's sad that you can't do your own stuff while you level up. And -needless to say- the archeum needed for level 50 gear is insane. And those drop values are locked by the Korean developer so Hartsman can't do anything about it even though he's aware this is another thing that it's hurting the game. He publicly said so and told XL that they need to change the drop rate, but the Koreans want more data before considering the change.

In the meantime, looks like the sandbox MMORPG that is supposed to have deep, meaningful and useful crafting, has its crafting part kind of crippled. But as I said, this is only what I read and I'd love for someone more informed to chime in.

Patron status is $15 a month. You don't need to spend any more than that.

Didn't we just agreed a few posts above that without purchasing the archeum chests in RMT store you are not gonna go far in crafting?

To ensure that all players have the option to potentially become a Patron, there are two ways to obtain this status. Players can purchase Patron Status as a subscription via real money on the Trion Worlds web store; expect pricing in line with RIFT’s current Patron Program. Alternately, players can use credits to purchase a Patron Pass through the ArcheAge Marketplace – these credits can be acquired by web store purchase, Founder’s Packs, or by obtaining an in-game item called APEX.

APEX, short for ArcheAge Patron Exchange, is an in-game item that can be sold on ArcheAge’s Auction House or traded between players; it grants Credits when consumed by a character. The Credits granted by an APEX can then be spent on any Marketplace purchase, including the 30-day Patron Pass mentioned above. This allows industrious players in ArcheAge to let their gameplay pay for their Patron status without spending real money.

I downloaded the game, created a character, and quit after 5 minutes because I could not find an invert Y mouse setting. Then a board search turned up a result that Trion says it is the number one requested feature by beta testers and their highest priority request for the foreign developers. The lack of such a simple feature tells me a lot about their ability to customize for a western audience.

Still no invert Y mouse setting on release by Trion. If the foreign developer can't put in such a simple to implement feature and it is the highest priority request then Trion has miniscule amount of influence on anything.

This is usually a nice idea in these games, but I wonder, with the way they'd apparently straitjacket the non-patron accounts in this game, is there realistic possibility for one to make enough gold to be able to purchase such a pass?

ArcheAge Version 1.2 Build 4.8: Patch Notes
GAMEPLAY
* The drop rate of loot bags from monsters has significantly increased.
* The drop rate of Sunlight Archeum, Moonlight Archeum, and Starlight Archeum from loot bags has been greatly increased.
* The chance of equipment from loot bags has increased from monsters. These items can be salvaged to gain archeum.
* The Solid Shaft recipe is available again, allowing for the construction of fishing boats.

Looks like less than 24 hours from launch Trion won iths fight over the South Korean overlords? Interesting...


P.S: Miracle patch.