So yeah this is a thread that is more or less about
ATC-RayCrash which is actually made by Filipinos. You are a giant robot and you blow shit up, there is a HUGE grind. But no, the Japanese (robots) nor the Koreans (grinds) are involved.
About Ray-Crash, you are a giant robot and you blow up other giant robots, really it is hardly a MMO but your giant robot is a character and it is persistant. You grind a ridiculous amount of money and you can pimp your robot-ride. Which is cool everyone loves to be able to change the weapon loadouts of giant robots,
everyone.
Of course like all the low-budget mmofps thingies I've seen, Ray-Crash doesn't have a world, nope just random servers that you join and leave at will. You pick a map, you fight, somebody wins and gets more money then the guy who lost. Rinse repeat. Basically we're going to need to invent a new game category, or I missed it when necessity shitted this one out:
FPS+ will work, the plus will denote that there are some rpg aspects or something.
So what sucks about Ray-Crash you say? Oh hell, lots of stuff. Par for the asian budget free-mmo'ish offering course we have the following flaws:
-pretty lousy netcode
-bad attention to detail
-fucking massive grinding
-not much in the way of community-building
Oh it doesn't help either that not many people play the game.
So why bother to talk about it at all you ask? Well for one, I'm icing my knee which is fucked up from netminding on asphalt (fuck you street hockey) and for two, I'm d/l'ing the latest episode of Eureka SeveN (did you know it has giant robots?).
Oh yeah, one more thing. The combat has this interesting characteristic I hadn't seen in my life prior to playing Gunz:the Duel. Some of you may remember me saying nice things about Gunz, some here even played it. You see in both Ray-Crash and Gunz you can REALLY FUCKING TELL when a player is good. I mean they will be doing some shit you didn't even know was possible. Sure you can tell a guy is good in Quake (railgun) or CS (awp) when they are just headshotting mother-fuckers all over. But this is different, its not just score-good its visually stunning to watch top-tier players play these games. You see in Gunz you could basically fucking fly, or block bullets. If you could get your brain to order your fingers correctly to do some version of finger breakdancing and your fingers could keep up. In Raycrash a good player is always moving and pulling some complex strategies, using grab moves, combo's and all other sorts of crazy shit. I've been thinking long and hard about why in these two games pro-play was just so much more impressive to me. Was the gamespeed that much faster? Or were there just more moves, options and creativity left to the players? I hope it is the latter, because if that is the case then eventually we might get this kind of spiffy combat in our slow american games.
Fuck if I know the answers. Bottom line though, these fps+ games are pretty cool, if they would just learn from WoW and put some fucking polish on, get some netcode that doesn't blow and not charge 50,000$ to start a clan (raycrash) -for the record I had earned like 5k after 2 or 3 weeks of casual play. If they can do that, while keeping these interestingly complex, challenging and inventive combat-systems I might even go back on my I wouldn't pay $15/mo for a game with no world stance.
I think it'll happen too, right now it is a race between east and west. Who will pull their head out of their ass sooner? On the one hand you have American/European companies just emulating the same fucking trash we've seen since EQ1. I dont think you can have a game more polished then WoW so somebody will have to try something new eventually right? Oh wait, nevermind the key is to get an even more established IP and cut features *cough* LTRO *endcough* On the other side we have Asian companies coming up with really cool sounding ideas and sometimes some pretty spiffy gameplay peripherals but at the core their games are all fucking Lineage style grinds, with no customization, limited visual style and repetitive gameplay and/or worlds. Tack on often crappy gui's, a woeful lack of any kind of system to ease newbies into the game and actual cockblocks to you know, playing with other people and we've got a retard fight on our hands here...
*sigh*
Now I know, a bunch of you old farts are going to start whining about moving your fingers fast or somesuch shit. I'm not saying this sort of thing is for everyone. Call it a "niche of a niche of a niche" if that'll make you happy and keep you from trying to shit on my head.
Discuss? Or something? I dunno, bottom line if you are a big-time fps fan you should do yourself a favor and check out
Gunz which is by far the better of the two. When you first start out it plays like a shitty free version of any other fps. Then all of a sudden when you get L21 you'll realize that there is a whole new world of wall running, multiple wall running, flying, butterfly, and whatever else they've come up with since I was last playing that game. It is pretty effing cool I think.
Author
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and some of the wonderful b33r that made this whole ramble possible 
I may have to play the Korean version at the rate they are getting the US one going. I guarantee you though, that some of the problems I've mentioned so far will be prevalent in Exteel as well. Sure I had some hope pre-AA but now NCsoft doesn't inspire very much fucking confidence.