SOE Free Realms

[Xanthippe]

I just noticed that there are weapons available for real money.  They're really really good weapons too (best in game?), and usable at level 1.

But what's the point of that?  Besides money for Sony, I mean.  It doesn't make a lot of sense from a player's standpoint. 

I've been having fun making my own stuff on my blacksmith until quests or drops give me something better.

I can see buying clothes and fluff but stuff with stats? 

I have no idea what stats do for miners, blacksmiths or chefs.  Or pet trainers.  Or postmen.  Or kart drivers.

[Signe]

This game screams for paint ball pvp.  Ask Xanthippe.  She'll tell you!

[Lantyssa]

That would be awesome.

[Xanthippe]

This game screams for paint ball pvp.  Ask Xanthippe.  She'll tell you!

oooooooooooooooooooooo it does.

[Signe]

We thought ATITD needed something like that, but this game looks like an even better candidate. 

I pretty much like everything so far.  My mouse doesn't seem to lend itself well for some of the bits, like stirring, bellows, practice dummies, etc. but I've been able to overcome that stuff.  I have a small worry Free Realms might be a quick route to Carpel Tunnel, though.

[tazelbain]

I am hoping Free Realms is practice for EQ3.  Combine EQ2 dungeon crawler ethos with Free Realm's Polish and Flexibility would be gold.

[RhyssaFireheart]

 My mouse doesn't seem to lend itself well for some of the bits, like stirring, bellows, practice dummies, etc. but I've been able to overcome that stuff.  I have a small worry Free Realms might be a quick route to Carpel Tunnel, though.

This.  Some of these mini-games just don't play nicely with a trackball.  I deleted a quest in Snowhill, one of the music conductor ones, because trying to follow some line using a trackball doesn't work well.  Although, I have discovered that I can have a USB trackball and a PS/2 mouse active at the same time on my system, and the game recognizes both, so maybe I'll try the music quest again soon.

I agree with different colored icons for repeatable quests, too.  Have it be the same green as all the other quests until you do it once, then change the color to something else, like a different shade of green maybe.

[Hawkbit]

I am hoping Free Realms is practice for EQ3.  Combine EQ2 dungeon crawler ethos with Free Realm's Polish and Flexibly would be gold.

It goes without saying that SOE has learned a helluva lot about games over the past 10 years.  I've got a pretty good feeling that EQ3 will be a decent game, even if it changes design into a game that I don't personally like.  IMO, you can't own SWG and *not* learn anything about how games should be designed. 

[tmp]

I pretty much like everything so far.  My mouse doesn't seem to lend itself well for some of the bits, like stirring, bellows, practice dummies, etc. but I've been able to overcome that stuff.

Stirring, chooping and other cooking stuff works out ok for me, but the other "follow the pattern" games humiliate me at anything but the easiest levels. They seem to have very narrow margin of error and tight time requirements, making them very easy to fail. And so i fail, oy.

Guess i can be glad it's not just me

[pxib]

I also use a trackball, and the music conductor and practice dummy just required some analysis of what each game measures. It works best for me if I just pretend i'm targeting desktop icons:

Music conductor would like you to follow the little paths, but it doesn't care much so long as you get to the spots at the right time. So ignore the moving note and just concentrate on the next dot, move the mouse there as the beat hits. There are some tricky moments where it strings beats together in sequences of three, and you may need to restart a few times until you know those in advance.

Practice dummy slashes work similarly. Other than the overall timer, it doesn't care how quickly you get from one slash to the next, nor does it care that you slash a straight line... only that once you've touched the start of a slash you quickly reach the end. You don't need to hold the button down or anything. So take the extra moment of care to hit the center of the click targets, and don't put your cursor over a slash until you've mentally targeted the other end end of it.

The bellows though? Torture. I've given up on smelting and just mine for the fun of it.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I didn't know that, pxib.  Now I'll try that out next time I'm in game.  If I don't have to switch to a regular mouse just for a few certain quests, I'll be much happier.  Too much moving the mouse around, when I'm used to keeping my hand in one place otherwise.

[Venkman]

Is there an EQ3 on the slate?

[Draegan]

Is there an EQ3 on the slate?

Not that I've heard.  There arn't any sekret SOE games right?  The only thing major I know that they have in development that most people know of is The Agency.  But I don't have sekret infoz.

[Lantyssa]

Has anyone done the quest "No, kitty"?

In the ending text:
I sent a bug report, but I'm wondering if anyone knows more.

[Bandit]

One major gripe that I do have that I forgot: No invert Mouse axis?!! Majorly annoying and confusing for me at times - I thought this is a standard

[Draegan]

Your website is terrible.  I'm attempting to get my girlfriend into gaming and your website is broken.  Bah.

Plus it's very difficult to use these free passes from Best Buy.  I enter in the code in "redeem a code" then it brings me to a log in screen where she doesn't have an account yet, so I click on create an account (is the free code still transferring?) and we go through the whole process of creating a character to the whole thing ending up as Bleh.

Oh well.  I'll try again later. 

[schild]

Is there an EQ3 on the slate?

Not that I've heard.  There arn't any sekret SOE games right?  The only thing major I know that they have in development that most people know of is The Agency.  But I don't have sekret infoz.

Every company has secret games.

Every single one.

[Venkman]

What if the company makes hand creme? 

I'm only curious if there's an EQ3 in the works. Because I'd love to discuss the merits of it (as in: not). But it sounds like while there could be, nothing is official, so there's nothing really to talk about.

[tazelbain]

Good one, DQ. 

[Xanthippe]

Has anyone done the quest "No, kitty"?

In the ending text:
I sent a bug report, but I'm wondering if anyone knows more.

I found this in the bugs forum - not sure if it's any help or not.

http://forums.station.sony.com/freerealms/posts/list.m?topic_id=4385

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, that's the one.  Search didn't pull it up the last time I looked.

[tazelbain]

I finally beat Iron Mining 100k last night.  I think switching to "pocket watch" shards helped.

[Signe]

I was going to buy a pet but then I bought a medic weapon instead, which helped a lot.  It's odd how you can buy a weapon with the same stats for absurdly different prices.  Same with pets.  Shouldn't they have different stats or something?  Good game, though many bits of it seem thoroughly thought out.

[Xanthippe]

Crafted and Station Cash Weapons - towards the bottom of this page.

(Spoiler alert, don't follow link if you don't want to know.)

http://forums.station.sony.com/freerealms/posts/list.m?topic_id=4265

It seems weird to me that you can buy the best weapon in the game when you're level 1.  For real cash, but still.


What do the tools do, like blacksmith tool and miner tool and so on?

What does the power of an item mean?  Is it just a guide or an actual stat that matters?

[Grimwell]

http://help.freerealms.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21560

That link tells you what all the icons mean on all the different gear. So you get a better idea of what the mining gear bonuses are for. More time, power ups, etc.

I've purchased a thing or two from the marketplace, and while the items are indeed extremely uber it's worth noting that the combat Jobs I didn't buy squat for are just as viable. I didn't have to pay to take on the content; I did pay to get a cool hat for my wizard. :)

[Xanthippe]

Thank you!  That's what I was looking for.

I totally get buying outfits and pets, or different glowy effects.  I've bought a cat and a dog.  If I find a spiffy outfit that suits my pixie, I'll get one of those too.

[Righ]

Sadly some of the game is entirely unplayable on my laptop. Most of the mini games work fine, but any movement in the world suffers from what seems like the client slowing down the frame rate to about two frames a second. Its not constant - it comes and goes, and I can't see anything bottle-necking to that degree in resource monitor. It does coincide with high CPU usage, but that peak drops off quickly and the slow throughput remains for close to a minute. I'm unable to do any timed quest of course. Would think a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory and a GT7950 graphics chip would suffice, but apparently not.

Ah well, that was short lived. Guess I'm only out five bucks.

[Grimwell]

You have turned down all the graphics settings, etc. ?

If you are up for it, file a ticket with support. Maybe it's a magical hardware combination  that we need to adjust for.

[Xanthippe]

Station Cash Chef outfits and miner outfits have a power rating of 30, but I have no idea what that means.  They look cool though!

[Hawkbit]

Wow.  I actually got it running on the Public PCs here at the library which are going on five years old now.  Framerate is a little sluggish, but it works pretty well. 

I might show it to the kids tomorrow so they play something other than FusionFall or Halo. 

[Bandit]

RMT is a successful model for idiots like me, I could not resist.



Nothing screams a complete waste of money like a virtual hot dog suit.

[Yoru]

That is fucking epic.

[schild]

Oh shit, the hot dog suit with the mustache is total money.

[Righ]

You have turned down all the graphics settings, etc. ?

I gave that a shot, it didn't help much. Perhaps it took a little longer for the frame rate to collapse, not sure.

If you are up for it, file a ticket with support. Maybe it's a magical hardware combination  that we need to adjust for.

Depending on what I find out today, that might not be necessary. Its looking like a problem with the nVidia driver and the laptop's power management. A cold boot of the system had me entirely free of problems for several hours last night. Just before I went to bed, I suspended and resumed and the problem was back almost as soon as I set foot in the world. I wasn't in the mood to start uninstalling and installing drivers and fiddling with peoples' mods for adding laptop features to newer generic drivers. I'll play some today, and see what I can figure out. Worst case scenario, I shutdown my laptop every night. It's a games computer only, waiting for it to boot is less infuriating than loss of frame rate. :)

[Righ]

I spoke too soon. After several re-installs of different drivers and using Driver Cleaner between each, I'm still having the problem. It's odd, and I feel like I'm looking at the wrong thing. Other games are running fine on this laptop, no problems in Fallout 3, some network lag in LotRO. Is it possible that the Free Realms client is blocking updates on network responses and I'm seeing network lag as a FPS issue?

I suppose I'll go bother the support people.