Hellgate London Alpha

[Mrbloodworth]

Reading the demo impressions makes me think they made a shitty demo.

The demo seems to play just like the Videos they host on the site. The videos being the first thing that made me go "Meh", and its now confirmed.

Which confirms they made a shitty demo.

This has not been proven. (To me at least)

[lesion]

they are freaking dorks for making the demo showcase the beginning of the game! like they're going to spoil the compelling storyline or something if they give a peek at any cool shit whatsoever? god dammit, I need to write a letter.

[squirrel]

NDA Lifted...http://hellgatelondon.com/underground/subscribers-and-patch-0

[Mrbloodworth]

NDA Lifted...http://hellgatelondon.com/underground/subscribers-and-patch-0

Fantastic...Let the floodgates open.

[WayAbvPar]

Let's hear it! I want detailed descriptions of the classes and how they play, as well as some of the phat lewts. And I want them NOW! I don't want to have to resort to working to pass the time for Christ's sake.

[Mrbloodworth]

Let's hear it! I want detailed descriptions of the classes and how they play, as well as some of the phat lewts. And I want them NOW! I don't want to have to resort to working to pass the time for Christ's sake.

Seriously.

[schild]

Patch Zero is pretty damn hot.

Also, oh, no NDA:

Ten things Hellgate needs to do:
1. Hire new animators.
2. Add some color, even if it's in themed expansions based on other timelines or cities. This, however, I can wait for.
3. Clean up the interface so things you need to read can be read more... easily.
4. Clean up the inventory setup.
5. Differentiate the classes more.
6. Clean up the skill trees. Get rid of useless shit, add more awesome.
7. More, varied particle effects. Cheap way to add color to the world. Lots of it.
8. Tell EA to shove their ads up their ass (big ups to you Lum).
9. Fire all of the PR and Community People. All of them. And start over.
10. Learn how to control the hype machine. Arena.net is good at it. Blizzard is good at it. These people should be good at it.

[Modern Angel]

Is it fun and why? Does it get tedious/repetitive/grindy?

[Morfiend]

Ok, I have been in beta for a while now. Here are my impressions and such.

Let me start by saying, this is going to be a very negative post. But I want to say first that the game at its core is pretty fun, and VERY addicting. Even with the stuff I am going to say, I still plan on keeping my preorder, and playing the game at release. Subscription, that I'm not sure on yet.

I started playing about 2 months ago. And the game, while having a lot of addicting qualities also has a LOT of problems and errors and bugs and "interesting" design choices. I personally feel this game is really suffering from having EA as a partner. They need another 2 to 3 months in Beta. They really really need it. As it is, I expect a 200mb+ patch for release day. Below are a list of things they are planning on adding by release that where never tested by the beta testers.

Buddy Lists

Much better and easier ways to organize your friends!


Guilds

While only subscribers can start one, anyone can join a guild. Special name colors and tags on characters show their affiliation.


Buddy and Guild Chat

Special chat channels so you can keep your conversations clear.


Bigger Levels in Nightmare Mode

These increase the time players get to spend in each area, giving the game a more expansive feel at higher difficulty levels.


PVP

Players can both duel and elect to enter free-for-all PvP Mode. To duel, a player invites the person they wish to duel into a group, and heads into an adventuring area. Duelers, then right-click on the portrait of the person they wish to duel and select the Duel option from the displayed list. Dueling can only take place outside of Underground hubs.


Players can also choose to enter into PvP mode which means they can be attacked and harmed outside of Underground hubs by anyone else that has chosen to enter PvP mode. That is, those in PvP mode, must always be ready for PvP. This is a way to have wide-ranging free-for-alls, or create your own “friendly-fire” way of playing the game.


Tuned Game Progression

Level and monster progression is more thematic in nature. While this does not affect the overarching layout of the world map, it does make each act feel more defined and focused.


Gossip

We’ve added loads of additional details on the people and places in the game through various NPCs in the world. This definitely helps make the stations feel more alive and provides players with more of the back-story.


More Quest Information

Quest NPCs do a better job of getting you prepared to know what you’re fighting and why. The overall story flows much better, the named demons that are encountered are given more story weight, and players gain a much better sense of overall direction.


NPC Tweaks

The vocal responses given by NPCs have been tuned so that they tend more towards the serious and “normal”, reserving the twisted commentary for specific player characters or in rare moments for the general populace.



Elite Mode

This is for those players that always feel a game is too easy. The demons are tougher, deal out more damage, move faster, travel in larger groups, and have more champions at the ready. Numerous tweaks to the overall balance and progression of the game make this an extremely challenging mode.

Also during beta, the game was so buggy and had so many "wtf" designs, it lead to a huge portion of players hypothasizing that the game we where testing was a "throw away game" and that the "real game" was being tested only in house. Also, I have never seen a forum more full of rabid fanboys and myopic followers. Any word of doubt or negitivity was greated with ether "Duh this is beta" or "GTFO the game is fine". during the early stages of beta, myself and quite a few others posted many threads on the games problems, and gave solutions and possible fixes. After a few weeks as more and more people joined, our threads got buried under waves and waves of Vault like posts.

Bugs. Oh my god is this game buggy. I mean buggy in a "we just started Alpha" sort of way. As of this writing, there are still so many game breaking bugs in the client it is insane. Ranging from equipment disapearing when you try to equip it, to swinging your sword attempting to activate every single skill at the same time but doing nothing and eating all your mana, to crash bugs, and one nasty bug where you lose synch with the server and it stops saving your EXP from that point on.

Classes. The game has 3 parent classes, and each parent class has 2 sub classes for a total of 6 classes. The parent classes are Templar, Hunter and Cabalist. The sub classes are Guardian and Blademaster for Templar, Marksman and Engineer for Hunter, and Evoker and Summoner for Cabalist. Now, each class has 1 skill tree, and they share half that skill tree with the other sub class. So half the Evoker skills, are shared with the Summoner and so forth. Also, several of the classes play a lot the same, the major one being Engineer and Summoner. Gear is also Parent Class specific, so, sorry, no Melee Hunters or Cabalists. Swords are for Templar only.

Gameplay. The general gameplay is fun, and only gets better as you get higher in levels and the mobs start coming in bigger and bigger groups. I have had some VERY fun fights. But there are some problems also. Even more than diblo2, the gameplay is very repetitive. Due to the fact that skills take a lot of mana, you cant spam very many skills. This leaves you with autoattacking for the majority or your gameplay, and doesnt lead to much variance. This is especially true with melee classes. Ranged can vairy it up by equiping different guns. This leads me to the Feed system.

Feed. I feel the Feed system is broken right now. First, the feed system is how equiping items is handled, let me explain. Each stat in the game has 2 uses, a normal stat like use, and it also provides stat feed. The stats are Accuracy, Strength, Stamina and Will. Accuracy gaves you higher crit chance, Str increases the amount of damage you do with melee weapons, will increased your mana pool and mana regen, and stamina gives you hitpoints. Each item has a Feed Cost associated with it, say I found a new gun, this gun would have feed requirements of 2 Str, 5 Stam, 3 Will, 10 Acc. This means it would subtract that amount of points away from your Stat Feed total. All gear has this. So, if I had a pair of pants with a 10 stamina feed also, that would mean I could equip these two items, and be at 15 stamina feed. If I only had 16 stamina, I couldnt equip any more items with Stamina feed cost, inless it was 1 sta feed cost.
The system its self isnt horrible, but it leads to having to put points in all stats as almost every class. Some items require specific types of feed. Armor needs more Str and Stam, guns need more Acc, and all items need a small amount of Will. It is worse for some classes than others. My engineer is pretty much constantly capped in all stats, and I have a bank FULL of items that have dropped for me, but that I cant use yet because I need more stats, in every stat. The Guardian can get away with out putting much in to accuracy, and the hunter can get away with out pumping Str (to an extent, as some guns need str).

Skills. The skills are pretty crappy. They really dont add that much to the game, and are one of the biggest complaints of the testers. There have been hundreds of threads about them. Lots and lots of constructive posts and ideas and such. Just 2 weeks ago FSS totally changed the way the skills worked with skill points, but it didnt help much, except for mean you had to put more points in to a skill to make it viable. Also, a LOT of skills suffer from diminishing returns. Lets that a Hunter skill. Tactical Stance. When you use this, your character crouches down, and gets increased range and crit, and more accuracy when shooting. Now, one point in this skill gives you 25% increased range, 6% increased crit. You can put this skill to 10. Each level bringing 2%crit or so. And thats it. Basically every gun user should take this skill. But putting more than 1 point is mostly a waste, as more points dont give very much increase. This same type of thing is repeated over many of the skills.
Many skills also lack power. Several people actually played all the way through the best, from level 1 to 22(the cap in beta) with out putting a single skill point. Also, many skills have really stupid prerequs. As an engineer, if I want to get their pet "Haste Bot" I need to put 3 points in to Inhibitor bot, and then 3 points in to "concussive Crash" than make the inhibitor bots explode. Then I can take "Haste Bot" but i the majority of Engineers are not going to use Inhibitor Bots, so thats 6 points out of 50 total that I have to spend just to get to the skill I want. This is repeated with just about every class.

Level design. Up to level 22 you have the ability to play through Acts 1-3 out of a total of 5 acts. If some one hadnt told me I was playing Act 3, I never would have known. The levels are identical and there are mostly the same monsters. There is no visual difference between the acts. Also, the levels are random, but the majority are very linear. So if your playing Destroyed Street level, the random part is weather the street has a left turn then a right turn, as aposed to a right turn then a left turn. You basically have one way to go, and it all looks the same. This leads the random levels to not really feel random. There is also no real big zones like in Diablo2, where you left town and went outside to a big land zone. You basically leave town, and go straight to a linear random dungeon. They have a very limited amount of random tilesets also. Streets, Sewers, Warehouses will make up the majority of your playtime. There are a few unique zones thrown in, but this is what you will see most of the time.

Their upgrade system is overall pretty awesome. In Hellgate you should NEVER, EVER sell an item to the NPC shop keeper. You can disassamble items you arnt going to use. This is equilivant to disenchanting an item in WoW. When you disasemble an item, it gives you parts, you can then use these parts at different machines in town to create new items from a list that is randomly generated every time you load in to a station (town) or upgrade your current gear. You can also pay money to add "magic" abilities to your current weapons and armor. Now, the only problem is that the upgrades and abilities are random. When you add an ability to a weapon, it has 3 options, Common, Rares and Legendary. Adding a Legendary property to your item will cost most of your current money, and you wont know what your going to get. It really sucks to empty your bank to add a legendary property to your weapon, and then have it be a skill bonus for a different class. This is minor in the long run, and I really like that you can upgrade an item. This was if you dont get a good drop as you level up, you arnt totally screwed.

The backpacks are also way to small. during the course of one instance, you usually have to stop between 1 and 3 times to disassemble items. If you could have a setting to auto disassemble "white" as in none magic items, it would be very very cool.

This game could really use another 3 months in beta, and it could be a very great game. As it stands right now, I think its going to go down as a fun game with a huge amount of wasted potential. I will buy it, and I will play it, but its just to repetitive, to buggy, and the classes dont offer enough difference for me to want to level more than a couple classes. Also with the way the skill tress are set up, you are going to have a limited amount of builds, but due to spending more than half youor time auto attacking, different builds are still going to play a lot the same.

[schild]

EA hasn't been involved enough to hurt it.

Blame Namco Bandai all day though. They had no business being involved for 3/4 the development.

[Morfiend]

EA one would assume is pushing for the Oct 30 release date. The game is not ready.

Also I forgot to mention. This game has the WORST FUCKING CHAT INTERFACE EVER. Oh my god. Its horrible. Really really horrible.

[schild]

Yea, I can't really stress how much the UI needs a work over. But the UI is moddable, rite? Can cope.

I think the Halloween date was decided long before EA was involved. THere's too much content ready for the holiday.

Morphiend, I hate EA more than anyone on this board, if I felt I could blame them, I'd be waving that flag higher than most could see.

[Salamok]

schild can we get a new post started in the NEWS section for post NDA commentary, maybe move morf's wall of text there too.

[schild]

hm yes maybe one sec

[Morfiend]

But the UI is moddable, rite?

No, the UI will NOT be moddable. They have stated they didn't have the design resources to allow mods. What you see is what you get.

Also, I forgot to mention also, about the Quests. They are more dull than WoW quests. So far they consist of "Go kill (Named Mob) in (specific dungeon)" Also, "Bring me 10 (mob body part) from (unnamed mob) in (specific dungeon)" or "Explore (specific dungeon) and report back".

There was SO much possibility for cool, unique and awesome quests. But for me, that is par for the course when it comes to Hellgate. Missed opportunity.

[Miasma]

I like the game but it's nowhere near great, I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed honestly.  Unless they are pumping out new items and levels every month I really don't think it deserves a monthly subscription either.

I enjoyed playing all of the classes and can easily see getting to fifty with each of them, it doesn't feel like you're doing the same levels over and over because the layouts are dynamic and change each time.  The game definitely gives you that really powerful feeling from Diablo, you just wade into enemies and start slaughtering left and right.  You might actually be too powerful because you rarely have to worry about dying unless you stumble onto an elite while in the middle of a fight.  The skill system is good but not great, there is some (arguably understandable) over lap between classes as well.  The gunners share some skills as do the sword wielders.  The loot is pretty good although quite often the blue stuff isn't better than the green and with six different classes you don't often see something you can actually use, but that's not a complete loss because of the crafting system.

The NPCs are great, I actually read the quest dialogue because I enjoy it.  They are either crazy or rude or fawning all over you, quite a bit of character.  The quests are well laid out in that you always just happen to get half a dozen of them for the area that you're about to enter as part of the main plot line.  They have a system where instead of being an FPS a mission gets turned into an overhead command a squad type game, it has a lot of potential and is a nice break when they use one (rarely, and it was quite short).  You can call in air strikes, tell them who to attack, where to take cover and so on.

There are quite a few augmentations and systems as well.  Most weapons have slots in which you can put ammo mods, magic mods, etc.  All loot can be broken down into their components and used to build new items at crafting stations, you can also buy items with the components from another NPC.  Each piece of gear you get can also be upgraded using the components by adding a random tiered effect (stuff like +38% chance to crit or +9 health regen).

On the bad side - as most people point out the UI isn't exactly clean.  This was also one of the worst betas I've ever played when it comes to bugs, and not little bugs either, big ones.  Entire stations (the towns of the game) disappear for hours/days at a time, if you are at the point in your progression where you needed to get to the next station and it's down you might as well roll an alt.  Some stations have warping bugs in which everyone in the station is pulled to the exact same point and you have to run back to wherever you were.  This is the only beta I have played where entire characters would bug out and be completely inaccessible, I had to roll alts because my mains were stuck in limbo after crashing while porting to a station.  I dared not use the equivalent of the Diablo town portal because half the time I would crash and lose all of my progress.  They had to manually distribute files over the forums because the patcher screwed up and couldn't complete the file.  These are mostly core system type bugs, I'm not even going to bother mentioning all the little bugs like display and game play... except for one, ravagers.  I only mention it because I hate them so much, they are the only enemies which "jump" at you and they are frustratingly screwed up, they either disappear or get stuck in mid air or land nowhere near where they were headed.  Hopefully most of the worst bugs will be fixed by release and things will be more stable.

If you played the demo I hope you really liked the enemies you saw, because you are going to see the exact same ones for at least the next twenty two levels and probably further (the beta was capped at twenty two).  By the time you've gone past the second or third station you have seen all the enemies in the game, they just get stronger and change colours/armour.  Flying enemies really suck for melee because you can't bloody well reach them, you have to constantly switch weapons to a grapple, which takes a few seconds to charge up, then hook and pull them to you, then switch back to your sword and kill them.  Ranged classes should get used to running backwards.  I'm also already really tired of the gray/brown.  Yes, I know the game is being fought in the ruins of London but there are always imaginative ways to travel to different places, with some fucking colour in them.

Basically I'll buy it but I'm a consumerist whore for these types of games.  I mean I bought Vanguard even though I knew it was going to be a disaster so it would be unwise to go by what I purchase...

Oh yeah, in game ads...  At least they fit in, I ignore them in the subway stations just like I do in real life.

Edit: Typos...
Edit 2: My lava dye kit really sucks, the wasp ones look great.  Mostly because they are beautiful yellow and I'm desperate to look at colour.

[Morfiend]

Some stations have warping bugs in which everyone in the station is pulled to the exact same point and you have to run back to wherever you were.

Thats not a bug, its a feature. If a station gets to full, its dumps a bunch of the people to a new instance of that station. Why they didnt just cap the numbers of players in a station and have any over that cap just enter in to a new station, I have no idea. I think its pretty stupid also.

[Mrbloodworth]

Some stations have warping bugs in which everyone in the station is pulled to the exact same point and you have to run back to wherever you were.

Thats not a bug, its a feature. If a station gets to full, its dumps a bunch of the people to a new instance of that station. Why they didnt just cap the numbers of players in a station and have any over that cap just enter in to a new station, I have no idea. I think its pretty stupid also.

Yeah, thats kinda bass ackwards.

[tazelbain]

SO is this like GW, where the towns are common areas and the countryside is instatized?

[Jamiko]

SO is this like GW, where the towns are common areas and the countryside is instatized?

AND randomized.

[Threash]

Sweet NDA gone... ok well.... i guess i liked it.  It was addicting as hell when it worked, the loot system is everything you could possibly as from a diablo clone and more.  The skills were horrible though and had very little impact on gameplay.  There is no such thing as "builds" or "specs", you simply pick a buncha random powers that have very little if anything to do with each other.  I'm not about to complain about bugs in a beta, specially since i stopped playing weeks ago, but ill say for me they werent that bad.  I never experienced inaccesible characters or stations.  I'll probably buy it and play it for a while and the whole time think about how the skill system of the last diablo clone (Titans Quest) was a million times better and if they could somehow combine those skills with the loot and graphics from this game that would be perfect.

[Miasma]

SO is this like GW, where the towns are common areas and the countryside is instatized?

They are both instanced.

Non sequitur:  Holy crap they added my favorite smiley in the whole world .  God damn that little guy makes me happy no matter how bad I feel.

[Morfiend]

I'm not about to complain about bugs in a beta, specially since i stopped playing weeks ago, but ill say for me they werent that bad.  I never experienced inaccesible characters or stations.

Each patch it got worse and worse for the last 2 weeks or so. Thats worth noting, when the game is 2 weeks from release.

[SnakeCharmer]

I'm not about to complain about bugs in a beta, specially since i stopped playing weeks ago, but ill say for me they werent that bad.  I never experienced inaccesible characters or stations.

Each patch it got worse and worse for the last 2 weeks or so. Thats worth noting, when the game is 2 weeks from release.

They are preparing for the secret fun working build that they've been hiding.

[rattran]

Yep. Instanced in all the non-station areas.

There are some really nifty levels, and the variety of loot is decent. As a Marksman, one of the 'guns' is a bladesaw, pretty much a chainsaw with a different look. Quite fun, and a nice change for when you're getting swarmed. Which happens fairly often later on.
The gameplay could use some work, and the game desperately needs better character animations and colors. The wasp dye kit looks nice, but without it, all my stuff for both Blademaster and Marksman is either brown, dark brown, or black. The UI is fairly awful, but other than a ferocious memory leak, I've had few major bugs. No crashing on portalling, no lost sync, never lost a weapon. I'm using the x64 dx10 client, so your mileage may vary. Your backpack is too small, the chat window is atrocious, and the 'rating' for weapons is worse than useless. A better variety of mobs, and an easier way to deal with special effects would be nice.

As for the demo, Holborn is fairly weak. I don't remember any of the quests there standing out at all.

edit: I'll believe in the 'secret gold client' when I see it. I suspect it'll be much like the one from AO... imaginary.

[Simond]

So...the two big questions:
1) Is it worth $15/month?
2) Is it more fun than Diablo 2?

[Morfiend]

So...the two big questions:
1) Is it worth $15/month?

That remains to be seen.

2) Is it more fun than Diablo 2?

No. Not right now. Addicting? Yes. But fun? It could be on the same page, if they keep adding content on a regular bases for about a year.

[Miasma]

I'm pretty sure it's $10 a month not $15, I'm hoping the first month is free so that I can see if it is worth losing the extras.

[tkinnun0]

Impressions from the demo:

• Oh god the movement lag and mouse lag. I mean, for a MMORPG it might be fine, but with Blizzard, not so much either.
• Talents, er skills. You just had to copy Diablo and ignore any improvements made since then? I didn't use any points at all because I was saving them for a level 5 talent (which I never got).
• I ran out of quests 1 hour in, so they outdid Diablo there.
• Don't end your demo with a dead-end and then make your players double-back wondering if they missed something. Compare and contrast with the Bioshock demo. Are you not even trying?
• Your world map is 5 small white boxes connected with different colored bars. Enough said.

All in all, it's your average shooter. But, unlike your average shooter, your levels are randomly generated, so you won't have the cool in-engine scripted sequences or hidden goodies off the beaten path other shooters have. No, your content consists of pumping dialogue out of NPCs one line at a time.

Loot, you say? I got one rare gun that I couldn't equip for no reason at all.

[Margalis]

Playing as a melee char is horrible. It's the typical FPS melee char, just replace the gun with a sword and pretend you are done. The animations are awful, I swing and hit a guy I missed by 3 feet, etc. Run and gun style just does not work well with melee combat, I wish PC game makers would play games with decent melee before they try to make one of their own. The ability to turn and strafe and run backwards while your upper body swings a weapon just looks goofy and the whole feel is unsatisfying.

Basically to me it's a bad Phantasy Star Universe.

[Mrbloodworth]

You know, the whole time, i had wished it was a skill based game, no classes. So then you could swap between swords and guns...

[Salamok]

You know, the whole time, i had wished it was a skill based game, no classes. So then you could swap between swords and guns...

I want Diablo 1 back, your skills/spells are based on class but you can wear whatever you have the stats to support.  I miss my platemail wearing fireball tossing wtfpwn sorcerer. 

[lesion]

quick (?) overview of classes--I didn't have time to really play all of them so some are not quite fleshed-out. in addition I will refrain from making comments about the game quality in general. I was going to embed images but now they are just shit-small links.


Templar
Templar are the melee fighters of choice. They have a few ranged weapons available but you definitely won't be killing things from across the map. The melee system is a bit odd and takes a bit of time to get used to (unless you're a connoisseur in which case you might vomit). In sticking with what seems a popular theme in HGL the combat remains simple and becomes almost chess-like later on (if chess included swarms of flying pawns). They also get swords that shoot bees.

Guardian
If you don't immediately get an idea of this class from the name it's okay to feel ashamed. Guardian features shield specials, carebear auras and horrible pants. Note that Hellgate auras do *not* work like in most games; they only affect you unless otherwise indicated. None of them, for either class, are particularly exciting. Guardians get a defense boosting aura, a passive heal aura, +max health aura, etc.  Moreso than Blademasters it may be viable to use guns, although with the Feed system that limits equipment based on player stats making things mesh might be tougher.

Why would you play a Guardian? Maybe you are dumb. I don't know. They certainly have the means to take more damage than other classes, so if you like being wailed on this may be appropriate. Also you can beat people with your shield.

Blademaster
I don't know why more people weren't running around as these--oh wait, I do. They start off as perhaps the most boring class aside from Cabalists. Blademasters cannot dual-wield until level 5 and don't get many of their kickass attacks until 10+ so you're stuck just whacking shit like a rube for a bit. When you get to the later game you'll still be whacking shit, but there will be more particle effects and mid-air somersaults. Auras include thorns (yes, those thorns), projectile stopping/reflecting and improved criticals.

They are the more offensively-inclined Templar. Shyeahduh. "Surges" serve very much like Assassin charges in D2, only they require kills to build up and cannot be used to enhance other attacks (while active you can get things like passive healing, improved critical chance and movement speed increases). You can "charge" enemies which, put technically, is teleporting into their face and fucking up their shit. There's a line of skills dealing with group attacks and a line for massive damage to a single target. Pretty straightforward, but I found it more engaging than guns once I got used to the jump-step melee attack timing.


Cabalist
The casters of the game, which essentially means guns that actually have ammo in the form of power (mana).  Weapons are divided into focus items and crazy ol' guns including swarm launchers (that fire homing clouds of buzzsaw insects), chemical throwers and pistols that immobilize enemies.  If you like wearing helmets that look like hollowed-out demon heads leaving enough of your lower face to look ridiculously stupid, Cabalist is the way to go.

Evoker
I have less info for this than any other class. I guess you fire off big spells and revel in barbed-wire inspired design. The use of focus items in place of guns (necessary for casting said spells) mean you will also likely have scary shit covering your hands throughout the game. See here for a more accurate description.

Summoner
So, you like pressing buttons repeatedly at the beginning of every map? In a strange twist Summoners have about 70% of all their skills dealing with summoned underlings. I am floored. There are elementals which provide around 4-5 different damage types as you go up in levels and three demon types: one a melee tank, one a healer and one an offensive...thing. Each can be enhanced with two different skills that define the previous roles. There are also support skills that improve health of summons, allow you to heal them, blah blah blah.

If you've played a Warlock in WoW and/or a Necromancer in D2 you'll likely feel at home with this class. Sacrifice health to top up your demons, suck magical red beams from corpses to heal yourself, or drain life from opponents still on their feet. While this is going on you can unload with a variety of guns, which is always family-approved fun.


Hunter
Hunters are the all-out ranged classes, except for that gun that just spins a blade on one end.  Long-range attacks are choice but when faced up close rocket launchers, beam weapons and handheld miniguns can do the trick. While the regular enemies are usually easier due to one-shot kills bosses can provide some trouble because of their habit of getting up close and unloading dump-trucks of fist.  Both classes can learn the "Escape" ability which cloaks them for a short period of time allowing a safe retreat. Easymode.

Marksman
I played this class briefly but ended up switching to Engineer. While it wasn't un-fun per se a lot of the skills are typical badass sniper dewd fare. Both classes get a "Tactical Stance" that roots you in place and increases gun-related dickery, but Marksman has a unique "Sniper Stance" that zooms your view a bit and gives you a scary ol' reticle. I found as an Engineer I'd sometimes have trouble hitting things because they were too far-off to see, so it's more than just visual fluff.

The class also has a large amount of grenade-type-things and air-strike tomfoolery. I didn't even pay attention to them because I was busy being a badass sniper dewd. The Marksman has a number of targetable debuffs (sharing one with Engineers) that all increase damage taken by the target/group.

Engineer
While similar to the Summoner in that it's a pet class there are some variations to how said pets work. There are "bots" and the "drone". Bots are apparently untargetable, which means they cannot generally be killed. There are bots that debuff the speed of enemies, buff your group's attack speed, fire rockets, drop bombs or suicide on a hapless demon causing a variety of unhealthy outcomes. Not all bots can be out at the same time so it's not always a convention like Summoners.

The drone is a customizable weapons platform, healer and buffer. All skills add or enhance functionality in those respects, from being able to equip your drone with a gun or sword to having it emit a healing nova or repair shields. In an interesting twist totally not related to D2, it uses player items. You can stick a rocket launcher on the top and giggle. The downside to this is that the drone (much like friendly NPCs) is shit-horrible at aiming projectile weapons since it can't seem to rotate in increments less than 45 degrees. Makes for an okay item-free healer though.

The class plays a lot like Marksman only it'll be prudent to keep your drone alive and stay on top of party health.  As far as this game is concerned it's got the most group-buffs available and will likely be the cleric of HGL, at least for Hardcore groups. Or something. What the hell am I talking about?

[Falwell]

Hellgate is a pretty damn good game. The problem is, the client itself and the servers are in terrible shape. Patching has been a nightmare for many. Including but not limited to, having to re-download and install the entire client and clean your rig's registry after a failed patching. DX 10 right now is also in pretty sorry shape. Massive memory leaks, textures swapping from high end to absolute low for no reason, black loading screens, extremely long load times, sound going completely out at random times requiring a client restart. Yeah, from a stability and dependability standpoint, it's in sorry shape.

Now the game itself, when it's running, has everything an action RPG guy wants. A massive loot table, extremely nice looking models at the high end, massive amounts of baddies, tons of random events like hell rifts, passages, NPC quest givers and vendors etc. In this regard, it's kept me quite entertained. The skill tables leave quite a bit to be desired, especially in variety. Many of the skills are just simple upgrades of the original. So the amount of actual unique skills is pretty slim overall.

The classes themselves, skill trees withstanding, are all pretty fun for me to play minus the blade master. Not really my style, but I could see how other people would enjoy it. Evoker / Engi are my 2 faves at this point and will be my first two roll ups. Over the long haul I could definitely see myself maxing every class save the blade master.

My prediction for Hellgate? I smell an abysmal launch for this one, on the technical end. Beta up to now all points to it. A nasty, unstable client with serious technical issues and a complete crap shoot patching system less than 2 weeks from launch reeks of disaster. Super magical happy fun secret build be damned. If they pull it off? Hot, the game is defintely solid enough to stand on it's own if the technical aspects can be taken care of.

I am keeping my pre-order, I'll be there at the midnight server ups with bells on come Halloween, but I'm expecting the worst.

[Salamok]

any feedback on grouping?  How many can be in an instance, good combos, etc...  How about PvP?