Hellgate London Alpha

[Murgos]

Ok, played all of seven minutes.  No need to repeat what is already above.

So, where does grouping come in, or is the whole thing just solo play with a leader board?

Uh?  Join a group or form your own?

[Modern Angel]

People who play four levels of a demo limited to the newbie area and think they got the inside poop are a bit deranged.

So does the 20 minute rule apply to true MMOs only or games like HGL which are sort of MMOs but not really?

I am starting to warm to the game a bit more. Somehow all the quests in my log got deleted and they won't fucking come back but I can cope. I may buy it, depending on how many of my friends do. I can see this being a hoot at a LAN party.

[taolurker]

Ok, played all of seven minutes.  No need to repeat what is already above.

So, where does grouping come in, or is the whole thing just solo play with a leader board?

Uh?  Join a group or form your own?

Maybe it's possible that it was a single player demo Oban played?

People who play four levels of a demo limited to the newbie area and think they got the inside poop are a bit deranged.

Undoubtedly the game would benefit from 3-5 more months of polish.  Give the UI a nice shine, get those mem-leaks taken care of, figure out the other annoying bugs and take another pass at the skill trees and voila.  Classic.

The difference between HG:L and Tabula Rasa is that HG:L actually has a solid core game that just happens to be currently hampered by bugs and minor issues.

The UI cannot be fixed, no amount of shine will eliminate the fullscreen inventory/skills or horrible choices they've made with it. The memory leak, crashing, and server issues will not help make multi-player be anything but frustration, plus it's clickiness with bland colors and pale quests will make it worse. There's too many annoying bugs, no patcher or server status, and nothing really that appears solid at it's core. Taking another pass at skill trees won't happen with all that crap to fix, so voila.. Classic junk.

I say stop paying for shit on a shingle games, or we will continue to see even worse half-assed, unfinished games than this one. The people who pay for this deserve to suffer, and likely have a masochistic bent, which is destroying the game industry slowly plus giving us more rushed games forced to release before they're done.

[Murgos]

The UI cannot be fixed, no amount of shine will eliminate the fullscreen inventory/skills or horrible choices they've made with it. The memory leak, crashing, and server issues will not help make multi-player be anything but frustration, plus it's clickiness with bland colors and pale quests will make it worse. There's too many annoying bugs, no patcher or server status, and nothing really that appears solid at it's core. Taking another pass at skill trees won't happen with all that crap to fix, so voila.. Classic junk.

I say stop paying for shit on a shingle games, or we will continue to see even worse half-assed, unfinished games than this one. The people who pay for this deserve to suffer, and likely have a masochistic bent, which is destroying the game industry slowly plus giving us more rushed games forced to release before they're done.

I did read your review on corp and I don't want to start a muck fight but, seriously.  Half the points you make are just wrong and the other half are your opinions that you are putting in absolute terms.

The UI's only real issue is that it's not intuitive that you can hold down alt to get mouse control.  The full screen inventory is fine and doesn't bother me in the least nor does the knowledge tree.  It's full screen?  Big deal, not like you can't see what's going on in the world (the screens are transparent) and there is no reason to spend ANY time on those screens in the middle of combat.  Non-issues for the most part.

The mem-leak has gotten better with every patch and even WoW shipped with a horrendous mem-leak.  Meh, it will get fixed, I can still play for 3 hour sessions even with it.  Crashing, for me, is tied to the mem-leak, once the system performance has degraded then a crash is inevitable, otherwise it's fine.  Other server issues are just the normal growing pains that EVERY game has suffered, that doesn't excuse their existence but are hardly world shattering, every now and then you get reset to a 0 point in the stations, Big Fuckin' Deal, the station crashing and locked zones went away weeks ago.

There is patcher and server status and yes, the patcher works as intended.  They had issues with it for about 2 weeks but now it's back in order.  Meh, non-issue, again. 

There are good skills and most of the ones I've used are fun and interesting even if I think some of them need to be tweaked/expanded for effectiveness.

I agree that the game shouldn't be forced out the door for the Halloween date but you are pretty much dead wrong in stating your opinions as facts and not even taking the effort to verify if your more outrageous claims are even true.

Maybe it's possible that it was a single player demo Oban played?

If Oban is too stupid to put single player demo and no grouping together coherently he really deserves no excuses.

[Murgos]

People who play four levels of a demo limited to the newbie area and think they got the inside poop are a bit deranged.

So does the 20 minute rule apply to true MMOs only or games like HGL which are sort of MMOs but not really?

Of course it applies, and they will pay the price for a poor demo and poorly implemented starting experience but some of the statements are very all inclusive for people who know they only experienced a tiny portion of the content.

[tkinnun0]

people who know they only experienced a tiny portion of the content.

So how long is the grind until you get to the good parts?

[taolurker]

The UI's only real issue is that it's not intuitive that you can hold down alt to get mouse control.  The full screen inventory is fine and doesn't bother me in the least nor does the knowledge tree.  It's full screen?  Big deal, not like you can't see what's going on in the world (the screens are transparent) and there is no reason to spend ANY time on those screens in the middle of combat.  Non-issues for the most part.

It's not just that you can't see through the UI windows for inventory and skills, it's that I can't even move when I'm looking at them. Yah, you can sort of see through them, and I didn't spend time looking at them in the middle of combat, it was that I couldn't actually run around (or type, or see chat) or anything while accessing them. MMOs depend on their chat window, and without the ability to customize the chat window at all, and not be able to see it when doing either inventory or skills is a big deal to me. Making quest chat into individual sentence click throughs? Totally time wasting, and heck the combat is enough clicking.

The mem-leak has gotten better with every patch and even WoW shipped with a horrendous mem-leak.  Meh, it will get fixed, I can still play for 3 hour sessions even with it.  Crashing, for me, is tied to the mem-leak, once the system performance has degraded then a crash is inevitable, otherwise it's fine.  Other server issues are just the normal growing pains that EVERY game has suffered, that doesn't excuse their existence but are hardly world shattering, every now and then you get reset to a 0 point in the stations, Big Fuckin' Deal, the station crashing and locked zones went away weeks ago.

There's noticable lag almost everywhere in common areas, the mem-leak may be improved, but it still doesn't fix the fact that you lose experience, items, quest progress and whatnot when you go LD or crash due to out of memory errors. Lots of posts are complaining about lost or locked items, quests that disappear, things that are world shattering. No matter whether it's getting better or not, there's been no stress test, no optimizations they do are near where it should be at release, so having massive bugs and dupe issues associated with them will only piss off the people who are early adopters.

There is patcher and server status and yes, the patcher works as intended.  They had issues with it for about 2 weeks but now it's back in order.  Meh, non-issue, again.

If I open the game and the servers are down, the game should tell me that. Also when I open the game it should check files like a normal MMO patcher, and resume where it left off downloading. If it can't patch and compare versions like it's supposed to, and from what I experienced with it stopping halfway for 2 days and me needing to go manually fix things for it, then yah it's not working as intended. Maybe I had the bad timing to join the beta exactly when the patcher took a crap, but still under a load, at release, with un-optimized code and no stress test, evil things are gonna happen.

There are good skills and most of the ones I've used are fun and interesting even if I think some of them need to be tweaked/expanded for effectiveness.

I agree that the game shouldn't be forced out the door for the Halloween date but you are pretty much dead wrong in stating your opinions as facts and not even taking the effort to verify if your more outrageous claims are even true.

/shrug

Hey, it's your money, but I also think you're just being a little too fanboish about this. I'm not being outrageous, I just can't see wasting money on things until they are stable, reliable, and make sense without bugs at every turn... But, I also can't see myself clicking my way through more than 2-3 weeks of this game anyway. It screams single-player game, so being horribly rushed and highly unpolished equals me not liking it. We have different opinions, and when it launches I hope you have fun watching the servers crash.

[rattran]

You can chat while in inventory, there's a little button that brings the chat window out. And I'm using the x64dx10 client, I crash when the memory leak hits the wall, but have never lost items, quests, or experience. I've also not heard bitching about lost items, except one person who couldn't get that there are 3 different weapon slots.

Hey, it's your money, but I also think you're just being a little too fanboish about this. I'm not being outrageous, I just can't see wasting money on things until they are stable, reliable, and make sense without bugs at every turn... But, I also can't see myself clicking my way through more than 2-3 weeks of this game anyway. It screams single-player game, so being horribly rushed and highly unpolished equals me not liking it. We have different opinions, and when it launches I hope you have fun watching the servers crash.

And I think that takes anti-fanboiness to it's illogical outrageous extreme. "The game sucks, and if it didn't, I wouldn't like it anyway."

[Oban]

If Oban is too stupid to put single player demo and no grouping together coherently he really deserves no excuses.

 

Actually, have not downloaded the demo, was just giving some feedback about the  .

I do not see why anyone would need to group, is there something I am missing?

[Threash]

I saw zero need to group at the default difficulty, i assume that might change at the harder settings.

[sam, an eggplant]

some of the statements are very all inclusive for people who know they only experienced a tiny portion of the content.

I totally agree, having only played the demo I wouldn't feel comfortable making such definitive statements. Of course the purpose of a demo is to, well, demonstrate representative gameplay, so you can hardly blame them from making judgments based on it.

That said, I played the full beta, comprising 3/5 of the final game sans voice and cinematics, and I pretty much agree with the demo players. The demo does accurately represent real gameplay. If you didn't like the demo, you won't like the game.

[lariac]

To get back on track and talk about Hellgate: London

I think that pricing plan is why I have zero interest in this game..Let me get this right..

10 bucks a month (on top of your initial $50 dollar purchase) gets you...

Elite players are bumped to the front of the line for servers - this is really bullshit. If you ever sat in a WOW que (and your paying there as well) you know this fucking sucks donkey balls

Elite players get 12 characters, regular players get 3 - Take a look at SWG (one character per server shit). I don't understand why developers won't allow you to try different builds/races etc etc....this is just another barrier thrown in by the developers.

Elite players can hold 40 items in lockers around the city, regular players get 20 and can't move them to other players - Can you sell shit to other players? or will you be stuck selling shit to NPC merchants who buy that super rare drop that your character can't wear for 2 copper? Also limiting the amount of space in bags? Every MMO I have ever played has you managing your inventory and it usually is the biggest headache you have next to bugs.

Elite players have access to better shinier gear (the only difference is aesthetic) - whatever; I could give a shit if I was wearing a french maid outfit and a pink fucking tutu as long as the stats were better than Plate Mail of Awesomeness +2.

Elite players have access to shuttles to move easier around the city - This is another bullshit barrier. The most important commodity in MMO's is time. The more you make of your time in a MMO, the more successful you will be by earning more money, raiding with the buds or whatnot. Making you take the slow ride like a public transportation bus rider only pisses you off and go get a cup of coffee, make breakfast, maybe watch a movie while you wait till you get to your destination.

Elite players can own property, regular gamers can't own a house or enter houses - Another bullshit barrier. I would imagine people will possibly have NPC merchants in their house? Maybe additional storage. Whatever it is, if you can't buy shit others can buy and you can't save shit that you could make money off of later, your gonna gimp yourself something fierce.

Elite players get more game types - What the fuck does this mean? They get to play a different game than the one I paid 50 bucks for? If so fuck them.

Elite players get monthly content additions - This I can agree with.

Really, I am a huge diablo and diablo 2 fan and a long time Blizzard fan. Roper and Co. might as well piss down my fucking mouth while I sing Dixie cause this pricing plans sucks balls.

edit: If you couldn't tell, im pretty fucking angry at the nerve of these guys.

So how much of an impact does the travel, housing and other items I listed above make as an impact in-game?

[schild]

Elites get 24 slots. They limit this because of the database load I'm sure. If there were no limit in CoH, I can't even imagine...

The item bits make sense because of the Diablo setup.

Again, housing thing and database load.

Basically, you're angry because they're making you pay for stuff that you'd want for free.

Seems like a good thing to charge for...

[KallDrexx]

I'm confused, but I havne't followed the game closely.

Can you play offline, and if so are you still bound to those restrictions (since offline characters shouldn't be taking up any database space and such)?  And can you lan it up without the restrictions?

[eldaec]

I wonder how much of the angst about the elites only exists because of the non-subscription option.

I mean, if they'd just said, "It's a MMOG, you get to pay subs, suck it up", wouldn't more people be pointing out that it is a cheap MMOG?


Not that this helps if it sucks as much as some people suggest.

[Trippy]

Elites get 24 slots. They limit this because of the database load I'm sure. If there were no limit in CoH, I can't even imagine...

What database load? It's not like people are playing all their characters on the same account simultaneously.

[schild]

I wonder how much of the angst about the elites only exists because of the non-subscription option.

I mean, if they'd just said, "It's a MMOG, you get to pay subs, suck it up", wouldn't more people be pointing out that it is a cheap MMOG?


Not that this helps if it sucks as much as some people suggest.

This falls in line with my "fire all of the marketing, pr, and crm folks." comment

[lariac]

really not bitching here...just curious since in MMOs having housing, fast travel, extra baggage and such makes a big difference on gameplay.

[schild]

The third is obviously good for a diablo game.

As for housing and fast travel - perks.

[rk47]

Elites get 24 slots. They limit this because of the database load I'm sure. If there were no limit in CoH, I can't even imagine...

The item bits make sense because of the Diablo setup.

Again, housing thing and database load.

Basically, you're angry because they're making you pay for stuff that you'd want for free.

Seems like a good thing to charge for...

I'm confused, are we still getting non-elite travelling and housing in SINGLE PLAYER mode? Who are we trying to show off our bling to? Me and my friends are quite confused about this $10 a month thingy for Diablo. It's not MMO, it's just Diablo why are we queuing for server slot? I thought it's just a chat lobby to set up games and join them? 

[Signe]

I think I know why they have an elite mode... MONEH!  In lieu of an item shop, I guess?  Dungeon Runners, Mythos, and now HG:L.  It's the new thang.  If the box comes with a free month, I'll find out if it's worth the tenner a month.  I'm pretty sure, however, that I'll find that it isn't.

[rk47]

subbing to Hellgate for 5 months could've gotten me another game....
Fuck it, I'll grab The Witcher instead. >_<

[MrHat]

Fuck.

I just realized what was bugging me about HGL.

It makes me want to play D2.  Why don't they just update that shit already? Or port it for the DS?

[murdoc]

And can you lan it up without the restrictions?

There is no LAN mode.

As of April 28, 2007...
There will be no LAN play in Hellgate: London.

Why?
It's a security risk. We have closed servers. We don't want other people learning how to circumvent our laser grid of defenses. We don't want other people running their own fake HG:L servers and ripping people off.

Why does it suck and why is it good?
No LAN doesn't suck at all. I know, I'm supposed to say things like that. It's somewhere in my job description. But when you really think about it... Who the fuck cares? LAN was great when we didn't have broadband. It's also awesome if you're willing to lug your stupid computer around all over the place. But HG:L runs on closed servers and we have free online multiplayer that's every bit as robust as Diablo II. So why even bother with LAN?

[MrHat]

Anyone have a link to a skills calculator?  I'm bored at work and planning is half the fun.

[Miasma]

What are shuttles, is that the same as the station teleporter?  And is this housing stuff actually ready at release, I never saw any shuttles or housing in the beta.  If there is housing with customization and the ability to hang tophies around that is something which might lure me into a subscription.

I don't know this stuff because their hype machine sucks and their boards are unreadable.

[sam, an eggplant]

Anyone have a link to a skills calculator?  I'm bored at work and planning is half the fun.

Not totally accurate and missing some of the skill descriptions past level 1, but here you go.

http://www.flagshipforums.com/Hellgate/Engineer.php

[sinij]

I can't think of a way to make game less desirable - elite player extortion scam on top of targeted adds + EULA that allows collection of any information from your PC? Seems games nowadays can fail in different ways - by outright sucking or by forcing suck through money-grabbing gimmicks.

If you end up paying for this shit you deserve kick in the balls for perpetuating and encouraging this type of developer asshatery.

[Kaa]

LAN play is a security risk? "Laser grid of defenses"? What, these people are off their meds or something?

Kaa

[bhodi]

LAN play is a security risk? "Laser grid of defenses"? What, these people are off their meds or something?

Kaa

I suppose I don't get to ask if you're retarded. It's really not a rhetorical question with you. I suppose I could ask instead what made you so.

You don't see what he did there?

He put the best spin on an unpopular decision he could. He presented the real reason as a joke by exaggeration and hyperbole and then presented a weak counter argument against LAN play.

[Salamok]

So many people were dissing the single player I decided to skip it and just do the beta (both became available to me on the same day).  Anyhoo I didn't get to play it as much as I wanted too over the weekend but I did play it enough to gather a few ideas.

#1 - Schild is right all the non devs at the company need to go.  They aren't marketing this thing hardly at all and what little they are marketing is the wrong stuff.

#2 - I think this game will be popular but I don't think Flagship understands why (or maybe it's just the marketing folks who don't understand).

#3 - It isn't really an MMO anymore than Diablo 1 + battle.net was an MMO.  Instead of a chat room you have noncombat areas to hang out in to work on gear/socialize/queue up your next group.

#4 - You don't need to group any more than you needed to group in diablo 1 or 2.  Grouping is fun in the sense that fun increases as your mobs killed per minute goes up.

In short this game is an evolved 3d version of diablo, which is just fine by me as diablo kicks ass.  Of course I may be way off base as I have only made it to level 5 so far but I am sure if that is the case someone here will correct me (or I'll correct myself if/when I find out differently).  It does also look like Flagship has created a foundation for something that very well may eventually turn into a true MMO so if that is your hope for the game it may be realized at some point.

On a side note this game brought to light a few reasons I have been distancing myself from WoW.  The main of which is that I want a little bit more mindless fun out of a game and a lot less time spent on marking targets & explaining shit to groups.  It also occurred to me that one of things I missed in EQ that isn't in wow is that trash mobs were trash and your job was to mow through them as fast as possable (pull lots and pull the next group before 1st group is dead), where as in wow each trash pull seems to be an object of endless discussion on the best possable strategy for not killing your group.

[Yegolev]

Can't sell subs if you have LAN play.

[HaemishM]

I finally played the demo a bit more. Then I uninstalled it. I don't get the love. It seems like a mediocre shooter at best. The RPG elements don't add enough early on to make it interesting. The graphics engine is fantastic, but the game just left me /meh.

[Salamok]

Can't sell subs if you have LAN play.

I don't think they care about that.  This game is going to follow the Diablo 2 business model not the MMOG business model.  I personally believe they are eliminating LAN (non secured server) play to avoid item/player hacking.  They are probably offering the "elite" program as a means to cover the costs of rebuilding their own battle.net from scratch.

[Mrbloodworth]

People who play four levels of a demo limited to the newbie area and think they got the inside poop are a bit deranged.

So does the 20 minute rule apply to true MMOs only or games like HGL which are sort of MMOs but not really?

Of course it applies, and they will pay the price for a poor demo and poorly implemented starting experience but some of the statements are very all inclusive for people who know they only experienced a tiny portion of the content.

It is not the job of the user to seek out the "content", or the "fun" of a demo. Its the job of a demo to slap the user in the face with it.

I finally played the demo a bit more. Then I uninstalled it. I don't get the love. It seems like a mediocre shooter at best. The RPG elements don't add enough early on to make it interesting. The graphics engine is fantastic, but the game just left me /meh.

I wouldn't even really go so far as a shooter, its doing some of the same "Bending and sticking" of the shots that Tabulia rasa does.