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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Hellgate: London  |  Topic: Hellgate: "I'd Rather Play Lineage II" 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Hellgate: "I'd Rather Play Lineage II"  (Read 20954 times)
Samprimary
Contributor
Posts: 4229


on: March 09, 2008, 02:10:00 PM

POSTMORTEM:

Hellgate London was not actually a good game at all. It was actually trash. The problem was that this trash would seduce you, purr in your ear, promise to make you feel like Diablo did back in the day, and it takes a while for the laudanum to wear off and have you realize that she's no good.

What wakes you up to all this? I think it was when I realized that I would never not be looking at the same grey and brown miasma of repetitious landscape. 90% of the game content was three recycled environmental templates. Over 50 levels, you are fighting the exact same enemies over and over again. There are only about 10-20 notable enemy models and they are recycled until the end of time itself.

The game's skill trees are absolutely the trashiest I have ever seen. Out of the game's stunning selection of six classes (two of which are not too different from their pair class) and no races, you have a lot of skill overlap. The skill trees only give the illusion of diversity, because big old chunks of everyone's skill trees are complete dead waste. Your skill tree is actually a minigame challenge called "Pick the correct skills or be forced to reroll 20 hours in." My friend Derek failed this minigame challenge twice, and it wasn't his fault, because the descriptions of skills are cryptic and filled with critical omissions, such as for evokers' "hellfire" not mentioning absurd levels of casting delay.

Since the game is tenuously and poorly balanced to leverage each classes' best build against each other, that means that you either pick the best build or you become underpowered, or even borked. This is the most terrible way to make skill trees suck, since this practice results in a disproportional amount of whining when you can't respec.

There is no PVP. You can duel if you really want to, but the classes are not balanced for PVP. Some people tried it and then gave that shit up for good. In fact, the game doesn't even really have any true multiplayer. It's entirely instanced except for towns and you are put on a random server upon entry each and every time you enter the game, so it has been described as "Massively Singleplayer."

The mobs are capricious and random and occasionally will cluster up in random, indelibly painful collections of brutality, like Snot Vagina the Rather Unkind, Epic Regenerating Teleporting Strong Explosive Paralyzing Bone Fiend with gaggle of rares.

Gear management sucks. When you're trying to cruise through the game you're spending about a third of a time putzing around with your tarded inventory management screen and furiously dissolving whites and greens, which drop at a rate of approximately 1bil/min. Oftentimes in the game you are forced to deal with the fact that the gear you found which is absolutely the best for you is perhaps the ugliest shit you have ever seen in any game ever. Marksmen/Engineers were the absolute worst off of any of us, too. By level 25 they all were wearing absolutely hideous cyber-stormtrooper-fireman-penisglans hoods and weird skintight man-leotards encrusted with paunches of wire and LCD screens. I picked up a number of strange evoker hoods which, when worn, made me look like I had been shaven bald and had a lizard foreskin stretched over my eyelids, so I simply didn't wear them. Conjurer gear tended to be giant tribal wads of butt hair with random dangly goth talismans. I threw away many otherwise wonderful evoker focuses because they looked like biological waste designed by H.R. Geiger to breathe toxic smoke while they raped my arms. I am not embellishing this. Here is a picture as proof. It literally humps your arm while you wear it.



There is no story. Aside from this one funny part with Techsmith 314 the rest of it is bargain basement technofantasy crap that kindly manages to make absolutely no sense. I stopped paying attention to it after the second act which was a good idea apparently because of the Surprise Twist Ending and the utter pointlessness of contacting the beacons of the light or whatever which turned out to be "The power was always inside you! Yaaay!"

There is an upside to the game, though! THE BUGS. Yes, the bugs drove everyone else utterly bonkers. I remember, I was there. Yes, they could drive me crazy too, as an evoker. About one in every three times I fired my channeling beam at an enemy, the game would fail to register the hit and it would give me a fake visual effect to make me think I was hitting my target and doing damage. But otherwise than that making me want to break a keyboard, I had fun with the bugs! The whole game was a litany of them! Visual bugs making corpses float in midair or swell to the size of the entire room so you can't see anything! Then there's the old standby — falling through the world eight billion times and having to start the level over again because of it each time. That's a real blast. Ooh, or random invincible and/or invisible mobs. Bizarre unaccounted-for permastuns that result in death. Mobs that disappear randomly. And then reappear. Behind you. Okay, wait, maybe this wasn't as fun as I remember.

Okay. So if it was really this bad, why did I play it?

I'll tell you — it's exactly the same reason why any of us played it for as long as we did before the spell wore off. It's injected with diablo heroin. It has the gear collection game. It gives you levels for killing a zillion mobs. It puts you under a spell which makes you tolerate how shitty it is because you're addicted to the small brain-pumps of entertainment you wrest from it.

But then you wake up and never play it again.

The end.
schild
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Posts: 60345


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Reply #1 on: March 09, 2008, 02:13:50 PM

You know. This is a stickperson comic away from getting frontpaged.
Reg
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Posts: 5270


Reply #2 on: March 09, 2008, 02:28:06 PM

I'm guessing that this sub forum is just inches away from that special place where bad/old games go to die.
schild
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Posts: 60345


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Reply #3 on: March 09, 2008, 02:50:49 PM

This and Planetside, yea.

Ahem, and CoX.

And LOTRO.
Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818


Reply #4 on: March 09, 2008, 06:17:09 PM

POSTMORTEM:

Hellgate London was not actually a good game at all. It was actually trash. The problem was that this trash would seduce you, purr in your ear, promise to make you feel like Diablo did back in the day, and it takes a while for the laudanum to wear off and have you realize that she's no good.

*Puts on a furry suit*

Quote
What wakes you up to all this? I think it was when I realized that I would never not be looking at the same grey and brown miasma of repetitious landscape. 90% of the game content was three recycled environmental templates. Over 50 levels, you are fighting the exact same enemies over and over again. There are only about 10-20 notable enemy models and they are recycled until the end of time itself.

I had no real problem with this. The limited tilesets worked with the game fiction, and all games are limited in how much they can choke your poor texture memory with. It would have been nice if the monsters had more varied abilities and scripts, though.

Quote
The game's skill trees are absolutely the trashiest I have ever seen. Out of the game's stunning selection of six classes (two of which are not too different from their pair class) and no races, you have a lot of skill overlap. The skill trees only give the illusion of diversity, because big old chunks of everyone's skill trees are complete dead waste. Your skill tree is actually a minigame challenge called "Pick the correct skills or be forced to reroll 20 hours in." My friend Derek failed this minigame challenge twice, and it wasn't his fault, because the descriptions of skills are cryptic and filled with critical omissions, such as for evokers' "hellfire" not mentioning absurd levels of casting delay.

Mostly agree. I was never a huge fan of talent trees in the first place, so I usually don't pay them that much attention. Just make a seperate goddamn class instead of letting us gimp exisiting ones.

Quote
Since the game is tenuously and poorly balanced to leverage each classes' best build against each other, that means that you either pick the best build or you become underpowered, or even borked. This is the most terrible way to make skill trees suck, since this practice results in a disproportional amount of whining when you can't respec.

There is no real reason to disallow repeccing. Totally agree.

Quote
There is no PVP. You can duel if you really want to, but the classes are not balanced for PVP. Some people tried it and then gave that shit up for good.

Some games are not fun with PvP. Shoehorning it in is foolish.

Quote
In fact, the game doesn't even really have any true multiplayer. It's entirely instanced except for towns and you are put on a random server upon entry each and every time you enter the game, so it has been described as "Massively Singleplayer."

Best description of HGL's MMOG status evar.  awesome, for real

Quote
The mobs are capricious and random and occasionally will cluster up in random, indelibly painful collections of brutality, like Snot Vagina the Rather Unkind, Epic Regenerating Teleporting Strong Explosive Paralyzing Bone Fiend with gaggle of rares.

THIS is what killed the game for me in nightmare mode. (Whatever mode is singleplayer's "harder than normal") gaggles of one-shot mobs at the entrance to zones. Not fun at all.

Quote
Gear management sucks. When you're trying to cruise through the game you're spending about a third of a time putzing around with your tarded inventory management screen and furiously dissolving whites and greens, which drop at a rate of approximately 1bil/min.

Agree.

 
Quote
Oftentimes in the game you are forced to deal with the fact that the gear you found which is absolutely the best for you is perhaps the ugliest shit you have ever seen in any game ever. Marksmen/Engineers were the absolute worst off of any of us, too. By level 25 they all were wearing absolutely hideous cyber-stormtrooper-fireman-penisglans hoods and weird skintight man-leotards encrusted with paunches of wire and LCD screens. I picked up a number of strange evoker hoods which, when worn, made me look like I had been shaven bald and had a lizard foreskin stretched over my eyelids, so I simply didn't wear them. Conjurer gear tended to be giant tribal wads of butt hair with random dangly goth talismans. I threw away many otherwise wonderful evoker focuses because they looked like biological waste designed by H.R. Geiger to breathe toxic smoke while they raped my arms. I am not embellishing this. Here is a picture as proof. It literally humps your arm while you wear it.



That thing creeps me the fuck out.

Quote
There is no story. Aside from this one funny part with Techsmith 314 the rest of it is bargain basement technofantasy crap that kindly manages to make absolutely no sense. I stopped paying attention to it after the second act which was a good idea apparently because of the Surprise Twist Ending and the utter pointlessness of contacting the beacons of the light or whatever which turned out to be "The power was always inside you! Yaaay!"

The story could have been good if they'd presented it better. Coulda been Diablo/Diablo 2, but just fell short.

Quote
Okay. So if it was really this bad, why did I play it?

I'll tell you — it's exactly the same reason why any of us played it for as long as we did before the spell wore off. It's injected with diablo heroin. It has the gear collection game. It gives you levels for killing a zillion mobs. It puts you under a spell which makes you tolerate how shitty it is because you're addicted to the small brain-pumps of entertainment you wrest from it.

But then you wake up and never play it again.

The end.

I found it a fun game for my first playthrough, bugs and limited tilesets and repeating monsters and questgrinding all.

No desire for a second playthough.

Good postmortem.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
Dren
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Posts: 2419


Reply #5 on: March 10, 2008, 04:53:39 AM

Completely agree with every point.

I had a sinking feeling when they didn't allow respeccing from the beginning.  How many times do we have to learn that's bad, mmkay?
Bunk
Contributor
Posts: 5828

Operating Thetan One


Reply #6 on: March 10, 2008, 10:30:28 AM

I still do play it - mainly because I'm lev 24 and have not quite finished the main quest. I log in and check my guild screen and see 23 greyed out names - have not seen another guild member in two months.

I feel bad for it - it is still kind of fun when you stumble on Ancient Blood portal and go on a killing frenzy.

I don't agree with all of Sam's complaints, or the level of venom he is spewing them with, but for the most part he is right. That being said though, I pretty much never bother cancelling my subs on these games, so I'll probably still have it when 2.0 rolls around.

The next patch adds an email system so that you can xfer stuff to your other characters, so that will probably keep me happy with trying out the other classes a bit.

Oh, and I like my arm humping Focus - it chews right threw Imp shields.

"Welcome to the internet, pussy." - VDL
"I have retard strength." - Schild
Typhon
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Posts: 2493


Reply #7 on: March 10, 2008, 01:38:25 PM

I still play it from time to time as well, it is exactly what I thought it would be - an entertaining hour or two diversion every other week.
Jimbo
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Posts: 1478

still drives a stick shift


Reply #8 on: March 11, 2008, 06:14:45 AM

I guess I'm lucky, my machine doesn't have a problem with the game.  I didn't have the crashes and bugs (train parts, falling threw the world, getting stuck on things, etc...) that seemed to plague everyone else.  I will feel the Marksman nerf, since I was using the build that pretty much makes you a bad ass in a way that is broken, but that is a secondary character I was playing.  My engineer is still playing on normal nightmare, and started one on elite.

I use it as a spurt game, I'll load up City of Hero's/Villans and bash stuff a while, then go back to WoW for a bit, then move to CoD4, then to Battlefield 2 or 2142, then over to DoW SS, or free games!
rk47
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The Patron Saint of Radicalthons


Reply #9 on: March 11, 2008, 09:10:46 PM

I didn't even make it to level 10 over a weekend at my friend's house stayover.
Peace to ya brother. At least you didn't sub. (Lifetime = Full Refund tho)

Colonel Sanders is back in my wallet
Furiously
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Posts: 7199


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Reply #10 on: March 12, 2008, 02:23:49 PM

hu?

Morfiend
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Posts: 6009

wants a greif tittle


Reply #11 on: March 12, 2008, 03:01:03 PM

I so called this one during beta. I think around the time Schild called it "Love and Angle Wings" or some such crap.
tazelbain
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Posts: 6603

tazelbain


Reply #12 on: March 12, 2008, 03:18:30 PM

New dog, old ticks.

"Me am play gods"
Driakos
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Posts: 400


Reply #13 on: March 12, 2008, 04:48:33 PM

Once I realized that the top of certain talent trees, were the bottom (or close) of other talent trees, with NO CHANGE in scale/damage; I realized the trees were retarded.  Hrrmm lemme think of an example, it's been awhile...  Marksmen get Napalm early on.  It was average when you get it, and after you level a bit, useless.  Engineers get Napalm near the end of their tree.  It's the same shitty Napalm ability.  So now you have an ability that didn't kill monsters when you were a newbie, and you're supposed to use it on the hard stuff?  How do you fuck up talent trees?  Talent trees are one of the fun parts of game design.

oh god how did this get here I am not good with computer
Yegolev
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Posts: 24440

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Reply #14 on: March 17, 2008, 12:39:16 PM

Skill trees suck.  Fate's system was much better and would have eliminated this class complaint.  I'm not saying they would have not made the skill selection sucky, but it seems like the best thing to do would be to copy and modify Fate.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
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Llava
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Posts: 4602

Rrava roves you rong time


Reply #15 on: March 24, 2008, 12:57:48 AM

I didn't play it.

But Lineage 2? Really?

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
rk47
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Reply #16 on: April 04, 2008, 12:56:39 AM

http://www.hellgateguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13266

 DRILLING AND MANLINESS

tldr: A modder who tried to mod the game to have nipples and pussies discovered that all textures of gears are fully loaded at high res, regardless of items is in inventory, a drop or sold in shops and simply resized which constitutes to the performance lag after killing bosses.   Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

Colonel Sanders is back in my wallet
schild
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Reply #17 on: April 04, 2008, 12:58:16 AM

Wasn't just anyone. It was Tessera. Ironic.
rk47
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The Patron Saint of Radicalthons


Reply #18 on: April 04, 2008, 01:01:38 AM

yeah iirc, he/she was the modder for nude VTM:Bloodlines too. quite hilarious. I hope he/she mods Warhammer Online soon.

Colonel Sanders is back in my wallet
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