Allods Online -

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm talking about any game. Perhaps its my outlook. But I don't see doing quests, exploring the environment and reading the story's that go with them as a hurtle to point B.

"Playing the game" seems to have been replaced by players with "Grind".

Its like my friends son, when he gets a new game, the first thing he does is go to the PC and look up cheat codes. As for designers, seems to be more of a reaction, than a cause.

Perhaps someone should make a game where you start at max level with the best everything, and every action taken slowly moves you to level one.

[Ghambit]

I mean, I'm not sayin' I hate grinding lvls... but if I'm going to do it, it's gotta be a pretty compelling world and a relaxing experience.  Allods took the Atlantica model for grinding though...  very basic quest locations and givers, pretty/static art but non-functional, etc.  It goes a long way having a lively world to "grind" in if you're gonna grind, especially if there's enough alternative distraction to ease the pain.  Games that dont provide this should learn to make coin by allowing people to skip it...  or hey, they can just deal through gold farmers who do the same thing (shrug).

People who enjoy the journey through the levels are rewarded by not having to pay a huge sum of RMT, as well as being rewarded with excess gold/loot and a lifetime's worth of lore...  which yah, philosophically is a game in itself imo.

What's the prospective lvling time to get to 30 in Allods anyways?

[Mrbloodworth]

For the record, I didn't post any of that because of JUST the comments here. There really isn't anything at point B, but the sliding scale...

[dd0029]

What's the prospective lvling time to get to 30 in Allods anyways?

I have no clue, but anecdotally, I did see a level 40 PC run past my lvl 6 paladin yesterday.

[Draegan]

I'm talking about any game. Perhaps its my outlook. But I don't see doing quests, exploring the environment and reading the story's that go with them as a hurtle to point B.

"Playing the game" seems to have been replaced by players with "Grind".

Yeah but games like Allods, there isn't anything really to explore and the quests and story isn't compelling, nor does it match up well with the game mechanics (DIKU).

What's the prospective lvling time to get to 30 in Allods anyways?

I have no clue, but anecdotally, I did see a level 40 PC run past my lvl 6 paladin yesterday.

I don't think it's too long.  I got to level 8 or so in a few hours of play and I think this game only had 40 levels or so.

[dd0029]

Noticed this morning that the little compass arrow thing points the wrong way.  If you are assuming the blue side is forward, you are going west when it points east and if you assume the red is forward, you are going north when it points south.

The elites are fairly annoying.  Some are easy solos and some are most certainly not.  The only way to tell is to get clocked for 250 or for 60.

[Cadaverine]

I found my first elite last night.  Stephan the Sneak.  As a summoner, I'm pretty used to ignoring my pet at level 6, as the mobs barely scratch the thing.  Stephan, however, destroyed my poor hellion in 3 seconds, and promptly ran up and smacked my face off in another 2.

I see now why everyone said Pally's were better tanks.

[Mrbloodworth]

Just a side note, this is a very group oriented game. Even a duo helps immensely. Time-to-kill-mob seems to be balanced for this. Solo seems possible, but it will take a long time. Pick your poison.

[dd0029]

Just a side note, this is a very group oriented game. Even a duo helps immensely. Time-to-kill-mob seems to be balanced for this. Solo seems possible, but it will take a long time. Pick your poison.

That makes sense.  The mob XP is already fairly pitiful, so the group split is not a big hit.

[ezrast]

Noticed this morning that the little compass arrow thing points the wrong way.  If you are assuming the blue side is forward, you are going west when it points east and if you assume the red is forward, you are going north when it points south.

You have never actually used a compass.

[ezrast]

Patch out. Notes here.
Some nice QoL things, but the important stuff seems to be:

Basically, PvP flags work now so high-level zones aren't all PvP+ anymore. In addition, dying now gives you a debuff when you rez that murders your stats and renders you useless. Apparently at level 40 it lasts for 50 minutes (!?!). You can remove the debuff by spending money in game or by using cash shop items.

So PvP is consensual now, and the new ridiculous death penalty ensures that most reasonable people will avoid flagging like the plague.

The forums are exploding with PKer tears.

[Mrbloodworth]

• Added an Astral Courier which allows you to access your bank from any location

Rather handy.

[statisticalfool]

Patch out. Notes here.
Some nice QoL things, but the important stuff seems to be:

Basically, PvP flags work now so high-level zones aren't all PvP+ anymore. In addition, dying now gives you a debuff when you rez that murders your stats and renders you useless. Apparently at level 40 it lasts for 50 minutes (!?!). You can remove the debuff by spending money in game or by using cash shop items.

So PvP is consensual now, and the new ridiculous death penalty ensures that most reasonable people will avoid flagging like the plague.

The forums are exploding with PKer tears.

Wow, is that 50 minutes of play time or real world time? Because I'm sure that having a death penalty that incentivizes players to stop playing right after failing is a great idea. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Um, the removal items negate it..so...so?

[ezrast]

So those removal items cost gold, and getting PKed gives you the full death penalty. In PvE the money sink probably isn't such a big deal, but in PvP that means you're essentially wagering about 3.5g on every encounter - somebody's gotta pay up, or sit out for an hour.

This is all hearsay; I'm not high enough to PvP yet.

[statisticalfool]

So those removal items cost gold, and getting PKed gives you the full death penalty. In PvE the money sink probably isn't such a big deal, but in PvP that means you're essentially wagering about 3.5g on every encounter - somebody's gotta pay up, or sit out for an hour.

This is all hearsay; I'm not high enough to PvP yet.

It'd be interesting if it was wagering: if 3.5g wasn't a large amount of money, and the winner got 3.5g from the loser, then that could possibly maybe even work in the: "PVP is slightly meaningful, but not scary". This is just a money sink.

If it's a large amount of money, well, maybe it'll drive all the pvpers to EQ2.

[dd0029]

Well.  My paladin is up to a whopping 13 now.  The apparent character wipe with the new server names was kind of annoying.  I thought I had to restart. The 125% XP post patch was very nice for this. I was either lvl 8 or nearly so when leaving the newb island.  My previous run through had seen me leaving the island at lvl 6.  One thing I did differently was I ground out the available reputation for the blue weapon.  I can't imagine the Empire side does not have something similar.  That made leaving the newb island much more palatable.  My last experience had been very rough.  I was not doing much damage at all and that made the very streaky combat even longer.  That blue weapon meant I was doing roughly 2/3 more damage coming out.  So, grind out that faction.  It's not that bad.  It was just three or four of the repeatable faction turnins if you do all of the quests that give faction.

I would recommend it again for the lvl 10 weapon, but that was significantly more annoying.  With the XP bump, I was half way through the zone and lvl 11.  I had to do that faction quest 20 times because I just had to have that new shiny sword.    Why yes, I did spend 36 hours straight camping for an FBSS back in the day in EQ, why do you ask?  The way things look to work without the xp bump is you complete the zone and do a couple of the repeatables and get your shiny instead of grind it out. 

I also did the first legion side dungeon.  First point, never go with someone in the group outside of the level range.  We filled a slot at the end with a lvl 17 something or other and the XP went from adequate to absolutely zero.  Second, these things hit hard.  At lvl 12 I was getting clocked for 200-300.  That's fairly rough for the speed of combat.  I had 1800 hp.  Multi tanking is possible, but damn.  Damage gets really nasty then.  There were several multi mob pulls.  It made me long for WoW target marks.  Healing with a cleric was rough, but adequate.  But holy split DPS batman.  Also, casters mobs don't seem to care about LoS.  The last boss has a really cool chain you up and roast you in a bonfire thing.  It has an great graphic.  But it's  for an intro dungeon.  It lasts 45 seconds and does a 100+ damage every 2 seconds.  You can have two people in them at the same time and one of them can be the tank.  For all of the trouble, it was not that bad.  About what I recall Deadmines being like back when I started WoW lo those many years ago.  Some of the loot was reskinned clones of the rep gear, but some of it was new pieces not available elsewhere. 

Getting a group together really makes the new WoW LFG look good.  I don't think another paid MMO is going to be able to be released without something that works at least as well as that thing.  But since this is free, we take what we get.

Any way, lvl 10 sees the other portion of the talent trees open up.  You still get 1 skill point for the main tree per level.  But at lvl 10, three talent trees open up.  You need to buy rubies with gold to get points to spend in the trees.  Each thing costs 1 ruby.  There does not seem to be a limit on the number of rubies you can use in the talent trees.  However, rubies cost progressively more cash.  The first costs a gold.  The second is like 1.3 gold, etc.  These talent trees are grids like a scrabble board.  You spend rubies to open up the options.  On occasion, you may need to spend rubies to buy a blank spot if you want to expand your talents a specific way.  The talents offer things like 5% more to a stat or new abilities and skills.  One of the paladin skills is an AoE.  Another is a party heal on finishing move.  Neat idea, but the cost makes it grindy.  I don't know if there is a cap other than cost for number of skills you can have.  You can purchase a talent again to increase the bonus, for example 5-10% bonus.

[ezrast]

You're allowed 1 ruby for every level 10+. It's a neat system but at 19 I suddenly found myself severely lacking in funds and unable to by my talents. Pretty sure the xp bonus throws the income per level way out of whack.

[Signe]

For those who are still interested (not me, I think it's awful!), I just saw that they have 7000 or so keys on MMORPG.com again.

[Azaroth]

To be fair, I've played so much worse (and paid for the privilege).

[Signe]

I have too, but I'm really trying not to anymore.  And it's not really awful so much as uninspired, maybe.

[dd0029]

It gets a bit more entertaining once you open up the talent thing at lvl 10.  But it's still fairly uninspired at the beginning.  And without the 125% xp boost currently going on, its going to be a long slog to get to the potentially interesting astral ship PvP bits at the end.  And some of the odd choices, most notably the lack of common / commands, ie /who and the apparent lack of a /reply add some really unnecessary annoyance to an otherwise entertaining game.  But it is somewhat fun in an early WoW sort of way.  And free is some fairly nice icing.

Please note that Closed Beta 4, the current phase, is going to be ending on 2/3/2010.  Not sure if there will be another closed beta or if it will switch to an open beta as rumored. 

[Draegan]

I'm going to get a chance to ask a few questions of the Allods people, though I imagine it's going to be PR spin/hype regurgitation though.  Anyway, anyone have any suggestions? 

[Malakili]

Keen and Graev's made a video about the astral ships.  Looks neat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RuhBtW8XU

[Hoax]

Even NBC uses it.

The fuck do you have against links anyways?  Uses it for what, when, where does it stay hidden on your system leeching your bandwidth?

[Jamiko]

Open beta starts Feb 16th. http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/10/allods-online-announces-open-beta/

Characters created in open beta will not be deleted.

[Ghambit]

Soooo, anyone sticking with this thing?  OB started yesterday yes?  I'd say if it's better than Runes of Magic (the other white meat) it's probably worth at least installing.

[Mrbloodworth]

So little time so many games, and the FPS aspect of GA has killed any want of mine to do target/skill combat for now. Nothing to do at all with this game, I still say its well made, and for a free game, god dam polished.

[Draegan]

Soooo, anyone sticking with this thing?  OB started yesterday yes?  I'd say if it's better than Runes of Magic (the other white meat) it's probably worth at least installing.

It's plenty better than ROM.

It's still a generic DIKU though minus all the interesting things in the end game.  Getting to the end game will be mind numbingly boring though.

[ezrast]

If other people are playing I'll roll up a healer and see how far it takes me. Having resubbed to WoW makes Allods feel kind of redundant though.

[Sparky]

Christ those little gibberling things are so kawaii 

[AcidCat]

The game definitely makes a nice first impression - especially for a free game. Feels polished and I dig the art style.

[Malakili]

I heard everything in the cash shop mysteriously had the decimal place moved over one place to the right, so now everything costs an order of magnitude more than it did before.   Any news on this?  I assume its a mistake/bug.

[IainC]

Keen and Graev on the bug/mistake.

[raydeen]

In Soviet Russia, game buys YOU!