New World (MMORPG, Amazon Games)

[Ashamanchill]

[Chimpy]

Maybe they are patching stagger back in. Which means they'll delay it to October later to remove it again.

Every time people mention "stagger" I have visions of Madeline Khan re-tracing the path to Yellowbeard's treasure.

[Draegan]

I remember being in the F&F alpha for Rift thanks to Hartsman. Such an amazing classless system with so much potential.

They kept shutting down my suggestions about running with those innovative parts and making it the core of their product pitch, I got shouted down a couple times by a dev. At one point I asked Scott what was up with that, and he said there was a very vocal and persuasive part of the team that basically wanted to make WoW 2.0 

And thus Rift languished in mediocrity.

If the game content (not the mechanics system) had been more WoW and less "let's remake Vanguard because that is where all of our grognard alpha testers came from" it probably would have been more fun to be honest.

Most of the dev team were EQ nerds.

[Hoax]

Why did Rift suck:
because Rifts sucked, emergent pve that felt threatening and couldn't be camped or farmed at will continues to be a very cool sounding idea that is too difficult for most(any?) devs to pull off. the rift concept was the hook and it was utter trash in the last beta, word of mouth was bad, it felt very WoW clone-y and that was that

Why does New World suck:
the combat is designed for mobile and/or console with almost no abilities ala moba combat. Except the abilities are so incredibly uninspiring, honestly its fucking shocking in 2021 to see such blah abilities. Also it has no content. But honestly who cares. The game has literally nothing but the promise of a new well funded fresh virtual experience to rpg and kill things in: good enough in 2021 but the combat is bad. The lag is bad in the siege/BG zones. The design of the siege/BG's was awful in the last beta tho they could fix that but at the dark heart of it all. The combat isn't good. This was once pitched as Souls combat adapted to a MMO. That might have worked through word of mouth and streamers. This will not.

FF14:
There's a free 2 weeks for returning playters. Sign up by 8/20 to get it or something. You might as well. Nostalgia is fun, the MSQ is a decent single player game almost and the FF game has a ton of very FF/jrpg minigame things that are great. in-game card game, casino, fashion shows, chocobo racing, etc. feels like a world. Good on them.

What should you be looking forward to:
Lost Ark. Yes its korean dickpunch lotto grind for gear score (disgusting) but the pvp is just a tack on of gear normalized arena fights (1on1 or 3on3) and the class balance is good, the visuals are good and the combat is well designed. So fuck it who cares if the pve is evil korean bullshit if getting to max lvl isn't hard and you are allowed to pvp without racing through all the pve stuff? Rather the pve exists as something to do when you want to do it for the sake of doing more pve and is supposedly a series of decently challenging boss/raid style encounters.

[Riggswolfe]

What should you be looking forward to:
Lost Ark. Yes its korean dickpunch lotto grind for gear score (disgusting) but the pvp is just a tack on of gear normalized arena fights (1on1 or 3on3) and the class balance is good, the visuals are good and the combat is well designed. So fuck it who cares if the pve is evil korean bullshit if getting to max lvl isn't hard and you are allowed to pvp without racing through all the pve stuff? Rather the pve exists as something to do when you want to do it for the sake of doing more pve and is supposedly a series of decently challenging boss/raid style encounters.

Literally nothing in this sounds appealing to me. I think when I see Korean I tend to tune the rest out because I know roughly how it is going to go.

[Rendakor]

I hated Lost Ark because I don't like click-to-move combined with a ton of hotkeys. Stuff like Diablo works because you generally use LMB, RMB, and maybe 2-3 other buttons; Lost Ark seemed to want a traditional MMO rotation, which just did not feel great in the beta (or alpha or whatever happened a month or so ago).

[Draegan]

Rotations for most classes, at least early levels, were like 123 buttons then on cooldown then you would use qwe buttons on another pack.

Definitely not WOW rotation shit though. It's slower.

Probably changes at max level when you can reduce cooldowns or whatever.

[Hoax]

New World is really bad. Playing the open beta and my impression from streams was dead on. Combat feels really awful.

[Falconeer]

I consider it the best combat in a western MMORPG ever. That's' not much considering how bad combat in western MMORPG has always been, yet it's the best.

[Falconeer]

Released today.

So far, flawless launch (servers, lag, etc.). There are queues but that's inevitable and as long as you didn't go in with a specific server in mind, there are many less crowded ones to choose from.

[Ashamanchill]

So far in Grampa Ashamanchill's "Haven't we been here before?" Series: he tours  the New World subreddit and laughs at all the kids who have never seen an MMO launch before. "What the fuck is a queue?!? I thought that was something you used in billiards (the mobile game of course)."

[Setanta]

Eventually got in, looked around... and refunded. It's pretty, but fuck me the mechanics are shithouse

[Hoax]

The combat is actually better than it seems, but the game is too scripted, too shallow, they didn't full commit to pvp and we've never seen an ounce of evidence there is a good plan or good people to execute whatever halfbaked focus group plan they have.

[01101010]

The combat is actually better than it seems, but the game is too scripted, too shallow, they didn't full commit to pvp and we've never seen an ounce of evidence there is a good plan or good people to execute whatever halfbaked focus group plan they have.

So a PvE game with PVP tacked on vs a PvP game with PvE tacked on?

[Riggswolfe]

they didn't full commit to pvp

About the only lessons MMO devs truly learned over the last 20 years or so is that fully committing to pvp is a surefire way to kill a game.

[Falconeer]

Both PvP and PvE seem tacked on. The game truly didn't know what to become during early development and when it was rebuilt it felt like both experiences were half baked and only getting by thanks  to the engaging combat system. Overall, PvE is cool to play due to the action combat but there's a lack of mob diversity, and PvP is also cool to play due to the action combat, but it's still quite meaningless unless you are part of a large PvP oriented guild. To be fair though, isn't that how it should be? My assessment as a PvP person is that it's much better than I hought: I play with my PvP switch constantly on and the occasional gank makes it for spicier gaming sessions. You never get one-shot, which is also great, and tonight I am gonna take part in the first 50v50 battle in an effort to conquest a territory.

So yes, they didn't truly commit to anything, but I was expecting much worse PvP and so far it's actually fun and consensual and meaningful.

[Trippy]

The combat is actually better than it seems, but the game is too scripted, too shallow, they didn't full commit to pvp and we've never seen an ounce of evidence there is a good plan or good people to execute whatever halfbaked focus group plan they have.

So a PvE game with PVP tacked on vs a PvP game with PvE tacked on?

It's a PvP game with PvE tacked on which is why the PvE questing and story is horrifically bad -- maybe the worst of any MMORPG ever. However, the PvP got "watered down" during the many reworks. The game used to be a full-loot free-for-all PvP survival type game but that sort of game obviously would not justify an Amazon-level of investment and so got changed into the "faction"-style PvP you have now.

[Hoax]

You can't even call only the PvE tacked on though.

PvP faction quests are the weakest of all the incredibly weak procedurally generated components. They are repetitive beyond belief, they don't work for groups to do together, its just an awful awful system that feels like it has to have been meant to be placeholder but then the game shipped without going back and working on it. They'll probably add mounts soon and make it even worse.

Generally speaking though the entire game just lacks surprise. No champion packs or world spawns I'm aware of. No interesting loot that changes how weapon X plays or what you can do, no active ability items or instance ala Moba's. In pvp its way behind where SB was with no real stealth vs anti-stealth battle within the battle going on. They literally let people respawn ON THE FRONT LINE in the 50v50. Its as if nothing has been remembered of how to do PvP from the time before all anyone made was WoW clone vanilla trash that basically ended the genre for a decade.

Its not Tera good but it is player skill influenced combat. It has a large budget. It was released at a smart time though its hilarious that FFXIV is doing so well and Lost Ark is such a better game that Amazon had to rush it out to avoid Endwalker release and back burner a game that is actually ready to go (localization only) to give New World a chance. But it has the player numbers to make it feel rewarding to be a part of it just needs one of those classic first MMO patch is basically an expansion worth of changes and improvements like we used to always see in the DAOC-AO days.

[Khaldun]

Sigh, I really did love the stealth v. anti-stealth minigame inside of SB's PvP. That was maybe the most fun I've had in PvP, just that element alone.

[Ashamanchill]

So I've given to watching this game a bit on Twitch while I rock my 2 month old between sleep screaming sessions, and all I ever see is the streamer running somewhere. I'll go down a list of 20, one after another, and it is just them running and checking their map. Occaisionally someone is chopping a tree.

[Falconeer]

the PvE questing and story is horrifically bad -- maybe the worst of any MMORPG ever.

Sorry, no. No game can beat FF XIV base game in that department.

[Rendakor]

I agree with Falc here. Story aside (I skip all cutscenes) the quests in FFXIV are fucking horrible. Nonstep back and forth fedex shit, kill 2-3 rats, run back to the quest giver, talk to him, watch a cutscene, talk again, talk again again, turn in. Walk three feet, talk, talk, cutscene, talk, turn in. Rinse. Repeat. There are a handful of cool solo instances, but other than that it's all the same dumb bullshit.

New world's are nothing to write home about, but they're not offensively annoying like FFXIV.

[Setanta]

Sigh, I really did love the stealth v. anti-stealth minigame inside of SB's PvP. That was maybe the most fun I've had in PvP, just that element alone.

Probably rose-coloured glasses, but I miss the PvP in Warhammer Online. Then again, I had a certain glee in punting opponents into lava.

It was probably shit.

[schild]

PvP in Warhammer Online.

Only the first battleground which you could no longer play once you passed the level cap. The second battlefield was like half as good but since everyone still had ass gear it was pretty ok. I don't think i ever made it to the third and kept restarting to play the first.

Pants on head decisions all around with Mythic titles.

[Velorath]

Wasn't the tier 3 battlegrounds where some classes could just knock fools into the lava or something?

[Sir T]

Probably rose-coloured glasses, but I miss the PvP in Warhammer Online. Then again, I had a certain glee in punting opponents into lava.

It was probably shit.

I only did tier 1 and that was a blast. Tier 2 was where I uninstalled.

As for tier 4, it was DOORHAMMER!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEedUeDJ7Us

[Ashamanchill]

The Tier 1 PvP  battlegrounds, or whatever they were fucking called were amazing, but over ilike one evening. The Tier 2 ones were okish, but by then people were starting to funnel into only one of them. Phoenix crossing I think it was called. By Tier 3, everyone and thier dog played that fucking Tor Annroc lava tunnel one, because it gave double the xp of the other ones. If you could stomach the deserted hour long queues for the other Tier 3 ones, they were alright. Better than sitting in lava.

Age of Conan PVP was better anyways. Free for All mother fuckers.

[Falconeer]

Age of Conan PVP was better anyways. Free for All mother fuckers.

100% true. Also, it was action based. Also levels didn't matter as much as in usual MMORPGs.

[Sky]

Planetside was the only pvp-based mmo I've enjoyed.

[schild]

Wasn't the tier 3 battlegrounds where some classes could just knock fools into the lava or something?

yes

(I think I played it five times with people here on my first toon and never again)

[Soulflame]

I think it was Tier 3 when the punting began, and that was where I stopped playing.

Tier 1 was a lot of fun though...

[Ashamanchill]

It might not have began in Tier 3, but that was it's, er, finest hour. The battleground was called Tor Annroc, and it was fucking miserable.

[Khaldun]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

[01101010]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

I was always told that DaoC was sacred ground when it came to open world PvP. And I never really liked PvP in RGPs.

[HaemishM]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.