Dark Messiah Multiplayer Beta

[Signe]

For anyone who's interested:

Join the Might and Magic universe!

Visit GameSpot on September 5 and sign up for the
 Dark Messiah Might and Magic Multiplayer Beta! As a
 GameSpot member you could be one of the select
 few to play the full multiplayer game before its
official release. So sharpen your swords and join
 the Might and Magic universe!

Get the OPEN beta on:
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 at
9:00 am PT.

HERE

I think you have to pay for an account first or something.  I don't have one and I can't seem to get off their mailing list so I thought I'd share my frustration. 

[climbjtree]

This is one of the coolest games to be developed since Ultima Underworld. I still rate that game as one of my top 5, with Arx Fatalis just behind it. I really, really hope it lives up to my hopes and dreams... if only they'd lower the requirements a smidge.

[schild]

1. Ultima Underworld
2. Arx Fatalis
3. What?
4. Are
5. You
6. Crazy?

[NiX]

I hope they actually listen to the players on this one. There's a lot of problems with balance already and it's frustrating as all hell. Not to mention the load times are disgustingly long and it doesn't look THAT good.

[Sky]

1. Ultima Underworld
2. Arx Fatalis
3. What?
4. Are
5. You
6. Crazy?

UU and AF were great games, and I could see them being in a top ten if dungeon crawling rpg is your thing. Maybe picture them with waifish angsty doe-eyed anime kids.

[Dren]

This is one of the coolest games to be developed since Ultima Underworld. I still rate that game as one of my top 5, with Arx Fatalis just behind it. I really, really hope it lives up to my hopes and dreams... if only they'd lower the requirements a smidge.

I can still remember some experiences in Underworld as if they were actual real life experiences.  I don't think I ate actual food for a month while playing that game.

[climbjtree]

Being that I cut my PC gaming teeth on classics Ultima Underworld and X-Wing, they are always going to hold spots at the top of the list. When I think about it, most of my favorite games are older games, so maybe I'm looking back with a "they sure don't make them like they used to" attitude.

I really dug Arx because it was a spiritual continuation of Underworld, and the graphics still don't look that bad today.

So, Schild, here's a revised Top 5:

Ultima Underworld
Arx Fatalis
Half-Life
System Shock 2
Tie Fighter

Please note that these are not in any kind of order.

[Signe]

I guess you don't need to pay money or anything.  I was emailed a code and I didn't do anything.  So, if it's so good.  GO PLAY IT!  Remember to write a review for us, too.  This means YOU, climbjtree!   

[Strazos]

Any link to the actual signup page? The link posted previously links to a page tied to someone's account.

[Signe]

No, sorry.  I posted what was in the email and the linky it contained.  Maybe you have to sign up to see it, which I probably have done sometime in my life, but I've never paid them any money.  I don't bother to try and get off games or David Bowie mailing lists anymore... it never works.

[Strazos]

Yup, apparently just signing up for a free account is enough to get a Beta key. I'll be playing this some time this week.

[Morfiend]

1. Ultima Underworld
2. Arx Fatalis
3. What?
4. Are
5. You
6. Crazy?

UU and AF were great games, and I could see them being in a top ten if dungeon crawling rpg is your thing. Maybe picture them with waifish angsty doe-eyed anime kids.

This made me LOL for real.

I love you Sky.

[murdoc]

I  Ultima Underworld LONG TIME

[Strazos]

I just installed my new AIW card that was discussed in another thread, so I thought I'd test it out on this...

The load times are unacceptable. Also, sometimes the loads timeout or something, and I have to shut down the program. I got about 3 minutes of gameplay in as a priestess....

They need to fix the game itself before they start worrying about balance.

[climbjtree]

I'll probably go and download this later this week, though since my computer is just below the min specs I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy it very much.

[Strazos]

I'm way above spec and I find it to be unplayable. Hell, I've only successfully joined a game once - the loader just hangs about 3/4 of the way through when joining a server.

Sigh...maybe they'll release another demo closer to release....one that actually plays.

[Engels]

Same here Straz. It is geborken somehow, not sure how, but definately geborken.

[Sky]

Sie nicht gefingerpoken!!

[Strazos]

I put significantly more time into this tonight. My thoughts on the classes, gameplay, and stability:

Classes:

I started with the priestess. Out of all the classes, I felt that this was the easiest to jump into and be useful with. You can heal (of course), and you also have a long-range attack. I got some abilities, such as stoneskin (mildly useful) and rez. I also heavily upgraded my attack. I got to max level (5?) fairly easily, mostly through healing and rezzing people. The attack, even fully upgraded, isn't spectacular, but it IS ranged.

I next tried the Archer. This class deals out Tons of damage...if you can hit something. Most of my kills were newbler point-blank attacks, as long-range attacks are HARD. Could be cool on different maps if you became good with the class. I'm usually pretty good with sniper classes, but I found it very hard to judge how my arrows would fly.

I then went over to the mage for a few minutes. Just like some of the previews, mages SUCK when they start; your long-range attack isn't very long-ranged, and it's weak. I saw lots of people tossing corpses around the map (including my own), so I imagine they're fairly powerful once you advance.

Then I hopped over to the assassin. Besides the archer, this class may take the most raw skill out of all of them - you're soft, and fairly weak in most situations, especially in the early levels. And then, to use your highly-damaging backstabs, you need to 1) get behind a target and 2) hit a (usually) rapidly moving target. No small task in a FPS, and the positional hit detection in regards to rear and flanking attacks seems to be a bit touchy. Sure, you can just slash away, but you leave yourself wide open to get slapped around by any other class. Still, once you get higher in level, you gain abilities to let you run around more, and perhaps most importantly, drop poison bombs; these things are (no pun intended) an absolute bomb when used in chokepoints. I saw no way to disarm them, and they pretty much kill anyone if they do not get cured by a priestess. Overall, an interesting class, but needs some hit-detection help.

Lastly, I tried the warrior. I used a lot of warrior abilities in the SP demo, so I was really looking forward to things like the Charge attack...and I was somewhat disappointed. Yes, there's a charge attack in the MP game...but it's VERY hard to use; it does not activate instantly, and you cannot change your trajectory much once charging. I will say this though - if you hit someone, they pretty much die instantly. I managed to mow down 3 people with one charge, including a teammate.  The toughest part about the class is getting in close to people. As suits a class running around in iron plate armor, you're very slow, and not able to sprint very far before tiring. And if you DO tire, this makes you a very easy target for assassins and archers. Still, like most other classes, the warrior becomes more fun once you get a few abilities to play with.

Gameplay: In short, the FPS is both a blessing and a curse. It's great to see someone finally do melee combat well in a FPS, but the curse is that, being a FPS, it's very tough at times to hit at point-blank melee range when your target is dancing about. I have a feeling the devs will be doing a lot of work with movement rates and hit detection.

Stability: At first, I had a massive amount of trouble even loading a map. And then I did something funny - I lowered my video settings from High (which the game auto-detected for me) to Medium across the board. The result was that I was actually able to play the game. Once in the game, everyone seemed to suffer from sporadic lag, though not so much as to cause too many people to quit. Also, many people seem to run into a problem with map swapping (or more properly, resetting), where the loader will simply hang. When this happens, I found that I could simply reconnect to the server (or another) and be fine. The drawback was that I would lose  all the class levels I had earned...oh well.

Now that I have gotten to play the game a bit, I can honestly say there is something pretty cool going on here. It's not going to be the next Countstrike, but who cares? It's cool to play something else for a change. For now, all I can say is that the dev teams need to do a lot of optimization work (to be expected with a beta), and do more tinkering with the classes and hit detection. More maps would be nice, but for now, if you can get the game to run, it's something neat to try.

(I should probably not try to write stuff like this at 6am, ugh.)

[tazelbain]

Gameplay: In short, the FPS is both a blessing and a curse. It's great to see someone finally do melee combat well in a FPS, but the curse is that, being a FPS, it's very tough at times to hit at point-blank melee range when your target is dancing about. I have a feeling the devs will be doing a lot of work with movement rates and hit detection.

This why can't play melee in guildwars.  It bugs me to no end the trivial task running in circles like a retard negates most of my abilties.

[Strazos]

GW isn't nearly as bad, but I know what you mean. I should clarify - it's tough to get a Good hit in melee. Sure, you can just rush in and swing around wildly as a warrior and get some kills, but assassin backstabs take a lot more precision, which is extremely tough when your mark is scampering about.

If you can get the game to run, it's still fun.

[NowhereMan]

I've been playing this a bit recently and enjoying myself but I've encountered a lot of problems with freezing. It happens about 1/2 the time when the game goes to load a new map (so most of the time when a round ends) and sometimes it'll lock up in the middle of play. The screen just freezes and I've got the last sound being looped. If I hit escape and wait 5 minutes or so I can sometimes get the game menu and I can quit, anytime I've tried to resume play it either freezes instantly again or I'm stuck unable to move being told I have  a connection problem. I'm also unable to alt-tab out while it's frozen, only thing I can do is hit the shutdown button and wait for the little 'end now' box to pop up over it and reboot.

I found I had the same problem with Half-Life 2 (though not quite as frequently) and that lowering the graphics settings right down reduces the average time before I get this. However I don't have much slowdown and it happens at entirely random points (sometimes when I'm looking at a wall) so I know it isn't some sort of massive surge screwing my processor or graphics card. My CPU doesn't quite meet the clockspeed for the minimum spec (2.2 Ghz Athlon) but I've got 1G ram and a 9700 Pro that apparently are more than good enough and I don't encounter much slowdown so I don't think it's this (could I be wrong? Am I doomed to not play Source games until I upgrade?) Any help would be much appreciated as this does seem like a blast.

[Strazos]

Right now, I am chalking up the game's instability to its Beta status. I have an Athlon 2700+ (2.17GHZ), 1GB of ram, and a new ATI AIW X800XT. The video settings auto-detect to pretty much max (which, for some reason, kept the maps from loading). Chopping everything, including sound settings, down to Medium, solved most of the problems. The map-switch hangup still presists, though does not stop me from hitting ESC and entering a server. Even the same server.

If it's a graphics problem, I would recommend trying Omega Drivers; they've tended to solve all of my problems.

[NowhereMan]

The Omega drivers seem to have worked a treat, thanks Straz!

Well the game does seem to be a lot of fun, loading hangups aside. Mages do indeed suck at low levels but I've managed to get one up to 4 and they can start throwing around some pretty heavy artillery at that point. I believe they also get the most number of insta-kill attacks, I'd imagine a team with a large number of high level mages would be a real ass to play against.

Assassins are fun to play as (backstab ftw!) but I've learned poison bombs take a bit of practice as they will go off when friends go near them as well. They're great for using on campers on ledges though. I'm not all that gone on the cloak though, the most useful thing it does is remove your name and its use seems limited to hiding very still and letting the enemy run past you. It makes sneaking up on enemies a bit easier but nowhere on the beta map is really dark enough for you to not be very easy to spot.

On the subject of not being able to hit moving targets with melee attacks, hitting alt will lock you on to an enemy. I'm not sure if this works for only the warrior as I haven't intentionally tested it but it can be useful as a warrior if your prey is tring to cricle strafe you to death.

[Strazos]

Well, I was playing more as a warrior, so I got a lot better with hitting in melee. It's just that the swing arc and hit detection is Really touchy; you have to find the right distance, especially with the power attacks.

On the plus side, this makes duels with opposing warriors Very interesting, especially when no one else interferes/happens along.

If you want to do well as a warrior, here are some tips:

1) For you first talent points, put one in Endurance, and one in Strength (or whatever raises attack power). Just do yourself a favor and do it.

2) For all other levels, split your points between More Endurance, and the different armor types.

I found the special attacks to be pretty much useless; they're simply too unreliable. The leap attack not only drains 100% of your stamina, but it also has a very wonky hit area. The charge attack is basically a kill if it hits....which is very hard. Once executed, you have basically no control over it, so anyone paying attention will simply move out of the way. And the shield talent? You're immobile while using it.

Instead, I find that simply pumping up you Endurance does wonders. Warriors are already the fastest sprinters over short distances. With extra Endurance, they can also sprint for the most amount of time at once, and also have the quickest stamina regeneration. The uses should be obvious. The attack power and armor upgrades should also be self-explanatory.

I also put more mage time in, and I definitely perfer the Lightning attacks, especially the charged bolt attacks. They might not be as flashy or easy to aim as the fire attacks, but they're much more efficient with mana, and have better range, essentially turning you into a sniper. Too bad the lightning bolt arcs are somewhat random as to where exactly they hit (relative to your reticle), but that is a bit balancing.

[geldonyetich]

I've had the most luck with Assassins.  Stealth seems fairly useless, but that disguise skill is useful if the foe doesn't take the time to memorize the names of the people on their own team.  Warriors eat me up, but everything else I can run up to and hack to bits.

Despite the multiplayer game having some value, I'm really more looking forward to the single player game.

[NowhereMan]

Holy hell assassins are awesome, haven't managed to get higher than lvl 5 (server resets levels every 4 or 5 rounds it seems) but disguise with lvl 2 poison daggers and increased stamina made me a killing machine as well as good at getting behind the enemy and capturing points. You can really chew up mages and archers once you get close too, going on an adrenaline killing spree through about 5 opponents really does make you feel godlike. Also backstabbing those mage sniper bastards is sooo satisfying. Poison daggers also let me seriously mess up enemy warriors too, as long as they're not experienced enough to just lock on to me and slash spam.

[Strazos]

One drawback with disguise is that, it seems that your team cannot tell you're disguised; they think you're someone on the other team, so they hack you down with impunity.

I'm really liking warrior. On one server a certain priestess insisted on following me around, and I would have to defend her when people would inevitably go try to bypass me and get at the healer. I'm still getting use to the stance swing and shield mechanics a bit - sometimes my shield simply does not want to come up, and sometimes a swing I think should hit just goes clank.

[Righ]

I installed a new sound card in Signe's PC, and launched this to test if sound was working right in games. I decided to pick an unpopulated server because I was just fiddling. There was one other player on, so I logged on , and picked a human archer. After wandering around a bit, I discovered there is some capture the flag thing going on. I stood in a circle and captured a flag. Then I started heading for the next flag, and spotted the other player. I shot him with an arrow (its like one of those old pool/snooker games - the longer you hold the key, the stronger the shot). He started to run towards me, I guess he was a melee character. So I shot him some more... you can shoot faster as they get closer. Killed him before he reached me with only minor movement. So I went and captured the rest f the flags. Then I kited him around the map some, and the game ended. So... one on one, warrior vs archer isn't very balanced.

Also, I don't see the attraction. It's FPS capture the flag, and the camera and controls don't seem great. There's more?

[NowhereMan]

A warrior can take an archer if they keep their shield up, strafe dodge a bit and then rush them as soon as they're in range, once the warrior can get close the archer's pretty much dead. Also FPS with capture the flag cover the basics, throwing the different classes and levelling is what really makes it fun and that really wouldn't come across with a short match against one guy. It can be really satisfying as a mage to get a new spell and suddenly going from dying every time to someone looks at you to throwing boom-booms around and blasting warrior corpses up and down the map.

[Signe]

This game in multiplayer is dreadful.  You people are much too desperate for something to do.  You should all take dance lessons.

[Yegolev]

You should all take dance lessons.

Took'em.  I'd rather play a bad fantasy multi-FPS.