2013 MMO thread

[cuervo72]

Yeah, sorry - we got a renewal notification, my wife went to the site and saw the notice.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

Anyone in the beta for Final Fantasy XIV? I've got a buddy who's playing it non-stop, but has a real hard time describing why.

A follow up, Youtuber ZiggyD Starcraft will be the one posting a bunch of videos on the game starting tomorrow. He's been in beta for some time and says he's got a ton on content he's wanting to cover.

[Matthean]

The one group of CoH players who got together to make their own project that I'm somewhat interested in put up another video. Looks like they are going to KS in three days.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by Matthean

A follow up, Youtuber ZiggyD Starcraft will be the one posting a bunch of videos on the game starting tomorrow. He's been in beta for some time and says he's got a ton on content he's wanting to cover.

As another follow up, I was bored this weekend and sick, so I took the plunge (it's been live for a few weeks). The short version:

-Graphics are beautiful.
-Sound is absolutely phenomenal.
-Voice Acting is laughably terrible. Truly, some of the worst I've ever seen.
-Oh my god dialogue everywhere (well, duh, it's a Final Fantasy/Squeenix game).
-Story is somewhat intriguing.
-Gameplay...this is clearly an MMO. If you don't like MMO's, you won't like this one. If you do like MMO's, you'll like this one.

More details:

FF XIV has a Class/Job system. You pick a class (from one of 7 basic classes, 4 martial 3 magical) and as you play, you level up with that class. Each class has class specific quests every 5 levels. Once you reach level 10 and complete your quest class, you are allowed to change your class as you wish...with no restrictions. You do this by visiting the guild for the class you want to be, reading some dialogue, then changing your weapon. When you swap to a new class, you start at level 1 - with level 1 HP and the ability to wear only level 1 armor. This can be somewhat disconcerting at first. When you switch back to your original class, you keep all of the old stats and XP, so you lose nothing by switching. So when all is said and done, you can be a level 50 EVERYTHING on just one character...if you put enough time in.

Jobs are a little more specialized - they require you to reach level 30 with your main class and then level 15 with a secondary class. Unfortunately, the system is not nearly as complex as the one in Final Fantasy Tactics, although many of the classes are lifted straight from it. Each basic class has exactly one Job they can eventually learn - except for one of the casters, which gets two for some unknown reason. So for example, my Archer, upon reaching level 30, can become a Bard if he raises his Pugilist class to 15 as well. Oh yeah, and Crafting and Gathering are not professions, but separate classes in and of themselves - gotta level them from 1 too.

As for actual game play, they seem to have borrowed a good bit from all of the other MMOs out there. They have random group participation battles in the world called FATEs that are exactly like the Rifts that would open up in, well Rift. There are also some interesting quirks in Levemetes, quest givers in each main hub area that have random selections of level appropriate quests that can specialize in either Battle, Crafting or Gathering type activities. These Levemetes have associated Guildhests, which are basically dungeon-finder like queues for small individual encounters which require a tank, a healer and 2 DPS. I've participated in two so far: the first included two different groups of enemies, then a final 'boss' enemy with two additional groups around him. If you were careful, you could pull each additional group separately, but we had someone randomly charge in. The second was a single boss monster who spawned waves of adds as the fight progressed. Each took about 5-10 minutes in a queue (where I could explore, craft, level, etc while waiting), then took less than 10 minutes each to defeat. Pretty cool little addition. I'm assuming as I level further I'll be able to use the same system for their longer Dungeons as well.

Also, each class comes with its own Hunter's Guide - a list of 10 creatures (or sets of creatures) to look for and kill every 10 levels. Each set of creatures is worth a nice bonus of XP, and completing an entire 10 level set of one is worth an additional bonus as well. Any creature you haven't killed yet from the list that you see in the world has a nice little target icon over their character to help you identify them.

So far I've leveled three characters, one is a Level 16/8 Archer/Lancer, one is a Level 13 Thaumaturge (Black Mage) and the other is a Level 7 Marauder (2 Handed Axe Warrior type, can tank in a pinch it appears).

So far, I'm really enjoying the game. Being able to re-roll a different class on the same character is really nice. That being said, it's probably going to be a little grindy - getting my Archer to level 8 as a Lancer was a pain, because all of the fluff quests that I used for experience with the Archer weren't there, so I had to use creature kills (and the Hunter's Guide, which is a godsend) and FATEs in the world to get him that far. Apparently you get an XP boost based on the disparity between your highest leveled class and the current one - the greater the disparity, the greater the bonus XP. So a level 50 Archer would have a massive boost for his level 1 Thaumaturge, but a level 30 Archer's boost would be smaller.

As for cons, talking to my buddy who's already a level 50 Black Mage (Level 30 Thaumaturge, Level 15 Archer), there is almost no diversity in build or rotation at max level. If you're a Black Mage, you use the same set of skills in the same order that every other Black Mage uses...and you're going after the same gear. After spending so much time with WoW (which I haven't played in months and don't really have a desire to go back to) I find it hard to believe I'll be playing this one for the end game, so that doesn't worry me as much.

[Matthean]

Follow up, considering this has been in the works for a year done by volunteers, this looking rather decent.

[Marmel]

The Phoenix Project - City of Titans by Missing Worlds Media — Kickstarter

Their kickstarter campaign just launched.

[Matthean]

I looked at funding last night and compared it to now. It has a solid chance of being funded. I just hope they don't try to make it too close to CoH. I saw them using Atlas as a place already.

https://www.facebook.com/ValianceOnline

Seems to be there is a third CoH spin off. This one is being done by actual professional developers, and they had a fantasy MMO in the works before switching it. Far less is known but that's because they decided to work more and talk less. They have an alpha build being tested. They are suppose to put out more info this month.

The second spin off remains as not worth keeping track of.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by Marmel

The Phoenix Project - City of Titans by Missing Worlds Media — Kickstarter

Their kickstarter campaign just launched.

It should hit the 50% funded mark in just over a day. Unless there is a significant drop off, they should reach their goal. The question now is how far does it go.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by Matthean

It should hit the 50% funded mark in just over a day. Unless there is a significant drop off, they should reach their goal. The question now is how far does it go.

http://mmoattack.com/mmo-news/city-o...on-kickstarter

[Matthean]

It will hit 230K shortly. One interesting aspect of this is the continual amount of people finding about the project and offering to volunteer as well. I think this will be more of an open source MMO than anything I have really seen, and I always wondered if it could be done. MWM will obviously need income for the servers and such, but with the income model they have it should work. I still want to hear more about the various systems they are going to do for things.

[Marmel]

They have exceeded their goal with 27 days remaining.

[Matthean]

I thought it was going to slow down more than it has. Doubling the goal seems way more than likely. I'm curious what it gets to. They will get a push at the end as well. It would be good for them if a larger company came along and took them in since the company could help them with the initial cost of going live, which is really the biggest hurdle.

[Marmel]

Originally Posted by Matthean

I thought it was going to slow down more than it has. Doubling the goal seems way more than likely. I'm curious what it gets to. They will get a push at the end as well. It would be good for them if a larger company came along and took them in since the company could help them with the initial cost of going live, which is really the biggest hurdle.

I would be surprised to hear that they would partner in anyway with a larger company. I feel that they would never take a chance that this would be pulled away from them as CoH was.

[Matthean]

It's just going to be interesting to see how they progress forward. They still have to deal with getting and supporting a server as they look to follow CO's path of one server for all. Beating the goal by a sizable amount is going to help lot though. I know CoH failed with in game ads, but something similar might not be a bad idea. People don't like it for PoE, but it helps pay the bills. They could do a company sponsored contest for creating a mission/story arc.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Up to level 35 as a Bard (50 is cap) in FF XIV and still enjoying it. Came to the realization that while the flexibility of changing classes by simply switching weapons is nice, but leveling up alternate classes on the same character is going to be a pain in the butt because I'll already have finished most of the quests. You get a nice XP bonus while leveling an alternate class, which will help, but I can't help but think that secondary and tertiary classes are going to be grindy as hell.

Still impressed by the visual and audio. The story is better than I gave it credit for early, but still nothing groundbreaking.

Dungeons are extremely linear, but the encounters are fun and have much more complex mechanics than I expected. So far running with completely random groups, I've done 6 dungeons and I've only wiped in one (though we did wipe several times on the last boss in that one dungeon). There have been several instances where the tank has died and I have had to use all of my skills to kite the boss/group of mobs, and it's been a blast fighting my way through those occasions.

It's a little frustrating that the main story quest line forces you to participate in the dungeons - queues can be somewhat long, and if you get stuck on a boss with a random group, you can easily be forced to wait for another group to come along before you can move on. I understand the second M in MMO is Multiplayer, but I prefer to choose when and where to group up. I don't really like being throttled because of someone else's incompetence.

[cuervo72]

Heh, I've long been like that. I liked that there were other players around in CoH (and fueling the auction house/production of goods), but I didn't necessarily want to have to team with them unless I was in the mood.


(Still using CoH as an example because, well, I've still not picked up another MMO.)

[Vince, Pt. II]

Yeah, I definitely like to solo in MMO's

What's been nice is that nearly everyone I've seen has been helpful, which is awesome. Not that I've needed the help, but yesterday when we spent half an hour wiping on the last boss in Brayflox's Longstop, the rest of the group wasn't angry and actually kept giving positively worded advice to the tank. Turns out he didn't know how to strafe and was playing using a controller...which is crazy to me.

I'm certain this is just because the game is relatively new, but hopefully I'm proved wrong and the fellowship attitude continues.

[BrianD]

It seems like you tend to see more annoying people when you get to 50. People are pretty good going through the story-mode quests, but their demands get very specific when doing quests beyond the end of the story.

[Matthean]

CoT ended up with 5K in backers for $678,189. Not bad. At one point I was thinking maybe 750K but more than doubling there goal is still pretty crazy.