Good write up, Rangoth. I disagree on some points but thats simply because I'm drawing comparisons from Eve.
tldr; this game doesn't sound like its for Rangoth. No idea if its for me, but Eve is my favorite MMO and its hitting the right chords so far. Dev team can do a lot with gameplay mechanics given their approach to art (lol). Incoming quasi-shill post... EDIT: to reiterate, it remains to be seen whether I stick around or not. This sounds shilly because I have desperately wanted to see more work done in this MMO-space -- we need more sandbox MMOs.
I agree, not for me but I also wasn't trying to bash the game in to the ground or condemn it. Just providing my honest experience. As I said I think this game will kind of survive as a niche game but it will fail to draw in and hold new people to the genre/specific game.
PW2: By your definition, Eve is P2W. No Eve players genuinely think that. No one cares that someone can buy $100 plex and buy whatever the fuck he wants. The way the game is structured, it'd take an unfathomable amount of dollars to make any noticible impact either on a small or large scale. Game knowledge and social aptitude is 1000x more important than currency. That being said, there are many people who do call Eve P2W because you can trade cash for isk. Everyone has to make their own appraisal.
I don't know eve, but you are probably correct. Again not crying about this and I even said you can buy the "premium status" with the daily earnings if you wanted to and I'm sure it will either get easier to do that as the market inflates or they will modify prices.
Grind: I don't know what you're expecting here. You played for how long and somehow feel qualified to comment on your rate of progression? Where are you now progression wise and where do you think you should be? A proper MMO should allow a player to feel as if they're progressing towards their goals at a reasonable rate of speed.
I actually did not comment on my personal rate of progression. I actually think I made it quite "far" for one day. I was commenting at the mechanics and style of progression. We could certainly argue all MMOs are a grind(and be correct), but this has the feel of standard Korean style grind. Literally it's a do X to get better at X, not shortcuts outside of being premium(where this makes a huge huge difference). Maybe it's like FFXIV class system where in a year everyone has all classes to 50 and people in Albion will be maxxed at everything. I just disagree with the implementation personally and felt like people should know it's grindy. Even guardianX, who seems to like the game, agrees.
Gear: Agree with gear "blandness", but they're modeling this off of Eve where people are either custom-designing their kit for a specific task or they're flying what their leaders tell them to fly.
Agreed. It is very bland but I will actually defend the game here and say it makes sense for the mechanics and style of game, that being death and looting people. No one will want to grind out Staff of Unique awesome if lag or anything else could kill them. But with the tier system you can have your guild bank/crafters ready to feed the horde army new shit.
Travel: Definitely is slow without a mount, just like all MMOs. That being said, its day 4 and mounts are already on the AH and are easily affordable after a decent play session or two. Prices will only come down. Tangentially, from an efficiency standpoint, running back and forth with fox hides is a silly way to play. Do whats fun but if the travel time is killing you, don't try to gather/craft yet, smash mobs for silver and buy a mount in a few days. Similiarly to your gripe about crafting. Just like every MMO, crafters with guild support will dominate soloists early on. Again, from an effiency standpoint, finding some friends and smashing mobs for pure silver is a simple and effective way to progress early on.
First mounts right now are going for 150k silver. That's not a "decent play session". I will concede the prices MAY go down...but if everything is lootable then maybe not as a death means new mount(can mounts be looted?). You say do what's fun and we are getting in to a more subjective view point, but combat isn't fun. I actually found smashing mobs to be MORE boring than trying to craft stuff and move it around and sell it or gather resources. Maybe this is because of the "bland" gear and skills or back to that "polish" concept I tried to talk about. I just did not find combat fun. Solo killing shit like a newb in any MMO was about equal to any other game out there, did a few group things and didn't really see the appeal. While it has DotA style view it isn't even close to DotA style fun/combat.
Abilities: it doesn't seem like they want you to ever have triple hotbars worth of skills. Whether or not the 8 hotbar slots are enough to make combat interesting remains to be seen. I haven't really studied any theorycrafting so I have no idea. However, MOBAs make it work with even less.
I actually like the limited abilities. No complaints here. I'm sick of the 30 hotbar thing new games do. have 7-8 or whatever it is was nice and refreshing.
PVP: There are anti-zerg mechanics in place, I beleive. The more targets an AE spell hits the more damage it does, AND, the more people focus firing a single target the less damage he takes. If you want to control territory you'll likely need a mid-sized guild, but thats par for the course and small groups can set up instanced stuff in the carebear lands. Regarding super-groups and dominating a server, there is only one server and Eve has managed to keep the dynamic interesting over the last decade despite the rise (and fall) of periodic super-groups.
There are anti-zerg mechanics. I read those too. And maybe you didn't play Shadowbane/UO, and maybe you just want to call me a liar or incorrect, but it's been my experience(and I believe statistically true) that 90% of PvP in games like this is not an awesome, heart pumping, action filled, combat session where two rival guilds battle it out for control over X. It's a guild of 15 dudes running around raping individuals from other guilds or raiding a town in the middle of the night, etc. People keep wanting this open world sandbox PvP style game to flourish but back to my earlier comments that this game will not welcome or hold new people and once the sheep are gone it will be mostly boring. PvP games where people are not on level footing will ALWAYS be niche. If that is YOUR niche then great, but don't expect a big crowd.
Random: Tier of resources is clearly visible by both its color and the number of "dots" it has. T3 ore is purple with 3 spikes; T4 ore is green with 4 spikes, etc etc.
I did mention this, that in a month I'd probably have all of the trees and rocks memorized but that doesn't change that a mouse over tooltip for a new player wouldn't kill anyone.
Final Thoughts: I have no idea how you ended up so confused by this game. Its far more simplistic than the MMO community has come to expect; there may be depth (and I think there is) but it is literally click and go, and the few questions I had I was able to find an answer either in public chat or on a forum.
Ultimately a sandbox game is going to cater to a few groups, and for most players, its the social aspect that keeps the game fun. This isn't a game to log in weekly and raid. This is a game to do things with friends, whether it be getting wealthy in carebear lands by PVE stuff or by holding territory in the outlands (think 0.0 from Eve).
You call the game simple but I just must disagree. You get tossed in the to world, no quest, no tooltips, no guidance. It tries to shuffle you along but ends up weak. There is no explanation that if you want to be archer/mage/fighter you need to equip that weapon. Or if you want to craft you should take this course or that course. No guidance on where to go or how to look for items. That's great you read the webpages and wiki and maybe I'm just old and bitter but I want it in game.
At some point it became expected that in order to play a game I have to watch 15 hours of youtube boss fights and read the forums to understand that my sta caps at 200 even though the game let's it go to 300 in my character sheet. What the fuck? I'm sorry but I make a pretty hard stand on that shit. I just want to play the game. I'm ok if that means I'll never be in the top percent or be the best player, but it is a game and I want to enjoy it, not spend my time studying it just to do the most basic actions. If min/maxers want to do that stuff power to them, but to the common player everything you need and accurate and clear information should all be in the client.