Archeage
- Thread starter tad10
- Start date
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 8,761
- 613
I just played up Patch 1.0 in Korea to 20 over the weekend again. Gonna post my thoughts on some of the changes that I noticed (almost all combat related, haven't experienced the rest) tomorrow morning. Was going to do it tonight, but too tired.
TrollfaceDeux
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
- 19,577
- 3,743
Ok, so I restarted my character and played up again from one to almost 20 on the Korean Servers. At a high level, the TLDR version is that Patch 1.0 seemed to be a positive as far as the early game is concerned. Here are my more detailed thoughts:
1.Abilities. They refined the ability trees. Generally speaking, it seems they overall reduced the duration of CCs, especially against players, and reworked the ability tiers so that there is more variety between the classes. Previously, one of my complaints was that many of the trees (for example, the magic trees) were very similar, so if you went Necromancy, Conjury, Magic, you would get like 3 DDs/DoTs, 3 stuns, 3 auto attack type abilities, so the combat felt kinda unrefined and haphazard. You would basically just throw all your stuff at a mob. They cleaned this up a lot. My standard rotation is to prebuff with a self only shield from the magic tree, then lightning bolt the mob from the magic tree, into mindflay like channeled snare spell from conjury, to a Dot+Debuff and then drain tank with lifetap (another drain dmg + heal spell). If it doesnt finish the mob off, or if I get an add, I can either root them and wait for cooldowns to reset or kite around with the spamable Necro autoattack skill. It all seems to flow a lot more than when I previously played. I think most of the changes were minor, but in the aggregate, it improved upon the tab targeting system. Still not a fan of it at all (b/c I like action combat), but its good enough now to not be a deal breaker.
2.Quest Rewards. Huge changes in the quest reward / gear progression. Pre 1.0, you really had gear that was all over the map. Stuff like Int + Agility gear as quest rewards, etc. Quest rewards were done like WoW where you could see 1 of 3 items and select it when you completed the quest. The way they do it now is that basically, you cant see the stats on the gear you are getting, but you select a "color" of reward. From what I can tell, Blue = caster/healer gear, Yellow = tank/defensive gear, and Red = physical DPS gear. I haven't played multiple characters so I cant tell if the game tries to customize the gear for you based off of the trees you select, but it really seems like it does. I get tons of INT gear for picking the blue package, with very little other stats except stamina and spirit. Perhaps the blue package just always gives this type of gear, but it could be that you pick what you want your "main" stats to be by selecting the color and then the game adjusts it based on your trees. I wont be able to really test it unless I start a new character with different trees, but in any event, the system is an improvement. One thing that is nice is that the quest gear is organized into sets. So, completing all of the quests in one area will give you a full (7/7) matching armor set with set bonuses, etc. It is fun to progress through each zone and try to complete the set, rather than getting one off random pieces each quest you do. Its a pretty different change and I like it a lot.
3.Difficulty. They increased the leveling difficulty a decent amount. It is similar to the way EQ was where if things go right, it is pretty easy, but if you get an add (respawns are pretty quick), things can go south really fast. In 20 levels, I've died maybe a dozen times or so, which is typically pretty rare for me. All of my deaths were "dumb deaths" where I rushed itno a fight without buffing, etc. So it seems a good balance where preparation really matters. All in, they made the leveling harder than it was before, so it feels a little less like you are just running from hub to hub. A positive change IMO. Although they didnt rework the death penalty, the changes they made to the way labor points work (crafting mana), made death sting a little more. When you die, 3 things happen. (1) you get a 10 minute debuff reducing your effectiveness (I think its 10% dmg), (2) you lose like 2% EXP, and (3) your future exp is cut in half for about 5%-7%. You can remove the future EXP reduction by praying at a shrine and paying labor points. You could always do this, but now your labor points are much more valuable (see below) so the penalty stings a little more.
4.Labor Points. This was by far the biggest change with Patch 1.0 (and going FTP). Your labor points are much more limited. Before, you could pretty much go around chopping down trees and mining whenever you wanted for resources. Unless you played a TON or got into really high end crafting/house, labor points were not much of an issue early game. Now, the labor point shortage is almost immediate, and doing things requires more labor points. Some examples (in addition to the death example above), monsters don't drop gold anymore directly. Instead, they drop sacks of gold, that can only be opened by using like 2 labor points. So, if you don't have labor points, you wont be able to earn gold from mobs. If you run around harvesting everything, you will run out of labor points almost immediately. Basically, I haven't harvested a single node and only used my labor points for death and gold and they are very slowly going up from like 200 starting to 300 over 4-5 days. Compare it to before where you would have like 800 almost overnight. This has a LOT of impact on the game. Namely, you dont see houses everywhere anymore. Because it takes labor points to keep a house up, people are much more selective about getting a house. Before, there was never enough buildable real estate in the world and the landscape near cities became tons of farms with square rows of sheep, etc. It was kinda immersion breaking. Well, all of that is gone now. It could be because the servers arent very populated in Korea, but I think it probably has more to do with the labor point change. People want to spend their labor points crafting and harvesting and not necessarily to run their farm.
5.Pay to Win. The lack of labor points leads me to my next point, not sure the game is really "pay to win" in that you don't get a lot of combat benefits from a subscription, but if you want to experience all the game has to offer, you will almost certainly have to pay what would be the same amount as a subscription. The reason is that you can buy items that regenerate your labor points, so if you want to compose songs, craft a lot, build a house, build a boat in any reasonable time frame, you will probably have to buy those items to keep replenishing your labor points. This doesn't really turn me off, b/c I would likely subscribe to the game anyway, but if you think "free to play" benefits should be limited to only cosmetic items, the implementation of the system as it is in Korea will definitely turn you off.
That is pretty much all I have to say. The world is just as pretty as I remember, and they made leveling a bit more interesting by adding in meaningful set gear progression into the leveling curve, but it is still WoW like hub spoke leveling where you complete quests to progress. If you want to level purely through crafting (which would have always been inefficient), you will probably have to shell out some serious cash now in addition to it being inefficient.
Overall, patch 1.0 is positive for the way that I like to play, but i can see how folks were turned off by it...especially non-achiever types that just want to shit around. This week, I should hit 30, which will put me into the PvP areas. I can give you all as sense for how active / balanced the PvP aspects of the game are once I get to that area.
1.Abilities. They refined the ability trees. Generally speaking, it seems they overall reduced the duration of CCs, especially against players, and reworked the ability tiers so that there is more variety between the classes. Previously, one of my complaints was that many of the trees (for example, the magic trees) were very similar, so if you went Necromancy, Conjury, Magic, you would get like 3 DDs/DoTs, 3 stuns, 3 auto attack type abilities, so the combat felt kinda unrefined and haphazard. You would basically just throw all your stuff at a mob. They cleaned this up a lot. My standard rotation is to prebuff with a self only shield from the magic tree, then lightning bolt the mob from the magic tree, into mindflay like channeled snare spell from conjury, to a Dot+Debuff and then drain tank with lifetap (another drain dmg + heal spell). If it doesnt finish the mob off, or if I get an add, I can either root them and wait for cooldowns to reset or kite around with the spamable Necro autoattack skill. It all seems to flow a lot more than when I previously played. I think most of the changes were minor, but in the aggregate, it improved upon the tab targeting system. Still not a fan of it at all (b/c I like action combat), but its good enough now to not be a deal breaker.
2.Quest Rewards. Huge changes in the quest reward / gear progression. Pre 1.0, you really had gear that was all over the map. Stuff like Int + Agility gear as quest rewards, etc. Quest rewards were done like WoW where you could see 1 of 3 items and select it when you completed the quest. The way they do it now is that basically, you cant see the stats on the gear you are getting, but you select a "color" of reward. From what I can tell, Blue = caster/healer gear, Yellow = tank/defensive gear, and Red = physical DPS gear. I haven't played multiple characters so I cant tell if the game tries to customize the gear for you based off of the trees you select, but it really seems like it does. I get tons of INT gear for picking the blue package, with very little other stats except stamina and spirit. Perhaps the blue package just always gives this type of gear, but it could be that you pick what you want your "main" stats to be by selecting the color and then the game adjusts it based on your trees. I wont be able to really test it unless I start a new character with different trees, but in any event, the system is an improvement. One thing that is nice is that the quest gear is organized into sets. So, completing all of the quests in one area will give you a full (7/7) matching armor set with set bonuses, etc. It is fun to progress through each zone and try to complete the set, rather than getting one off random pieces each quest you do. Its a pretty different change and I like it a lot.
3.Difficulty. They increased the leveling difficulty a decent amount. It is similar to the way EQ was where if things go right, it is pretty easy, but if you get an add (respawns are pretty quick), things can go south really fast. In 20 levels, I've died maybe a dozen times or so, which is typically pretty rare for me. All of my deaths were "dumb deaths" where I rushed itno a fight without buffing, etc. So it seems a good balance where preparation really matters. All in, they made the leveling harder than it was before, so it feels a little less like you are just running from hub to hub. A positive change IMO. Although they didnt rework the death penalty, the changes they made to the way labor points work (crafting mana), made death sting a little more. When you die, 3 things happen. (1) you get a 10 minute debuff reducing your effectiveness (I think its 10% dmg), (2) you lose like 2% EXP, and (3) your future exp is cut in half for about 5%-7%. You can remove the future EXP reduction by praying at a shrine and paying labor points. You could always do this, but now your labor points are much more valuable (see below) so the penalty stings a little more.
4.Labor Points. This was by far the biggest change with Patch 1.0 (and going FTP). Your labor points are much more limited. Before, you could pretty much go around chopping down trees and mining whenever you wanted for resources. Unless you played a TON or got into really high end crafting/house, labor points were not much of an issue early game. Now, the labor point shortage is almost immediate, and doing things requires more labor points. Some examples (in addition to the death example above), monsters don't drop gold anymore directly. Instead, they drop sacks of gold, that can only be opened by using like 2 labor points. So, if you don't have labor points, you wont be able to earn gold from mobs. If you run around harvesting everything, you will run out of labor points almost immediately. Basically, I haven't harvested a single node and only used my labor points for death and gold and they are very slowly going up from like 200 starting to 300 over 4-5 days. Compare it to before where you would have like 800 almost overnight. This has a LOT of impact on the game. Namely, you dont see houses everywhere anymore. Because it takes labor points to keep a house up, people are much more selective about getting a house. Before, there was never enough buildable real estate in the world and the landscape near cities became tons of farms with square rows of sheep, etc. It was kinda immersion breaking. Well, all of that is gone now. It could be because the servers arent very populated in Korea, but I think it probably has more to do with the labor point change. People want to spend their labor points crafting and harvesting and not necessarily to run their farm.
5.Pay to Win. The lack of labor points leads me to my next point, not sure the game is really "pay to win" in that you don't get a lot of combat benefits from a subscription, but if you want to experience all the game has to offer, you will almost certainly have to pay what would be the same amount as a subscription. The reason is that you can buy items that regenerate your labor points, so if you want to compose songs, craft a lot, build a house, build a boat in any reasonable time frame, you will probably have to buy those items to keep replenishing your labor points. This doesn't really turn me off, b/c I would likely subscribe to the game anyway, but if you think "free to play" benefits should be limited to only cosmetic items, the implementation of the system as it is in Korea will definitely turn you off.
That is pretty much all I have to say. The world is just as pretty as I remember, and they made leveling a bit more interesting by adding in meaningful set gear progression into the leveling curve, but it is still WoW like hub spoke leveling where you complete quests to progress. If you want to level purely through crafting (which would have always been inefficient), you will probably have to shell out some serious cash now in addition to it being inefficient.
Overall, patch 1.0 is positive for the way that I like to play, but i can see how folks were turned off by it...especially non-achiever types that just want to shit around. This week, I should hit 30, which will put me into the PvP areas. I can give you all as sense for how active / balanced the PvP aspects of the game are once I get to that area.
This is my bad. I didn't realize what Reas was doing until it was too late and fucked the thread.
Let us know your approximate time to level at the various stages. Changes sound mostly good. Thanks for keeping us updated.
- 11,060
- 2,262
The F2P shit sounds really bad but as long as a) they don't go F2P right away or b) have a sub system which removes ALL the issues with the systems, I'm ok with it. Not sure they'll launch with F2P stuff. Hell I'm not sure they'll launch with that patch either, when they port shit it tends to be several versions behind and they catch up over the next few months.
Guess we'l know more soon, beta should be starting shortly, even though I assume it'll be under NDA at first but they'll probably do interviews and shit to reveal their plans for the western release.
The class changes definitely sound nice.
Guess we'l know more soon, beta should be starting shortly, even though I assume it'll be under NDA at first but they'll probably do interviews and shit to reveal their plans for the western release.
The class changes definitely sound nice.
I wish more games would just allow you to sub and once you sub for 3 months or something you auto get anything in the f2p. Sony had the station cash stuff that was better than most if you subbed and their new all access pass is pretty interesting if they get a couple of MMO's worth paying for (landmark / next).
I just would like companies to give paying customers an all you can eat option that preserves their cash shop value but allows people to just sub their game without hitting my wallet for a couple of bucks ever so often. Let me just pay you up front for fucks sake the nickle and dime shit isn't for a lot of us.
I just would like companies to give paying customers an all you can eat option that preserves their cash shop value but allows people to just sub their game without hitting my wallet for a couple of bucks ever so often. Let me just pay you up front for fucks sake the nickle and dime shit isn't for a lot of us.
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
- 18,717
- 34,906
Why do that? They know they can likely get a sub out of you,plusbe able to nickle and dime you here and there via the cash shop.
Its like classic WoW leveling. The time to level really hasn't changed. I remember the quests since last time I did it, which speeds stuff up, but I also cant read Korean, which really slows stuff down. On the balance, I think my leveling speed is about where it will be on NA live. Id say its about an hour a level. Since so much of the exp comes from quest turn ins its a little sporatic where you complete all of the quests in an area for an hour and gain like 10%, then BOOM, you turn them in an you are at 75%. It's basically the same speed as WoW when you didn't know all the perfect spots.
Note that is only for your FIRST pass through. Here is one thing to keep in mind. You can get every skill on your character if you want to put the effort in, but in order to do so, you have to level each tree independently. Mob's "gray con out" based on your character level, not your tree level and a lot of your exp is through non-repeatable quests. So, basically, once you max your first three trees, EZ mode leveling is over. The next trees become a straight up Korean style grind. I think this is a nice compromise between the Korean grind and Western ease of accessibility, but, from what my former guildmates told me, it does create a weird scenario where unless you are really dedicated to your main character, it is way better / faster to reroll to try out new trees.
The have a sub option that basically puts your Labor Points up at the old level. You will still get nickel and dimed for the cosmetic stuff, but at least its not the core gameplay stuff. I dont know if this will be in the Western release, but the Korean version also basically has a "gift packet" that you get every 30 minutes you are logged in (with additional rewards if you are logged in at a PC Bang...internet cafe). Pretty standard for Korean MMOs and doesnt usually make it to the US. I would expect that is one of the things Trion gets changed. It's kinda dumb to incentivize you to AFK bot and click a button every 30 minutes.
I cant tell what the rewards actually do. One is a key and the other is a gem of some sort, but I have no idea how they are used.
One thing I forgot is that the first time I played, they had a ton of socket type things where you could buff your gear. This time through, they have seemingly been removed. Not sure what is up with that. Maybe the set gear that you get from quests is already item budgeted with the sockets included. Not sure. I just know that sockets used to be there and now arent.
Thats a good many changes from when I played the game. I'd have had a much better opinion of things if that was what I played. Like I said before I'll give the NA beta another go, but not because I'm just bored with whats out there, but because the changes make the game sound better.
I'd love to hear from Scott on how much of the pay to win stuff is going in. But I doubt he is allowed to say anything.
I'd love to hear from Scott on how much of the pay to win stuff is going in. But I doubt he is allowed to say anything.
This is one of the few skill calculators that seems to be up to date with the live version of the game. I basically do a Google translation of a Russian translation of a Korean version, so /shrug. Who the fuck knows if its accurate, but it seems to be.
Archeage - ?s???O??f???,??? Archeage
That is my current build as well (Necro, Conjury, Magic). They translate the class as "Mage." I see it "Sorcerer" a lot of places and sometimes "Dark Sorcerer." If any rolls on Korea Servers, here is the name of the server to start on. It is server 10 and called Ollo.
Archeage - ?s???O??f???,??? Archeage
That is my current build as well (Necro, Conjury, Magic). They translate the class as "Mage." I see it "Sorcerer" a lot of places and sometimes "Dark Sorcerer." If any rolls on Korea Servers, here is the name of the server to start on. It is server 10 and called Ollo.
Thanks Oloh as others have said for the info and updates, and for the record I'm all in with world pvp right there with you.
Folks will either love this or hate it, but it is what it is:
Random Feature 05 - Custom Dyes
So, you can make custom cloaks, T-shirts, sails, pictures for your walls, etc. in ArcheAge. While the first reaction may be "badass, I can put my guild logo on my boat so the world fears my pirate fleet," you also get:
Any 256x256 png (with transparency permitted) will work. You just buy a master dye for like 40 gold, then can reprint it as many times as you want (I think) for the cost of the item + like 10 silver. Some interesting dyed items:
(spoiler-ed b/c its swimsuit model type stuff for those at conservative works....no nudity)
Random Feature 05 - Custom Dyes
So, you can make custom cloaks, T-shirts, sails, pictures for your walls, etc. in ArcheAge. While the first reaction may be "badass, I can put my guild logo on my boat so the world fears my pirate fleet," you also get:
Any 256x256 png (with transparency permitted) will work. You just buy a master dye for like 40 gold, then can reprint it as many times as you want (I think) for the cost of the item + like 10 silver. Some interesting dyed items:
(spoiler-ed b/c its swimsuit model type stuff for those at conservative works....no nudity)
TrollfaceDeux
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
- 19,577
- 3,743
lol what the fuck....
....i am definitely making a coffee shop of starlets pictures plastered all over the place...
....i am definitely making a coffee shop of starlets pictures plastered all over the place...
LOL. I told you. The feature set is something that started out when a thirteen year old said "wouldn't it be cool if"......you have to see it to believe it.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
- 5,518
- 583
This is wrong, also the Wolf v. Sheep guy is wrong. Trey Parker got it right. You've got pussies, dicks and assholes in the real world and in the MMO world. You are only describing 1/3 (I'll guess) of the playerbase: the Pussies who want Monty Haul no-risk/all-reward games. You are not describing assholes who just want to gank people (Dicks or Pussies) usually by attacking in large numbers or when the Dick or Pussy is greatly disadvantaged (much of the time with Pussies who tend to have little idea how to play their character in a PvP situaiton). Finally we have the final 1/3 (maybe less/maybe more) of players: Dicks who want to ePeen which requires either (a) very hard to get loot (via raiding) or (b) difficult PvP (such as WoW BGs back in the day). I'll guess that Dicks form the "respectable guilds" that Kedwyn speaks of, because there's no epeening when you're ganking 100 on 1. There is epeening when two Dicks fuck up five Assholes who were trying to gank them or when a guild of Dicks defends a bunch of Pussies from a huge Asshole force.
The moral of the story is for long lasting PvP you probably need to help out the Dicks by enabling ePeenery in your game (e.g. achievement: 5 - 1 - defeat five enemy players while fighting alone, yada yada yada). WoW BGs worked so well back in Vanilla because they were all about ePeenery until assholes started afk honor farming.