So, like most of the really hardcore players out there, me and my friend pretty much hit 35 in two days. These are merely my opinions and my criticism alone, most of which will probably be negative. If you don't like it, then feel free to stop reading now. The reason why I'm not going to go into too much detail on the more positive aspects is because they're pretty common things that I feel any successful MMO should have.
Just like most of the free to play MMO's, leveling the early stages go by pretty **** fast. I hit cap in AIKA in a day. Prius in 2 days. Neosteam 3 days. etc. (open beta cap, mind you.) I can't really judge the game completely, because I mean, really, it's only closed beta. The game isn't even open beta or live yet. But there are SOME things that I REALLY dislike. For example:
PVP. What interested me most about the game was that there was going to be multiple ways that I could challenge myself in PVP. I was sad to see that there wasn't even a dueling system where I could gauge my skills against a few friends. That was a pretty big let down.
RVR. It doesn't help that Eos was severely lacking in players. The very first RVR me and watter went to, it was 6 vs 2. Probably us vs Final. The second one was 10 vs 4. The third was probably 20 vs 7-8ish. I had fun in the most previous RVR, but only due to the fact that I could charge into their entire realm who were spawn camping us and break through their line and escape out the back. But seriously, who likes losing that hard? There was literally zero chance that we could win. This is probably because the hardcore guilds all went Dione. (Final and Requiem from my knowledge) and left only us in Eos. The only other semi-active guild I noticed in Eos was Mostwanted? I think that's their name.
What I'm getting at here is that there should be way more emphasis on choosing your camp since it's such a big impact on how the game is played. A simple talk to NPC and pay 10k or however much it was to choose your realm shouldn't be allowed. There should be more depth, and much more clarity on just how big of an impact on the server it's going to be. (Like I said, the game is still new and there might be room for improvement.)
--------I also think there should be more emphasis on just when RVR takes place. That way people have more room to prepare.
Playerbase. Something I aim to be is the best on my server. I thrive on competition and that's where I derive my enjoyment from. The fact that there was never more than maybe a couple hundred players on at any given time was really boring. Now that we're cap there's really nothing to do. I think incorporating some sort of OPEN PVP against realms would be nice. That way it gives us something to do. y'know, roam around and look for Dione's to kill. In that sense, I suppose it would be sort of broken. There would always be the noobs who went and farmed the lower levels. Maybe some sort of limit? In general, the OPEN PVP just plain sucks.
You literally have to OPT IN (I find that a horrible mechanic in general) to PVP and EVEN THEN there is a penalty from what I understand. The opt in system is just plain garbage. The penalty I don't mind so much. Maybe not as severe? If there is going to be PK, it shouldn't be opt in. Players should be able to kill whoever they want, with a certain consequence.
Item crafting and upgrading. From what I could tell, blueprints were completely useless and not even worth picking up. You spend an hour or three grinding and you'd have a blue that was much better. After grinding to 35 you have 700k+ and blues sell for around 50-80k ish. Which makes them stupidly easy to get a hold of. All in all, the crafting really is useless. The only thing I found remotely useful was being able to craft speed pots with crystals. Even then, it was stupidly easy. 50 gold for an empty bottle and 3-5 crystals? :/
I just didn't like the lackluster crafting system in general. Maybe that's just me, though. I really enjoy the hassle of having to find rare materials and using them to craft an item that may or may not have good stats. This also gives us end game users more things to do. Again, I know it's CBT but still, most of the other F2P MMO's that I ended up playing into open beta had triple the content and five times the active players. All of this just really turns me away from spending any sort of time into the game.
Most of you say closed beta is for finding bugs/glitches, etc. But, for many, it's about preparing your guild, scoping out the good players and finding out ways to better yourself so that when open beta roles around you're in the race to becoming a top player. Like I said, I thrive on conflict and more importantly competition.
With that being said, the castle siege looks promising. Still, the ten man player limit on a guild at level 1 seems redundant. Maybe 30-40 player limit and bump it up by 10-20 players per level. You can't even call 10 players a guild. Seriously, that's a party and a half. A GM did mention to me that they were probably going to fix this in an upcoming patch. By all means, do it. You guys rock if so.
The skills in the game were all very nice to watch. But the FPS in the game REALLY stunk. Like, REALLY. I've never played a game where I could put all settings to low and still barely play at a solid ten FPS. Even on minimum spec mode, I would be getting a max of 20 FPS and when more than three or four players were on the screen it dropped back down to 10 FPS. That's just horrid. My PC isn't even that bad. I've been able to play all other mmo's with at least a solid 30 FPS and I play LoL with 60 with all high settings. I don't know if it's just me, but from what I can tell others are also having a pretty big issue with FPS lag.
To be completely honest, I'm bored and have nothing else to do at the moment. I've probably ranted on for way to long here and it would be naive of me to expect many to really read the entire thing through. I've been searching for a semi-decent MMO to put me and my guild to trials with for the longest time now. I like the game and enjoyed playing it but it will need soooo much more for me to actually consider "no-lifing" it. Just some thoughts from some random player in hopes that you guys might better the game some how. So far, it just doesn't live up to even my ridiculously low standards.
inb4 tl;dr. inb4 op can't inb4.