Yeah, I’m an MMO junkie and want to check this out.
Any other QT3 players playing? I made a character on Iterator and would love to hook up with other folks playing, but I’m low enough level that I don’t mind switching if need be…
Man, Xemu, I would be right there with you if I had liked the beta more. Once you’re into it deeper, if you get a chance, let us know how the game feels. I’m curious to know if they can (or have already) overcome the problems that were apparent earlier on.
[size=2]P.S.: Do you know where the Eye’s sarcophagus is stowed? The Guardians are trying to figure out how to reawaken him from his slumber :)[/size]
I love MO, warts and all–which is kind of surprising, since I couldn’t stand the movies; not even the first one. The milieu makes for a really good gaming environment, though, and I’m enjoying it a lot.
Xemu, you’re in luck. I’m on Iterator and just hooked up with a pretty good partner, so if you want to make it a threesome, give me a buzz. Name’s Datagen, currently level 8 Operative.
Jason, the game’s solid. It’s still buggy (particularly the missions; I think they broke something last patch), but most MMOG’s are at release. The gameplay’s pretty good, though, if you get into it. If you just want to run around, bash anonymous mobs, and level up, then yeah, this won’t be the game for you. You’ve got to get into the story a bit to make the most of this one.
I’m not much of a “run around, bash anonymous mobs” kind of guy, 'bunch, so I appreciate the story aspects of the game. And your feedback about it.
I think we went over this in another thread, but the main thing I found to be such a barrier to my enjoyment in the beta was the character “feel” – especially jumping. An interface that obscures too much of the viewable area, an unnecessarily obtuse skill/ability system, and foes that die, get up, then die again didn’t reduce my negative feelings about it. I expect some of my qualms to be answered as the game develops, but my main worry is that the basic underlying design may be too much for me to get over.
But I look forward to any more enthusiastic reports you and Xemu might have. One day I’d like to give the game another whirl, I just want to make sure I won’t be too disappointed when I do.
Thanks, Jason. I really think a lot of people are underappreciating this aspect of it. MO comes to the table with a much richer backstory and environment to it than other MMOG’s have. SWG was supposed to have this as well, but the SWG team just didn’t capitalize on their lore properly. I think Monolith is on the right track with their approach, as they’ve got a lot of people genuinely curious and interested about what’s going on in the Matrix. I know it’s really adding a whole different dimension to the gameplay for me. (Like you, I was in beta and a tad underwhelmed at the time, but things have changed now that it’s live.)
I think we went over this in another thread, but the main thing I found to be such a barrier to my enjoyment in the beta was the character “feel” – especially jumping.
Ah, yes. I remember this conversation :) Unfortunately, the running and jumping animations haven’t changed. There are separate “moods” you can set for yourself as you level up, though, which vary the animations. I didn’t know about these until just the other day, but the idea is pretty cool. Essentially, they’re “fidget sets,” and you get a new set to use every level or every other level. If you use these, your running and standing around and sitting animations aren’t always the same ol’ same ol’ throughout the game.
An interface that obscures too much of the viewable area
Not an issue with me. Maybe because I play at 1280x1024? I dunno.
an unnecessarily obtuse skill/ability system
At the risk of sounding insulting, and I definitely don’t mean to, I think this is probably more due to your not grasping the system yet. I know that was the case with me. I kind of floundered around with the thing during beta, but now that I’ve got a real manual and a real direction I want to go in it’s all come clear to me. The system is actually really, really good, imo.
and foes that die, get up, then die again didn’t reduce my negative feelings about it.
Hehe. Yep. Still there. I’ve put up with this in lots of other MMOG’s, though, so it’s not a dealbreaker with me. Besides, they’re not actually coming back to life. It’s just a lack of sync between the dice rolls and the animations. However, there is a related bug that’s driving me crazy right now: sometimes I’ll bust a couple of rounds into a mob and they’ll display the damage and start running toward me. Then they’ll stop, turn around, and run back to their starting point with full health. They appear to be telling their buddies I’m shooting at them, because then they’ll usually come back at me with one or two in tow. In a way, it’s kind of cool–almost realistic, in a way, except for their health bar filling back up.
I expect some of my qualms to be answered as the game develops, but my main worry is that the basic underlying design may be too much for me to get over.
Well, take your time. MO isn’t going anywhere. In the meantime, I’ll be glad to break it in for you :)
But I look forward to any more enthusiastic reports you and Xemu might have. One day I’d like to give the game another whirl, I just want to make sure I won’t be too disappointed when I do.
Yeah, I don’t want to be one of these “Dude! You have to get this game!” kind of people, because I have no idea whether what appeals to me will appeal to you. I can only tell you I’m having fun.
(One thing that’s really making a huge difference for me is a streaming Internet station I’ve found that plays the perfect soundtrack music for the game. It’s the sort of thing you have to experience to appreciate, but a game in which the music is always changing yet is always appropriate is soooo much better than a game with a few repetitive tracks. It’s been like a revelation to me to play this way. I recommend it to anyone playing MO. PM me if you want directions to the ultimate MO soundtrack station :))
Wow, I thought this was going to be a complete turd. I’m honestly surprised to see this kind of positive word of mouth… so what is it like? What do you do in it? How does this skill system work? Etc.
I’d have to agree with Extarbags-- after playing the beta I was pretty turned off by how unpolished it was at such an “advanced” phase of its development cycle… I did kinda like the roshambo type deal with the fighting, but I couldn’t figure out wtf to do and I couldn’t log on half the time so never really got anywhere. I just gave up in disgust…
So far I have one character on the Enumerator (a “Hostile”) server named “Killfile”
Will get around to creating a character on “Iterator” sooner or later. :)
For those of you who missed this other thread, there is some info and links that might give you some more info on some of the game’s strengths and weaknesses.
Well, I’m tired of typing for now, so I’ll put off posting more about it until later. I’ll just say that there are still bugs. I don’t want to mislead anyone. I had to repeat one of the key missions four times before I could get it done successfully (through no fault of my own). However, it’s a testament to my feelings about the game that I put up with that and got 'er done.
(Incidentally, no one should even think of approaching this game without a gig of RAM in their box. All this stuff you hear about “lag” in MO isn’t lag. It’s people playing with 512Mb of RAM, which is insufficient to handle all the textures required by the game.)
After reading around about this, I’m surprised it sounds pretty cool… some questions though:
How grindy is it?
What makes combat cool/different? (presumably this is what you do the most)
What’s cool/different about character design?
How are the quests?
Ack! You can’t turn the settings down to require less? Why is this a computer RAM issue rather than a video card RAM issue?
That’s a very cool feature.
[quote]An interface that obscures too much of the viewable area
Not an issue with me. Maybe because I play at 1280x1024? I dunno.[/quote]
Yeah, I think resolution is the problem. I am a little peeved that they didn’t design the interface well enough to scale properly, though.
[quote]an unnecessarily obtuse skill/ability system
At the risk of sounding insulting, and I definitely don’t mean to, I think this is probably more due to your not grasping the system yet. I know that was the case with me. I kind of floundered around with the thing during beta, but now that I’ve got a real manual and a real direction I want to go in it’s all come clear to me. The system is actually really, really good, imo.[/quote]
Yes, I think the lack of in-game help (as well as insufficient online help) made it much more of a problem for me and detracted from the system’s merits. With proper documentation I’m sure I would appreciate it more.
(One thing that’s really making a huge difference for me is a streaming Internet station I’ve found that plays the perfect soundtrack music for the game. It’s the sort of thing you have to experience to appreciate, but a game in which the music is always changing yet is always appropriate is soooo much better than a game with a few repetitive tracks. It’s been like a revelation to me to play this way. I recommend it to anyone playing MO. PM me if you want directions to the ultimate MO soundtrack station :))
That sounds cool too.
Thanks a bunch for your comments, 'bunch.
Let me modify that statement a little bit. What I said was based upon the testimony of one of the devs, who said his hard drive was thrashing like crazy until he added a second 512Mb stick of RAM. My own experience, as well as that of plenty of others, confirms the hard drive thrashing story. This dev said it was because of the texture load, but who knows, maybe he was wrong about that detail. I sure wouldn’t know. The bottom line still remains that lots of stuff gets written to the hard drive if you don’t have enough RAM, and the basically unanimous consensus is that 1Gb is what you should ideally have.
However, it’s also the case that setting your page file (on a drive different from your Windows drive) to 4096Mb will improve performance immensely. It won’t completely make up for the low RAM situation, but it sure mitigates it a lot. I did this page file adjustment and my own performance shot way up (I’m in the 512MB RAM boat myself right now). So the game is playable with 512Mb, just as Monolith claims, but it’s really only acceptably playable on the lowest graphical settings and with the page file set properly.
One thing that’s very cool about this game is the way you become a member of a faction. Lesser games would explicitly ask you to choose which faction you wanted to belong to–for instance, AO or DAoC, where you choose your “side” at the beginning of the game and it can never change thereafter.
Not so with this game. In MO, your first few introductory missions are run for Zion–Neo and Morpheus’ faction, if you remember the movies. But after that, the game opens up and you can run missions for any of the three factions: Zion, the Machines, or the Merevengians. Each mission you run earns you positive reputation points for the faction you’re running it for. However, each mission requires you to kill members of the other factions (or otherwise cross them; I obviously haven’t run every mission in the game), which earns you negative points toward those factions. The upshot is that you will eventually find yourself–even if you consciously try to stay neutral–in the favor of one of the factions as opposed to the others. Since there are three factions, there’s no way to just bounce back and forth, trying to keep on an equal footing with each one. You will join a faction, whether you like it or not, and unless you’re explicitly trying to join a particular one, it may not be the one you assumed you’d end up in when you started playing.
The interesting thing (to me) is how organic it all is. There’s never some boring old screen where you click a box saying what faction you want to join. You just join sort of naturally, by playing the game. It’s all very cool and very ingenious.
Don’t let anybody tell you no thought went into this game. The more you play it, the more you’ll realize just how much goddamned thought went into it.
I’m really looking forward to playing MO, actually. However, I’m currently wildly entertained by WoW, and I have no interest whatsoever in dealing with MO’s launch issues, bugs, and gameplay imbalances, whatever they are.
I’ll be coming along when they get settled. Probably 3 months from now, unless the game completely tanks, which I don’t know to be likely at all.
Glad you’re enjoying it!
Well, I do love games that force me to do things whether I like it or not.
Oh, please. Every game forces you to do things whether you like it or not. Joining a faction is a necessary part of the Matrix experience. Stop being a…well, whatever it is you’re being :)
I’m with ya, mutt, on the story being a critical factor with regards to my enjoyment of an MMO. IMHO, what everybody refers to as the “grind” is hardly noticeable if you can manage to stay engaged by the storyline and other immersive qualities of the game world.
Anyway, you’ve got me thinking about picking up MxO! :roll:
Edit: While looking high and low for more MxO reviews (where are they all?) I stumbled onto this little tidbit about actors in the game:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/25/matrix_online_game_h.html
The Matrix Online (a massively multiplayer online game based on the Matrix franchise) has hired a troupe of 20 actors to hang around in game and in character, advancing the story and generally making it all seem more disbelief-suspendingly real.
Since the close of the beta, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that it has employed a troupe of 20-odd people whose job it will be to enact narrative scenarios in The Matrix Online live. These people will assume the roles of popular characters, interact with players, and generally move the stories in ways that only live "actors" can. And though it appears that the story hasn't officially commenced, a few players on the Method server were treated to a pretty slick sample of it this afternoon: an extended pep-talk by none other than Morpheus himself. (See the screenshots for proof.) But this is an Out of the Box report, so here are our first impressions of the game so far.
As grindy as you wanna be :) Seriously, it’s grindy in one sense, but maybe not in the other, depending upon how you feel about the game. It’s grindy in that, just like other MMOG’s, you kill mobs, run missions, and level up. However, what seems like a grind in one game may not be so bad in another if you like what you’re doing. So far, I like what I’m doing in MO, so the grind hasn’t really become, mm, a grind yet. That’s not to say it won’t, but I can only speak about right now.
There are some balance issues yet to be resolved, though, at least in my opinion. Mobs don’t always yield the experience points you’d expect based upon their difficulty. Hopefully, that will change.
I have to reiterate: one thing that keeps MO from seeming as grindy as it otherwise would is the sense it gives you that you’re actually a real player in an ongoing drama. It’s hard to explain why, considering that I haven’t personally met Morpheus or any other actor-controlled character yet, but it’s true. I really feel like part of a living world in a way. Maybe one of the big lessons we’re going to learn from MO is how important a strong and involving narrative is for MMOG’s…
What makes combat cool/different? (presumably this is what you do the most)
MO’s combat beats that of every other MMOG, and most other computer games, period. Essentially, the combat is like that of a 3D Mortal Kombat, without all the button-pressing. You have four basic “stances” you can use to fight with: Power, Speed, Throw/Disrupt, and Block. Each “round” of combat you choose one of these stances and your opponent does the same. Then virtual dice are rolled and the victor gets to impose his (very fluid, very cool) combat animation on the loser. Lather, rinse, repeat until dead.
In addition to the four basic stances, however, you also get special moves based upon your skill set. For instance, everyone starts out with “Cheap shot,” which is a melee kick-and-punch move that does extra damage when it succeeds. You can choose these moves in lieu of the normal stances, but once used–successful or not–they take time to regenerate before you can use them again.
Them’s the basics, but you really have to see the combat in action (and, even better, to understand what you’re doing) to appreciate it. It’s really kind of beautiful to watch, just like in the movies. And there’s bullet time, too, just like in the movies (although it’s just for show).
What’s cool/different about character design?
Character design is pretty basic. You choose one of, like, nine or ten different “histories” for your character. The history or character type you choose determines your starting stats and there’s no way to modify them. Beyond that, your character’s appearance is fairly modifiable, although clothing choices at the outset are slim.
There’s actually a reason for limiting character design in this way: since the skill and ability tree is wide open–any character can learn any skill and they can all be swapped out for others at will–differences between characters are dictated solely by stat differences.
Thus, the ten or so archetypes are the only way Monolith has of maintaining real differences between the players. That’s not a bad thing. The swappable ability design is a very good thing, imo. But once they decided to go with that, the archetype system with its limited character creation choices basically became a necessity. (Note that this is also why you only get one point per level to add to your stats: more points would make it too easy to level up those stats you start out weak in.)
How are the quests?
The missions are great, imo. Unlike the missions in other games, the missions in MO seem to have a purpose. I say “seem to” because, of course, it’s mostly an illusion, but Monolith carries it off well. They’re not your typical FedEx missions. They usually require several tasks to be accomplished, some of which you may not even know about when you undertake them. Also, sometimes things change mid-mission, requiring you to adapt and overcome.
Each mission (so far, anyway) seems to be hand-written. No random, cookie-cutter missions here. The only random parts appear to be the locations and the names of the principals.
The missions give great experience rewards, and are well worth the trouble. An interesting adjunct is the fact that, if you hang around in a building for too long after a mission objective is complete, Machine agents will home in on your position and show up to vaporize you.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I’m getting tired of typing again…
Just wanted to add that in addition to the three factions as Muttbunch mentioned there are also “Exiles” in the Matrix like the “Chessman” in Tabor Park, that also give missions that are neutral in nature (completeing them does not effect any of your standing with the three factions).
Also some of the complaints that I have heard about the missions are that that people are checking every room of every floor in the apartment complexes for their contact, or mission goal. However when taking the elevator, look on the panel, the button for the correct floor is always green colored. The first few missions I didn’t realize this and was getting a little frustrated. :P