Reply With QuoteIs there any scenario group or raid group-wide channel for chat? The PvP battleground thingies don't seem too well fleshed out really.
I've had good luck just blind-inviting people who seem to be on the same mission I'm on when I need help with something. No one has refused the invite so far, although most of them don't say anything. :) The missions go easier and faster with two or more people, too.Originally Posted by triggercut
Is there any scenario group or raid group-wide channel for chat? The PvP battleground thingies don't seem too well fleshed out really.
there is a faction channel for each faction
I really like what I see from the PVP.
I entered the Blue Mines area and duoed quests for a while- it was much, much easier and quicker. It's a pity this game doesn't have voice comms built-in though. I was spoiled by LOTRO there.
I haven't had too many issues with solo'ing Blue Mines. I've started collecting some tank and healing gear and adjusted my skills slightly for CC. Like a lot of people I spent Kingsmouth and The Savage Coast as mainly a DPS build. It doesn't take long to farm up or craft some green alternate talisman sets.
...and I've never seen a single post in it, in PvP or otherwise. Weird.
The PvP battlegrounds are nicely designed it seems but fairly chaotic; probably part of the issue is my computer which starts to chug with all the people in the zones. But it's fairly interesting at least.
I've participated in a couple of matches but it seems to be mostly a big zerg by Templars to capture each point. I rarely see other factions. In PvE we always have the PvP buff.
Really? The Illumati channel on Arcadia is nearly as busy as General. Happily, in Fusang, it's restricted to just that zone.
I can't stand the PvP in this game. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is the only reward for PvP doing the missions? In other words, there's no incentive to heal, tank, cc, or do anything except kill guys and capture points in Fusang? And on the two smaller maps -- and ugh, what a random jostle of random randomness -- I know there's a scoring system, but does it tie into the marks you win at the end of a match?
As I said on the podcast with Triggercut, where he astutely observed that it's like watching six-year-olds play soccer, the PvP feels so amateurish.
-Tom
Ha, I noticed this! I'm a Templar, and when I group with people from the other factions, I sometimes notice they don't even have that global domination buff icon. Illuminati and Dragon are are n00bs!
-Tom
<non-sequitur>
This is literally the third time I've heard that metaphor used today, in completely different contexts each time.
</non-sequitur>
I'm in Egypt now and it looks like you really need to make talismans a part of your build instead of just equipping the highest QL you find. I can understand now why the gear management interface works the way it does, swapping out equipment along with abilities.
I just rejiggered all my talisman's to raise my attack rating, since everyone on the LFG channel is advertising attack rating. However, I've literally cut my health in half by doing this, so now I'm running around soloing as a freakin' glass cannon. Ugh. Which means I need a whole other set of talismans to give me a little solo survivability.
But then sometimes I have to heal, since everyone doing Kingsmouth and Savage Coast is a DPS, as you noted, and the game doesn't do a very good job pushing people into tanking or healing roles (notice how it hides all the threat management abilities between the cracks of the ability wheel!). And when I heal, I can't heal to save my or anyone else's life because I don't have healing talismans! So that's a third set I need to collect.
Not that I'm complaining. It all reminds me of Diablo III for how it encourages fiddling with different builds. I love the hardcore wonkiness of it all.
-Tom
I promised myself WoW would be my last MMO but durn it, this is tempting. Gah!
Hit rating is king. I realised this fairly early after doing my first Polaris run. ;)
I'm glad the rest delivers, because I actually logged out in disgust last night, after fisrt the horrible Collect 4 shrooms, then 7 of those, then 3 of those, then 6 of these, in all the most remote areas of Savage Coast - Followed closely by Kill 4 zombies, 5 draugs, 7 draug women, kill big draug, kill bigger draug....
On to Blue Mountains - Kill 7 Feeder bugs, free 7 Sasquatchs...., then, moving on to some totems, Kill the 7 feeders around the totem, do this 5 times... GOD DAMIT!
And, the above is NOT embellished but exactly how it happened. It did not help that since Sasquatch cant talk, I am just told how to do it through text.
Its not that its harder - There's just a LOT more hitpoints or damage reduction on those beast, and their dash ability makes the fights longer.
And yeah, I realize how it sounds, like a whine, but its just such a big diverging from how the previous quests worked, that I am kinda fearful as to what is going on.
You should play this, because it's NOT like every other MMO. It's a game that would be a blast single player, but there's also a ton of other people around to group with, because that's awesome too. Also, because Funcom likes $15 a month.
That's a question I've had, too--in most games with battleground-style PvP, you get a fair amount of experience from doing combat and support stuff, with bonuses for missions/victories or whatever. It's hard to tell, but it does seem that the only way to benefit in TSW PvP areas is to do those missions. It could be otherwise, but there's very little feedback.
And yeah, so far it's been running around in a pack of identically dressed (everyone is DPS it seems) guys in leather hoodies crashing into other masses of identically dressed dudes in different street clothes. I'm sure there's some way to have actual tactics and stuff but I've never seen any group or faction chat, and things happen so fast that I'm pretty much at a loss as to how you'd actually plan anything.
The physical layout of the PvP areas is pretty cool, though, and there's potential here--somewhere.
They should have copy pasted the pvp scenarios from Warhammer and the structure - loved those and they made pretty good sense in how you were rewarded.
Yeah, as far as I can tell the only "useful" thing to do in PVP is to hop in Fusang for the two capture missions, and then leave the moment they're done.
It is pretty amusing to me to see people who exploited the hell out of those missions turn around and complain that leveling is too fast.
Got the dreaded "Chat" bug.
When you get randomly DC'ed from the game, especially in an instance, when you come back your connection to the Chat server can be completely gone. You'll be unable to speak to anyone.
The patch to fix it is on TestServer right now, but even after reinstalling from scratch, my main character has no communication abilities. People are saying it comes back after 24+ hours, so...ya, hope you all can avoid it!
There's a possible workaround - you need to log in from a new IP address. If you're on DSL, just power down for a bit.
Evidently, the chat server does not recognize that you disconnected. Upon reconnection, there is a "nickname collision" error. Logging in from a different IP clears it for some people. There's a good thread in the beta forum about it.
Alternatively, if you like your IP Address, connect up to a proxy or a VPN, and then boot up the game. You don't need lightning speed, as all you're doing is creating the conflict and clearing the IP address cache from the server.
I tried the IP thing, still wont work. ARgh, thank you for the suggestions though.
I'm slowly becoming ...delighted by this game. It's all context. I'm playing in the Savage Coast, now, and just cleared out the quests over at the Academy. Spent a little time in the amusement park...boy, when that place gets dark, it gets really really spooky.
On more than one occasion, the game has gotten my heart rate up, and I try not to get freaked out by low lighting situations and things jumping out of the dark at me.
And, on top of that, I had one of the quests this morning making me Google-search for a bible passage. That's some awesome-sauce, let me tell you.
This happened to me right after we killed the first boss in a dungeon. It made me look pretty bad, being back online but not responding to messages or tells.
It got fixed 24 hours later but in that time I played a single player RPG with some very random NPCs running around occasionally helping me.
I agree that PVP is a joke at the moment. I pop in, grab the two capture missions and then drop out. I can't believe the developer said that PVP and crafting are two avenues for people at the end game to occupy themselves. There needs to be more dynamic quests and points of action in Fusang to make it work, also a couple of mission types where small groups can do something to make a difference. At the moment I find Fusang most useful as a meeting place to trade items with friends.
Last edited by Peter Frazier; 07-06-2012 at 04:04 PM.
I really, really don't see how crafting is supposed to work.
I was going to say "as an endgame activity that would absorb people in lieu of more content", but you know...I think I stand by the above.
Just encountered another bug, but this time at the end of the Soloman Island story mission. Guess I'll be putting that on hold and moving on to Egypt.
So many goddamn bugs in this game.
Do you mean from a design perspective, or just the mechanics of it? In both ways, it's very similar to Diablo III, actually.
-Tom
From a design perspective. The actual mechanics are kind of opaque but once you understand them, not terribly difficult (except the whole separating stacks of materials thing), but the material conversion rates and low drop rate on toolkits seem kind of stifling, and it's not clear to me that there's any real advantage to dealing with all that. It's a lot more work and a lot more resource-intensive than just using drops and quest rewards but doesn't seem substantially more accessible or customizable.
And I really really don't get how it's meant to be an endgame activity.
(I haven't played Diablo III because of the whole constant connection thing, so that's no help as a reference.)
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