KingsGambit
Caldari Knights
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Posted - 2006.12.21 17:39:00 -
[1]
I gave it a try when the group I played CoV with went back to it (for them). It was a first for me and well post-NGE, so I had no ememories or preconceptions of the game pre-NGE. There are 9 archetypes to choose from, all well and good...but apart from a little specialisation at later lvls (usually 2-3 paths an archetype can take), all chars of one type lvl up *exactly* the same as others. All medics f.ex (the kind I chose) get the same powers at lvl 3, 6, 9, whatever, etc), and while there are some stats to play about with nothing really notable.
The space part of the game is fun for a while, but has it's drawbacks. The controls are half-brilliant and half-frustrating (eg. the idea is great, but badly implemented), and battle is repetitive and not particularly rewarding. Also, as you say, it's no trouble to just get back in your ship and relaunch after dying. On top of this, if you want to try flying different factions ships, you automatically *forget* how to fly your previous faction's ships...hours and hours of gameplay *wasted*. There is no logical reason a character would be unable to fly a ship he's spent hundreds of hours in, except that for RP purposes, Imp pilots shouldn't be flying rebel ships....BLEGH! Really annoying.
On the ground, it gets worse. Every person you speak to sends you endless missions, which admittedly get you lvlling up and seeing more of the planet, but travel is very tedious. For example, you have to run through a city to the spaceport to find a computer to take off. WHY?? It's such a pointless waste of time to make you do this ad infinitum, and make you run out of the spaceport when you land. Characters from the movies appear for no reason other than because they were in the movies. Most of the players are Jedi also. This game is set in a period of the SW Universe's history where there were no jedi (between episodes 5-6), excepting Yoda and Luke (who was training to be one), so there's zero continuity.
Dying is tedious. You lose nothing for dying, which unlike most of the Eve community, I don't really care about either way. That's not the problem...the problem is you get like a "death weakness" that leaves you with lower...everything for ages after you re-clone. Bearing in mind whatever killed you before is still there waiting, and that it killed you while you were more powerful, jumping back into the fray is very hard for that time, and usually results in another death/re-clone/tedious trek and you're weaker still. The downtime after death is horrid, horrid, horrid. Logging off for that time doesn't work either...you have to have your character, online, in-game, for 10 pointless, wasted minutes for the effect to go away.
Oh, and everything respawns. You can fight your way through a mission, only to find that everything you've already killed has just come back and caught you with no power left for another fight. I could go on, and if I don't end here I probably will. There are some great ideas, the action itself isn't bad by any means, but the game has so many flaws that it's no fun to play, there's little RPG aspect to it, the movie bits are thrown in for marketing purposes really and the community just don't seem very interested in much beyond themselves (with exceptions). Trying to chat, team up or do anything when you're new isn't easy.
Eve deadspace missions, and games like CoV and guild wars which are instanced are done in my opinion how it should be...teamwork is rewarding, collaborative and exciting. CoV has also what I think is a good death penalty...you simply lvl at half rate for a time after you die as half of any exp you earn pays off "XP debt" you acquired (which goes up as your char lvl does). You can still play, almost no downtime, but still get penalised to a degree.
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