Extended LA2_Cobalt review Part 3

Here is the third part. Its Russian original is here:

http://forums.goha.r....php?p=12471696

Enjoy.

Gameplay

A question arises – what ArcheAge’s gameplay looks like? Is it a soft lamp of LA2 or cold crystal of WoW? Certainly, the first steps in the game cannot uncover all its aspects, but basics of PvE and questing are already apparent.
My main first feeling in the game was – almost forgotten after the projects like Aion and Tera – a freedom to equip. Yes, your character can (and should) utilize any kinds of weapon! In Aion, available armor and weapon are restricted just to a couple of combinations out of all the variety (though there are even more serious shortcomings), In Tera, the weapon is explicitly bound to a class that takes out any flexibility from you. Mage = disk, priest = staff, mystic = club… No variation allowed. Compared to all this nonsense, characters in ArcheAge enjoy very nice freedom. Continuing the idea of the flexible class creation, the character comes into the world literally equipped to the teeth with various weapons. My mage (one of “pre-built” classes) had with him a two-hand club, a short sword, a shield and a bow. And he was proficient with all the above! In addition, he had in his inventory a less useful for a mage musical instrument (a minstrel’s “weapon”).

All classes in the game have a basic set of attacks; among those – melee strike, ranged attack, musical instrument use. The character carries his melee weapon (if it is one-handed, shield can be added) and a bow on his back. Weapon type switches automatically depending on attack type and skill used. There is an auto-attack option but it cancels any possibility to use ranged weapons in melee – the auto-attack forces melee weapon choice. This complicates kiting but still allows some ranged skills. It is disappointing that the automatic weapon toggle effectively precludes kiting with a bow under conditions of a heavy lag. Also, the auto-attack malfunctions if your character is not correctly oriented; the avatar does not turn toward the enemy automatically that might be just a bug for now.

Physical damage in the game comes in three varieties – piercing, slashing and crushing. Any weapon piece has a description with percentage of each factor. Most of weapons have single attack types – 100% piercing (e.g. rapier), 100% slashing (sword), 100% crushing (club, staff, etc). Interestingly, a bow has 90% piercing and 10% crushing attack. In addition, each attack type has its potential effects – for example, a crushing hit has a chance to stun. Probably, armor has also different defensive characteristics against various damage types.
The fights consist of targeting the mob and applying on it all available hits and skills. The battles are easy at the beginning, and not as long-lasting as in Aion. The monsters are not very intellectual too. During the battle, HP and modificators (buffs, debuffs) of the player himself and his target are displayed, a line of casts is running. When defeated monster falls on the ground, keeping cursor over it shows loot resence (if present, the arrows changes to bag sign). The loot does not drop on the ground, instead, as in WoW/Aion a window appears. Everything is done traditionally. The drop is familiar – quest items, resources, items (fulldrop).
First quests and battles are unremarkable, such ones can be found in any good MMO. Everything is understandable without translation – got a task, attack first met mobs, collect loot, distribute it to needed in the village. Quest dialogues display reward and number of required items as well as other conditions. To teach you extended game possibilities, some quests require you to climb a tree, to help an NPC to build a home etc. Quests are expected to be many, in addition – a story line will be present in the game to build an atmosphere.

If your character dies, he resurrects at a special obelisk. There is no death penalty, and no equipment deterioration. Next to the obelisk a servant can be found who will provide you with a defensive buff for 66 copper coins for an hour. In addition, every class has a basic skill of return to a binding point (Return, 30 min cooldown) – identical to Aion. The binding is done by interaction with a characteristically looking pole (not an obelisk), also almost like in abovementioned game. The binding was provided for free in the test, but not every pole let you do it. In the description of the skill a “current” return point is mentioned, where to the character is sent. If your character dies in a remote location, there is a choice – to resurrect at the closest obelisk or to go to your binding point.
A faction system is apparent in the game, however a free PvP was declared and RvR system is absent. Whatever the actual intention is, all players and NPC belong to their own factions (and those for Nuian and Elf are different). Relationships between factions can be friendly, neutral or hostile. Friendly ones are marked green, neutral – white, hostile – red. No difference between green and white signs was mentioned – both can be attacked in PvP using Ctrl-F.

It was declared that for other character killing (PK) the perpetrator will accumulate some analog of karma – crime index. No details are available yet but probably its amount will depend on level difference. After its value hits 100, the character will be automatically teleported into a jail and debuffed for 30 minutes making impossible for him to use any skills. While in jail, the crime index will gradually decrease and when it vanishes, the character will be freed. How much time will it take – this is not known for sure, but developers hinted that there will be some ways to escape from the jail.

The game suggests a variety of social elements and importance of team interaction (particularly for ship sailing), however in this particular test the socio-political system was in its infancy. A basic possibility to form parties does exist, but there were no named monsters, epic or raid bosses. Klan system was also non-existent. It would be natural to guess that the facets of social interactions will be a focus of the third stage of closed testing in Korea.

Overall, the game is ordinary-friendly to a gamer, its simplicity and convenience are most reminiscent of Aion, however monster fights are simpler – in this regard the game is closer to WoW (speaking of regular mobs, of course). There is nothing of harsh and inhospitable sandbox where sullied and impoverished characters have to wear rags, search for hidden NPC, guess actual meaning of quests, and fight by rusty axes, risking to lose all their hard-gained possessions in an event of death. Comfort and convenience of the gamer are a spotlight in this game, along with diversity of the game content. This should attract both hardcore (due to sieges and PvP) and casual gamers (due to the absence of significant death penalties, presence of PvP-free zones – at least at the beginning, and a simple, understandable and hint-providing gaming process).
Character development
Development and leveling of a character in Archeage has its own specifics related to the system of free choice of classes and skills. As I already mentioned, there are 10 skill trees - combat, witchcraft, invincibility, magic, bow shooting etc.). Each class possesses 3 out of these 10 trees so the overall number of classes in the game is 120 (number of combination by 3 out of 10). At initial character creation you choose 3 active trees, and the first level character has one skill from each tree. There basic stats in the game, these are STR/DEX/stamina/INT/spirit. Unlike in other games, these characteristics are not fixed but develop with character’s level. At the beginning all they are equal 10, and each new level increases them by +2. A variety of parameters of your character (HP/MP, strength, evasion, critical hit probability, magic etc) is calculated from them. The basic stats can be increased/rebalanced using appropriate equipment, the better quality of an item the better are bonuses. Magical weapons and armor give big INT/spirit bonuses, melee equipment – STR/DEX. Also, passive skill from different skill trees may affect the stats too.

Skills are learned in the game from an instructor using Skill Points – studying of one skill costs exactly one point. SP are acquired when a character makes a level, but not every level. To increase level of already learned skill, you will need some money (and the price is quite perceptible). Now all skills can be learned from the same instructor, he also performs changes of skill trees (you can disable any one of original 3 and add instead any other). The level of the skill development is reflected in your character info window whereas skill window displays all possible skills for the present trees. The skill description includes info at which tree level (not the same as character level!) it becomes available for learning. The skills are many, now already about ten in each tree. I got a feeling that you will never have enough SP for all of them and you will be forced to choose which particular ones to learn, that should determine your character built-up.

An interesting peculiarity is skill tree switch. In the game, in addition to the character experience gauge, each tree skill has its own leveling gauge. In the beginning, they fill out equally and simultaneously with the overall character experience lever. In this situation, when character breaks next level the trees automatically get the new level too. The growth of the skill levels does not depend on particular skills used, all of them grow equally:

After switching the trees, the timing breaks. The switch can be done easily – just asking the instructor. In the skill exchange window you choose one old tree and one new, and then pay 8 silvers (not exceptional money, even for a noob). The old tree will be disabled and its SP will be returned to the character (if there were 3 skills learned, the character will obtain 3 SP), then the new skill tree will appear. If the tree has never been used, its development level will be 1 and the lever will be empty. Apparently, at high levels it should cause significant weakening of the character because of the uncompensated loss of the skills. Now with experience accumulated this tree also starts to develop, and because of its low level it does so much faster than the older, already developed skills. No limitations and penalties was found, the skill tree exchange does not force you to go back to low-level locations to use its undeveloped skills on weak monsters. However, while this skill tree is undeveloped, it simply does not give you much advantage in a battle. Once again, availability of skills for learning is determined by the level of the corresponding skill tree but not by the character overall level.
If you plug in a skill tree that has been developed and used before but was disabled at some point, a similar process takes place – the skills of the outgoing skill tree become removed, SP for them are returned to you. The re-installed skill tree gets activated with all its skills in a not-learned status but available for re-learning (for the recovered SP). All paid skill improvements remain valid, i.e. after skills are re-learned they appear at the same level as they been un-learned. Such a system allows to switch between skill trees deliberately, losing nothing except the switching fee. However, because of the reset of the skills, it is not a one-click process (as subclass switching in LA2, for example) – you will have to spend some time to restore de-activated skills. The icons on your quickbar become not lost in the process, you just can use separate quickbars for each particular skill set, without their re-arrangement. It seems that having enough time a character with all skill trees leveled up can be feasible.

The rate of leveling up is not clear so far, initially it is fast, but quickly de-accelerates with level growth. After 4 days of the test, one can see characters of 25+ level with apparent level cap for now about 50. I do not know if the rate was intentionally increased, but usually it is not the case because one of the targets of such tests is to measure actual leveling speed. At first glance it looks too fast, especially taking into account the size of the areas devoted to development of levels 1-30.
In the game, a big attention is given to non-combat interactions with the game world. Next, after the open class system, distinguishing feature of the game is a very high degree of interactivity of the world. Indeed, you can climb trees, ladders, ropes. Also you can plant trees and other useful vegetation, collect harvest and other resources, build ships and houses. Sure enough, there are still many static items and buildings in the game – you can climb not any tree or ladder but only specifically dedicated interactive objects. On the positive side – they are not few but quite many.
One can expect that the development of interactivity will inevitably cause some sensitive moments and unexpected problems, therefore I am glad that finally a team of developers has risen, which was not afraid of the difficulties and is prepared to introduce in MMO a new degree of freedom of interaction with the game world. Already now first difficulties were identified and workarounds found. For example, to plant a tree, a model of the tree is displayed in front of the gamer, surrounded by a standard frame of 3d editor. You cannot place the tree anywhere – the color of the frame shows you if the planting is permitted here (green – allowed, red – forbidden). If the color of the frame permits, the gamer can affix the tree on the chosen spot, set desirable rotation angle around vertical axis and confirm the planting. Then a small bonsai-like tree actually appears and starts to grow slowly.

I did not have enough time to try a craft, but it is apparent that a great deal of attention is devoted to this in the game. Like in Tera, there is a variety of crafting skills separated into 2 big groups – collection and processing of raw materials and also item crafting. Each craft requires its device – workbench, mannequin, kitchen or furnace. The devices are situated in craftsmanship areas of castles, cities and villages, but can be also put in zones of private building construction – i.e. in an open space. To learn a craft, recipes are used; some of them are sold in specialized shops along with the required components (money sink). It appears that the unique for ArcheAge characteristics Labor Power is the craft currency. It accumulates up to certain level with time, even while the character is offline.

Each craft skill is developed separately that is figuratively displayed in skills window by an empty development path next to each skill. During the test, there were no limitations on resource collection – low-level characters could pick up resources in middle-level locations. Most probably, the system of harvesting and craft is far from finished, otherwise it remains unclear why resource gathering can be leveled up. As it stays right now – it is a cheat opportunity when noobs can collecting precious resources in high-level zones and sell them in stores for big money instead of grinding starting quests for pennies.
Money in the game are made by WoW blueprint – these are copper and silver coins. Logics tells that golden ones will be introduced in future, but right now they are absent albeit some prices in shops exceed thousands of silver. In the beginning of the game, you can make money selling resources to NPC stores and doing quests. There are traditional shops in the game where you can buy some items or sell your junk. Conveniently, when you NPC an item, you can Repurchase it if it was sold by an error. The sell/buy difference is of factor of 2, i.e. if you buy something from NPC, you can sell it then for half the money (hello from LA2 economics). Interestingly, that info on items in your inventory includes their price to sell to an NPC shop (for those that can be sold). For stacking items, a price of the entire stack is displayed. Nice touch.

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ArcheAge Source: Extended LA2_Cobalt review Part 3 - ArcheAge Source

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