Allods Closed Beta - Rambling thoughts

[Wyld]

Quick background: http://allods.gpotato.com/?m=about ($12 million?!) It's in Closed Beta 4 right now with a wipe coming Open Beta on Feb. 3rd. With that out of the way, here's some thoughts I had in my first week of play. If Warhammer and Eve got drunk with Russian vodka and made a baby, this would probably it. I really had no expectations since it was LOX that actually told me to try it..yea I know right?

With a wipe coming in a week, I played to explore and try all classes. Each class seems to have its own unique "game mechanic" aside from their usual skillset. Creative mechanics like mini class systems similar to Warhammer's Shaman Waagh or WoW's Rogue combo points etc. This keeps each class very interesting to play as you manage this little mechanic with your skills as your play your character. Some examples:

- Paladin has a "Barrier" tanking mechanic. What this barrier does is it stores the highest maximum damage in the barrier and delays that damage done to you for 10 seconds. If a mob hits you for 10 damage first hit, that goes into the barrier - then if the next hit is 20 dmg, you will then receive that 10 dmg that was in the barrier, and stores that 20 dmg instead. Basically, it will keep storing the highest damage done to you and delays it. Then the Paladin has several talents and skills that modify the damage stored in the Barrier, giving tanks a way to differentiate each other from good ones to great tanks, not just high Armor = best Tank. A lower armored tank that manages barriers well is a better tank than a higher armor tank that don't.

- Summoner has Drops of Blood you would create with skills to manage more powerful life-leech skills. Psionicist manages Mental Links with targets that open up several new abilities only after a Link has been established. Warriors have a mechanic similar to Rage system. Scouts can pre-load Enchanted Arrows in a Quiver mechanic that modifies their skills. Mage with Elemental Synergy with different effects whether or not you cast Fire then Ice, or Ice then Fire etc. So on and so on...

Incredibly, classes are well balanced in PvP/PvE even at this Beta stage. If you look in the Allods forums, you won't see threads that cry "OP" "IMBA" threads anywhere. That alone amazes me.

There's the usual tiered 3-branch Talent Tree, but what blows every other RPG Skill system away is the Ruby-Talent Grid. Imagine about 30 different skills peppered around in a Crossword-Puzzle looking grid for each of the 3 branches. You start at the center then as you level up you use 1 point to move around the grid. Premium skills are located on the edge/corners of the Grid and there's practically unlimited ways in how you "snake" your path to get to the edges you want. It would take hundreds of build variety to see any build similar to each other because of these pathing possibilities.

[Wyld]

While the whole Class/Skill system aspect made me keep playing once I started, it was the promise of the Endgame that first convinced me to even take effort and download the game.
Since I'm obviously not gonna have any experience to tell you about it, I found a post made by a veteran Russian beta player(yes, that Russia.) giving his experience. so I'll just copy-paste that. The endgame is where the Eve-ish influence comes from.

- Individual Astral Ships (6-man).  Guild Astral Ships (36-man).
- Ships take two weeks to thirty days to make. Ships are completed by doing daily quests/world mystery quests to gather the parts. You complete the quests and the ship building NPC’s of the shipyard work on it for you. It’s a big investment of time and effort.
- “There are permission lists so people can’t jack your boat”.
- Astral ship combat is longer than normal combat. It takes time to hurt a ship enough to board it. This is a not a “wham bam” thing. These are fortified vessels.
- All Astral combat with other ships is in real time. Multiple ships can gang up on you. You can board a ship someone else damaged. It’s a cutthroat place.
- Your boat can be damaged and you need to go back to port to repair — takes time. Have to collect money and parts to repair it. Not like going to a vendor and hitting repair.
- Astral Plane is massive (as big as the game world itself — it’s the space surrounding it). Giant raid bosses attack you randomly as you sail around. You can find dungeons and raid dungeons. It’s open, but there are defined locations you’ll know about.
- Raid and “mini-raid” bosses attack you. Raid bosses are pseudo-instanced but the “mini-raid” bosses are bosses that anyone can sail right up to and fight together.
- Special Chests drop from these bosses that go onto your ship. You have to take these chests back to the port master to have them opened to see what epic loot you got.
- Port Battles take place in the astral plane over these raid boss dungeons. You dock your ship and go in to do the boss. The result is a lot of “port battles”.
- Astra Plane PvP is FFA. Yes, you can even pirate and attack your own faction. This is why the loot on your ship is at danger!
- Level 30 you get the quest to make your ship. It is set up so that it takes X days to complete.
- Mounts are coming. Obtainable through quests. More of a convenience thing.
- There is a city siege mechanic in the game to attack capital cities. “Somewhat like WAR”. The capital city itself won’t be sieged but some sort of instancing is used to make it so that the city isn’t inaccessible or lost to everyone, but attackable. When I asked about instances, he said “in a round about way”.
- “Epic Lore Raid bosses” are promised. Think “Lich King”. There is definitely a deep lore here that comes from Rage of Mages. READ YOUR QUESTS.
- “End-game” content (24-man raids) are in the game and more are being tested and developed.
- Level 23+ there is world pvp. Once you leave your quest hub you are vulnerable to attack and your flag turns on. Enter your quest hub and you’re safe. This is the only area you are safe in the 23+ zones. The story line begins to evolve and introduce the conflict between the sides. “Expect anything to happen while you level.”
- Control objectives and gain access to a dungeon. When you take over all the objectives your side gets the dungeon, thus taking it away from the other faction. The dungeon remains locked unless your side owns the objectives. It is instanced once you gain control. Think Darkness Falls, but not an open dungeon.
- Class balance lends itself to group/squad oriented play. Individual class balance isn’t a big thing. There isn’t one class to rule them all or one class that sucks. It’s about synergy. Some classes have minor problems but they are simple fixes. “They have done a superb job balancing classes.”
- Crafting is important. Good balance of crafted vs. drops. Equal if not better than drops. It’s good old fashion luck with crafting in this game though. It’s like vegas. You can spend the best mats on something but you’re never guaranteed to get exactly what you want — it’s not completely consistent. There are items to make crafting chances better, but it’s still random. Not the best system by any means. More of a mini-game — a bastardized form of the Free Realms crafting system.
- Cash shop truly is a convenience only thing. Nothing in the cash shop is game breaking, unbalanced, or unachievable in-game. No advantage can be gained from the cash shop.

This tidbit enticed me:
- Special Chests drop from these bosses that go onto your ship. You have to take these chests back to the port master to have them opened to see what epic loot you got.
- Port Battles take place in the astral plane over these raid boss dungeons. You dock your ship and go in to do the boss. The result is a lot of “port battles”.
- Astra Plane PvP is FFA. Yes, you can even pirate and attack your own faction. This is why the loot on your ship is at danger!

I could imagine setting up ambush spots around docking ports to intercept any ships that had just gotten these Special chests from raid bosses, attacking them while their ship was damaged from that battle, and boarding the ship and taking their loot. ARR!

Here's a few more cookies from the Allods thread in SomethingAwful Forums: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3226993&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=17

The goons have actually built an Astral ship during beta and there's a few pics of it in the last page of that thread. I didn't wanna crosslink them here.

[Wyld]

Some Con's:

- Combat is on the slow side because there is no Auto-attack button, though it does pick up at later levels the more skills you "cycle".
- User Interface has a lot of missing features still.
- PvP isn't integrated until later levels..Lvl 20+ (40 is max) until you start entering PvP zones on your quest progression. But it doesn't stop Lvl 40's from entering Lvl 5-10 city zones and wreaking havoc (yea I got rocked by a Lvl 40 while i was chillin on the edge of town).
- No mounts until Open Beta(supposedly)
- Small inventory bag initially, will need to quest/buy for bigger bags later on.
- Quests aren't readily obvious, it doesn't babysit you with big arrows where to go and what to do; you actually need to read some quest text to figure out what to do. Thats good or bad depending on how you look at it.
- Crafting is spotty at best. There's a lot of luck involved in the crafting mini-games.

[Wyld]

Overall the game grabbed me the same way Warhammer grabbed me from the start. Enjoyable characters to play, creative designs, huge world(much bigger and less linear than Warhammer). Warhammer was very enjoyable up until the endgame, where there was none and it all became repetitive. This game promises a much more content-rich endgame but that's just it - it's still promise. We all know Age of Conan was the king of all promised features and we all know how that turned out. The lack of PvP early game hurts its appeal as well.

In the end, the game is free to download and free to play. It's not Korean but it is Commie Russian-flavored capital cities, but it does relieve you from overly feministic looking male models. Browsing the Cash shop items include convenience items like Bigger inventory bags, shorter death respawn rates, crafting boost-ups, re-spec potions. No stat-gear or anything to make you "pay to win". Reputation gear is usually your best gear option at your level and obviously that's earned and not bought. They do claim that you can buy all cash shop items in-game if you have enough in-game gold..and quests are available as well for these same items.

[Mad]

I was impressed by how polished it was during beta, don't see that much so kudos to them. However, it's going to be a hardcore grind and is just a wow clone so can't see spending a ton of time on it but since it is free why not fuck around with it? I love the li'l ewok race!!!! EFff you Bucky.

[Wyld]

Actually, there is a fatigue experience bonus system in place that is capped daily. If I explained it to you in detail you really wouldn't get it unless you played past the Tutorial. But basically, fatigue xp bonus doubles all xp (including quest turn-ins) you get up until you reach that daily cap. Then that cap resets daily. The doubled experience isn't given to you until you rest at an innkeeper.

If you're a casual gamer that can only invest a few hours a day, you're in the sweet spot of the leveling curve since you'd be playing with double experience all the time and you'll never get close to capping your daily bonus. It only hurts the hardcore dudes that grind mobs all day even after questing.

Sorry maddy, I'm telling everyone to play Empire(Horde) side to KILL those lil midget ewoks, and not be them ! (They do have the best attack animations I admit)

[Mad]

I'd have to be ewoks, u get to customize 3 of them and if u are a pet class u got 4 li'l bastards running around!

I don't care if there is rest XP its still extremely grindy, mainly because the fights can be so long. To get max level it will take months, rest xp or not.

[Desperado]

Played the beta off and on, its actually not bad for a Free to play game.

[Wyld]

They extended the Closed Beta period through Feb.10th and no longer requires a beta key. There's no official date for Open Beta released yet, but usually a week-ish after Closed Beta ends is when OB would start.

I've finally started to get a taste of the open-world PvP @ lvl 25 as soon as I entered the Holy Lands(PvP zones). There's a 2x exp boost going on right now but typically, you would reach this area @ lvl 20 if you just followed quest progression.

I was doing an Escort NPC quest through a contested path when I saw a red player name. Lvl 26, I was lvl 25 - oh it is on! He was coming straight at me with a pre-loaded spell (aka he's holding the spell in his hand before combat that can be released insta-cast), so I hid behind a massive tree root to block his line of sight. I was playing my Warden (aka Shaman w/ pet) so I charged with my pet first to disrupt him. He ignored my pet, kept coming forward thinking I must have went around the tree, but as soon as he got close, I opened with my knockdown.

Turned out he was a Summoner with his own pet, so I needed to silence him asap. Woops haven't leveled it yet cause I've been doing mostly PvE beforehand heh. So I got feared right away, which was the spell he had pre-loaded. Feared me straight into aggro mobs So now I got mobs, his pet and his dots ticking on me. My pet is disrupting his cast time and I had unloaded all my cooldowns before fear so he was almost 50% health.  I have a spell with a 33% chance to knockdown and I got lucky with that cause I knocked him down 2x in a row with it.

Then his buddy came, lvl 28 Warrior :x Damn it this is what happens when you fly solo. I kept my pet on the caster and just unloaded on him. Good thing his buddy Warrior can't heal heh. I eventually killed him and tried to run away from the Warrior by knocking him down first...but died to the mobs that had agro'd me from the fear earlier heh.

Turned out the area I was questing in had a massive "Site of Power", which gives 10minute stat buffs to the Faction that controls it. So both Factions are always wanting to keep that under their control as they quest. There are several of these Sites scattered around the map as well and the bonuses exponentially grow the more of these you own. Damn! This was what Warhammer was missing in their open world PvP and what PlanetSide did so well! Advantages other than xp by capturing a tower/site.

I'm just so impressed w/ this beta. Usually you always notice content-starved Betas with the disclaimer: "More content @ release" etc. This game literally gains more depth and content the higher you go, which is pretty much opposite standard in many MMO's out there(good start, fades late types). I always say to myself to stop playing and just wait for the Open Beta wipe, but things always opened up as I leveled that I wanted to get a "taste" of

[Wyld]

For the curious: takes about 30mins-1 hour to level 5 which is just out of Tutorial. And about 1 full day with fatigue bonus exp to get to lvl 10. Then after that, about 1 level per day if you played about 3 hours a day. So basically playing casual 3 hours a day, you can reach lvl 40 max in about 1 month. Then the game really gets into Phase2 at max level, which opens up the Astral world, which is probably as big as the main world itself.

The most advanced guild in beta have made a 6-man Astral ship(1 on speed, 1 on turning, 1 on navigation, 1 on repairs, 2 on cannons) and have mapped out, their estimate, at most 20% of the Astral world. There is no in-game map of this world. There's no wiki, no google, no nothing. It's simply up to your guild to map out your own Astral world. Freakin sick if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RuhBtW8XU - video of a popular Allods blogger invited onto an Astral ship (he's playing that li'l ewok race that Mad blushes about). They discover an Allod(island) but their ship(appropriately named Hindenburg) gets rocked by random Astral mobs and blow up cause that ewok failed at repairs HEH

[Wyld]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLs8HKQ75j4 - Goblinball! It's supposedly a huge feature they're continuing to develop. I don't have much clue about this but it's supposedly Team vs Team soccer where you kick around a goblin, hence the name. I assume you use your skills/CC to prevent the other team from scoring heh. Very few players even know about this feature because I think they just activated it last patch and it opens up at higher levels only.

[Wyld]

My Lv25 Orc Warden with Ht logo !

(Actually that's some Empire icon but I would totally rip that off for our logo)

[Wyld]

Closed Beta over. Open Beta opens Tue. Feb.16th. Going Empire Side cause I am not going into battle with ewoks and fairy wings despite Lox's fetish with them.

[Wyld]

Open Beta just started and there's about a million ppl in the starting zones..

As Mad requested-

Server: Tensess
Side: Empire

[fade]

This looks interesting, thx for the updates bucky.