I’m sick as a dog right now. The only thing worse than a winter cold is a summer cold. Oy…
/sniffle
Anyway, let me try and get something coherent for you all to read with your morning coffee. Fallen Earth. I’ve been playing the beta for about 3-4 days and I honestly don’t know what to think. My first thought is “Eve in the Wastelands”…because that’s how I feel about this game. It is a very different take on MMOs…especially when it comes to crafting and equipment that your character uses. Everything is crafted. Your weapons…your armor…everything. The crafting itself seems to be a real-time system a la Eve as well in that you start a crafting task and a countdown/progress bar is displayed telling you how many minutes/seconds…days(?) it will take to complete the task. Interesting and highly involving due to the fact that you have to scrounge for the components to make anything. The crafting will be this games main draw for most players…even for players who consider themselves “non-crafters”.
Graphics are serviceable but not spectacular and that will turn off the typical “flash in the pan” gamer. Performance is my main concern right now because on my machine I’m getting a consistent 5-10 fps. This machine can handle Fallout 3 at a solid 30+ fps, so I have no idea what is going on with Fallen Earth…but something is wrong in that department.
This game will not be a mainstream hit by any stretch of the imagination simply because it does things too differently. The way it just “puts you out there” will make most MMO gamer’s heads explode…and that is a shame because there is something to this game. Perhaps, in a year or so that will change but this game’s popularity will grow with word of mouth from the grass roots of gaming. It will probably end up in the same category as Eve once was, i.e. a small, dedicated audience who have a potential to steadily grow the title. Which is all good because my sense from talking to the developers a year ago is that they are not looking for insane numbers here.
I have to admit though, when I did see this game at AGC/GDC last year, I kind of just nodded my head and smiled, thinking, “ummmmm…yeah…right guys. Good luck with that.” After having played it I’m going to say that my first impression was incorrect. This game has huge potential to get some legs given the right conditions…I’m just not sure that the right conditions will ever come given the track that MMO gaming is going on.
In the end, I recommend trying this game out, but with a word of caution that this could go either way. Performance is the main issue. Also know that you may not like this game if you are not into games that stray from the expected formula and are “hard to get” out of the box. Hands down though, this beta was head and shoulders above the Champions experience.
D out.
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August 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am
“Hands down though, this beta was head and shoulders above the Champions experience.” – Well now, that’s some high praise…
Joking aside, seems I might actually have to give this beta a try, as I’m always a fan of an MMO doing something different and a small time dev team who is confident in their game.
August 20th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I love how I loot bodies and clip through the door…
Yeah, it won’t hit mainstream Expect Pirates of the Burning Sea but only a little better. When I saw it at Gencon in 2007 I thought the same thing and gave it a wide birth.
I think you are right it is a matter of performance and shoddy presentation. Tone that up and who knows
August 20th, 2009 at 9:51 am
FE seems to be very picky when it comes to hardware, my laptop does better FPS wise than many rigs built specifically for gaming (I have an nVidia 9650M GPU w/ 1GB Dedicated) – my FPS generally stays around 30-40 in town [well, most towns - some have some optimisation issues that drop me towards single digits now and then) and upwards of 120 FPS out in the 'wild' [at High graphics settings nonetheless].
I don’t know if you have played with your settings, but turning shadows off boosts performance by a huge amount. There was also a problem in Beta (don’t know if it is still around in OB) where the dx3d_9.dll that is installed with the game is outdated, replacing it with the newer version from MS [by replacing the one in the game folder] has shown some increases in FPS for people. This may have been changed though, I haven’t checked that particular avenue.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:03 am
[...] P.S. – Darren has a few good things to say about it, as well. [...]
August 20th, 2009 at 10:31 am
i got into the FE beta months ago and barely played it due to the performance issues. and my computer is not so bad that it should be forced into running a game at 5-20 fps maximum. plus there was a LOT of stuttering, which bugs me more than anything. as a result, i ended up abandoning the entire thing before i really got a chance to hit the substance of it at all. maybe if they fix that i’d be willing to take another look down the road.
what’s the deal anyway? the graphics are CRAP. someone missed their optimization class during CS.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Finally! Someone agrees with my take on this game. I had the exact same experience as you (horrible first impression, hardware issues, love it more than Champions now that it works), but I do realize that many many people will hate this game. I’m already set to hide in the corner, secretly loving this game after launch while everyone and their grandmothers are playing Champions and Aion next month.
It will be our little secret, Darren.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I will be trying it out. Didn’t get much time on the beta before my hardrive croaked, but I gotta say hell yeah just for having guns and no classes. Certainly worth a roll of the dice.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:52 am
There is a lot of potential with FE. I think it as close to SWG pre-NGE as we’ll get.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Very similar impressions though I’m still playing through a bit. I can typically muster around 30 FPS most of the time but it definitely bogs in town, etc. This may be a game that you WANT to love, but ultimately can’t get over some of the hurdles you and other posters have mentioned.
They gotta do something about that jump animation….
August 20th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Worst MMO I’ve ever played, would basically be how I sum up my play experience with it. The bugs and performance issues were just outrageous, and for how poor the graphics are, it shouldn’t be running like it did. Then beyond that, it offered nothing. The combat, ugh. I can’t believe they want to sell box copies of this game, let alone try to charge a monthly fee. I guess they can just blame my DX10 graphics card and Win7 x64 OS.
August 20th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I’m hearing that it has a lot in common with SWG. Is that true in your opinion, Darren? (did you play SWG pre-NGE?)
Is there housing and open worlds to explore and a lot of player-created content like shops and items and an indepth player economy and crafting system? Is it more like a community that lives and works together or a theme park?
August 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
I’ve been playing this game for a couple of months. Rolling a new character at Open Beta, the performance on this game has greatly improved. I don’t know why, but the performance on my new Sector 1 character is vastly better than my toon at endgame (Do they have more server resources devoted to Sector 1 at the present?) The crafting is robust, if a bit arbitrary at times. (Try digging into the cooking – some things HAVE to be bought). My clan has a lot of L45’s, including myself, and all the top gear is crafted.
As for the SWG-pre CU, I never played it, but most of my clanmates are making that comparison too. It’s my understanding that some of the Devs made their way over from that era. If you know what you are doing with your build, you can certainly do a “jedi” class. There’s no housing yet, but they’ve made it clear that they understand “player housing” is at the top of the wants list, so I expect it will be worked on post-haste. The player economy is hard to judge in beta, but ive found some thing on the auction system worth my time. No player shops at this time though.
Is it still “clunky”? Yes. It’s definitely not as pretty as Aion. But it’s a hell of a lot less buggy now than two AAA fantasy titles were at launch last year. (And from my clannies who played on Bria back before launch, a lot more stable then SWG was at laungh) I still crash one or two times a night. But they are polishing this game like crazy and I’m confident it’ll be “pretty darn good”. Not polished like WOW was (don’t remember any or very few crashes), but that is the bane of being an indie, rather than having the deep Blizz pockets.
August 20th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
@Keen: No housing yet, but it is their soon-ish plans. The economy is not as deep and there is no item decay… but everything can be crafted. Vehicles can only be crafted. There are no rails and the world feels gigantic. I really think it will shine after a couple content patches.
August 21st, 2009 at 7:47 am
[...] entice Fallout fans into their world with their open beta. Darren of Common Sense Gamer thinks it plays quite a lot like EVE Online, especially with the lengthy crafting sessions. Syp goes so far as to say it might be this [...]
August 24th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
What is the best way for me to view my FPS while playing? I too am having pretty bad performance but my rig isn’t great. I see people throwing around FPS stats and don’t really know how to get them within FE. Can somebody point me in the right direction?
September 29th, 2009 at 8:59 am
serverhosting…
in der Firma sind alle Server inzwischen mit HyperV virtualisiert, darum auch HyperV am Laptop. Ich kann in Ruhe das Schulungs- Image konfigurieren (auch daheim mit dem Laptop), und der Admin veteilt es am Abend vor der Schulung auf die HyperV Server. …
September 29th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
There is a lot of potential with FE. I think it as close to SWG pre-NGE as we’ll get.
What an awful thing to say! I just bought this and I’m downloading the client right now, but if it’s an anthill-kicking game like SWG then it’ll have a record short lifespan on my hard-drive.