After staying away from the game for a couple months, I decided to give it an honest try, again. And yet again, despite my best efforts, I just can't get into the game. The FOnline engine is great. Unfortunately, the gameplay seems to only suit the elite few on the server. Namely, anyone wearing combat armor and carrying around a big gun.
I understand the notion that game is suppose to be merciless and unforgiving. I played EVE Online for over a year in 0.0 space. I'm used to the cruel and unusual. FOnline: 2238 on the other hand seems to go about this with a series of cheap shots, brute force, and counter-productive measures. Those that play this game right now, have higher level characters, and know to work the system in place will enjoy it for quite some time. Unfortunately, it will be at the expense of new players.
There are a number of facets of the game that will prevent a good influx of new players: Time sinks, Requirements, Economy, and Mechanics.
- Time Sinks -
Quite simply the game has TOO MANY time sinks. Extended cool-downs typically should only be used on abilities or powers, which were intended to be used a very limited amount due to their powerful nature. In the case of FOnline, they seem to be present everywhere. I understand there is a need to balance and prevent overuse, but putting a limitation on the player's ability to perform simple actions is a very heavy handed approach that excessively punishes the player for doing things they have to do.
Gathering is one of this situations. To have ANYTHING in the game, you must gather. Gathering despite the cooldown is a very time consuming process at times. I understand the goal is to limit the amount of material goods coming into the economy. (Though, there are other issues will discuss later on.) Instead of placing a cooldown for the player, why not just place a cooldown for the resource? Then add in a percentage chance of successfully finding the resource, based partially on a proper skill.
Other annoying time sinks are the First Aid and Doctor skills. These skills are very powerful in their current form. But with a rework they could be made not only more sensible and realistic in nature, but more useful. Instead the long cool downs, introduce a HP heal limit and chance of failure based on the skill level of the character. They could try multiple times to use First Aid on themselves, with diminishing returns and greater opportunity for undoing the good they have done. This would not only make getting travel worthy and semi-functional a less painful matter, but it does so in such a way to give no more power to the skill and even increases the value of higher skilled characters.
Crafting cool downs are pretty unnecessary for the amount of work that has to be gone through to create even the most basic weapons and armors. When you have an economy based on player generated products, the last thing you need to do is to stymie the production process. For players in established organizations that have multiple crafters, alts, and other such facilities in place, the crafting process is workable. For everyone else, it is quite painful and generally fruitless. This is especially true when you consider how easy it is to lose everything.
The Stealing cool down seems unnecessary as this only brings up the theft dialog. The act of stealing an item already has a percentage chance associated with it. This cooldown was probably done to prevent excessive steal attempts. The better way is to put a certain amount of risk associate with initiating the theft attempt. There could be a percentage chance of failing the attempt and a certain percentage of horribly failing and alerting the target. You can only try to reach inside someone's pocket so many times before they're going to notice you fumbling around in there.
The Weaken state, need to go. It doesn't do anything. There is some shoddy justification for it, but all it does is slow down the game even more. You can't heal yourself, you can't fix limbs, or do much else. All it is a unneeded time sink. You don't keep your equipment when you die. The game is HEAVILY based on equipment. You don't have the gear, you can't do anything. I've tried making characters that are monk like and don't need equipment. It's not possible. A SMG blast pretty much overrides everything.
I cannot comment on the other skills as I've had very little chance (despite my best efforts) to attempt to use them effectively. But, certainly an extrapolation of what I've mentioned above could be applied to those skills.
- Requirements -
Requirements for many aspects of the game are pretty stiff. Most things shouldn't be trivial in nature. The problem lies with when the requirements exceed a certain point that starts to breed overspecialization. This is what is happening. You cannot currently expect a gunsmith to go into combat with his creations and expect that great of a fighter. Players HAVE to HAVE alts in order to be somewhat effective in the game. The majority of your skill points will end up towards gaining the next level of a profession. These requirements aren't simply skill point based, but have an odd requirement for stat points, too. This means for a character to EVER be an expert in a profession, they must be designed from the start with that in mind.
It's not wrong to go this route, but players will be forced to either be a the mercy of people or be at the mercy of other people. The requirements for crafting could be loosened up and even have professions done away with for more item specific skill requirements. The cost of high skill levels is very expensive already, so this alone could be used as the requirements for creation of certain items. It is safe to say that someone that has a 180% proficiency in a skill has a profession implicitly defined. So instead of having to do professions, they just rather be educated in the creation of particular items. This gives players some flexibility in their character designs without sacrificing the need of specialization for more exclusive items.
The requirements for basic facilities in the game is very steep. 10 bramhin hides for a tent? When the average bramhin hide sells for 100 to starting players with nothing focused into bater or charisma, it's pretty difficult. This need for a tent to have a place to store equipment, also slows down character development. The towns are fairly large in theory, why can I not rent an apartment or building? A few towns are fairly safe to players, and provide more than enough protection. So, instead of having to spend a majority of the time trying to get enough brahmin hides in once place to have a tent for even the ability to have a safe storage spot, just allow people to rent apartments or houses. Makes much more sense, keeps players within an area to allow for more communication, and would allow more economic growth since it reduces the risk of materials lost in transit from production of goods.
Some would be quick to point out that that is what bases are for. Sure. That is great for a group of people able to effectively pool a few ten thousand caps without getting robbed or dying. There needs to be something for the starting character or even the mid level character. The cost of death is pretty steep, which is fine if facilities are in place to give good transit back to fighting strength again.
- Economy -
Where? There is no economic flow as it stands right now. Now this may be resolved by reduction of time sinks and increase of products into the system. As it stands right now the only means of income is shit shoveling and junk pawning. Those alone are developer gimmes in attempt to give starting players some kind of chance. This is similar to Ship Insurance in EVE Online; it makes no sense other than to make sure the player isn't left penniless. 10 caps a turd or 10-25 per piece of junk? There should more valid routes of getting income. Like what? Maybe have a system in place of random encounters that are locations containing resources or raw materials of interest to certain individuals in cities? Whenever you find a location, your character makes note of it, you look around for bits of junk, scrap, and parts, and head into the city to report the location for a cap reward. Not the best idea around, but it would certainly breakup the monotony of traveling with something other than "death around the corner". Also, if you don't make it back with the loot, you at least are able to report the location for caps.
Right now the economy is sluggish. Many would argue there is one, but to the starting player there really isn't anything to work with. Players mostly sell to others in a faction or to other higher level players, since no starting player can even afford the basics. Sure, you can wonder around aimlessly and hope to find someone buying what you need, but you are wasting a majority of your time doing so. Also there's a risk of the insane player killer, the suicide bomber, and plain old thieves. But in the end, all this takes time away from other needed activities. A far better solution would be to implement selling and buying agents in towns. These NPC's or places would sell player made and found items for particular prices. These are similar to the auction houses, contract systems, or player shops in other games. They are quite essential for a player run economy. If you are concerned with making use of skills, just make the maximum number of items that can be sold or bought at any time be based on a the Barter skill. Also, a higher barter skill would reduce the tax the buying or selling agent takes. You could just sell to merchants, but with the silly time limit on transactions and limit to how many people can use a single merchant... this just serves to be more annoying. It seems the developers forgot how long it actual takes to make sure you are getting a good deal using Fallout's trade window.
Also another issue is that even raw material gathering and mining has required equipment. Equipment of this nature should be easy to obtain. For the most part it somewhat is, but because of various cooldowns and other issues this is a very slow and painful process. It should't be trivial, but basic goods need to be relatively easy to get access to. You already can die easily during gathering, mining, and even crafting... there's enough that can go wrong as it is without other arbitrary limits.
- Mechanics -
Pick either Turn-Based or Realtime. Pick one now and stick with it. Keeping these two contrasting systems in the game will only serve to cause problems and issues. For the purposes of a multiplayer game, having both of them doesn't make sense. They attract different kinds of players, but are not equal in the end. A fully turn-based game is very possible, but it would probably make a majority of the elite players far happier to have realtime as it matches the twitch reflex and taking advantage of player latency and load times they enjoy.
The AI needs an overhaul. If turn-based is going to be kept, the AI needs to have methods and logic in place to relinquish their turn when they aren't going to do anything. Right now, they wait for a time out. This is really annoying. Also, AI needs to understand the idea of accidental fire as to not flag you as hostile so easily. On top of that, a majority of tougher enemies shouldn't really bother wasting the ammo on lower level players who have nothing. A bunch of New Reno gangsters aren't going to bother with a Level 1 twerp and will go on their way. Not every critter should be immediately hostile to a player. Fallout 2 had many neutral critters and NPC's and they should be used. We already have economically inept player killing morons that waste ammunition and time killing low level players for no reason apart from fulfilling a psychological inadequacy and vain attempts at justifying their existence. Do we really need everything out there operating in such a simplistic in nature?
Once combat starts in a random encounter area, it needs to be locked out from any new players entering the area. Starting players and recently killed players have enough problems without another unknown element being added to the mix. After combat is done, new players can enter the area and cause havoc, but not before. Also, these new entries always seem to throw off the flow of the game. Quite frankly, new combatants mid battle does not add anything to the game.
With the fact you can lose all your equipment so easily, there should be mechanics in place to allow dedicated players to make characters that are less reliant on equipment. Rather than lose my guns, armor, and drugs each time I die. I'd rather save up for implants, cybernetics, and mutations. Since Unarmed, Melee, and Sneak are completely useless in the game entirely... there needs to be something else. The cycle of working your ass off to gain equipment to only lose it in a second gets old real quick. Not many people like the idea of starting a square one because of one idiot. I was actually hoping the dermal and thermal implants would be in the game for this reason. Make a Doctor/Monk whose sole goal is to become more a mutated, cybernetically enhanced freak of nature.
Sneak needs to be redone. A good sneak would actually give some gathering and crafters a chance to get out of harms way before they get bitten by the twitch driven realtime combat player killing senseless morons. Sneak is critical to make Melee and Unarmed combat useful and open up opportunities for people to become scouts and infiltration specialists.
The higher level and elite players would argue that the facilities in place are fine. Of course, they are for those that know how to work them and are lucky enough. In order to attract new players and interest them, there needs to be something for them other than long, painfully boring, and work heavy tasks. This is a game. When many people play the game, they expect to play a game. As it stands right now, the game is all about "hurry up and wait" and "hope you don't chance run into one moron that ruins everything you've worked hard for". I'm used to many tasks taking large amounts of time to accomplish. I've had production runs and blueprint research set for days at a time in EVE Online, along with Level 5 skill training taking close to a month in real world time. I also used to losing my ship, implants, and money. But, there were other things I could do in the mean time while getting back on my feet. FOnline is lacking this. Hmm, maybe I should go out there and explore? I don't have a weapon. Hmm. I'll make one. Dammit! I need tools for gathering. Gathered the raw materials for the tools to gather more. Damn! The cool down for gathering the raw materials takes forever. Crap! Crafting in the intermediate parts put a cool down on my crafting. Finally! I have a gun. Now I needed ammunition. SHIT! Now I have to wait for my craft and gathering to cool down before I can make ammo. (An hour later) I have a gun and ammo. Cool! Lets go out beat up some scorps or cows. FUcK! I almost killed all those scorps, then some jackasses dropped into combat and killed me. Now my cool downs are maxed for an hour, I lost all my resources to get resources, and didn't even get enough XP to even make the painful venture worthwhile.
- Summary -
This game has an audience. It seems like a selected few, but it does have an audience. The problem is it seems more like the French Aristocracy. You have the rich, powerful elite and everyone else. The system is designed to exclusively favor them. If you are part of this elite, the game is cool and fun. Everyone else? Not so much.
A game of this undertaking is hard. I've got a masters in computer science and the amount of effort required to design, implement, and maintain such a system is pretty rough and adventurous. So, my hat is off to the developers. Though, it could be made easier on the developers. If the developers don't have plans to sell or make money off this game, think about open sourcing it. There are many licenses out there and one will fit your needs.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category This way, you can not only maintain the control of the direction of the system in place, but take advantage of the knowledge in the masses. This would open up the possibility of clones and other people opening their own servers. Some would see this as bad, but many would be grateful. This would allow more people to use the game engine to produce a game fit to their needs, increase the exposure the system gets, and further establish it as an amazing engine and mod. Also the developers can continue having the game their way, get the advantages of bug fixes and imrpovements from other servers, and be able to properly tell anyone who doesn't like how they are running their game to fuck off and go to another server. In way, if the source was released and available, my gripes would be moot. Everyone then would be able to find the cake they like and eat it, too.
If you read this far, I congradulate your attention span. This a lot of writing, but I had to do something in between waiting to be able to do something else in FOnline, so eventually I would be able to play the rest of the game. In theory... Understandably, maybe my perceptions are completely wrong and I just got off to a bad start. But after trying multiple character build and attempting everything from crafting, to hunting, to stealing, and trying to be a friendly doctor... The just doesn't flow well. For the elite few, you have your game, enjoy it while it lasts. Maybe things will change again in few months. I might give it another try then. Maybe the third time will be the charm to get me to appreciate the game. Good luck.
