Path of Exile

[mamba]

Yes, I also believe that in the long run you will at the very least have 'convenience sales' like mounts and teleports / maps, but I do not blame them for that, they need to make some money.

If you are too cheap to buy that stuff, at least you have a free game, even though you need to spend more time going places. The alternative is them shutting down again or having the clients be a purchase (or even SP game).

I do not like it if purchasable items are superior, but convenience is acceptable. Even so, personally I prefer SP (or player hosted MP) over MMO. I would probably buy the game if it were SP, I doubt I will even try it as it is a MMO (I might as it is free, would be the first one I actually do try however).

[Sile]

keeping my eye on this one

[oasisbhrnw]

Originally Posted by mamba

Yes, I also believe that in the long run you will at the very least have 'convenience sales' like mounts and teleports / maps, but I do not blame them for that, they need to make some money.

If you are too cheap to buy that stuff, at least you have a free game, even though you need to spend more time going places. The alternative is them shutting down again or having the clients be a purchase (or even SP game).

I do not like it if purchasable items are superior, but convenience is acceptable. Even so, personally I prefer SP (or player hosted MP) over MMO. I would probably buy the game if it were SP, I doubt I will even try it as it is a MMO (I might as it is free, would be the first one I actually do try however).

I think they've mentioned larger stashes as a micro-transaction and that's certainly a convenience charge. What I do know is that during this gameplay video:

http://g4tv.com/videos/48432/Path-of...eo-Walkthrough

there's a boss monster with a sword stuck in it and during the battle rips it out and starts swinging. That's awesome. The guys who are making this game are hardcore D2 fans and when asked what other arpgs they've liked in the past they mentioned Titan Quest. I think it's the most similar upcoming arpg to Grim Dawn as it's a tiny developer making a dark fantasy arpg. Torchlight is cool and all but I prefer the dark grit.

[Kardiophylax]

The difference between this game and Grim Dawn is that Grim Dawn has a solid engine that was built by a AAA development studio. They may be indie now, but the tools they are using are not. Personally, I feel the images we've seen in the Grim Dawn screenshots are miles ahead of Path of Exile, which appeared to contain pretty drab environments with repetitive unit types.

I will admit that the combat feedback was better in that video then in the other, it felt more fluid, and the enemies seemed to have more of a reaction to getting hit. A major issue I had though was that the marauder class I was watching had ONE animation for his attacks. There was one overhand two handed weapon swing, and one slice animation with the one handed hatchet. The leap slam and ground slam abilities were pretty cool (though Torchlight's ground slam looks a lot better) but not all that exciting.

They call the game an MMO, but in truth it is only a MMO in so far as it will have towns where people can meet up and participate in PVP or auctions. When players enter the world, there will be a limit of 4 to 8 players per zone, which sounds very similar to the way Guild Wars worked.

I listened to what they stated the purchased items would be. This is the list I heard:

New spell effects
Cosmetic skins
Alternate animations
Dark pets
Wrapping paper
Storage tabs
Pvp victory animations

I'm not exactly seeing anything there that screams BUY ME, except perhaps the alternate animations (now that explains why the combat is so dull in the video, I need to buy more animations...). PVP Victory animations? Seriously? Is Madden football selling touchdown victory dances as well? Sounds like the same basic concept to me. I don't know what dark pets are, but I assume they are reskins with maybe some darker powers. Overall I can't see this type of model supporting the server infrastructure they will need to house world and character data. Do they a publisher (and publisher funds) or are they self publishing? Runic partnered with Perfect World to be able to fund their MMO plans.

I'm not going to say the game won't be decent, but I'm a bit skeptical. I've played too many MMOs and seen their faults to really buy into any of the hype anymore. Aside from that, the vast majority of indie developed ARPGs have been failures, so I tend to lean towards that line of thinking until proven otherwise.

[yerkyerk]

3d environment with 2d units in it?

Anyway, it looks pretty decent. The visuals remind me a lot of Diablo 2.
But anything with MMO written on it screams DO NOT GO HERE to me...

[Sacred]

haha, yea. Replaying Diablo 2 again just now and they look much alike.
Could be fun though, in the video they said that it would be perfectly possible to play it as a single player.
If it were playable now I'd try it, next year is so full of other games in this genre that I'm skeptical.

[Renevent]

That walkthrough video was nice...I have mixed feelings about the game now though.

I like the grim/dark art style but like was earlier mentioned the animations look rough. Not terrible mind you.

The game is hosted on closed net servers which is great.

I saw a couple shots of the inventory though...terrible. Looks like it was taken right out of Diablo and is tiny. The items seem to have the same proportions as Diablo as well, so what little inventory is there will get filled up quickly.

Skill system...sounds strange I guess. Maybe I don't understand it fully (only skimmed over it)...but skills are assigned by equipping gems into your items? Not sure how much I like that...guess I will have to play it to really see.

[Sile]

I've had half a slab of jacks right now.. and i just got home.. it's around 3am.. I just went to view the gameplay vid for this and accidently rushed through the age verification and click on "2010" for the year i was born.. now i cant view the vid. LOL.. can someoen tell me how awesome it was?

Thanks

[heron]

The video is very good, it's another arpg mmo with a closed server.
I like and it's free!

[medierra]

Originally Posted by Kardiophylax

We had a big discussion about F2Play games for awhile. The bottom line is I just don't think they will be able to sustain the game selling armor dyes and cosmetics. Does anyone know of a popular F2Play that is thriving without selling items that actually affect gameplay? My understanding is the largest ones such as Maple Story, Dungeons and Dragon Online, Lord of the Rings Online (which is now F2Play) all sell items that give players an advantage.

I've heard Runic Games saying the same thing, that they'll only be selling cosmetic stuff. The problem is, cosmetics earn a very small amount of money. What people want to buy is advantages and shortcuts. I don't think Path of Exile will be any different. Let's face it, these guys aren't working for free. They want money and you playing for free doesn't pay their bills.

I think you'd be surprised at the numbers; I certainly continue to be. I don't really get it personally because I just would never pull out my credit card to buy some bullshit items in a F2P game... or at least, that's what I keep telling myself. I don't know though, it seems there are a LOT of people who do and games seem to be moving more and more in this direction. The numbers for games like FarmVille and League of Legends that I've heard are absolutely staggering.

I think the idea is generally that you can get a lot more people trying out your game if you don't have a $60 admission fee and, if the game is good enough, people will support it. Then you usually end up with a large audience of people who might only be paying $10 on average, with some people who get hooked paying much more than $60. I mean 3m people * $10 = 500k people * 60. Some of these F2P games end up with tens or hundreds of millions of people paying into them though.

While I am not a huge fan of that transaction model as a player (maybe just because it is new and I hate change ) I think there is one potential benefit for gamers. Right now game sales are so driven by marketing, graphics, and gimmicky features that often look cool in trailers while sucking in actual gameplay. This is all designed to get players to make a large up-front investment that is usually non-refundable. With micro-transaction games, at least developers are a little more rewarded based on the merit of their game vs. their marketing effort. People get to play these games first and judge whether / how much they are worth investing in.

I think these new systems of monetization can potentially even be good for players if they are done in a way that preserves the integrity of gameplay and aren't trying to just milk player's wallets for all they can. Where I really don't like to see this is in games that already charge a full box-price or subscription. Then it isn't a new monetization system, it is an additional one that seems a little exploitative.