I’m still playing TB, but for how much longer I can’t say. I can say that for the most part I’ve enjoyed my game time. I’ll just post a thought dump below covering my experiences with various aspects of TB.
Open World: This is a must for me now when it comes to MMOs so exploring TB’s open world has been pretty fun. They did a good job of keeping the zones fairly large and expansive. The game also looks really good for an MMO so wondering around the areas has been a visual treat.
Instances: The instances in TB have been really good, definitely one of TB’s strong points, unfortunately given the way the dungeon loot system is setup, bosses them selves don’t have a set loot table, so there’s nothing to farm, thus I have no reason to go back and play through them again. Farming a dungeon, like in WoW, for an item you really want might not be fun in and of its self, but if the instance is well designed and fun to play and you group with good people, then it wont matter if I have to play through it over and over again.
Combat: Combat has been pretty fun to a degree. The game has been pretty easy for the most part, I’ve soloed most of my 32 levels. Some highlights would be the enemy raids on outposts, which are always pretty wild and harry, so many Bane attacking an outpost at once is simply cool. If the Bane succeed and take control of that outpost it will result in some quest givers not being available or a warp point being unavailable which means you’ll have to run a lot further to where you might want to go. Players will have to band together and recapture the outpost.
One big problem, at least for me, is that the fear of death is low. Since TB seems geared towards the casual MMO player it seems to work for the most part. Of course the fear of death is a powerful subconscious motivational mechanic when used correctly, however penalties for death in TB are minimal at best. You’ll respawn with all your stuff at a medic nearest to where you died, you can then use certain items to negate the effects caused by dieing (reduced stats for 5min), you then repair your damaged items, and in the end the only thing you really lose is the time it takes to run back.
If you get a critical hit when you kill an enemy they will enter into a “Fatality” like state and if you can run up to them in time and press the melee button you’ll be greeted by a satisfying “finishing move” which is dependent on the type of ammo you used to for the kill; electricity, sonic, etc. This kill starts an XP chain, which are nice, as you can build on them up to a certain %. It’s almost a little mini game as you try and kill something else as soon as possible so you don’t loose the chain.
Weapons / Armor: The various weapons I’ve used have been pretty decent in design and functionality. Being able to blow back alien scum with my shotgun or sonic rifle will always be entertaining. More monsters are being made immune to some weapon types, which has helped in making you have to use certain weapons against certain enemies, EMP against robots, etc.
The resist stats on the various weapons and armor are a little confusing and I’m never sure if they they ever really do anything or just help in decision of which piece of armor to keep and which to sell if the AC happens to be the same.
Attributes / Abilities: Attributes are pretty straight forward; Mind, Body, and Spirit nothing complicated to figure out. Most of the Abilities I’ve played with have been pretty cool and helpful. It’s also nice, and slightly motivational, that some of the abilities will help squad mates if you choose to train it up to a certain level, like Rage. Other abilities are just plain cool, like carpet bombing. (though I haven’t speced any points into this myself yet) watching it happen is cool. With the free respecs though, I’ve been able to invest only in the top level abilities and no longer have any of starting abilities that helped define my character in a way.
I’ve chosen the Sniper route and have enjoyed it for the most part. The torque riles are indeed deadly at longer ranges, combined with my various sniper specific abilities I’ve been able to kill just about anything I’ve come across in my level range. Aside from the occasional quest mob that has ridiculous regen rate then only staff wielding characters will be able to solo them. The “Release The Hounds Quest” is a good example of this imbalance.
End Game Content: Probably the biggest gripe I see / hear from people in TB right now is the lack of end game content. What am I supposed to look forward to? This is one of the reason why I should I keep paying $14 a month. Other wise it turns into a glorified multiplayer game with no real ending. I keep hoping the end game content will be around the corner so I have something to look forward to, but I can’t chase the carrot on the stick forever.
Crafting: Crafting in TB is fairly confusing. I just sell all the crafting stuff I find and buy usable resources from vendors. One of the factors in my lack of interest is that you’re forced to spend valuable talent points on crafting skills and that simply doesn’t work for me. IMHO, most crafting abilities should be easy to pick up at first and then harder to maintain as you progress. Let me craft the easy stuff at low skill and then charge talents points, if you must, at the later levels so I can choose to specialize in creating particular items, etc. I would also be interested if it was more user friendly.
Difficulty: TB is geared towards the casual gamer, which isn’t a bad thing of course, but I’ve only grouped a handful of times and that was because I had to. Other wise I’ve soloed for most of my 32 levels.
Loot / Equipment System: For quite some time the stats on the items were some what confusing. This system also seems to be geared towards the casual gamer. I haven’t had to put much thought into my gear. Getting new weapons and armor usually means I just have to wait a couple more levels in order to use something that has 2% more [insert stat here] then what I’m currently using. For the majority of the game my new equipment and weapon upgrades came from vendors since I wasn’t getting anything worth while from drops or instances but I always had plenty of money.
U.I.: A little clunky and a little unintuitive. It’s not customizable, as in you can’t move windows around to your liking, etc. A constant and very frustrating dilemma since day one is that I have a backpack full of various weapon types and I only have five weapon slots. So constantly juggling weapons gets annoying. Also, having to share abilities and consumables on the other five slot rack also sucks, but at least I can hot key through different racks… The mini map is fairly useless. I mean, the game looks great and yet my mini map looks like someone spilled water colors and drew lines all over the place.
Money / Economy: For me the currency in TB doesn’t have any real value since it’s usually acquired in large quantities in short periods of time. I currently have 1.3million credits and nothing to spend it on. An economy didn’t really exist until just recently when they put the auction house / NPCs in. Even then it’s going to be interesting to see how these play out since everyone has a ton of credits and will continue to have a ton of credits. This is definitely another aspect of TB that could use a lot of attention; getting a stable, player run economy going. Crafting will certainly fit into this equation.
I get the feeling the team is making positive progress now that the game has launched and I do have to say that each patch that has come out has made the experience a little bit better each time and as someone who’s played TB since launch this has certainly been a big factor in me sticking around. There were some inexcusable performance issues that should have been addressed before launch, like the few low level zones that were unplayable. Of course, there will always be certain things you simply wont be able to find out about / discover until the game launches to the public, even with betas, like stat tweaking and game balance.
Ok, that’s enough of that. Even with this wall-o-text I still feel like I’m leaving stuff out…
PS. The game runs great now on my new 8800 GT. ^.^