Ubisoft has announced a free for all Open Beta for the upcoming Tom Clancy-isque supposedly mammoth of a game: The Division !
Alright , now thats some good news right there ! Not because I love the game already and want to play it but because , like many out there, I am unsure of what The Division holds in its slick recreation of a chaotic New York and this provides for a perfect risk free way of checking out the game.
What has many gamers divided is the RPG aspect of this game which seems like a shooter at its core. Apparently, thats not so and maybe the game is a complete opposite of what it seems and from what I have gathered from people's impressions from the closed beta, its seems like a game with shooting gameplay which is an RPG at its core. I may or may not be right and I am excited to have the opportunity to test out the game myself in this open beta. I am being optimistic here and as long as the controls are sharp, I can go with the RPG element all right.
So, make sure to mark the 16th of February on your calendars as thats when you can start downloading the Beta client which , I am sure, will be north of 20gb in size.
The beta will be Live from February 19th to 21st on PS4 and PC and February 18th to 21st on the XboxOne which gets an exclusive headstart of a day.
I recently made my first foray into MMOS by playing the FFXIV's 14 day trial on my ps4. To not make a long story out of it, I enjoyed it a lot and ended up buying the game for myself but that's not the reason I am here. I am here because what I thought about the most while playing Final Fantasy XIV was , surprise surprise: Dragon Age Inquisition !
Yup, every fun moment I had in FF XIV reminded me of the fun I did not have in Dragon age Inquisition ! I am not saying I didn't have fun in Dragon Age at all, but for each time I did I can count 10 where I did not. For all of its grand designs, the game felt bland and lukewarm in every implementation. For all its shiny exteriors, Inquisition felt like a monotonous trudge through a series of beautiful environments.
Enough complaining about it, though. Here are some of the points which I realized were similar in FFXIV and yet more fun or engaging than Inquisition:
The Combat:
This is where the two games are most similar. Both the games have ability based combat which is governed by cool down meters for those abilities. Multiple abilities share a common cool down meter while some abilities have their own cool down time. Abilities also stack up on each other well if you chain them in a proper sequence. But this is also the aspect where FFXIV is a lot of fun while Dragon Age Inquisition is just serviceable at most. Chaining abilities and taking crit shots in FFXIV is exhilarating while in DA:I, even though we can switch between characters and have cross class combos, when you do land a crit its just another hit, just another fight. One does not get the feeling of having pulled it off correctly or intelligently or victoriously. So what is it that makes FF better in this regard?:
Well, for one the Cooldown times:
They are faster in FFXIV. I have not measured them in milliseconds or anything, but combat is faster and more hectic in FFXIV making it feel more energetic and involving than DAI where the slower pace makes it feel drab and button spammy in nature. I know these are perceptions and can vary with each individual but then games are perceived experiences and the main emotive or perceptual goal while designing a combat system is the feeling of excitement, the adrenaline rush, while making you believe that your actions and decisions matter. In other words, the goals of designing a combat system include a rise in pace/attention and player agency. If any of these fail the game's combat is bound to feel bland or lacking without the player being able to tell why. Both, a sense of player agency and a higher pace of events than normal requiring higher level of attention, snapping the player out of the exploratory humdrum,are essential in imparting a feeling of being in combat.
Finisher moves:
this is where Final Fantasy nails it and imparts an indispensable feeling of achievement and decisive agency. Playing as an Archer I acquired a skill called the "Misery's end" which is high powered shot from the bow which can be triggered only when the target has less than 20% health. The idea being that you fire this as the last finisher shot to end the battle on a victorious note. This might sound pretty simple but it leads to a small but significant moment in battle where I, the player, feels a complete sense of agency, power and accomplishment in one go! Of course, there is a chance that the target might live through the move, especially if it's a boss, but even then it foreshadows your impending victory bringing an ebb and flow to every tiny battle you fight. Thats storytelling techniques within each battle ! It is like an announcement by the player that I am about to win this right here, right now ! When it kills, it's like the exhilaration of declaring 'Checkmate' after a well fought chess match ! And to top it all its not some end game skill which one unlocks at the fag end of his/her levels but something that is provided to you very early in the game. From what I played DAI lacks this sorely during its early hours leading to the battles lacking any kind of flow to them. It's stacking attacks upon attacks till the enemy dies. That is not to say that DAI doesn't let you use tactics, it does and does pretty well later in the game but can it make you stay in the game till then? And that brings us to our next point.
The Pace of Levelling up:
this is another area where FFXIV scores ever DAI in keeping your interest intact during the early hours of the game. In FFXIV you level up fast, very fast initially. I was levelling up every 20 minutes or so during my initial hours and even faster when I had my sanctuary bonus running in the background giving me double xp for every quest. What this means , other than gratification and general sense of accomplishment, is that I was gaining new abilities, new toys to play with, every 15 -20 minutes! OTOH, in DAI After spending double figure hours in the game, I realised I had only managed level 7 or 8 which directly equates to the number of skills I had at my disposal to play with. Of course, these numbers are not directly comparable between games but it does show the disparity in rewards and the number of choices I had in each game to play my way or feeling that l could choose my play style after a specific amount of time. FFXIV manages a perfect 'flow' in its "challenges vs rewards" curve and keeps the player engaged and interested while the much much slower reward pattern of DAI makes the similar combat feel like a grind ! It's a designer defined experience and the choice to keep the initial hours slow in terms of progression and choice can lead to that definite feeling of grind. OTOH, giving out too many rewards can make the game feel hollow and nullify the importance of the world you are fighting for or engrossed in. The 'flow theory' is at work here and FFXIV manages that challenge vs rewards graph very smoothly.To be honest, FFXIV is more Grindy than DA:I but it doesn't let you feel it at all which is not just due to the faster levelling up and engaging combat but also due to another aspect which brings us to our next point.
Characters and humour:
this might seem not to affect the player's impression of the grind but actually it contributes equally towards the perception the player forms of the activities he is tasked to perform. Believability and sense of purpose are the two defining factors here and FFXIV scores better on both fronts but not by making the characters and the world more realistic but instead it makes its world, characters and activities 'believable' by doing the exact opposite ! FFXIV doesn't strive for realism and instead embraces its existence as a game. The characters do not pretend to be real in their dialogues or actions and are perfectly contended in being non realistic 'cartoons', for the lack of a better word. Since there is no make believe going on here, the player's mind also accepts them as fictional cartoons which do whimsical and silly things. The game spices it all up by adding humor to every scene or dialogue cementing the notion that it is all in good fun and none of it is to be taken too seriously ! This approach, well balanced in FFXIV, works wonders and whenever one is tasked with another one of the good old fetch quests, one doesn't cringe at it as there is no suspension of disbelief, there is no part of your brain fighting with the unrealistic demands of the game as the quest giver itself also is aware of the meaningless quest as highlighted by the humor in its quest description. OTOH, DA:I chooses to go the 'realistic' route and as good as Frostbite may make the characters to look and sound, they feel like clay puppets trying to sound too serious in vain. The believability is lost each time a character speaks only to look like a shiny plastic doll devoid of expressions or an exposition is presented out. At each quest description, your mind jumps out to inform you of the futility or the un-feasibility of the required task and the illusion built so delicately by the graphics of the game falls apart. The Witcher 3 succeeds in this department while still keeping the world and characters realistic, thanks to some well written dialogue, the humor and the very well made emotive faces.
The dense and alive cities:
another aspect that elevates the believability and immersive-ness of the world of FFXIV is the way all of its areas feel dense and full of activity all the time. This is where the MMO nature of FFXIV brings in its advantages. Each and every area is bustling with activity creating a convincing illusion of a living breathing world, all thanks to the multitude of players populating its worlds. Even if you never interact with any of them, your world is always full of other people going about their own quests or businesses and that sets the world apart ! Being a single player experience, DA:I cannot do that convincingly and we cannot hold it at task here but this does bring forth the importance of having people together in your game. We could , for example, have a system, somewhat like Demons Souls, where in you can see a lot of players in your game, playing around doing their own thing, even if you cannot interact with them. It would still make the world feel alive and bustling with activity ! Though, of course, your fiction must be able to accommodate this influx of heroes :).
Playing FFXIV has actually made me more interested in going back to Dragon Age and finishing it as it has shown me how good a cooldown based combat can be. Now , I am re-downloading DA:I to see if the game improves in the later stages of the campaign and actually delivers on the promise of being not only an expansive and exhaustive RPG but also an enjoyable and immersive RPG. But the game will have to do it fast because MGS V approaches soon and then, its all over to Snake and Master God Kojima San !
Nice name, yeah? Well, not really.Generic space marine is what I think of when I hear Battleborn but I paid attention because it sounded a lot like that awesome amazing super fantastic Miyazaki love called Bloodborne but, calm your horses, it has nothing to do with it which is sad because anything to do with Bloodborne is most welcome, will be appreciated and devoured till no more can be devoured !
The similarity of name with the Japanese masterpiece is not the only reason Battleborn caught my attention, in fact, putting aside teh jokes, the real reason is that its being made by Gearbox, the creators of Borderlands franchise and, well, I liked Borderlands 2 quite a bit. The cast of multiple crazy characters and the skill trees combined with the unique art style worked its magic on me back in the day and , in fact, writing this right now makes me wanna re-buy the game for my ps4 to try out the newer characters which were released later as DLCs. Damn it, there goes my money again, I shouldn't be writing stuff at all and should be just posting this kaboom-a-shazaam of bad-assery mixed together with some phonetic crooning of exotic sorts :D .......!
What you just saw, Ladies and Gentlemen, needs no explanation : its gamingsuace being poured in dollops ! Bring it on Gearbox, let the games begin :) ! Yeah ! all that excitement brewing in me and I haven't even shared the gameplay demo yet. Well, I am not Snake to keep you waiting, here , here :
(That Ratchet and CLank vibe to te banter is unmistake-able)
You know what, I can be that Archer right now :^) and that Vampire Ninja :O : the cast of characters is crackling with energy ! I think Destiny, the only game that actually ever got me "addicted" in the true painful sense of the word is in danger now. I sense a true competitor even if the games are very different from each other. Destiny is following the MMORPG formula while Battleborn wants to tread the MOBA way, both not really committing to the respective genres instead trying to be lighter versions of each. Yet the common element of selling a fantasy of playing as exotic characters mowing down enemies together with your friends while earning yet stronger powers as you play remains at the heart of both .......and that both are aimed at the FPS lovers out there !
The competition is real and as far as I am concerned, Battleborn is already in the battle with Destiny for my time. I cannot wait to try it out for myself and see the punches it packs considering I am already getting jaded with the DLC pricing and the direction Bungie is taking with the way they serve content in Destiny. Instead of being a world where regular new events occur, Destiny is more on the lines of fixed content being delivered via DLCs which you keep playing till the next paid DLC arrives. This may have always been what Destiny was 'destined' to be but I perhaps had a different vision of a persistent world where newer events get pushed into the world every week, like Warframe does. I mean whats the point of running your game on servers if you aren't pushing fresh events regularly? Even small missions which change things, like :
"Fallen are taking over cosmodrome...defend it , events lasts till Monday evening."
Or
"Hunt a special target amidst a massive firefight between hive and fallen on earth. "
Or
" Fight alongside cabal in taking over an area from Vex....some guardian can choose to take Vex side... Events lasts for few hours ! "
/end_Destiny_rant. I got carried away but thats how I had imagined Destiny to be.
So, what does Battleborn do? Battleborn isn't going that way either, instead they are being a MOBA with a co-op campaign. A MOBA is primarily PvP genre, just like League of Legends and DOTA, and I think thats why Gearbox is so focussed on revealing co-op content first to distinguish themselves from regular MOBAs and catering directly to the FPS fans first and foremost. Just like any other MOBA, Battleborn has a wide array of characters, 25 to be specific and Gearbox is making a huge deal out of it and comparing it to Borderlands 2's 4 but, to be honest, that comparison is just misleading. This is a MOBA-esque game and 25 is not over the top for a MOBA !( C'mon Gearbox, get your act together ;) !) But when they are as crazy and imaginative as Gearbox makes them, then that count of 25 sure packs a punch !
This difference from Destiny, yet sharing the similar fantasy is what excites me actually. This game can be heaven with a bunch of friends, just like Destiny is... but with 25 characters to choose from and each match letting you level your character up differently, there is a LOT of builds to try out and a LOT of fresh gameplay to be savored. Considering that we are having so much fun with just the three classes, technically six, in Destiny, imagine having 25 characters with multiple skill trees which can be changed every mission... ....I see smiles plastered on my face :^)! I hear cackles of laughter while failing and victory dances when the classes just work together ! Who doesn't want to be a Vampire Ninja, for gods sake ! I know I do ! :^D and did I mention a four handed witch yet , oh and a Mecha that can fly up in the air and shoot tracking missiles ala "insert-favourite-anime-name" !!!
.....and just look at the art style !
In-Game screenshot !
My heart screams :OKAMI !!! :)
Although I am not totally convinced by the art but the mix of Diablo-esque art with Sci-fi with Ratchet n Clank tendencies looks fantastic to me. The explosions are what caught my fancy instantly, they look hand drawn and pulled straight out of Anime ! Apparently the character designer from Borderlands has the reins of Art direction in this one and he has been allowed to go as crazy as he wants and though something feels off about it IMO, it still feels "alien" in a very new way. Its unsettling, unfamiliar to look at and I guess that's the premise of the game. Its the place left after all star systems have died and your warriors fight the last battle of the universe in this far-away corner of the universe ! A world alien to all aliens too, an inviting yet unsettling place for adventure. SOunds and looks equally cool. Hoping it gets mroe polished by the time beta arrives and more importantly, hoping to jump into the beta myself. Sony hasn't really been giving us the betas that were promised with PS+ subscriptions !
The promise here is huge and the possibilities immense.
I just hope the MOBA influences don't dilute the fun for me. Battleborn has a 2015 release window.Here's hoping for a excting end to this wonderful gaming year of 2015 !
Oh, edit: Here's the latest interview of th eproducer, much needed tons of info in there, enjoy:
