Hi all. I saw this game gaining rank in FPS and Sci-Fi genre on the mmorpg websites (yes fps is sometimes a thing to be reviewed in mmorpg sites).
I come from star fox, Freespace, X3, you name it…I played it (and usually beat it). I currently play Star Trek Online (3 days a weekish), TERA (super casual if ever a week), and Warframe (heavily).
How is this game? the forums seem mixed. Guys seem to enjoy talking strategy and others hating the P2advance the Beta changes put them through. My question is: How is the game? Population steady? Factions balanced? Payment really P2W (or farm your eyeballs dry, or have a craptastic ship for months until you farm 1 tiny upgrade? like in WoT).
I am looking for balance. You will notice my current games all have balance cash shop (STO all ships given free to F2P cash buys novelty items (pure looks - TERA is just costume purchases - Warframe you can craft every purchasable item and character by just playing and getting drops).
Also, does faction change ship performance? I read here in threads Federation is speed and energy. I would like to play Empire, any heads up about this?
Thanks all, your feed back will help me determine the uninstall push or not ^^
*EDIT*
Any group strategy? I never played a space sim where people worked together. STO it is just free flight around spam skills. In World of Tanks I made top 3 always but because I did my own solo thing, Aces usally charge or camp. What is strategy here? I plan to go fighter. Would I stick in a pack? Support the heavy shooter? Whats the strategy here (if any?) I am watching youtube vids now, but it is mostly russians just snipering people XD
There is no P2W. There is P2SkipGrind. The actual game is very balanced and non-premium ships are better in combat than cash ones, just take a while to unlock at higher tiers. There are 4 tiers; you can get to T2 in hours and T3 in a few days. Higher tiers have very different gameplay because you have far more module variety and ship slots.
You can work for any faction and switch between them at any time (keeping all progress) for a tiny fee (equivalent to 1 match reward).
The game itself is a 3rd peraon space dogfighting sim with objective-based modes like hold the control points. Overall it is a bit like a mix of Ace Combat and WoT, but in space, with rather good controls giving full freedom of motion in 3D. You can squeeze between gaps in asteroids etc.
Currently it is not an MMO. It has a personal hangar for managing loadouts etc, then you queue up for a match, 12v12 at most. Like COD or Battlefield. There is one global chat channel. More MMO-like elements may be added later.
Some pay-2-win elements exist:
The steam packs give you access to unarguably better ships (At the price of ~$80)
Playing with friends and grouping up in a squad requires paying $11/month
The rest of the game is pay-2-skipgrinding, with the exception of subfaction loyalty gain, which is barely influenced by the licenses and bonuses you can buy and which is so slow at the moment, that you’ll gain the rarest purple loot which only comes from drops after winning a game, than you will the unlockable blue loot from subfaction loyalty gain. Grinding to rank all subfactions to max is probably sitting around several years of playing the game every day.
The game is well balanced overall, but does suffer when you get to the nitty gritty:
Frigates are the best ships in T1 (Almost entirely a result of the damage scale of their ability weapons to the health of other ships)
Fighters are the best ships in T2 (Primarily empire fighters like the Deimos 2, which have been toned down recently, but are still exceptional)
Interceptors are the best ships in T3 (Mostly due to crowd-control and stunlocking effects)
I’ve yet to see what T4 is like, but from the sounds of it - it’s much like T3. Interceptors are too fast, have too much armour and can stunlock enemies for too long.
Frigates get worse the higher in tiers you go, interceptors get better, and fighters are largely even.
Strategy varies depending on your team’s and opposing team’s ships and playstyle, and what is the gamemode.
But luckily, mainly it depends on your personal playstyle: you can basicly always be offensive, at least in some level. You cannot always camp, if opposing team is too interceptor heavy. You always get to bring 3-4 ships to a battle to choose from, so you can switch to more suitable ship if the initially chosen is poor for the situation at hand. That is part of the strategy.
It is definitely better to play as a squad. Teamplay in random team is --considering the lack of fast communication-- good. Quite often, due to kill assiting also being rewarded, people DO help each other, unlike in some other games. (There is no such thing as kill stealing in this team game).
There ARE certain things you MUST do (but there are still multiple ways to choose from), or must not do (playstyle vice) if you care about being always in top3 of the efficiency list for a match, as in any game. But the game rewards (these efficiency points) only for doing right things in my opinion: killing or assisting killing, buffing or debuffing and that results someone making a kill, or taking part in completing (sub-)objective of the game mode.
It’s a good game.
I do not agree fully with above writer. I have two out of three DLCs, and while it is definitely Pay2GrindLess method, I don’t see any of the DLC ships being better than others. They are not all poorer than same level non-premium ships, but I don’t see them being better. There are bigger differences between same tier non-premium ships. So in theory a premium ship could be better than the “poorest of all” of the same tier ships. Ships are individuals (both premium and non-premium alike), some are OK, some are a bit poorer than others or have narrow usability.
I don’t currently drive my premium ships if I plan to win.
One addition to one above mentioned detail: you get to have 2 people squad without paying for a licence. To have 4 people licence, one of the 4 people (the squad leader) must have a licence.
Currenlty you do get “money” from the game by logging in to the game every day for each 5 days, and filling a poll question every now and then, but not that much that it would be viable way to support getting constant licence for 4 players to play as a squad.
There might be new sources coming in future.