Deployment (patch) 16.4 went live yesterday. Here are the official patch notes:
Maps and Missions
- Responding to unspecified intelligence, AFS Construction personnel have expanded the CELLAR Arena in preparation for imminent Bane hostilities. Recruits will find that these areas currently have restricted access.
- Edmund Range Training Grounds has been enlarged, and newly available combat technology has been made available to recruits there.
- Two depots were added… one in front of each team. They do not contribute to scoring but supply the owning team with Giant Robots.
- All AFS buildings and structures have updated new looks.
Game Mechanics
- Added various mechs: AFS Mech, Orson, Angel, Vulcan, and Grendel.
- AFS Mech
- Ranger Themed – 1 weapon 3 abilities
- Orson
- Sapper Themed – 1 weapon 4 abilities
- Angel
- Biotech Themed – 1 weapon 4 abilities
- Vulcan
- Command Themed – 1 weapon 4 abilities
- Grendel
- Slow but deadly up close
- Any class can drive any Mech but must have Logos to use abilities
- Accessible only on Edmund and limited to use on Edmund
- Entry to a Mech only occurs on Mech Pads
- The hologram above the Mech pad matches the Mech it spawns
- Holograms turn off when Mech is in use, then reappear when a mech becomes available again
- All have a time limit on use
- Right click game effect icon to exit
- New items added to drop packages
- 3 New Armor sets with level 50 stats that can be equipped by any level
- 40 unique weapons named after players
- New pet and emote items
- Hyper-EXP tokens
Known Issues
- If you die in a PAU while your armor is at 0%, repairing all will result in strange displays until you exit and re-enter map.
- Using the mechs in walk mode may cause the mechs to stand still.
- Fixed a bug that caused Mechs to be unavailable to players below level 50. Please note that the Angel and Vulcan will be fixed through a later patch.
First, I have to tip my hat to the TR Live team. They’ve done everything they could to get the game the way they and the players wanted. Even now with only 18 days until the game shuts down, they’re putting out the final big content deployment and the final note mentions another patch coming.
Second, I unfortunately have not gotten into TR this time either, despite the attraction of free play for two months. I think my character might be level 5? With the timer ticking, I’ll try to put more effort into the game over its remaining few weeks though. At a glance, I think my main issue is its general lack of responsiveness. Many actions have a slight delay from the time I use them until I actually start seeing it. The worst offender (or the most obvious delay) is jumping. I press the spacebar and it takes nearly a full second until my character actually jumps. SWG is also guilty of this, and sorry but it’s unacceptable. It’s bad enough on the slower fantasy MMORPGs but TR and SWG are supposed to be faster paced. I don’t care what client-side trickery it takes but when I do something in an action game I expect my character to respond immediately if not sooner! Keep the reality of the die rolls, the networking, etc. behind the scenes; I don’t care about that. But on my screen my character needs to have the responsiveness of a twitchy console game or shooter. Why is Blizzard the only developer who seems to understand this?
One of the complaints leveled at TR was that it felt "shallow." In the fantasy games where I have a sword or staff that I swing (or bow to shoot) it seems there’s more "depth" but is there really? In both TR and Every Fantasy MMO (EFM) I run around. EFM might give me mounts or some faster travel options, where TR gives me the waypoint pads for fast travel and now mechs. TR and EFM have plenty of different zones to explore and plenty of adventures, quests and instances to complete. Factions to grind. Crafting. And of course, the obligatory Inventory Management game. (Wasn’t that a pet peeve of Richard Garriott? What happened?) The difference between TR and EFM? Speed. In EFM combat is slow-ish with big swings of the swords and axes, or lengthy casting times. In TR you point the business end of your gun at something and make it go boom!
I made the following statement recently on a forum about MMOFPS: I don’t play MMORPGs for combat, I play them because they’re so big with so much to do besides murder everything that moves. But strap a gun on my character and I want to shoot it. Not sure that type of shallow game play has what it takes to get me to pay for the development and upkeep service…
Is that the key? Is there some psychological trigger that having a gun just makes me want to shoot it? Even though fantasy MMORPGs are highly focused on combat, I can’t say that my goal in life upon receiving a new sword is to go out and bash things with it. But give me a new gun and I can’t wait to rush out and blow something up with it. Even if the game offered far more in other areas than a fantasy game would I still ultimately consider it a shallow experience because I’m just shooting my gun all day?
Would I accept and admit that it’s my behavior that is causing me to feel the game is shallow?
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Well there is the ability to make the Spy class (?) that uses hand weapons, but you are right. I think with TR you are ALWAYS … FIRING…THE…GUN. When the population started to dwindle I had to fight something every freaking 20 feet to get to an outpost and it got old fast. Getting the character up there to use the hand weapons efficiently was just a grind. In other games leveling a character at least brought around instant rewards or SOMETHING, but with TR I felt I was leveling in huge intervals with no payoff and I hated that skill system.
Maybe slow it down a bit? Allow guns and hand weapons but give the option to open combat how you choose? I don’t know. I haven’t played Fallout 3 but I thought that is how it would be.
Couple that with the lack of in game communication with people and I just felt like I could do better in a single player FPS title and not pay so much.
I think these people should be given congressional medals of honor for sticking with a game that they already know is headed out the door. For trying to get the game to the state they dreamed of when the concept was only a drawing on a British airways napkin somewhere in the stratosphere.
These men and women didn’t have to do all this creative stuff. They didn’t have to make the game better or even care what the final product was at the very end. They should be regarded as true heroes of the gaming industry.
I think the shallowness was different for different people – there seemed to be quite a few people who equated shallowness with a lack of end-game or pvp – for me it was something more indefinable but story-related.
One way to put it is that I never once felt like I was actually in a military. Another is that I also never really felt that I was one of the last of my species, exiled from a destroyed earth. Personally, the introductory movie also grated on me and probably set the stage for my dislike of the over-all story. (God I hated the whole authoritarian “our great leaders knew what was best and saved us pathetic commoners” thing – but that is me.)
I wish I could express it better, but the whole time it felt like I was playing a half-finished game. Even if I would have like the storyline it still felt lacking somehow. Plus I really didn’t like the skill trees that much and while I thought the Logos element was cool, it was ultimately pretty useless.
I liked the graphics, though – very pretty. I’m personally a fantasy guy, but I like mixing it up and the sci-fi theme was appreciated. I also liked the quasi-fps combat quite a bit.
Maybe it is because I like gathering/crafting/exploring so much that TR didn’t do it for me – because the game bombed spectacularly on those fronts. Combine that with a story I was immediately not fond of, a garishly adolescent enemy design ethic, and a milque-toast implementation and that is why I didn’t like the game. It definitely had it’s strengths though, just not enough to shine through the weaknesses I suppose.