I got to try Nosgoth today

[Windcaler]

Yep. Got to try it out and steam has a free weekend going on right now. For those that dont know its sort of a deathmatch game similar to well just about all the deathmatch games out there that Ive played. Its basicly vampires vs. vampire hunters and that might sound dull but the interesting thing I learned after playing it and doing some research is its apparantly connected to the Soul reaver/legacy of kain series. I encourage everyone to go download the game, play a few matches, and come to their own conclusions on what they think of the game.

That said, I wanted to talk about my first experience with the beta of nosgoth. I played about 10 matches I think, played all available classes (didnt try any of the locked ones). So it needs to be stressed that 1. This is my first impressions of the game after maybe two hours of time with it and 2. It is still in beta so a lot might change. At the very least I think its worth a look



The first thing I noticed is the game runs pretty bad. My PC isnt the best machine out there but its certainly above average. I have a single titan in my machine, 16 gb of ram, a terabyte of space, blah, blah, blah...I know people dont really care about that. Anyway, the problem is I could not get over 60 frames per second but I wasnt running anything in the background. I suspect theres still a great deal of optimization to do but if you're going to play a deathmatch game framerate has to be good. For me games that requrie twitch reactions, like deathmatch games, framerate is king.

The game looks good. Lots of great detail on the character models and the maps. The only thing that looked a little off to me was the various fires around the map. I cant put my finger on exactly why but theyre just look...off. Im not sure how to explain it

The game has no story and almost no lore that I could find within the game. I know its attatched to the Legacy of kain series and while I was never a huge fan of those games (havnt played them in years but I know i finished all of them). I wouldnt have known it was part of that franchise if I hadnt read it somewhere else. The little bit of lore I saw gives some backstory about the various classes and the vampire classes are connected to specific clans but it really felt meaningless to me. Maybe I just need to replay soul reaver and legacy of kain to get all the references but as is I really cant find a reason to care

Honestly though, with the game using a license that is known for deep and interesting story and larger then life characters I dont think it does it justice. I wouldnt have known the game was connected to that series if I hadnt read it elsewhere. Taking the game on its own merits without that liscence it doesnt seem to have much identity besides a generic vampire hunters vs. vampires war.

The game itself has a high focus with vampire hunters having ranged attacks and vampires being focused on melee. Everyone has 2 abilities that work on cooldowns and the abilities can be switched out for other ablities. Vampires have a lot of ways to quickly (near instantly for the reaver class) close distance though and once theyre close youre pretty much done. Vampire hunters do have a melee attack but there was no stun or knockback component to it so far as I could tell and the vampire hunters weapons didnt seem to do enough damage to get them to back off. Coupled with the fact that vampires can pretty much spiderman their way over the map (wall crawling not web slinging) and the vampire hunters are stuck on specific paths I felt like there was some minor imbalances going on between the two, favoring the vampires

The business model I think is fair. Its arguable that it suffers from the same problem planetside 2 did which is to say its more "Pay to win for now" but not "Pay to win". You can unlock everything that effects the game and cosmetics are locked behind real money transactions except maybe (I stress maybe) the four locked classes. It was 3000 real money currency or 1 of this other currency that looked like a box. I dont know how you get that other currency yet. Eventually you can grind everything else that effects the game with in game currency you get after every match

Overall Im kind of disappointed. I didnt even know what the game was when I downloaded it I just thought "hey free weekend. Ill give this a try and buy it if I like it!" I was disappointed to just find a deathmatch game (granted there is a sort of deathmatch/conquest mode similar to battlefields conquest). Ive played dozens of deathmatch games over the years and with a vampire vs vampire hunter war I guess I expected more. Then I got really disappointed when I heard it was part of the legacy of kain series. It seems like a rather lame spin off for the franchise.

Im curious what other people think though. Maybe Im just not the target audience for the game

 

[Elfgore]

I downloaded and played Nosgoth yesterday. After two minutes of playing, I uninstalled the game.

The game ran like shit, even on low quality I had lagging. My laptop can run the Witcher 2 just fine, it isn't my laptop. The vampires are ungodly OP. Within two minutes, they'd already racked up six kills and we'd only gotten one. I quit and will never look back.

 

[The_Lost_King]

I downloaded and played Nosgoth yesterday. After two minutes of playing, I uninstalled the game.

The game ran like shit, even on low quality I had lagging. My laptop can run the Witcher 2 just fine, it isn't my laptop. The vampires are ungodly OP. Within two minutes, they'd already racked up six kills and we'd only gotten one. I quit and will never look back.

You really can't say something is op when you've played one match. They didn't rack up kills so fast because they were vampires. They racked them up because they were skilled. I have played matches where the vampires dominated and then switched to hunter and still dominated.

The game itself has a high focus with vampire hunters having ranged attacks and vampires being focused on melee. Everyone has 2 abilities that work on cooldowns and the abilities can be switched out for other ablities. Vampires have a lot of ways to quickly (near instantly for the reaver class) close distance though and once theyre close youre pretty much done. Vampire hunters do have a melee attack but there was no stun or knockback component to it so far as I could tell and the vampire hunters weapons didnt seem to do enough damage to get them to back off. Coupled with the fact that vampires can pretty much spiderman their way over the map (wall crawling not web slinging) and the vampire hunters are stuck on specific paths I felt like there was some minor imbalances going on between the two, favoring the vampires

The business model I think is fair. Its arguable that it suffers from the same problem planetside 2 did which is to say its more "Pay to win for now" but not "Pay to win". You can unlock everything that effects the game and cosmetics are locked behind real money transactions except maybe (I stress maybe) the four locked classes. It was 3000 real money currency or 1 of this other currency that looked like a box. I dont know how you get that other currency yet. Eventually you can grind everything else that effects the game with in game currency you get after every match

In regards to you finding vampires hard to beat because they can easily close the gap between ranged an melee: the hunters are able to lock down vampires with bolas and other effects which I have been killed because of many a time as a vamp. Also The hunters are forced to work together and stay in groups while the vampires are not. A lot of the time I find that vampires don't often come in all at once. This makes it easier for vamp hunters to deal with because it can be 4 against 1 or 2.

As to the confusion on unlocking classes: You can unlock a class with a special currency you every 5 levels.

 

[Windcaler]

In regards to you finding vampires hard to beat because they can easily close the gap between ranged an melee: the hunters are able to lock down vampires with bolas and other effects which I have been killed because of many a time as a vamp. Also The hunters are forced to work together and stay in groups while the vampires are not. A lot of the time I find that vampires don't often come in all at once. This makes it easier for vamp hunters to deal with because it can be 4 against 1 or 2.

They can and they cant. I mostly played an alchemist because I liked the class better but I did notice reavers could seemingly instantly break bola's with their dodge power. I never had an opportunity to test it out myself though.

That aside I still think the reavers jump skill (I think its called pounce?) is a bit to powerful. Perhaps if it slowed the reavers down more as theyre charging the attack, reduced their defense during the claw phase, or had some other disadvantage I would feel more comfortable having it in the game. As the game is right now I feel its to powerful and you can usually tell its to powerful because its pretty much all reaver players use. The fact that it disables so easily makes it essentially an easy to use/abuse super move

As to the confusion on unlocking classes: You can unlock a class with a special currency you every 5 levels.

Thats very helpful. Thank you

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i dont know why big companies dig their old intellectual property only to shit all over it with a new release that has nothing to do with previous games

square should know better, they made deus ex human revolution for fucks sake

 

[The_Lost_King]

In regards to you finding vampires hard to beat because they can easily close the gap between ranged an melee: the hunters are able to lock down vampires with bolas and other effects which I have been killed because of many a time as a vamp. Also The hunters are forced to work together and stay in groups while the vampires are not. A lot of the time I find that vampires don't often come in all at once. This makes it easier for vamp hunters to deal with because it can be 4 against 1 or 2.

They can and they cant. I mostly played an alchemist because I liked the class better but I did notice reavers could seemingly instantly break bola's with their dodge power. I never had an opportunity to test it out myself though.

That aside I still think the reavers jump skill (I think its called pounce?) is a bit to powerful. Perhaps if it slowed the reavers down more as theyre charging the attack, reduced their defense during the claw phase, or had some other disadvantage I would feel more comfortable having it in the game. As the game is right now I feel its to powerful and you can usually tell its to powerful because its pretty much all reaver players use. The fact that it disables so easily makes it essentially an easy to use/abuse super move

As to the confusion on unlocking classes: You can unlock a class with a special currency you every 5 levels.

Thats very helpful. Thank you

I usually play Tyrant so I don't know about the whole bola break because of dodge. However there is a disadvantage to pounce because it locks you in with a person and any somewhat intellegent group of hunters will stick together so it leaves the reaver(and they are pretty squishy) open to attacks. I've killed many a reaver while they clawed at my friend. It starts to become powerful when vampires attack together, but like I said in my ,albeit limited, experience vampires don't band together as much, unless they just got through wiping out all of the hunters.

 

[Mahorfeus]

I got into the "closed" beta a while ago and had given it a shot.

To be fairly honest, I rather enjoyed my time with it, though it is in definite need of work.

The F2P element is more than a little awkward, especially if you want to purchase items for permanent use. Still, I have some currency stashed up (plus some extra from the last Humble Bundle), so it gives me some leeway to experiment.

Another element that had me conflicted were the controls. I loved using my 360 controller for the game (the layout just felt "right"), but I found that regardless of which faction I played, I often got flat-out crushed. At one point I thought the vamps were simply overpowered, a perspective that quickly changed when I got to play as them. Mostly because I can't aim my attacks for jack. I am beginning to suspect that while feeling familiar and convenient, the aim controls on the controller are just holding me back.

As for the tangential connection to the main series... Well, I think the game is well-served by not having the Legacy of Kain title directly attached to it. It's the same world, but this is clearly not Kain's story. It's an odd use of the IP, but to me it felt like a surprisingly polished one.

I'd love another "true" LoK game, but I don't see it happening with Tony Jay gone. It's simply not possible.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

If the game ran pretty poorly on your rig @OP that has a Titan in it then I won't even bother installing it on mine that has only a measly 560ti.

Thanks for sharing your time with it with the game..I guess it requires a shitload of optimization to work on lesser powerful PC's.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I downloaded and played Nosgoth yesterday. After two minutes of playing, I uninstalled the game.

The game ran like shit, even on low quality I had lagging. My laptop can run the Witcher 2 just fine, it isn't my laptop. The vampires are ungodly OP. Within two minutes, they'd already racked up six kills and we'd only gotten one. I quit and will never look back.

You quit way too early to know if the Vamps are OP, you just had a shit team playing humans. My first game us Vamps got raped by the humans who used terrain to their advantage because they had so little options in mobility. Each team is strong in one area, weak in others and you need to form teams of people who know their roles.

My first impressions were how nice it ran on my machine, 8-Core AMD with 16GB RAM and Crossfire'd HD7770's. I didn't get any framelag, nor freezing on max settings. I liked the way combat is set up, how you get to buy your skills and such. I dislike the payment system to unlock classes early, I think that should be something everyone should have to earn, leave the paywalls up for vanity items/skins/etc.
But solid multiplayer game, how well it will do post-release I've not much an idea but I hope it does well.