Has it been that bad? Yes it has. Even RPS mentioned that they were surprised the press was shown the game that early on, and I'm pretty shocked myself. As they point out it's still in Beta with no release date. That press release was apparently authorized so I will say they are not liars.Nalgas D. Lemur said:
That said, I apparently think that the game will have potential because I have indeed given them $40 based on my limited beta testing (bought two differant character starter packs).
I will also say that I think RPS sort of misses the point and what they are trying to do here. They for example mention "City Of Heroes" type MMOs, but this wasn't intended to be that kind of game. What they are doing is creating a sort of huge-scale version of the "Marvel Ultimate Alliance" (or "X-Men: Legends) games, played from that perspective. There is little focus on customization unlike other super hero MMOS, the entire idea being to create a very approachable game where people can login, assume the role of their favorite character, and bust some heads. There isn't a lot of work put into depth or deep story building here. It's also being developed as a FTP title, as opposed to an elaborate subscription based game like other super MMOs were designed as, so you have to evaluate it in those terms as well. The differance in quality between games being developed as FTP to begin with and subscription based games (having betaed both) is huge. With the relative death of subscription based games I think gamers are going to have to tighten their belts when it comes to expectations accross the board, I do hope that this will lead to pressure to get the pendeluum
to swing back in the other direction and by the time that happens the industry will have finally learned where they went wrong with the subscription based games (ie not enough focus on endgame, which motivates people to keep playing and re-upping those subscriptions).
This game is NOT City Of Heroes, Champions Online, or DCUO, and wasn't trying to be. It's playing in an entirely differant arena. That's one of the reasons why I gave them money (which is pretty limited to me), it's a differant direction of game development that has potential if explored.
Going entirely by what's been released and "seen" the image you should have in your mind to begin with is a cut rate Action RPG but with super heroes. Buying a starter pack for example will give you a character, plus enough in game currency to buy another one, and then you have your starter character that you select when playing for free. So you figure 3 characters which is roughly parallel to the number of character options in many ARPGs (say a fighter, rogue, and mage). How much game do you expect for $20? Looked at on that level it's not a bad investment and you could do far worse.
Basically it's like playing Diablo, or Torchlight, or whatever else (click, kill, loot... occasionally clobber boss) and even sold that way. The differance being that you have lots of other people playing at the same time, a chat mode going, etc...
You expect it to be a deep super hero experience like other MMOs, your not going to get it, but it's not trying to be one. As much as I hope we will see a "real" super hero MMO set in the Marvel Universe some day, I suppose this is a decent product in the meantime.
Besides, having played both CoH and CO (lifetimer) I will say that the complexity in these games is off putting to a certain segement of players. There are those who just want to have a character exactly like a favorite from the comics and then run around and clobber things without having to put much thought into their build, gear, or sit down and build a costume that doesn't cause blindness from a color haze from a selection of hundreds of parts. This is very much the game for those people, and truthfully I suspect it might actually help with "problems" like 40 gajillion people all trying to be Wolverine without ticking off the GMs, and getting all upset because they can't do it perfectly. This is a game where you can just flat out be Wolverine (like anyone else can).
I definatly figure it's something I'll dip into here and there.
I'll also say that the guys doing the RPS article are totally insane on some levels. Trying to keep a game current with comics continuity is pretty much impossible. Not to mention that not everyone likes every change they did to comics. There is a certain status quo that the major universes revert to for a reason, and that is what most people want. Something like "The Future Foundation" might be a cool idea, but at the end of the day people want their normal Spider Man and Fantastic Four more. Changing around Ms Marvel based on what her current status in the comics is would be nearly impossible. What's more changes take work, and Marvel generally isn't going to give pre-notification to those doing products for them. Back in the day TSR had the rights to the Marvel RPG (PnP) and this was kind of an issue since they by contract had the rights to this information apparently, yet Marvel didn't want to give it up. We saw attempts to update the universe through Dragon magazine and the gamers encyclopedias of the marvel universe, but by the time anything was released it was woefully out of date due to the speed with which comics update themselves.
If your perceptive in looking at the founders packages you'll notice that aside from characters, these packages also include costumes. The costumes as you might notice include differant looks from various periods in a character's history. For example Spider Man has his "Future Foundation" outfit in one pack that you can put him into if you want to envision yourself as the Spider Man from that period in his history. What you've got is a very basic version of the marvel universe, and some mild tools (by purchusing costumes) to use versions of characters other than the default. Want to be the Marvel Now! version of a character, you'll notice there are costumes for that. Want to play Thor in destroyer armor? Notice there is a costume for it in the Thor pack. RPS probably should have done a bit more research in some aspects of this... they aren't liars, but their comments about Ms Marvel being kept up with comics continuity are kind of crazy, and honestly, if enough people demand to see her as "Captain Marvel", "Binary" or whatever other form she's in or has been in the business plan for this game seems to be for them to be more than happy to sell you a skin for it. I imagine if the game succeeds to any level at all you'll see costumes being produced by the truckload (and if you look at the packs, there are already tons of them, I can only mention what's been publically released but notice for example that they have like "Planet Hulk" Hulk, and even bloody Maestro just in that bunch of reveals).
