My take on the Free trial, less than 2 weeks played.

Before all flame remember I am very new, I know not alot. However A guild found me or I found them and all is great sorta. I have not played UO since the early 2000's, Played EQ from launch till just a few years back played ESO launch till a few years back, Basically got out of gaming till I seen Richard Garrets Name on a game advertised on FB. What I see in the immediate playing is the fact you just can't grind, you will loose you leveling pool, as a grinder I have mixed feeling about this however its a great mechanic to party up and make your pool larger to level up. And I like the fact that if you try to grind lower level mobs your penalized. I believe that a very good mechanic. A mmo needs to be just that a mmo. Grind with people not yourself. Thats the most inportant thing I have seen thus far and wanted to share my perspective as a new player. Cheers. BTW I bought the game and kicking myself in the arse I did not see it earlier.

 

If you are a grinder this is your game. Solo grinding does work if you turn off all your skill increases to build the pool.

I'll disagree on group grinding being the thing. It should absolutely work and return a little more than solo but not leaps and bounds more. I never again want to see a game where my process when logging in is "/zone Lvl 46 mage LFG"

 

One of the many popular complaints about this game is how insanely grindy it is. After playing around with the (flawed) XP system, you'll notice that it won't affect your enjoyment of grinding that much.

"Losing your XP pool" just means that your skills are actively improving.

 

Indeed I am one that does not listen and have many skills open, that being said, i am still above the Your not pulling weight. With help of my guildies and well times quest completion. I stay above the pool and keep on trucking. I watch carefully what im doing. as I stated i am very new to the game. Not grinding, One of the 1st in EQ to get SMR, nor afraid of dying the 1st guild to break Plane of fear 15 hours. I am really enjoying the game, but IMHO i really think the devs need to pull thier arse outta thier head and somewhat explain the mechanics. Because when if they release, A bunch of new people that has never played MMOS for long or are WOW EQ players are not gonna get it totally. Unless the Devs plan is to have all oldschoolers. then they will have the playerbase. Just not the numbers. I love the game and this is only my 1st impressions after I seen this on facebook and remembered the late 1990's.

 

I aboulutely love the player interactiveness in game Cage Storm was sitting in Soulstrom and I noticed him serveral times when banking my loot. I finally talked to him and he showed me how I can import music into the game. I loved it. will be doing that soon. Not Groundbreaking from my Research LOTRO had this. However i never played LOTRO so it fun fascinating and different to me. The housing I peaked at I will be buying mine soon. I am aware alot been on 4 years so please forgive my ignorance, I joined on the 4th free trial, If I knew of this when they brought it online I would probably be stating what most of ya think.

 

I would argue that: if you have to be aware that the system exists in order to play and enjoy the game (ie: managing how your skills are trained), then the developers have done a poor job of implementing said system.

The whole point of a "on use" system is so that characters can grow automatically based off the actions of the player.

Believe me when I say that I, too, want the dev team to smarten up and address the issue. I'm just arguing that grinding is pretty much the only thing SotA's good for right now... that, and dance parties apparently. The only thing in the game's roadmap that hints of any change is giving you reasons to grind (ie: quests/story).

What I think is really special about what SotA has to offer (compared to its current competition) are some of the dungeons/environments.

Some of the kobold mine-shafts are pretty freakin' neat.

 

Good luck on that. I think they like to keep us in the dark.