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PriNGLeS posted:i dont know what your stream is okay  It's pretty darn scrub-tier since I don't at all make a habit of it, but it's on Twitch.
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Oct 27, 2015 20:19
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Anticheese posted:
Where's the gamer chair ads? It's like you're not even taking this seriously.
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Oct 27, 2015 21:28
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Streaming now Stream over Anticheese fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 08:39
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did you find the person to the (DOWN AND RIGHT) ??
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Oct 29, 2015 10:15
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To be honest, I only really found the various people through the developer directions, and only really had a vague notion of where everything was. However, I would like to thank the devs for coming in and being altogether really great people to talk, and do terrible ad-hoc interviews with. I'll have the article posted in here by the end of the week.
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Oct 29, 2015 10:24
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Thank you very much for your time  Thank you to who ever else attended! astoniareborn fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 10:33
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Astonia Reborn Reviewed This review is a strange one for me. It wasn’t organised through talks with public relations professionals — in fact, the lack of professionalism in Astonia Reborn’s advertising is what drove me to pick it apart in an earlier post; I was annoyed enough to write around 700 words explaining why I found the whole experience unpleasant before even downloading the game. Irritated, I asked the moderation team to unlock the thread, and that the developers join me in a Skype call while I stream my way through the early levels of their game. Surprisingly, they agreed. The day came where, late at night and with absolutely no prior experience playing the game, I dove into the game with both developers coaching me through the tutorial, and answering interview questions. All expectations I had about developers Trent Wilson and Lux (no real name given) were smashed. I found myself quickly warming to them personally, and gained a bit of insight into their motivation behind Astonia Reborn. Astonia was an MMO from around the year 2000. It was a 2D isometric affair with an unremarkable high fantasy setting that, by all accounts, never achieved a huge fan base. It shut down after some time. But, while it didn’t have masses of fans, those that remained were dedicated enough to pick up where the original developer left off. A quick Google search shows about half a dozen forks of the game, with Astonia Reborn among that number.  The first dungeon of the game combines a lightning trap with skeletons. Lots of skeletons. While I’ve played a number of fantasy free-to-play 2D isometric fantasy games in the past (many taking after Ultima Online), this is the first time that I’ve been exposed to Astonia or any of its branches. It just so happens that Reborn was the one to post on Something Awful. My first impressions of the game itself weren’t terribly positive. The game shows its age in its clunky sprite-based world, the clumsy interface, and a low resolution UI that made it difficult to accurately gauge basic statistics. A few features that we take for granted in more modern games weren’t present, such as dialogue boxes to keep quest-giving NPC text from being lost, an intuitive way to hand in quest items, and indicators for where one is meant to go. I did find a few nice surprises playing my mage, though. Every new magic user has every spell in the game from the start, so there’s no annoying grind for spellbooks or material components. However, it did strike me as odd that one of the spells, bless, was so fundamentally necessary that there was even a command to automatically maintain it. The existence and apparent necessity (every bit of advice the developers, and the game’s forums, had began with ‘cast bless’) of the spell with no apparent way to tell why it’s necessary is a source of frustration, and highlights a major problem with the UI. There’s no accessible method for figuring out the impact of the various skills and effects in the game, and many character build guides just list what you should do, rather than any reasons for why it should be done. Interestingly, skills and stats can be bought at any time with XP, rather than with a sum of points or skill orbs or what have you received with each level up. Talking with Trent, I learned that apparently some skills are better in PvE and others in PvP. I also learned that character respecs are available, and that unlimited access to respecs is gated through essentially reaching the max level.  I'm not entirely sure what a Daily Mage and a Daily Beast is. When I’m not writing to fulfill toxx promises, I’m typically dealing with news and analysis about EVE Online. For all its flaws, the game is good at letting players try new roles and ways of playing, and doesn’t require a new character for trying out new bits of gameplay. This is a relevant point of comparison, as under the Astonia (and indeed many other early MMOs) model, there isn’t any real way to swap between what’s effective for Player versus Environment combat, and what’s effective when fighting other players. Even without access to the numbers behind the game’s combat, it’s easy to see the huge difference between the two. PvP in Astonia is a matter of 1v1 duels, and the very first combat encounters in the game will have you mobbed by many weaker enemies rather than an intelligent equal. So, in order to be terribly effective in one role or another, you’ll need to level up an entirely new character with one purpose in mind (and again, knowing what all the different skills mean for that role), or ultimately play the game to 100% completion. Both methods involve a whole lot of work that can still potentially punish players for making a “wrong” skill choice. PvP is apparently undergoing a rework, though few details were given, which brings me to the rest of my impromptu interview. I asked Trent why he’s dedicated his free time to working on an obsolete MMO with visuals exceeded by Ultima Online, and what I’m pretty certain is the door opening and closing sound effects from AIM. He said that they are amateurs doing this as a labour of love, and to outdo competing forks of the game. They were refreshingly honest about how much needs to change to bring their game up to a modern standard, and every subject that I touched on during the stream was met with humility and genuine enthusiasm for their project. At the very least, I admire the passion that they have for what they do. Whether promises about fixes to various problematic areas of the game will come to pass or not is another story, but I can at least give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being. It’s a game that they want to develop because they loved the original, and that’s fine.  The second dungeon was also full of skeletons, and accidentally clicking on the bonfire teleported me to the exit. According to the website of the original developer, which contains the game’s source code, the game’s server software cannot handle any more than about 500 users, and a licensing fee of 10% per month is required after revenues exceed US$12,000. While an unlinked advertising page says that Astonia Reborn is obtaining a commercial license, it doesn’t seem likely that either of those restrictions will be tested in the near future. Ultimately, until any of these talked-about changes materialise, the advertising efforts improve significantly, and the game becomes a lot more accessible for new users, I can’t yet recommend Astonia Reborn to anyone on its merits as an MMORPG. If you are going to play it, you’re likely already interested in the original (or games very much like it), which will be a huge boost in getting past the initial difficulties that this game presents newcomers with. And do you know what? That’s entirely okay. I hope that I can come back to Astonia Reborn some day and find a much more professional-looking, user-friendly game that can engage me more. But until that day comes, for better or for worse, it will largely be the domain of the nostalgic. Astonia Reborn can be downloaded for free from the official website. It is worth noting that it will only work properly in windowed mode on Windows 7, 8, and 10.
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Oct 31, 2015 07:28
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Thank you very much for the review Anticheese It was great to hear an outsiders prospective of the game. We will walk away with the feedback and come back with a more professional and user friendly approach to our much loved game. Thank you again for your time it is much appreciated. Also thank you to those people who have given the game a go. astoniareborn fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Nov 2, 2015 |
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Nov 1, 2015 11:33
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I like that the update process is to have the launcher close itself immediately when you open it (with no explanatory message), then open a browser window straight to a blind download for updateXX_XX_XX.exe. Like yay I tried to play a game and now i'm being asked to download a random .exe! Other than that, I've had some fun with this game since Anticheese's review. If you go far enough into the forest, you find some kind of castle or something, and it has lamps that you can turn off, and if you turn them off a "janitor" will run around and relight them. I thought this was a Nice Touch. Quests are so far still all "kill the thing, bring back the item", except for one where you have to race to touch as many pentagrams in the forest as you can (that was kind of fun). There's lots of wonky stuff, too much to list, but it kind of gives the game character, like a drowned fly might spice up your soup. PVP I think is a fully consensual 1 on 1 only in specified zones thing, but when I shouted "YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE" another player gave me 300 gold anyway. Other players exist and are helpful. NPC dialogue is bland and bad, yadda yadda. There are still not many reasons to play this game other than nostalgia.
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Nov 10, 2015 23:41
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Seems like a pretty good Estonia simulator.
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Nov 12, 2015 17:36
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