Life is Feudal - MMO Beta to Begin December 14th

[MagicManICT]

It's worth pointing out that unlike Wurm, Xsyon, and MO, this game has achieved millions of dollars of funding and has a large team working on it full time.

So in other words, someone should file a lawsuit against all these devs and claim IP rights to the game design.

Seriously, though, I've been watching this, and if I recall right, I know who it is that's working on it. There's been more than a few "HnH clones" (for lack of a better phrase) come up in the last few years by former HnH players that were inspired by jorbtar. Plus, the whole genre has gotten huge in large part because the indie game scene has blossomed for several reasons.

I think that a relatively few number of players are generating churn going from one title to another looking for that one "right" game, though. I know, as broke as I am, I have bought 3 or 4 of these open world survival/building games, and have played several more I'd like to buy. Each one has a little something different to offer. The problem I see is the same problem I see in every other online one--take a break, and you might as well expect to have to start over from scratch other than having a developed character.

[Grable]

I've sank about 80 hours into this game, so I guess I'm somewhat qualified to judge. I'll try to be objective.

Overall, I'd say the game is 5/10. Not super bad, but not really that great either. Last played a few months ago, I believe.

So here's some of my opinions that might as well be facts, or not:
- the game is still in a very rough form, controls clunky, UI clunky (what jcoles described, basically), bugs
- quite a few bugs actually, from small issues (texture issues) to random crashes
- the game is very slow paced and grindy. Even the basic actions such as gathering take a few seconds of waiting each. To gather all the materials and build something cool (like a big house) it takes quite some time.
- skills are made so that one character (usually, depending on server setting) cannot be the master of all
- from the last two points comes this: the game is only enjoyable with a good group, preferably of a decent size. Since everything takes forever to do (especially terraforming) and characters are specialized, you really do need people to achieve building a village or a town or anything beyond a shack, really.
- combat is half-arsed Mount&Blade. It's not good but at least it's not tab target or something.
- Alchemy is a nightmare, as wafflecat here already said, and it's key in production of steel, which is used in anything mid/high-tier. I did hear they did some rework there last few patches though?
- graphics are good
- patch frequency is kinda slow
- there's enough players/servers

This is what I can come up with now. Imo the game can be enjoyable with a good group of friends and your willingness to devote time and effort to it. I had fun when I played with about 7 friends and watching our village/buildings completed provided us with a good feeling of achievement.

[shubla]

- the game is very slow paced and grindy. Even the basic actions such as gathering take a few seconds of waiting each. To gather all the materials and build something cool (like a big house) it takes quite some time.

I think its good thing.
If you would get steel on first week it would get very boring very fast.

[sMartins]

I think the reason is still not possible right now (2016) to make an in depth MMO with nice graphic and everything. The reason is that resources ( money, pretty much) are limited, so if you invest in nice graphic,etc... you cannot have also in depth gameplay,etc..MMO that are alive have not huge graphic etc.. (Wurm, Eve...), the others are not MMO, but dedicated servers (MInecrfat, Ark).
To have both you need to sell a lot, and to do this you had to compromise the gameplay.
In short what i mean: more graphic is good = less the gameplay will be (untill now). It's why i cannot think LiF will be a good game...(maybe if he survive, it can become a great game in the next ten years, but not now)

[jorb]

I think the reason is still not possible right now (2016) to make an in depth MMO with nice graphic and everything.

... and yet here we are.

[sMartins]

... and yet here we are.

I didn't mean that...i love your game design and everything. Sorry .
But I guess you can understand what i meant....i'm saying is not possible to make an MMO that has a AAA graphic, animations, physic, combat, etc...and at the same time a huge map and an in depth gameplay. Cause this would involve a devs team of reasonable size that need to be payed for that work, so again, you need to sell a lot and to do that you need to compromise the gameplay in a way that mass of people would buy and play it...in short something like all those WoW clones (black desert,etc..)....where the main thing you can do is shooting fire balls at some mobs.....but unfortunatly that is what people like and would buy....market rules.

P.S. Not to mention the money you need for advertisment also.

[MagicManICT]

i'm saying is not possible to make an MMO that has a AAA graphic, animations, physic, combat, etc...and at the same time a huge map and an in depth gameplay.

Let me point you to one that is trying, but keeps getting delayed.

I'm not going to include these ones that only require DX9 still but need a sixth gen i5 with DX11 level GPU performance as AAA graphics*, so that limits the ones with AAA graphics to about a dozen or so titles, maybe fewer. Even the ones with the lesser graphics usually have huge holes in their game play. As examples for what I mean on the AAA graphics--EVE Online, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, the game I linked above (if it ever comes out...). Out of the ones that you can call AAA graphics, EVE is probably the only exception to having great game play, and that's because it's 13 years old now, and have constantly been updating game mechanics, and they debuted a new graphics engine a couple years ago.

I hope that these guys are going strong in 5 years. They have the backing to build something solid if they don't squander it. From what I'm reading they have a long road ahead of them, and they need to be careful not to piss off their potentially returning customer base. (That said, anyone here that has already tried the game... remember that all pre-release games can have a period where they're utter crap. Don't judge the final release on early performance.)


*If you're graphics engine team is so crap that you can't program shaders efficiently, or whichever graphics calculation that is grinding your game down, quit trying, please, or go back to school and learn some new techniques. I personally would rather see an efficient graphics engine I can run at full tilt on a low to mid range GPU for a lesser cost to me, the consumer, than one that I need a $200 graphics card to run at medium settings and doesn't look as a good as a AAA game that came out in 2004, which I can run full tilt on a bottom end DX12 graphics card.

[sMartins]

I haven't fully understood what you mean....btw you mentioned EVE...all right it has a nice graphics, but what i mean....it is almost only space, in that enviroment you don't need a lot of calculations for terrain, tiles, etc...it's why that game has great gameplay too...cause they can focus more on the gameplay than on the engine, etc..and cause it's 13 yo of course.
What i mean is when you try to make a game like LiF right now....i guess you need to spend a lot of resources and money on the optimization, on the engine, etc...so you need to sell a lot immediatly to finance it (compromising the gameplay, and btw LiF is still pretty bugged and run poorly)...while with a game like Eve i guess it's a bit easier (and less expensive) to make it running so they can focus on the gameplay more. They have totally different target.
I feel i cannot explain very well what i'm trying to say....i hope you can figure it out.
P.S. Idk a lot about Star citizien...but probably they are waiting better hardware cause they cannot make it run now (for mass of people i mean, and again space should be a bit easier even if totally different from Eve).

[shubla]

I haven't fully understood what you mean....btw you mentioned EVE...all right it has a nice graphics, but what i mean....it is almost only space, in that enviroment you don't need a lot of calculations for terrain, tiles, etc...it's why that game has great gameplay too...cause they can focus more on the gameplay than on the engine, etc..and cause it's 13 yo of course.

Im pretty damn sure that they spend majority of their time writing engine. It is truly fascinating how EVE works with dividing load to multiple servers and stuff. Time dilation and things.

[dageir]

EVE is superior to most games when it comes to graphics, resource harvesting, production and last but not the least a functioning market.
PvE sucks though. PvP is good I guess, but I rarely ventured into that. If Haven introduced some kind of general market mechanism accesible by all it would lift the game considerably.
It would break some immersion though.