Despite my lack of blog posts about Allods lately, and the extreme amount of negativity and cynicism surrounding the game from just about everyone under the sun, I’m still playing. In fact, I’m playing the game a lot. I’m now over halfway through level 24 and working through the first few waves of quests in Asee-Teph. For those who do not know, Asee-Teph is the first PvP zone in the game. For a few days before I arrived in the zone I was hearing a lot of grumbling about how uneven the sides were and how badly we were getting stomped.  Not quite the same experience I’m having.
The first night in Asee-Teph our guild formed a group and began questing together. We encountered a significant amount of PvP and quickly started to grow our group into two groups (still of all guild members) and rolled across a great deal of the zone. We ended up completing only a handful of quests but annihilated dozens of Empire. Quite the opposite experience of that being experienced just a few days prior. Perhaps most of the higher levels moved on?
This morning and afternoon was spent running dozens of quests all over the zone yet still only scratching the tip of the enormous iceberg that is Asee-Teph. Again, lots of PvP and fun. We formed a small 3-man group and moved around the zone with little trouble. Occasionally we formed into a bigger group to tackle larger Empire gatherings and had higher levels show up to annihilate us (like a level 32 Summoner plaguing the entire raid) but it was all fun.
How does the flagging system play into the enjoyment of PvP?
Let’s just say that 8/10 people I come across are flagged and 1 of them will usually flag to attack while the other runs away thinking they’re vulnerable. In Asee-teph it’s rather difficult to not flag yourself when simply questing. Many of the mobs will flag you because they’re empire mobs. Later on the factions you attack will not necessarily flag you though, so if people want to run around unflagged then they’ll probably be safe from PvP.  Asee-Teph is still quite a PvP hotspot and a lot of fun though.
We’ve still heard nothing from gPotato. The lack of communication has the townsfolk grabbing their torches. The locals are getting restless and that’s never a good thing.
Damn, I felt good that I was level 8 😛 But I’m taking it easy.
I am still have some PTSD from the first dew days in AT…so much death..so much…raging..
The lack of communication from GPot is pretty sad really. Their PR and community management is terrible.
I’ve paused playing Allods for the moment, even though I quite like it.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled Allods around 3 times now lol, I cannot make my decision to play or not to play. I want to play, the game is amazing, but i’m scared of pouring hours into the game to end up quitting because of the heinous CS and FoD system.
Sigh…
I made an alt on your server, and listened in on vent for a few hours. I felt like I was behind the leveling curve of the guild, and went back to my Empire guy on the other server.
I am not sure how you guys are leveling so fast. I am having huge amounts of downtime, and death at level 11 now. I must be missing something.
What the hell is the point of making a “PVP zone” iF you have to freaking consensually flag just to even PVP in it?
Freaking carebear WoW clone.
It is interesting to note just how much content we are able to get through without paying a cent. It seems that they will have to generate most of their income from endgame charges, which seems to be a flaw as endgame players often rapidly tire and leave without inclusion of new content; yet another flaw in a model that tries to over-charge the “hardcore” players.
Not sensible from a NA mindset to give away 80% of your product and then price the endgame usage non-competitively, unless you are selling heroin…
Do you get experience points from PvP kills?
On an unrelated note… I tried to main heal the Xaes instance the other night. What a complete mess. I could chain heal til my fingers bled and still not keep anyone alive. Even on trash! We died over and over, sometimes on the same pull, until we got to the first miniboss (I forget his name). At which point it became utterly clear that we weren’t ever going to beat him. Did I mention the health bars are also usually out of sync (target vs group for example)? It’s such a pretty game and I like the quest design. I hope this gets better.
Thanks for the update Keen.. I agree though, the non communication from GP leads me to believe that the original devs are still gone and they are trying to figure things out. Beta’s get updated almost constantly these days, and not one thing has changed. I think were gonna be screwed I think. Any other thoughts on this?
The fact that the CS pricing is still the same speaks volumes.
Stick a fork in this one guys, it’s done.
@Grant
Yes, those were my thoughts as well. Healing is far too unreliable. I came out of the Citadel completely discouraged. I love playing healing classes, but in Allods there is far too much luck involved. There are times it takes me 10 heals to get someone to full health following battle. That’s just wrong. I’ve dropped the game for now and am playing LOTRO. Unless things improve I will not be back.
@Werit: No. You only get glory which earns you ranks. Once those ranks are achieved you can buy some goodies.
@Grant/Akarin: Healing becomes more reliable later when your stats are much, much better.
Nice, Would be fun with a guild for those kind of open PVP zones.
I know it’s deadend. and I’ve moved on to LOTRO, but I still log on and play my Summoner now and then.
Warden has gotten crappy and can’t solo.
Still waiting to see the changes from GreedyPotato or AN.
Some news would be nice, I’m hoping for some sort of announcement today since it’s the start of a new week. That being said tommorow is the 2 week anniversary of OB’s start and about a week and a half since the CS opened. I think if they don’t announce some kind of information, or a plan for the future of the game soon things will get worse.
Well guys, it looks like Allods failed. And they want to let it die. Just take a look into the Forums. In EU or germany. The forums are nearly dead. Then take a look into the Aika forums. See where it will go, and why?
Lets say it like in a game:
Too bad, its me Blacksmith
I ran out of steam for the game at level 8, a bugged quest and massive over population just made it pretty crap to play. I like the game, but while I was playing I couldn’t help but think of my WoW account sitting there, and for some reason whenever PvP was mentioned I remembered WAR fondly :O
I agree that the area between lvl 8-10 is pretty harsh. Alot of the quests are very frustrating.
It seems to get alot better after that though. The bears and bees quests by the frontlines in silveria was very painful. Once I moved on from that though, its been smooth sailing. Im still waiting on an antler to drop(last piece for my bag) but im almost 14 ( brawler) and im going very strong.
That said, I feel my time in allods is limited. Im too excited about too many things in the future. Im entertained now, but I dont think allods will survive my first distraction.
The fact that a single level 32 Summoner can plague a whole raid of people is part of why I’ll never enjoy PvP in a game with a wide power differential. Some like it, but to me, that’s just annoying.
@Akarin: I didn’t even think about going into Xaes until my healer was level 12 and had the third rank in divine healing or whatever they call it now =/ I was afraid my heals would be weak and I’d get booed out of the party lol The mini-bosses are tough, though once our warrior equipped a sword and board instead of a two-hander, things went smoothly.
Regarding the post, he’s right. Asee-Teph and pvp in general is a LOT of fun if you’re in a group. In CB, I liked that the open world pvp encouraged grouping and I’m actually looking forward to getting to Asee-Teph and questing with my guildies.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to have “flag to pvp, but you can get flagged by doing PVE.” Especially if you need to level in the game.
I rag on EVE a lot, but security space is a good mechanic because its all PvP with little to no restriction, and you know that when you opt in. You also aren’t really forced to go there.
I wonder what the community’s thoughts in general are on the PvP mechanic. If people come try it from WoW I’m not sure they’d like suddenly finding out you have rolled on a semi-pvp server to say.
PvP will be fine when everyone is 40. There really should be a mechanic to punish high levels that “grief” lower level areas. And for god sakes the NPCs should be more durable.
Keen they answered a post I had about Cash Shop prices with a link to the post they made today around 3PM. The post says they are going to implement new cash shop prices this week. Now we get to see if they have a clue…
Hey, Keen, a question about PvP: I read something on another forum about an item called a “Banner of War” that allows you to attack non-flagged enemy players? This so? They seemed to be implying that not only did such an item exist, but that it was a plentiful enough drop that you could basically attack non-flagged players at will. Sounded a bit odd to me so I thought I’d check if this was an exaggeration.
Yes, that item is in the game and it is a common drop. If you kill mobs enough you’ll get at least one per day.
“Healing is far too unreliable… There are times it takes me 10 heals to get someone to full health following battle.”
This is something that most people don’t realize about Healers within Allods. For the most part, many people in the game are grateful for your heals but occasionally you’ll get the rare idiot (like I had in a rep raid group the other day) who just doesn’t understand the mechanics of the class and will thus call you “useless”.
Here’s a simple test as a healer. Find someone who is dmg’d till they are almost dead, yet their health bar is still green. Heal them. When you do, you’ll notice their health will shoot up with each heal. Now find someone else who has the same low health but their health bar is red. Now try to heal them. You’ll notice that your heals maybe only heal them 5 to 10% of their health, instead of the normal 25 to 30% when their health bar is green.
What you’re encountering is wound complexity (the blood drop icons on your target’s health bar). While it can be a frustrating aspect for Healers to deal with, I think it is still a great addition to the game compared to other MMOs because it can prevent enemy Healers from quickly recovering their wounded comrades and thus it’s easier to take them down.
From your perspective, actually from any players perspective, you want to ensure that your wound complexity is at the very least removed before you engage in combat again. If you don’t, it will be extremely difficult to heal yourself or someone to heal you. For example, I see warriors who have only lost 10% of their health and rush to engage the next target thinking that they are fine. What they don’t realize is that they are making it at least three times harder for a healer to heal them this way, especially if they take a lot of sudden dmg.
For example, this rude person in the rep raid came running at me with like 10% health, expecting me to suddenly pull them out of the frying pan. I’m a 25th lvl healer (without League Army gear at the time) and she was 26th lvl. The creature attacking her was a 29th lvl enemy pet. Simple put, this is a no win situation due to the compounding factors involved. The only way I could have saved her myself was if I was maybe a 27th lvl Healer (two levels higher than what I was). In reality, everyone should have been helping / CCing the mob but they didn’t. So in the end, she complained to me and called me useless for not saving her.
To follow up, I later told the rep raid to ensure they get full healed before engaging / pushing / over extending themselves. People called me a “wuss”. Not 30 seconds later, half the group called killed by an enemy group showing up and hitting them. Again, people think with numbers they are invincible which is when they start getting slopping, over extending themselves / splitting up to take on two mobs at a time and, voila, that’s when the enemy takes advantage of your situation and strikes fast and hard.
Akarin: Forgot to mention, the stat that lets you heal through massive wound complexity (i.e. red health bar with lots of blood drops on it) is Faith but you need a lot of it to do so. Even your Perception (which I didn’t even realize until the last part of the Closed Beta) is also factored in with regards to heals as well. So ensure it is up there as well.
Here’s a good Healer guide:
http://novogradtimes.com/2009/12/11/class-guide-priest/
It says Perception doesn’t affect heals, contrary to what Nollind is saying, but I don’t know who’s right.
What is worse now that the game is a year old, you have very little pop in Holy Lands and 90% of the quests are tied to taking PVP abjectives… and you can not solo them.
So you have levels 23-30 that you just can not do… that is completely ignorant of a game company to do…
I had a blast trying to figure this game out and leveling to 24… its not fun trying to solo 3 summoners and dying every time and having a 2 min rezz timer… whoever is pretending to run this game needs to get a clue and change things.