Neuromancer
Member
I find the dancing crab/turtles really funny.
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Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning |OT| An Enemy-Pounding Funfest
- Thread starter ReaperXL7
- Start date
I find the dancing crab/turtles really funny.
Hit button, watch bar, hooray, hit button, watch bar, hooray, hit button, watch bar, hang myself, hooray!
To be fair, even low level Blacksmithing helps a lot, especially since all you really need is that one drop to salvage (or more, I guess, since the material is RNG) and then you're on your way to better equipment than 95%+ of all the drops even at low levels of Blacksmithing. I kept myself at "only" Blacksmithing 4 on my Might/Finesse character and a lucky Azurite Greatsword drop has made all loot drops since pointless
Hence why I'm just dropping Blacksmithing use entirely now.Honestly, I'm not sure what to be done here besides reducing just how good the stuff that you can make is. Being given full control of the item's stats just lets you do so much.
I find the dancing crab/turtles really funny.
I like killing them for their blacksmithing components.
Neuromancer
Member
Baconsammy
Banned
I broke the game's difficulty without ever touching blacksmithing. It's all +health. Cap that shit and the problem goes away.
The Faer Gorta hates these things. Sometimes I try to unsummon him before he can get his seafood on, but for the most part these things are going extinct in my game.
Hit button, watch bar, hooray, hit button, watch bar, hooray, hit button, watch bar, hang myself, hooray!
To be fair, even low level Blacksmithing helps a lot, especially since all you really need is that one drop to salvage (or more, I guess, since the material is RNG) and then you're on your way to better equipment than 95%+ of all the drops even at low levels of Blacksmithing. I kept myself at "only" Blacksmithing 4 on my Might/Finesse character and a lucky Azurite Greatsword drop has made all loot drops since pointless
Honestly, I'm not sure what to be done here besides reducing just how good the stuff that you can make is. Being given full control of the item's stats just lets you do so much.
I only use salvaged material from drops and I never find my created items to be wildly better than random loot even though I'm 2 points from mastercraft. Maybe they should restrict crafting to salvaged items or at least decrease the quality of materials you can buy next time around.
Regarding crafting, I remember back when I played Star Ocean 3. I actually quite enjoyed the crafting system in that game and the way they set it up. I don't recall any kind of grinding being needed, but the rare materials were typically very hard to come by and some weren't accessible unless you did the optional dungeons.
This way, you could play the game like normal and not be over powered since you didn't find mats for crafting game breaking weapons/armor dropping from literally everything. But, if you did the optional content then you could craft some very nice gear, which made you quite a bit more powerful, but still didn't break the game.
That's the kind of balance Amalur needs. Crafted gear should be better than drops, but none of it should break the game. And the materials needed to make the mega weapons/armor should be very hard to come by and limited in quantity per play through so you can't just keep on pumping out mega game breaking shit.
My two sense on that anyway. The game overall just needs some massive balancing. It might be too late to change much at this point, but it's something they need to keep in mind for their next game.
I loved how the battle music would randomly start up and while I was talking to an NPC my Faer Gorta would be pounding away on an oxe or something in the background. I was just like... okay dude, do whatever you need to lol.
This way, you could play the game like normal and not be over powered since you didn't find mats for crafting game breaking weapons/armor dropping from literally everything. But, if you did the optional content then you could craft some very nice gear, which made you quite a bit more powerful, but still didn't break the game.
That's the kind of balance Amalur needs. Crafted gear should be better than drops, but none of it should break the game. And the materials needed to make the mega weapons/armor should be very hard to come by and limited in quantity per play through so you can't just keep on pumping out mega game breaking shit.
My two sense on that anyway. The game overall just needs some massive balancing. It might be too late to change much at this point, but it's something they need to keep in mind for their next game.
I loved how the battle music would randomly start up and while I was talking to an NPC my Faer Gorta would be pounding away on an oxe or something in the background. I was just like... okay dude, do whatever you need to lol.
I don't kill the crabs but I definitely kill the baby Spiders and/or Crudoks.
Fuck those things.
I kill chickens for my damage testing.
I'm kind of a terrible human being.
I don't buy their stuff either and I can make better equipment for the most part. Maybe a Unique outclasses it but the drop rate on them (or, rather, the one I'd use) is just so low that chances are I won't see one.
I wasn't even aware that purchased materials were that great. I just assumed it was Basic/Improved stuff.
Check out the Crudoks, up close if you can, those things are McFarlane if there ever was one, the 'clowny' face that splits open, ugh...
FWIW glad to see you folks understand how this works, the post earlier commenting on how something as simple as just a 'potion timer' would impact game play, not that it makes you guys happy, but you see this for what it is.
There are a ton of game 'systems' in Reckoning (and HOLY HELL you should see Copernicus, like Reckoning x15 or 20) and literally NOTHING doesn't touch multiple things if changed.
That being said, we are hard at work (as well as that team is hard at rest, getting some time to get their lives back after the ridiculous hours they poured into the game over the last year, was borderline not fair honestly) at a patch that addresses as much as we possibly can to improve the player experience.
FWIW glad to see you folks understand how this works, the post earlier commenting on how something as simple as just a 'potion timer' would impact game play, not that it makes you guys happy, but you see this for what it is.
There are a ton of game 'systems' in Reckoning (and HOLY HELL you should see Copernicus, like Reckoning x15 or 20) and literally NOTHING doesn't touch multiple things if changed.
That being said, we are hard at work (as well as that team is hard at rest, getting some time to get their lives back after the ridiculous hours they poured into the game over the last year, was borderline not fair honestly) at a patch that addresses as much as we possibly can to improve the player experience.
Hawk269
Member
For all the complaints that I put up, I really do enjoy the game thoroughly (to the point that it's going on my list of games that I'm going to have to figure every damn thing out for). I just like talking about how to fix it, I guess :x
Maybe it's the way you distributed your skill points? At that level I was already spamming elemental rage which would clear crowd and mages quickly. If you invest a lot of points in the faer gorta, you can have him drain health of monster and send it to you too,
I was using sagecrafting a lot and there are some gems you can make early on that give +30% armor and +35 armor. Just make a bunch and socket it into everything you wear : helm, gloves, boots and armor.
Neuromancer
Member
First of all Curt let me say congratulations on the success of this game and the great reviews its been getting. I'm having a great time with it, I'm on my second play through already. Your team did a fantastic job, I have almost no complaints about the game.
I would love to look at the enemies up close but it's hard unless they're dead; I would love some kind of creature viewer where you could look at 3D models of the enemies and pan and zoom and rotate around them. I know it'd be a lot of work but it would be very cool and we'd be able to appreciate the designs a lot more I bet.
You don't have to grind if you don't want but at least it acts as a good restriction to prevent abuse and also require the use of more ressources to craft stuff. It would also be a way to use money on something as I barely bought anything from stores in the game outside of lockpicks and repair kits.
EDIT : Oh and you're right about the level requirements although you can bypass it easily with items that boost these skills. Some rings for instance give a bonus to these skills. Reading a skill book gives +1 to a skill and you can drink potion to temporarily increase your skill level so it's easy to abuse anyway,
The Star Ocean way of doing it someone mentionned is good but the thing is that crafting can fail often in Star Ocean. Crafting the best materials and weapon will lead to lot of failures and lot of wasted money. It also requires investing skills points in the corresponding crafting skills or skills that increase drop rates of materials from monsters. Instead of putting point in skills to boost your magic or attack power you have to spend points in craft skills so it act as a way to balance things out.
When I fire and murder ALL of my PR, Marketing and Community team.....
And/or reloads.
Many, many reloads.
Dang, even after release? That's cold.
Neuromancer
Member
Hey is it possible to get over to the east side of the map without doing the main quest? Thanks. I'm on my second play through and really don't feel like having to go through the main quest just to get over there.
Lactose_Intolerant
Member
so Monday then?
Seems kind of fucked up to fire someone before you murder them. Cold blooded!
I'm fine with that. It makes it all the better when you manage to craft that awesome weapon. I remember failing and ending up with subpar versions of weapons, as well as checking out strategy guides to find the mats that I needed to make such and such weapon. It adds a bit more depth and fun to the crafting system when you have to take a large risk to get the mats you need, as well as the fact that you don't have a 100% chance to crank out perfect equipment every time.
I imagine typical western gamers will disagree with me, but if I'm going to make a weapon or a piece of armor that's better than anything I can get from drops or quests, then it should be damn hard to make in my opinion.
They kind of went a bit care bear this time around, but I hope in their next game they cater to both casual and hardcore gamers. You can have all of the casual content and make the game perfectly playable while still including the hardcore content as well. Optional dungeons are often a good way to do this with enemies and bosses that are created to give that extra challenge.
Probably not as there is
a siege outside after all...
1st strike said:
I agree with this completely. This is why it's easy to get overpowered here. You either need a high requirement to craft something based on ressources and levels or have it have a low % of sucess to work.
Neuromancer
Member
I figured as much, bummer.
Baconsammy
Banned
Just wanted to say that I wouldn't waste my time talking about my complaints with the game if I didn't love it.
I'm still playing it in hopes that I can 1000/1000 it, but I must be overlooking some reagent for the Collect 10 of Every Reagent achievement.
I'm still playing it in hopes that I can 1000/1000 it, but I must be overlooking some reagent for the Collect 10 of Every Reagent achievement.
Same here. If they can get their crafting sorted, fix the potion cooldown and add a new difficulty (especially one that re-scales on replay ala Borderlands HINT HINT HINT) this will be one of my favorite games of this generation. And it's been a long ass generation.
Edit - That doesn't include functionality stuff that I've already talked about (camera, hotkeys). That shit needs fixed yesterday.
While we're in wishing mode, I'd love to be able to disable EXP so I can grind to my heart's content to get all the drops without breaking the level curve.
...don't look at me like that. :|
Baconsammy
Banned
Yeah, I loved Borderlands. They got the difficulty down perfectly in that game. I much prefer the combat and visuals of Reckoning, though, and wish they could come up with something similar to Borderlands in regards to difficulty scaling.
Hawk269
Member
LMAO...You must be bursting with information that I know you would love to share with the community. Well, as I mentioned before, when you begin beta, there are alot of us here that would be willing to test things out and provide honest, yet harsh at times, but honest feedback!
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
Just bought this. Worth installing on 360?
sneakypete
Member
Definitely!
Neuromancer
Member
For PS3 folks, what's the average house -> world and world -> house load time? I recently installed an SSD in my PS3 and I've been very pleased with the load times but I'm curious if I've shaved off any significant amount of time.
For the curious, my world -> house load time is one second, and my house -> world loads are a little under 4 seconds.
For the curious, my world -> house load time is one second, and my house -> world loads are a little under 4 seconds.
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
Thanks for the responses.
TOPIC CHANGE
uh, what the fuck. I installed the game, went into the DLC menu and inputted and downloaded the online pass, now when I started the game, it crashes on the first load screen saying game data is corrupt (or something along those lines) and sends me back to the dashboard. Is this common?
TOPIC CHANGE
uh, what the fuck. I installed the game, went into the DLC menu and inputted and downloaded the online pass, now when I started the game, it crashes on the first load screen saying game data is corrupt (or something along those lines) and sends me back to the dashboard. Is this common?
Neuromancer
Member
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
Yeah, a reinstall fixed it. Weird!
Neuromancer
Member
Good to hear.
Can anyone tell me where the town of Seawatch is? It's supposed to be somewhere in the Caeled Coast but I can't find it.
Edit: never mind, found it
Can anyone tell me where the town of Seawatch is? It's supposed to be somewhere in the Caeled Coast but I can't find it.
Edit: never mind, found it
Proposed Law
Member
fixed
NoirVisage
Banned
Listen to this man, cooldowns aren't the answer. at least not across the board, i prefer NOT dying due to stagger crazy mobs stopping my potion guzzling on lower difficulty.
I must say, though I'm probably only half way through the game, its a great first start. If Copernicus can keep the same super colorful sun-shiney look (I really love the color design), it will be gorgeous. I just hope that most of the male models don't still looks like the Hulk lol.
I gotta admit that the I'm the RNG's bitch right now. Holy hell I can't find anything good and I've been using the same crap for many levels now. I don't know what people mean by making better gear through Blacksmithing. The best blade I've found has been made of Azurite and that won't make anything remotely better than the drops I've found already. I wonder if there's just a lot of hyperbole going on, because my experience is so completely different than what I'm reading here. I've died tons of times to damn everything, my gear is crappy, blacksmithing isn't helping any since I can't get any decent parts to make anything good. So frustrating. I'm level 21 (60 hours in) and I had to buy a blue sword from the store because nothing I've found anywhere was even remotely as good. <sniff, sniff>
Any idea when this patch is gonna hit the Xbox and what kind of things can we expect in the patch?
Again, Jottun suck. Ugh.
Heh, I thought the black guys looked like Idris Elba. Ha, ha!! My next character is going to be black and named Luther.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Did I really just play like seven hours of this today? Yes... yes I did.
40 hours in now at level 32. Just finished almost everything in the Plains of Erathell and made my way into Etyre... did the first area with the miners and then completed the House of Valor. I really enjoyed that arena stuff--was a lot of fun.
The only problem is that, as a pure magic user, I feel like a god with the super-damaging AE spells. Still a ton of fun to play.
40 hours in now at level 32. Just finished almost everything in the Plains of Erathell and made my way into Etyre... did the first area with the miners and then completed the House of Valor. I really enjoyed that arena stuff--was a lot of fun.
The only problem is that, as a pure magic user, I feel like a god with the super-damaging AE spells. Still a ton of fun to play.
Coercionist
Neo Member
First post on GAF, figured I should give my impressions on the game.
Just got my platinum, after 105 hours played and completing 211 quests, which I believe is all I can do, not counting the repeatable tasks. I used a full finesse build the entire game, faeblades/chakrams as weapons, and stuck only to unique and set equipment, never used crafted gear or gems.
Will start off with the things I loved:
Now for some of the issues I had with the game:
Some random musings:
All in all, I think Amalur is a great game that suffers from a broken difficulty system and repetitive dungeons aesthetics. I'll definitely be looking out for the next game 38 studios puts out.
Just got my platinum, after 105 hours played and completing 211 quests, which I believe is all I can do, not counting the repeatable tasks. I used a full finesse build the entire game, faeblades/chakrams as weapons, and stuck only to unique and set equipment, never used crafted gear or gems.
Will start off with the things I loved:
- The combat - Probably the biggest draw for me to keep playing. Loved the action game style to it, one of my biggest turn off in rpg's are systems with autoattacks. The main reason why I could never get into playing melee classes in WoW.
- Really dug the drastic changes in aesthetic as you changed zones. Going from Dalentarth to the Plains was such a shock, changing from under a leaf canopy for twenty hours or so to finally having nothing but open sky hanging over your character. I got the same feeling going from Plains to Detyre, with the change from green fields to red rock.
- The art of unique and set items. The unique weapons all look different, and most look amazing. Only using and looking at the finesse armor sets, they too had great aesthetics, especially the Wanderer and Justice sets.
- The Faction questlines were enjoyable. The storylines in most of them were interesting, and I liked that some of them actually had different rewards on the final choices you made. Would have preferred that all of them had meaningful differences depending on the path you take.
Looking at you Scholia Arcana and House of Ballads
Now for some of the issues I had with the game:
- Like others have said, the difficulty is severely undertuned. The game seems to have been balanced around doing the main questline only, as doing even some of the sidequests overlevels you for the rest of the game. If anything, the difficulty should have been based on the player doing all the sidequests, making it more of a challenge for those who want to just speed run through the game.
- Not using either the crafting or socketing systems, I can't really speak of experience, but from just looking at the stats the flawless components have, I can definitely see how it can easily break the game. At least with blacksmithing, I didn't start consistently salvaging flawless material until Klurikon. With gems though, you can starting making pristine quality extremely early.
- The dungeons - While I appreciate that each dungeon had a unique layout, there was absolutely no variation. There was only four or five tilesets for the dungeons to choose from. Got incredibly tired of seeing nothing but caves, fae burrows, and castle ruins all game. The game could have definitely used some dungeons that were based out in the open.
- The final boss was incredibly underwhelming. I saw the intent mechanically of it, but it ended up ultimately in making the boss a complete pushover.
- While I mostly paid attention to the dialogue for the main storyline and faction quests, the majority of the sidequests I found myself constantly skipping dialogue. Most of the sidequests weren't that interesting story-wise, and involved only clearing out dungeons, whether the reason being killing specific individuals or fetching items.
- The four skillslot was fine for my specific build, seeing as I was mostly using passives and sustained abilities, but it's definitely not enough for any heavy sorcery build. There should have been some other way to map additional skills, probably an action wheel.
Some random musings:
- The crit damage with basic attacks as a full finesse build gets to be incredibly obscene. Was managing crits for 4,000+ damage on normal attacks against enemies my level. Highest crit I've managed is a 10,035 backstab with faeblades.
- My favorite questline would probably be the House of Valor chain. The plot was intriguing for what it was, and I appreciated being able to choose between arena partners, all with varying personalities and combat styles.
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I was awestruck when I stepped into Bhaile. The design of that area is absolutely amazing, would have loved to see it used a little bit more.
- The potion action wheel was wholly unnecessary with health and mana potions already being mapped to the d-pad. If anything, I would have liked to see the L2 action wheel being used for skills, and letting you map two additional potions of your choosing to down and up on the d-pad.
All in all, I think Amalur is a great game that suffers from a broken difficulty system and repetitive dungeons aesthetics. I'll definitely be looking out for the next game 38 studios puts out.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Don't want to shift the topic of discussion too much off the game, but can the above poster comment on how difficult it was to get the 50 persuasions trophy having done what seems to be most (if not all) of the quests? Were there enough persuasion opportunities in the later half or after completion?
Coercionist
Neo Member
I got my persuasion trophy while I was in Adessa, but I also did the entirety of the Plains and Detyre quests beforehand. From getting to Mel Senshir to the end of the game I would say there's about an additional 20-25 persuasion options , doing all the sidequests in Klurikon and Alabastra. One thing to note is that most of the persuasion options at that point are around 66% chance of success, even with persuasion maxed out.
Nice impressions Coercionist.
My impressions are that I've never played WoW (yep), and I'm coming off a Euro-RPG kick (Risen, Arcania, Divinity II) so I'm in love. Luckily, my GF is also in love with it so we're kind of having a threesome with the TV right now.
CRITICISMS/FEEDBACK:
- Spice up the quests with more range in the dialogue. The approach of quest-givers is one-note, so every quest feels like another quest. Yes it streamlines things, but give some action or more variety to the introductions of the quest-givers. The writing has some range so back it up in approach...
- To the questing point; everything feels so orderly in dialogue and presentation... Like it's trying not to mess up. There's obvious skill behind it all, but sometimes the game feels a bit distant on a 'humanity' level. Again, more range in the dialogue and perhaps some greater reach of depravity would enliven things. Even when death and destruction presents itself; things feel fantastic in a way that can't be traced aesthetically.
My impressions are that I've never played WoW (yep), and I'm coming off a Euro-RPG kick (Risen, Arcania, Divinity II) so I'm in love. Luckily, my GF is also in love with it so we're kind of having a threesome with the TV right now.
CRITICISMS/FEEDBACK:
- Spice up the quests with more range in the dialogue. The approach of quest-givers is one-note, so every quest feels like another quest. Yes it streamlines things, but give some action or more variety to the introductions of the quest-givers. The writing has some range so back it up in approach...
- To the questing point; everything feels so orderly in dialogue and presentation... Like it's trying not to mess up. There's obvious skill behind it all, but sometimes the game feels a bit distant on a 'humanity' level. Again, more range in the dialogue and perhaps some greater reach of depravity would enliven things. Even when death and destruction presents itself; things feel fantastic in a way that can't be traced aesthetically.
If you're only getting Azurite, then you're not in the right areas yet. But, you will be soon. You'll be swimming in master and flawless raw materials, and there will be a ton of high end/top end weaponry for you to break down.
Even without perfect materials it's still very possible to break the game, though. Craft a couple sets that have + to hp/mana regen, and bolster up your phys/crit/magic damage %, and you're set.
Definitely not hyperbole. I crafted a full set of armor (still using purple drops I've found for weapons - which I have found a ton of, all very good weapons at that) and it takes 3 mages pounding me with whirlwinds/fireballs to get me to use a potion as I regen through everything else.
I'm level 39 at the moment and I'm just tearing stuff up as finesse/might. I think that once I hit 40, though, I'm going to respec to universalist (37 points in might/finesse/sorcery) for kicks.