Infinite Crisis presents Cyborg, the ideal class for ranged dps players that like to be rewarded for positioning and out thinking their foes.
Yearly Archives: 2013
Warface: CBT Impressions
By Michael Sagoe (mikedot), OnRPG Journalist
Crytek is planning to take their beloved Cryengine 3 technology to a place where many FPS titles would not even dare to tread: The realm of Free-to-Play social gaming. Warface is a modern war shooter that’s attempting to mix hardcore FPS action with Facebook-style social interaction. With a balanced focus on both co-op and competitive multiplayer modes, there should be plenty here for gamers of all styles to dig up on… or is there?
My initial thought on the game from viewing some early gameplay footage was that WarFace was going to play similar to Crysis 1, except without the nanosuit. After a good amount of playtime in the closed beta, I was only partially correct on that assumption.
First time players will have a choice between several different character models before inputting their player name.
Once selected, they’ll head off into a quick training tutorial that will get them up to speed in no time. Anyone that has ever played a modern war shooter before will know exactly what to do. However, it fails to leave out some extra details that are (sort of) unique to WarFace’s gameplay, such as the on-the-fly weapon customization option.
After completing the tutorial, I hopped right into the co-op mode, and the game asks me to pick out an item to unlock. Warface has a simple progression system where players can pick out a new weapon, new armor piece or new equipment mod to unlock in the item shop. When completing missions or multiplayer matches, players gain a small amount of EXP towards unlocking their item of course, but can switch their choice before the start of each match, just in case the player changes their mind.
I started my first mission in co-op mode as a medic, and my first objective was simple: Get from point A to point B. Of course, there were plenty of enemy soldiers in the way of each checkpoint, and all of them were pretty quick to jump on players that were eager to Rambo their way through. In Warface’s co-op, players will have to play quickly and carefully. There’s a lot of focus on team synergy and support, so playing with random people was a bit of a problem during my previous play sessions, especially with context sensitive actions that require two teammates in order to perform, such as pushing away large obstacles.
I found myself in several situations where I could not help my teammates out because of the two-man system. For instance: one time during a defense mission, some of my teammates were camping on a catwalk in the city. The enemy soldiers had them pinned down, so they were taking a hefty amount of damage. I was playing as a medic at the time and I wanted to patch my teammates up, but to get on top of the catwalk, it required players to do the two-man assist move. I positioned myself at the spot, calling other players out to help me get up there, but no one wanted to help, and so my teammates up top ended up bleeding to death.
Class composition in Warface’s co-op mode seems to be fairly important. Each team will always need to have at least one of every class type available, otherwise completing missions will be more difficult than they should be, AND your medic really needs to be quick on the draw, even more so than every other class, because dying is far too easy due to enemies having pinpoint accuracy with almost every shot.
After trying out the co-op mode, I switched over to Warface’s versus mode, to see if there was anything special going for it. From the server list, it had all the expected types of FPS game modes including Free-for-All, Team Deathmatch and Bomb Defuse, which is all well and good, but I was really looking for something special to try out. Instead, I wanted to try out Warface’s “Storm” game mode, to see if it was anything special. Sadly, however, this mode wasn’t anything special, either, as it was merely an “Attack and Defend” game mode with a fancier name.
Getting into it, playing Warface as a PvP game proved to be a frustration experience, because as a beginner, you’ll be getting your ass handed to you throughout most of the match. Since players aren’t bullet sponges, players will have to move and shoot carefully, but with the objective of capturing & defending bases and time-limits breathing down the player’s neck, it’s fairly difficult to play tactically.
In other shooters like Ghost Recon Online where players can die in one or two hits, it’s not much of an issue since maps are designed to be fairly linear, but with Warface, maps have several cover points and spots to hide away or sneak through, so mindful players can easily get the drop on newbies. Not to mention that grenades are ridiculously strong with a fairly large explosion radius. I’ve gotten taken out by so many grenades during my play sessions that I ALMOST thought I was playing a game of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warface, which was also notorious for its grenade spam in multiplayer. Simply put: new players aren’t going to be enjoying themselves too much.
One thing that surprisingly disappointed me about Warface was the game’s visuals. The anti-aliasing feature didn’t allow for specific settings (which I believe was locked at either 2x or 4x AA), the texture quality was good, but not quite as solid in comparison to Crytek’s other Cryengine 3 titles, the game’s physics were only limited to ragdoll deaths, some of the animations were a bit blocky and so on. Even though I figured the reason that Warface’s visuals barely stood up to other Cryengine 3 titles was because Crytek wanted keep the game’s download file size nice and compact, making it serviceable as a browser game. Regardless, Cryengine 3 technology is far more capable than this, and it was such a shame not being able to see the game visuals at its full potential.
After a few more play sessions, I started to take a look around for the ‘Facebook-style’ social interaction that was being promoted as part of the game. As it turns out, many social features for Warface were not available yet in the closed beta, outside of usual community features like friend lists, clans and leaderboards. Soon, however, they plan to integrate more of the upcoming G-face service into Warface such as being able to start up live streams of your play sessions for your friends, achievement feeds and even the possibility of cross device play through cloud streaming.
As it stands, Warface’s co-op gameplay seems to be the main attraction, requiring a lot of focus from teammates in order to complete missions. Co-op missions can certainly be a lot of fun, but players will need to grab some trustworthy friends before tackling them. And as for the competitive multiplayer, it’s the same old stuff we’re experienced time and time again.
Maybe once the extra social features get included, WarFace will have a lot going for it, but for now, it’s just another modern war shooter with a new coat of paint.
OnRPG MMO News Update w/Mikedot – May 27, 2013
Mikedot takes a look back at the news and articles from OnRPG last week.
Everlight: There’s An “It’s All Greek To Me” Joke Here Somewhere
By John Shadle (Sephorus), OnRPG Journalist
Everlight is a browser-based free-to-play fantasy MMO developed by Koramgame. It’s billed as allowing you to “plunge into the depth of Greek mythology as you hack and slash your way to discover your heritage”, which is an interesting premise for a game. Sadly, I learned that expectations and reality are often two separate things, as Everlight is less an interesting game and more of a horribly-veiled way to try and extract money from your bank account.
The story begins simply – or perhaps abruptly – enough. After selecting one of four classes – Warrior, Prophet, Ranger, or Mage – you learn that “an invader from the underworld has broken free from the rift of time to threaten the world”, and seeing as how you’re a descendant of the deity of War and Wisdom, it’s your task to put a stop to this nefarious plot. You’re soon on your way to pick up some basic gear before stepping into the unknown – and it’s here that the first issue with Everlight, well… comes to light. From the get-go, your quests automatically path to the next objective and will pick up key items, track down targets to fight, or find the appropriate person to talk to next. It’s normally a handy optional feature for players who are simply stuck, but considering it’s enabled from the moment you start playing (and I’ve honestly yet to find a way to turn it off), it doesn’t do much to pull people in. What’s worse, the localization is poor at best, and downright terrible at other times, with such phrases as “prophets are greatly intelligence” or “my poor kid is just a baby, but he already lost his dead…”. Things like this simply litter Everlight, which makes things just that much harder to comprehend.
Graphically, Everlight’s honestly not too shabby. The quality of the actual art – sprites, UI, etc. – is a bit variable, but mostly good overall. Truthfully, the animations – basic things like running or swinging a sword – were a bit smoother than I expected; while there’s still a slightly jagged quality about them, it’s not incredibly noticeable and a bit better than I’ve seen elsewhere, which was a nice change of pace. The art style overall is a bit hit and miss, with any possible Greek influences fairly buried in a hodge-podge of themes; things like player design and some monsters look pretty good and fairly interesting overall, while other creatures – like your starting pet, sadly – look nothing short of weird. Different strokes for different folks here, but a panda with what looks like alien eyes? A bit on the creepy side, if you ask me.
Sound and music are nothing to write home about. Basic attacks and skills feel like they connect with enough force to be painful, and the brief moments of music (I’m going to stress brief here!) do just enough to set an appropriate tone for the area you’re in. The thing is, the audio direction and quality is almost too generic – almost like things were played a bit safe here. I can understand the need to not risk having a game that sounds terrible, but it’s almost as damaging to have a game that sounds too much like other games.
Everlight has a ton of systems to play with, but they seem to cater more towards offering more things to have micro-transactions for and less towards making you more powerful (although this does happen in the process!). There’s an entire section devoted to forging and upgrading your equipment, alchemical crafting (IE: combining fragments of items to make something useful), pet and mount upgrading and training, skill improvement through usage (which, admittedly, I found kind of awesome), a reputation system to unlock special gear and improve attributes, and a star sign system which lets you intensify your connection to a constellation in order to become stronger. There are supposedly some additional systems available, but I’ve not gotten to a point where I could utilize any of them.
There are two main gripes with Everlight’s various improvement systems; the first is that there’s hardly a proper tutorial for any of them. There’s all sorts of tabs and buttons unlocked when you reach a level to use them, but the game doesn’t even do a terrible job of explaining them. In fact, Everlight kind of goes, “Look at this shiny new thing!” and runs off to leave you to tap away at things to try and piece how it works together. The second issue is that, aside from the skill improvement system (which pretty much just requires you to murder things), everything you can play with here has its own items that you need to acquire – and are all things you earn very, very slowly unless you drop some cash in the item shop; of course, do this and you’ll be able to upgrade most of your gear, pets, constellations, etc. in record time, which pretty much is the definition of ‘selling power’. What’s worse, while some achievements give you diamo (Everlight’s cash shop currency), any earned in this way can only be spent on a very minimal selection of items and only seems to serve the purpose of getting you to open the item shop up and see what you could be getting. It’s a pretty obvious and glaring cash grab from start to finish.
Overall, I found Everlight to be a thoroughly disappointing title. While it had some very minor redeeming qualities in its art and sound, the localization ranged from barely passable to utterly terrible and the cash shop is nothing short of overbearing. I’m all for the potential of browser-based gaming, and certainly don’t mind something casual for a brief moment of fun, but when it comes to Everlight, take my advice – leave yourself in the dark.
Pearl Abyss
Pearl Abyss
Skara: The Blade Remains Developer Interview
Questions By: Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Kickstarter Addict and the OnRPG/MMOHuts Forum Goers
Answers By: Pablo Rodríguez, Co-Founder of 8 Bit Studios and Creative Director on Skara
Some say the MOBA market is already over saturated. There is certainly no doubt that 2013 is the year of the MOBA. It seems like we can’t go even two days without talking about one on OnRPG these days. So you might be asking…Leliah, why are you shoving another one in our faces? I promise you Skara is like no other MOBA you have ever seen.
It has everything a traditional MOBA has but takes it all a step further. Instead of being limited to certain characters, you build your own just as though you were playing an MMORPG. A fan of player made content? They’ve got you covered there too with the ability to build your own arenas. They even abandon the traditional MOBA camera angle. This is a MOBA accessible to everyone from the hardcore MOBA lover to someone just getting their feet wet.
Skara: The Blade Remains is being created by 8 Bit Studios based in Spain. And I had the honor of interviewing the Co-Founder and Creative Director on Skara, Pablo Rodríguez. Throughout it I refer to the Kickstarter campaign which is looking to raise £150,000 in the next 36 days. I highly recommend you take a look through it before reading the interview just so you have a better idea of what we’re talking about. And with that I leave you to enjoy my interview with Pablo.
Please introduce yourself and what your role is on the production of Skara.
My name is Pablo Rodríguez and I´m the co-founder and Creative Director of Skara.
How did the idea for Skara come about?
Four years ago I was drawing a map in a sketch book I always carry with me. I had a clear idea about the ambiance of Skara, but when the map was finished, I suddenly figured out where every race came from, their weapons and combat style, the gods they adored, the stories and myths of every culture.
So, I guess the best answer is that Skara started with a drawing.
Why did you decide to go with Kickstarter instead of pitching the idea to a studio?
This is a project we wanted to develop on our own. We knew that we could recruit a great team, because of my experience as a teacher and game developer. At first we asked for some money from family and friends, rented a small office and convinced some of the best, talented workers in the Spanish videogame industry to come and work with us. All because of the amazing project we are working on.
Kickstarter was a nice option to get the remaining funds that we needed to complete the project as we wanted to involve the players in the creative process, improving Skara with their suggestions and ideas. Kickstarter gives us the chance to engage our future players and build the game with their collaboration.
On the Kickstarter it mentions that Skara will be available for PC, next gen consoles, and portable devices. Can you tell us which consoles and devices you plan on making it available for? Will players on a PC be able to play with someone playing on a console?
That is our intention, and we hope next-gen consoles will allow developers to create cross-platform games. But it is too soon to say, I have high expectations on Microsoft and the possibility to interact among PC´s and Xbox One and probably in the future interacting also with Android devices, Windows Phones or the incoming SteamBox.
How is Skara different to other MOBAs already on the market?
Well, Skara is a MOBA because our game consists on Multiplayer Online Battles in Arenas, but people have in mind titles such as DOTA or League of Legends, and Skara is completely different. Our camera placement, for example will be similar to third person games like Gears of War, but the combat system will be similar to versus fighting games. So I would not necessarily employ those kind of labels.
Do you hope to take Skara into the tournament and eSports scene? To that will there be spectator modes?
For sure. We want to focus Skara on direct competition among players, because they need a lot of skills, practice and experience to master our combat system. It´s not about spending money, raising the level of your character or owning the fanciest armors and weapons, it is about being the best warrior. It will be truly impressive, so the people watching fights on spectator mode will enjoy it a lot.
The description of Skara on Kickstarter says you hope to revolutionize the MMO/RPG/FPS scene by blending it all together. How do you bring together RPG and FPS styles and themes into a MOBA?
We love all kinds of games, and want to blend the best features that we enjoy in every genre. The fast and frenetic action of the FPS with the story and social interaction of RPGs and MMOs, and the skilled combat system of a Versus Fighting game.
Will players be able to customize their characters?
Yes, and it will be an important factor, because a player is defined by his faction, rank and success on the battlefield. As players raise their ranks inside the faction hierarchy, they gain access to new equipment, armors and clothes. They will distinguish from the rest of the warriors on every arena, causing fear and respect among their enemies.
What is the role of cities in Skara?
We have just ten cities defined in the map of Skara. The best players will obtain the opportunity to found their own realms, name cities, build arenas and defend them against the enemies’ raids. Only the best of them – the top players in every faction, will be able to add their cities to the map and become part of the history of Skara.
Will there be an in game store?
Yes, not only for player customization (clothes, weapons, armors, shields…) but also items to personalize their arenas. Players that found their own cities will be able to buy construction packs, and build castles and fortifications for their arenas.
Will there be different modes for those who are more competitive and those who are more interested in casual play?
We want to attract all sort of players. Those who are more competitive will join a faction and try to be the best in Faction Battles. Those who are not will enjoy playing just a couple of games per day, because Skara is very fun to play. And we are willing to develop some exciting offline modes such as Horde or a History Mode for every race.
You suggest players should ignore the health bar but that has been such a big part of games since, well forever…do you think people will be able to let go of that idea that death is the worst thing ever?
Well, Super Mario didn´t have a lifebar (just kidding…but it’s true) and most FPS titles don’t either. We just want to remove the non-sense-in-the-real-world things about the lifebar. The kind of “My sword is impacting that Orc´s head again and again and he doesn´t die” situation.
Finally, will players be able to get that awesome mustache David has?
This is the BEST IDEA EVER!! How did we not think about it before? Sorry we are stealing it!
I’d like to say a big thank you to Pablo for taking time to do this interview with me. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Skara Kickstarter campaign over the next month so make sure to keep coming back to OnRPG for the latest. And come back every Friday for interviews and more from current and past MMO Kickstarter campaigns.
Skara: The Blade Remains Kickstarter Intro
8 Bit Studios tells their story and their goals with creating one of the most original titles in the F2P market ever, Skara: The Blade Remains.
Skara: The Blade Remains
Skara is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), available for PC, next gen consoles and portable devices, and developed by a small team of Spanish digital artists, coders, and gamers. Skara aims to revolutionize all the MMO/RPG/FPS varieties of game already in existence. It aims to create a totally new experience by blending never before seen fps-style hand-to-hand combat into a compelling story that is at once exciting and artistic.
Features
Active Unreal Combat: Utilizing the Unreal Engine, players will have complete control over their aim and weaponry, allowing them to block and attack in incredibly unforgiving combat.
Customization and Weaponry: Rather than a traditional moba offering preset characters with set kits, you will be able to customize your characters weapon choices and race, each providing variable fighting styles and skills to one-up your foes.
Horizontal Progression: Levels will not exist, maintaining an even playing field between veteran and novice players. Only skill will differentiate you.
Offline Story Mode: In addition to a large number of modes including siege, king of the hill, horde, and faction battles, you will also be able to take part in a narrated offline mode explaining the story of your chosen race in greater detail while allowing you to hone your skills outside of the intensity of PvP combat.
Faction Warfare: The greatest players will rise to control customizable city maps that they can defend against the other factions to impact the overall flow of the world.
8 Bit Studios
8 Bit Studios
Warframe Update 8: Rise of the Warlords
The fastest growing F2P co-op action game just keeps getting better! In less than 8 weeks into Open Beta, Warframe has quickly surpassed 2 million users!
We’re keeping the momentum going with our most significant update yet — Update 8. Loaded with new content– including the highly anticipated introduction of the Clan Dojo–Update 8 lays the foundation for a whole new aspect of Warframe. If you haven’t tried Warframe yet, now’s the time. Be sure to bring your friends – there’s more reason than ever to play together…
THE DOJO: After months of wandering, you deserve a place to hang your helmet. Welcome home, Tenno. There’s strength in numbers – unite with your Clan under one roof. Build, research and train in the sanctity of your Clan’s custom Dojo.
- BUILD [Alpha]: User-created level building begins! In the first iteration of this feature, Clan members contribute resources and aid in the construction of their Clan’s Dojo. Architects have total control of the layout – selecting hallways, junctions and special rooms to build. Clan members ‘vote with their resources’, funding construction to completion. Future updates will expand these construction features and customizations.
- RESEARCH [Alpha]: Build Dojo rooms to open up technology research options providing your Clan exclusive access to an array of deadly new weapons. Clan members collect research samples and pool resources to fund advanced new weaponry projects. The results? Access to Blueprints that builds never-before-seen weaponry in the Foundry!
- DUELING [Alpha]: Build special dueling rooms in your Dojo and challenge members of your Clan to friendly 1v1 Dueling. Clan members can watch the action, set up match rules through discussion in Global chat and referee from the sidelines. Coming Soon – Dueling Leaderboards.
NEW LOCATION SETS:
- GRINEER GALLEON: At last we reveal the Grineer ships – Explore the vast, rusted space-submarine like chambers that exude the gritty bulk of the Grineer army. Beware Tenno, new vicious enemies are onboard and hell-bent on dismembering any Tenno they find.
- OROKIN VOID: Hidden within a dimensional fold are the fortresses of the Ancient Orokin race. Buy, build or loot Void Keys to open up exciting loot runs in the Ancient Orokin Towers. Stay alert Tenno: the Void is a dangerous place, fraught with traps and guarded by the corrupted remains of past raiders!
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS:
- 22 NEW WEAPONS including energy weapons, biological toxins, high-impact explosives and more!
- 9 NEW MODS including 3 mods (Sanctuary, Reach, Master Thief) designed collectively by the Warframe community through our exclusive Design Council.
- NEW WARFRAME – a trapper Warframe, the highly tactical VAUBAN uses his powers to create deadly traps that can zap, imprison and dimensionally crush enemies!
- Plus, loads of fixes based on feedback from our incredible community!


















