What albion did wrong- not a bash thread
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I think its important for the devs to not make the same mistakes as Albion,
I personally enjoyed the game up to a point.
However in my eyes and much of the public, the game is a failure
A few steam reviews
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Albion isn't perfect, but it's better then it's been for a while. It is most definitely NOT a failure, lmao.
Those reviews don't even scratch the surface.. in detail or time played.
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In my experience with Albion, I found it to be a fake game. It's a clever trap that separates players into two groups, deriving from asymmetrical gameplay (which is normally stuff like "one player is the monster and everybody else is the survivors".)
The richest 10% of players, who are the most willing to pay to win, are the only players that really matter. The game is designed so that all "high-level" play requires PVP and is therefore subject to pay to win, thus drawing whales as the primary desired demographic.
The other 90% of players are not actually players. They're just like the foxes and the ores - sources of materials, elements to enrich the experience for the elite.
Many PC or console MMOs have ascribed to a similar elitist model, and it has not helped the long-standing criticism against the genre.
Even without the elitist system, we still have the problem that Albion is linearly designed - all "endgame" content is necessarily open world PVP. Fractured will not have this flaw.
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@FibS Totally agree with FibS. Albion is made by whalers.
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@FibS said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
In my experience with Albion, I found it to be a fake game. It's a clever trap that separates players into two groups, deriving from asymmetrical gameplay (which is normally stuff like "one player is the monster and everybody else is the survivors".)
The richest 10% of players, who are the most willing to pay to win, are the only players that really matter. The game is designed so that all "high-level" play requires PVP and is therefore subject to pay to win, thus drawing whales as the primary desired demographic.
The other 90% of players are not actually players. They're just like the foxes and the ores - sources of materials, elements to enrich the experience for the elite.
Many PC or console MMOs have ascribed to a similar elitist model, and it has not helped the long-standing criticism against the genre.
Even without the elitist system, we still have the problem that Albion is linearly designed - all "endgame" content is necessarily open world PVP. Fractured will not have this flaw.
I'm unsure what's asymmetrical about the gameplay to you.. I'm also unsure about your monster and survivor example. The only thing I can think of is gatherer (survivor?) vs pvp oriented players (monster?).. I could possibly see how a survivor in this scenario could perceive black zone pvp as asymmetrical.. but I'd rather you explain before I go off in the wrong direction. IMO if I was close, I think the dichotomy is perfect as it is now. Risk = reward.
I might be considered in the richest 10% of players.. and I didn't pay to win. People I know who have wealth earned it, ground it out.. None of them payed to win. I don't really see how that's possible with mastery system in place. Everything requires grinding.. from PVP, to gathering, to refining and crafting. Sure you could buy a piece of 8.3 but you could just as easily die with it.. Now that gold you converted to silver is gone, didn't win jack.. Sure you could buy 7.3 but you have no mastery.. Someone with 6.1 and more mastery would have more item power and do more damage then you. So please elaborate on how albion is pay to win.
The elitist point is a thing.. No lifers grinding out pvp fame and utilizing alt accounts to maximize learning points and crafting focus.. those make up some of the elitist groups in Albion IMO. But they earned that right, they didn't pay for it.
Have you played Albion recently? There are dynamic dungeons spawning all over, roaming mob camps, elite resource mobs dynamically spawning.. You've still got arena macthes and hellgates to choose from. Endgame is what you want it to be. Sure, it is a game focused on PVP.. but the theme park is vast and totally what you choose to make of it.
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I am a former Albion Online player and I was planning to make an in-depth review of Albion at some point, but I guess I could share my thoughts here as well. Even I am going to share several points where Albion and SBI went wrong imo, I still do not think it is a complete failure. Albion has also done some things right and tried afterwards fix the mistakes made earlier. So I have to agree with @Vortech here and those small ranty reviews are not the whole truth.
I started to follow Albion Online when it was still in Alpha state. I watched a lot of videos, guides and comments from players. I was sold. Albion felt like a game, which offers so much things I love, and because of all that I decided to jump in to the beta test phase. Beta test was a long journey and I played it more or less almost 1,5 years. After launch I played about 9 months and I have revisited the game now and then to check out the new features, but always I have left pretty quickly because lack of interest. Here are some points what should been thought better in my opinion:
City of Caerleon as the central hub of the whole world
Caerleon is a city which was created just before launch at the end of true final beta (this was second final beta), so it was not tested properly before launch. It was superior when compared to other cities because it was a central hub for basically anything. You could fast travel from there everywhere, it had shortest way to best resources and it had the black market. So it was quite obvious that most of the player base would settle there and that slowly shriveled other cities. Most players in one place also caused a lot performance problems. Within time devs understood their mistake and now they have made corrective actions to the whole system. However, this came almost two years after release and lots of harm has been happened already.Bad launch and first months
Official launch was horrible. Game was basically more or less unplayable for days and those problems was seen weeks and even few months after release. Characters were rubberbanding so you cannot move, server was rolled back several times and you lost your progression X time, login queue was easily 30 minutes to 2 hours, game was crashing etc. etc. So the preparations for the launch were not done properly and there was not enough time for that.P2W or P2A or what?
Albion can be considered as P2W or at least P2Advantage. It is all about how people feels that, and there is many different opinions. I would say Albion sails somewhere in grey area with possibility to buy ingame currency with real money and with ingame currency you can buy almost everything. You can get so much help for progression with money, so it is kind of huge in game where progression is almost everything. However, you can not get everything with money and you still need to grind for that. There is also alts and islands involved the whole mess, when the game pushes people to use those and upkeep premium time on every alt separately. Albion Content creator Lewpac made a good video about Albion and P2W, it can be found from here:Everybody matters?
Yeah well, nice thought, but not actually right. This relates partly to elitist like @FibS mentioned. Many guilds (at least top) works like "peon" players gathered almost all the resources for the guild and then the elite players centralizes resources for their crafting alts (or guild shared alts) to get all the fame progression free and the best gear. Of course this is partly okay when these elites in some cases are fighting over territories for their guild, but still the system is used very wrong. So Albion's best crafters are shared alts and very rarely people who do that actually as main activity. I really hope that in Fractured individual crafters matter and the progression can not be boosted by other players.Test phases better than the final version?
Many people who played Alpha and/or Beta liked one of the test versions more than the final product, and I am actually one of those people. I really liked all betas and maybe combination of those would be the best version for me. When beta 3 started, SBI was so close a really good version, but they blow it just before finish line with Caerleon concept. There was few problems in beta 2, which I would like to point out. The world was too big and there was too rarely open world PvP encounters. Also creating few separated BlackZone continents/islands was a mistake. Now one guild or alliance could conquer the whole island and after that it was quite safe place to just gather all resources without fear to encounter any resistance. So DS should keep these in mind when creating Tartaros and Syndesia.Gold sellers
Gold sellers were at start a huge issue and they partly controlled economies and even destroyed guilds, and that way made a lot of harm to the game. People quit playing because of gold sellers and that should not happen in any case. So DS, make sure you have enough tools to work with these guys.
These are things what came up with my mind, but like I mentioned before, there is punch of good things in Albion too why I do not think it is a complete failure. I always liked the SBI as a company and their workers, they were nice and interacted a lot with community. They have also done awesome videos and news. I love the destiny board concept, gear system with tiers and enchants, "you are what you were" model, OWPvP, resource bosses and The Black Market. On top of that I kinda miss my "support bruiser" character with Demonic staff, Mercenary leather jacket, Guardian plate boots and Mage/Cleric cloth cowl…
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@Tuoni nice review, thanks
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Gold sellers is my one greatest fear for Fractured. the Beast will be plagued while the Human planet will have some also, I doubt the Tartaros will have many because of the open PvP there, however, I've seen them report players for killing their bots.
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Open world PvP does not fear gold sellers from my experience. They go there where players gather (get together). This was also the case In Albion, where the most harm happened in Caerleon, which is surrounded with open world PvP zones. Of course bots are working more in safer areas, but those are not always related for gold sellers and are another issue. And even gold sellers have bots, they can still operate in different areas at the same time.
Starting point in Fractured is also different than in Albion, because in Albion you could trade gold for ingame currency (silver). I have understood that in Fractured you can not trade DM gold and it is always personal. Moreover, if Fractured offers only account wide VIP packages with calm benefits, cosmetics and stuff like that, this will not lure gold sellers as much in Albion, where Premium package progression benefits are huge (we could say mandatory) and every character needs own package.
One good way to fight against gold sellers and their customers is monitor high currency transactions between players and investigate more closely those cases. Also creating very easy bot report system for players will help a lot to catch bots.
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@Tuoni said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
Open world PvP does not fear gold sellers from my experience. They go there where players gather (get together). This was also the case In Albion, where the most harm happened in Caerleon, which is surrounded with open world PvP zones. Of course bots are working more in safer areas, but those are not always related for gold sellers and are another issue. And even gold sellers have bots, they can still operate in different areas at the same time.
Starting point in Fractured is also different than in Albion, because in Albion you could trade gold for ingame currency (silver). I have understood that in Fractured you can not trade DM gold and it is always personal. Moreover, if Fractured offers only account wide VIP packages with calm benefits, cosmetics and stuff like that, this will not lure gold sellers as much in Albion, where Premium package progression benefits are huge (we could say mandatory) and every character needs own package.
One good way to fight against gold sellers and their customers is monitor high currency transactions between players and investigate more closely those cases. Also creating very easy bot report system for players will help a lot to catch bots.
I assure you there will be 3rd party sites to buy whatever you want. gold sellers will sell items and resources, unless we can farm cosmetics and they can be traded.
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What exactly is a gold seller, and why is it bad?
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@Roccandil a gold seller sells in game currency for real life cash, the reason people dont like it is because it artificially scews the prices of items towards items being more expensive,
And more importantly people (players) feel like gold buyers have a massive advantage, although personally I dont rly care what people spend there money on, plus everyone has equal chance to buy from said sellers.
But if these sellers are botting and using stolen cards that's when it becomes a problem
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All I am gonna say is Albion is not Failure in any way, it is a game of its kind. It got everything, almost, building, crafting, market( my favorite), dungeon but It lacks content for the solo player and its always risky being a solo, so my only complaint is almost no content for solo player but if you are in guild or love PVP this is the best game, with simple interface. but I am much of a solo player and also I got bored with the game so here I am.
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@Xzoviac good point their fellow Fractured, The point made my these comments you cropped pretty much summarizes the bad aspect of the Albion online, the bottom line is developer need to balance the game with the PVP an PVE content. for e.g. when I am with my guild I do BZ and Mindless ganking and all but by myself I am pretty much stuck enjoy a little bit of crafting and selling stuff in the market besides I don't have anything to do, cause every time I go In BZ or Red Zone, I have 5-6 noobs chasing me and there is no way you can fight them. there are tricks what to wear and what to carry for ganking and escaping but being in constant fear of being ganked is a thrill but not fun all the time.
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@Roccandil said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
What exactly is a gold seller, and why is it bad?
Like already mentioned, gold sellers sell ingame currency or items for real money. The main problem is, that you can not sell something what is not your property, it is illegal. Moreover, gold sellers get their wealth in and out of the game somehow scamming.
In Albion gold sellers manage to destroy guild(s) when they bought city plots (crafting stations) from players in time of auction. Players did not have enough money to compete with gold sellers' large amount of wealth. They can also easily control economies if they want.
If in Fractured, in game currency can be used to buy advantage over towns for example, then there is a chance that gold sellers can have negative influence to world progression.
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@Jetah said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
I assure you there will be 3rd party sites to buy whatever you want.
You do not need to assure me, I know this and I agree with you.
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as 6 years player of albion, i can tell that this the worst game i played, and i still play just because there is no other game like it, up to fractured....
let me list it:-
grind, never ending stupid grind that have no fun in it.
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no skill, the best item win, very few builds that are known and all use.
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PVP connection to reword, it doesn't matter if you manage to kill a t8 boss, or manage to do something good, all the items are connected to PVP and all PVE are just places that force you to meet other players and fight them. players that do not like to PVP and like crafting or gathering or PVE can't go to the top item places since it has 100% death. the developers like to say higher risk = higher reward, but its just bad gameplay.
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and the most impotent for me you can't play the game solo, even if you find a dungeon that is solo, you will not get from it the same rewards as in 5 players team, for the same amount of time invest.
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this one should be the most impotent one, the developers are BAD, they use favertisem, and listing to a few player that usually the most P2W players, they called it "the round table", they ban without reasons, if you criticize them, they lie, and do not tell the full truth.
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@grofire said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
as 6 years player of albion, i can tell that this the worst game i played, and i still play just because there is no other game like it, up to fractured....
let me list it:-
grind, never ending stupid grind that have no fun in it.
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no skill, the best item win, very few builds that are known and all use.
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PVP connection to reword, it doesn't matter if you manage to kill a t8 boss, or manage to do something good, all the items are connected to PVP and all PVE are just places that force you to meet other players and fight them. players that do not like to PVP and like crafting or gathering or PVE can't go to the top item places since it has 100% death. the developers like to say higher risk = higher reward, but its just bad gameplay.
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and the most impotent for me you can't play the game solo, even if you find a dungeon that is solo, you will not get from it the same rewards as in 5 players team, for the same amount of time invest.
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this one should be the most impotent one, the developers are BAD, they use favertisem, and listing to a few player that usually the most P2W players, they called it "the round table", they ban without reasons, if you criticize them, they lie, and do not tell the full truth.
Hmmmm... Worst game you have played and you are still playing after 6 years..
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True. Albion is a very grindy game and even I have background from game such Runescape, still AO has too much focus on grind and vertical progression to my taste. Maybe one reason for this is, that I do not have the same amount of time to use for games, what I did 10 to15 years ago.
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I would not say that gear is only what matters. I agree that gear has a big role, but I would say there is still room for skill and especially skill to play well together. I do not have much knowledge of happenings past year, but imo there has been quite good amount of different possibilities what it comes to builds. We have to remember that there is builds for different situations (GvG, HellGates, OwPvP, PvE, solo, gathering). When we are talking about 5v5 meta and GvGs, there is usually few options at the top level, but still gear pieces are quite often tweaked or modified so the meta will change at some point, and new weapons and armors are getting to better positions. If we speak generally what average people wear, there has always been different variations, flavors and mixes. Balance, is something what every game struggles with.
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Yes, PvE content is very limited in Albion and in most cases it is only there to cause more open world PvP encounters. Of course you can do (PvE) instanced dungeons, mob camps and open world dungeons in safe zones, but then the world is very limited and content gets boring really fast. However, this is not only a design mistake, it is more like awere choise. The core is in PvP and that is Albion's game philosophy. This is what DS wants to avoid in Fractured and it seams they have found a solution to put all different type of players in the same world.
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This is pretty much the truth. Very few can play Albion as a solo player and the content is very limited.
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This sounds a little bit exaggeration... I have been part of that table once back in beta and imho back then the behaviour was really proper so it is kind of hard to believe it has changed so radically. However, I do not have any acknowledge of current situation so it is hard to argue.
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@Tuoni I think the biggest issue most can agree on is the inability to solo, not everyone wants to be in a big guild or has lots of friends who play the same game as them, and these kind of players need protection from mass gank squads,
making it so groups have only small numbers to join, or when huge groups of players group up crazy world bosses spawn that dont drop a lot and harass the gank squad
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@DevilsDog said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:
@Xzoviac good point their fellow Fractured, The point made my these comments you cropped pretty much summarizes the bad aspect of the Albion online, the bottom line is developer need to balance the game with the PVP an PVE content. for e.g. when I am with my guild I do BZ and Mindless ganking and all but by myself I am pretty much stuck enjoy a little bit of crafting and selling stuff in the market besides I don't have anything to do, cause every time I go In BZ or Red Zone, I have 5-6 noobs chasing me and there is no way you can fight them.
I agree, that Albion should have more content for solos and for PvE centric people to get more longterm players.
there are tricks what to wear and what to carry for ganking and escaping but being in constant fear of being ganked is a thrill but not fun all the time.
I agree with you, that the thrill is nice, but it is not something what all players want to experience 100% of the time they are playing. I have three different examples related for this point. When I played as solo, when in casual competitive guild and when in hardcore guild.
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When I played as a solo, there was not much things to do beside gathering, crafting, trading, building island, run some low level dungeons, mob camps and of course die a lot. And because you needed to be totally self sufficient the deaths really hurt.
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In competitive casual guild we played in all kind of zones and we had a territory too in Outlands. Even we were mostly self sufficient, it did not matter that much, because you had the support of guild members. It was fun to do every kind of open world activities in small groups with guildies.
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When I played in hardcore guild and we had several territories in Black Zones, everything was shared, everything you gathered went to the guild, but you also got almost all gear you needed for free. With this kind of system there was less thrill and I remember how I did not care of my equipment at all and I could challenge everybody who crossed with me without any doubts. If I died, I just took another set and I was back in business. It was kind of easy, but I started to hate that system, because I wanted to do refining and crafting too, but there was no possibility for that or at least no point when I could not compete with all those shared alts.
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