War of the Vikings

[Tpek]

It's now on early access on Steam (also purchasable via Gamersgate).
Though it would appear that many of you, according to Steam, bought it already :P

Seems to be available in 3 different editions, the normal 20$, the automatically unlocked tier 1&2 content + bonus coins 30$, and the even more coins + exclusive helmets + DLCs for free in the future for a whooping 150$.  ???
(You do, however, get a 10% off for owning Mount&Blade or War of the Roses)


So any impressions so far?

[Tpek]

Well, LB seems to have started playing this.

Is it exactly like War of the Roses? (which honestly was pretty 'meh' all things considered) Or does it actually improve upon it?

[Nefaro]

Sounds like they started pushing the "unlock content for money" route, which doesn't entice me to check it out.

I liked the general gameplay of War of the Roses but it had some nuts & bolts issues for quite awhile and by the time they had started addressing them in earnest, much of the player base had moved on.  Including myself.  I'm not sure if they ever got WotR to where it should've been. 

I suppose that moving away from a setting containing full plate armor and lances on horseback was a way to get around some of the issues.  Although I would still be pissed if someone (or a couple people) could still just stand over you and spam Shield Bash to keep you locked down on the ground.  Shield Trolling was just one example.  Another was hacks being used in-game and having to manually report people using them to get anything done.  That's not fun at all.

[Tpek]

The rampant cheating was the reason I quit playing WotR.

[LongBlade]

I've posted some thoughts on the early access view I saw: http://grogheads.com/?p=2749

[Nefaro]

After seeing Silent Disapproval Robot's screenshots, and feeling a rather rare multi-player slasher/shooter mood, I picked up WotV. 

Since it is supposed to have some anti-cheat software, I figured "why not?".  The gameplay melee generally feels a bit better although I've only been fitted as a noob with sword & board or 2-handed axe.  The ranged weapon aiming needs to have a separate mouse sensitivity setting or something, however.  It's too fast. 

I was having problems trying to see enemy weapon swinging cues to block.  I was sometimes being hit before I saw their animation.  :(  I can't get used to using the orange directional indicators since they don't really stick out.  I'd have to focus on them specifically, which is fatal when you're doing the strafing circle dance of death.

One last criticism is regarding the maps.  I really liked the Conquest maps in War of the Roses.  The ones in WotV aren't near as open; they just funnel the teams down a hallway-like alley to each other.  Don't like that.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I am f$&king horrible at this game.  I can usually hold my own and acquit myself reasonably well in any MP game but I just get slaughtered in this.  My K/D per match usually looks something along the lines of 3 kills, 14 deaths.  I was on the fence about buying.  I love vikings but I absolutely hated War of the Roses.  I read a few forum posts and people mentioned that the combat was more balanced, more fluid, and the hit-boxes and animations were much improved over WotR so I decided to give it a whirl. 

The animations are indeed much more lifelike (it'd be hard not to be as everyone in WotR looked like a scoliosis victim with a metal rod shoved up their ass) but the hit detection still seems way off. Like Nefaro said, you sometimes seem to get hit before the animation triggers.  Or you seem to get hit even though you've sidestepped or stepped past the enemy weapon. 

I assume it's just because I'm not used to using the directional mouse attack inputs, but I find the combat too hectic and the controls very unintuitive.  I much prefer Chivalry's combat to this.  Obviously it is learnable because there were guys with 15:5 K/D ratios but I haven't been able to crack it yet.

Not a fan of the Battlefield style ranking system.  You need to level up to get money and renown to get access to better gear.  Those with the better gear slaughter the new guys.  On more than a few occasions, I've stabbed and slashed a guy 4-5 times with my sword only to have him turn around and one-shot kill me with a hand axe or whatnot.  As they don't seem to limit the ranks via a balancing match-maker, I usually end up in a server with a bunch of level 50+ guys who use my little level 8 guy as a pin-cushion.  The end result is that I end the match with almost no experience or money so I can't get any better and the cycle repeats.

I'm going to give it a few more weeks so I can hopefully improve to the point where my screen-name is no longer synonymous with "free kill here" but I'm not enjoying it very much at this stage.

It does look nice though.

[Nefaro]

Those are all great points.  The level-up system isn't kind to noobs since there is no segregation by level and, therefore, equipment quality.  It was an issue with WotR too.

I also suck.  Not the worst but, like you, I generally get murderized left and right by the more experienced players.

The death-before-swing issue may be a netcode or latency issue.  While my ping to the servers I used weren't terrible, they also weren't in the double digits when I pinged the servers.  I was showing about 140ms latency.  I'm thinking either the hosts or the netcode is a bit sluggish and the attacks aren't being advertised as quickly as they should be.  If the netcode is sluggish, it may magnify even the smallest latency differences where those near the host server with great ping are getting a large advantage even for a small superiority in their latency.

I wasn't very enamored of Chivalry's combat.  The whole thing just felt like a mod of a first-person shooter to me.  It wasn't bad, but neither was it all that sophisticated.  It also didn't help that the thing gave me a headache after playing a short time.  Fortunately this one doesn't.  :D

[Father Ted]

Love this!

Rant rant rant

It does look nice though.

For the record I also am not in favour of the "rich get richer, poor get poorer" school of game-play rewards.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The latest update means that you get experience more quickly so that you can increase in rank and have access to higher tier weapons, armour, perks, and whatnot but they haven't increased the amount of gold you receive so it is still a dreary grind.  I finally got enough gold together to create a custom class with a bargain basement round shield, a one handed-axe that seems to be made out of cheese, and a hunting bow with knotted pubic hair for a string. 

Gameplay seems a bit smoother although hit detection still seems kind of dodgy to me.  The backstabber perk combined with fast daggers is retardedly over-powered but it is immensely satisfying on the rare occasion when I do spot one sneaking up on my team-mates, trip him with an arrow to the hamstring and then cave his skull in with my cheese wedge on a stick.

I still suck horribly, but not as horribly as before.   

[Nefaro]

From what I understand, there are only a handful of weapon categories and each perform exactly the same:

As in 1h sword/axe, 2 handers, bow, wotnot.   

So aren't all swords and axes the same except for how they look?   I think that kinda sucks.  One thing I liked about WotR was the large variety of weapons and each having their own traits, even though the hit detection was squirrely on many of them.  I think they still should've kept some differing strengths & weaknesses instead of just rolling them up into a few of the same.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Mostly but they do have tiers. For example, there is a difference between the Dane axe, the bearded long axe, and the Norse battle axe.   I think they vastly reduced the variety in weapons types because balancing them all would've been a nightmare (as witnessed by the complete lack of balance in War of the Roses).

I'd like to see more variety between the weapons but I doubt it's going to happen.  I'd also like to see the shield be made a bit more useful than it currently is.  It makes no sense to me that parrying with a wooden spear or axe handle is more reliable than using a shield and that you can recover and attack more quickly after a parry with a weapon than with a weapon and shield combo.

They seem to be pushing things towards the more generic end than towards variety and history though.  I don't like the fact that they changed the class names from thane, huscarl, and hirdman to "default warrior", "default champion", and "default skirmisher".

[Nefaro]

Mostly but they do have tiers. For example, there is a difference between the Dane axe, the bearded long axe, and the Norse battle axe.   I think they vastly reduced the variety in weapons types because balancing them all would've been a nightmare (as witnessed by the complete lack of balance in War of the Roses).

That's better than I had imagined, when I first heard.   :)

I'd like to see more variety between the weapons but I doubt it's going to happen.  I'd also like to see the shield be made a bit more useful than it currently is.  It makes no sense to me that parrying with a wooden spear or axe handle is more reliable than using a shield and that you can recover and attack more quickly after a parry with a weapon than with a weapon and shield combo.

They seem to be pushing things towards the more generic end than towards variety and history though.  I don't like the fact that they changed the class names from thane, huscarl, and hirdman to "default warrior", "default champion", and "default skirmisher".

If anything, a shield block should be faster to transition into an attack than a parry.   But they should at least be the same in-game.  I thought they did a passable job with the shields in WotR, since they could become broken and ineffective.  The shield bash perma-lockdown was pretty ridiculous when a pair were exploiting it though.  Hopefully that "ability" isn't in this one.


Sucks to hear that they're dumbing down the historical references.  It's already been dumbed down enough.  Admittedly for the better in some cases but not always.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Bah!  The latest patch reset everyone back to level 10, wiped custom characters and emptied everyone's gold.  Bastards!

[Nefaro]

Bah!  The latest patch reset everyone back to level 10, wiped custom characters and emptied everyone's gold.  Bastards!

So it's officially released now?  That's what was to happen, as I understood it.