Fallen Earth Continued

I did make an attempt to get into this game during the free trial, but I just couldn't handle it for very long.

The controls are slippery/sloppy, and that's my biggest turning off point for MMO's. I should be able to control my character perfectly, not deal with animation frame locking me out of control. The jumping was obnoxious as well. It's cool that there was momentum in the game, it's dumb that you can't jump forward while standing still; getting stuck behind terrain until you can find a way to get enough running room to leap over it is not exciting game play.

The premise of the game seems decent. You are a fighter/crafter that goes around collecting resources and killing things to collect resources and increase your gear set. Unfortunately the game goes with the system of "no you can't". As in, "no you can't" excel in all crafting professions even if you put the time into it. "No you can't" be both a great fighter and a great crafter. It's a system of limitations and frustrations.

The idea of ability points is so outdated it hurt just thinking about leveling up. Once you place a point, it's gone for good and you're never getting it back. Supposedly players will get to do minor updates in the future, not full skill swaps just a few points here or there, and that's nice and all, but it still shouldn't be necessary. Fallen Earth would have benefited immensely from an oblivion style level up system, where the more you do something, the better you get at it. No need for levels, no need for placing points. Fallen Earth basically did it backwards. They let you skill up by doing, but then require you to level up before you can skill up more. What they should have done was let you skill up by doing, but then allow you to place points you've earned from skilling up into branching paths of advancement, that you can eventually just get everything of.

Example: So you've just spent an hour leveling your herb gathering skill from 1 to 100. You've gained 5 level points, 1 per 20 skill points that you've gained. These points can be spent increasing your gathering speed, increasing your mini map awareness of herbs, increasing your chance of getting special procs off herbs, any number of things. They could also be spent on branching paths. Putting level points into Healing Herbs means you could gather higher level healing herbs than you currently have skill points for, so if you were gathering a healing herb, you would gather as if you had +75 skill points; so 175 gathering skill instead of just 100, when harvesting that specific kind of herb. That's the kind of system Fallen Earth should have used, since so much of their game revolves around doing, but is constantly held back by the artificial "leveling" ceilings.

The world is very open, you can just walk forever, and that's interesting until you realize there's just nowhere to go. Perhaps if I was max level and was exploring with a vehicle it would be more fun.

I probably only spent a total of 10 hours playing this game. The introduction explained things well, the starter town was incredibly boring, as was the extended introduction. Fallen Earth is the kind of game that you won't get into unless you plan on getting into it. By that, I mean you cannot really enjoy it as a casual game, because you won't gain any rewards. You have to play Fallen Earth in order to enjoy it, you can't just log in and enjoy it.

Other notes: The graphics sucked even on high quality, the lighting effects were nice though. The art style was bland. The starter weapons were ludicrously boring and ineffective. Prepare to do a lot of reading and studying before even doing anything if you're worried about your characters advancement; basically you have to know the entire game before you even start playing the game. The static world is... completely static; the world doesn't feel like a post apocalyptic world with wild creatures running around or that everyone is trying their hardest to survive, it feels more like a rural desert with the big city maybe an hours drive away, and that as a player you're just Choosing not to go drive towards it and relax.