Posted on March 16, 2012, in Episodes and tagged anime, entertainment, episode 17, video. Bookmark the permalink. 31 Comments.
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Posted on March 16, 2012, in Episodes and tagged anime, entertainment, episode 17, video. Bookmark the permalink. 31 Comments.
MMO Grinder 
How did you get past the DRM? It crashes on me every time I try to start the game.
I didn’t have an issue beyond it killing Skype for me every chance it got. Although you said you had the game on your system for a really long time, and you might need to wipe and re-install it to get it to work properly.
I finally got it to work.
So there’s MapleStory, LaTale, SoulSaver (fka Ghost Online), WindSlayer, WonderKing, & GrandChase. Am I missing any?
Oh, they released “season 2” & now have 1200 x 750 & 1200 x 800 resolutions, & if you dig around in options long enough, you’ll eventually find another way to switch from fullscreen to windowed.
Translations are even worse than Trickster’s. During events, half the font is in korean wingdings. The grammar is baffling at times.
I swear I’ve seen people doing PvP matches in town.
please don’t ever Do DC Universe online. to the people that want that review fine ,it’s boring, slow and is your choose hero you fight gorilla’s for the first 5 levels and it so annoying because THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME and what makes it so bad is how much detail you have into dressing your character.
leveling is slow powers are fun but get old too fast. if you really want to know try it yourself on your ps3 or PC because you’ll probably delete it or never play it again. Diablo II is more enjoyable solo.
………..fucken flash didn’t help either.
Brings to mind Angry Joe’s review of it.
As a person who plays maplestory I have to say that most of the comparisons besides the community and the cash shop is either outdated or wrong.
The character creation selection in maplestory does have more options since you last reviewed it though there are still only a hand few hair styles from the character creation that I see people actually using. Though this isn’t really a selling point for the game because the ingame helmets usually cover a large portion of the head making the hair stick out in certain front places or they are non existant. So pretty much the only option for those who care about how the hair looks in the game would need to purchase cash shop items so I guess La tale wins here.
Control wise/frame animation wise I would say maplestory’s and Wonderkings simplistic design is pretty much the only way to go for 2D MMOs. Whenever I tried to play La tale it felt like I am not controlling a character but rather a tank that took 2-4 seconds to respond. This might be because I was using skype back in the day though it didn’t crash the client as you said it would.
I assumed this delay problem was caused by other problems such as the game supposedly being more server based rather then client based. This would mean that whenever I pushed a button I would have to wait for the server to respond before my client does anything. Client based to server based works in a different way in a sense that you can perform a action immediately and then the server picks it up and processes it. Both of them have their flaws though this delay made me assume I was playing the worse offender to “server to client” based connection system in a MMO. I also heard people blaming this delay on the fact that there was just one server for everyone to play on and that the server couldn’t handle all the input requests which was also understandable. Whatever caused this delay has pretty much killed the game for me as it became unplayble whenever performing simple tasks such as moving, jumping, and attacking which would all take 2-4 seconds to perform. In maplestory or wonderking on the otherhand I can perform any commands instantly without any problems at all. I didn’t make this up, this was all forum speculation when I started playing the game 2 or so years ago. I guess I can’t make a fair argument due to my bias of this game being sluggish so I guess I will end the argument in terms of controls here and continue on with other nitpicks.
There is a keyboard button layout for maplestory that will allow you to change set skills and other commands to whatever keys for maplestory by simply pressing the “\” button. The only things that are locked into place is that the movement arrows are the only thing locked down. Everything else is changeable so long as you remember what key does what.
Whenever kill stealing occurs in maplestory, the exp is shared depending on how much damage you deal to it. If you deal half a enemies health in damage and another person came up to it and dealt damage to it as well the exp would be split by health percentages. Everything else you described is true about items and quest info as the person who dealt the most damage gets the item as well as the points going into the quests.
World travel in maplestory has improved with a airplane mount option which is available at every port. This option allows you to buy a 7day mount with ingame cash *not nx cash* which allows you to go straight to the 4-8 minute waiting screen for another relatively cheap cost on top of that. I don’t really see why the 4-8 minute waiting screen is a problem as many other MMOs do it as well such as FFXI and Everquest. I would say that this travel time gave the game a sense of atmosphere in a sense that it takes X amount of game time to get to said area via vehicle. I will admit that this type of travel is more atmospheric in 3D MMOs where you can at least fool around in the boat by looking at random islands, fishing, and fighting ocean creatures that jump onto the boat. While in a 2D mmo it is more restricted because the only thing you can do is talk to the other people or stare at a repeating background. Maybe if they polished up the airship’s backgrounds to replicate what travel would be like along the way it might not be as bad of a offender but even then if you get bored of it you can always do other stuff such as check emails and other blogs as a mini break inbetween grinding. That plane ride in La tale really had no atmosphere to it besides you entering a plane and waiting for it to take off in which it then suddenly teleported you to said area. I guess that is much more atmospheric then say talking to a NPC that would magically teleport you to another area with no clear explanation as to how he did it but I would kinda like the option to at least have a bit of a waiting time so I can be forced to take a break away from the game to do other things.
Though this is the most subjective subject as some people would prefer finishing a juicy hamburger and then the fries. While I like to take a break from the juicy hamburger to have some fries and then continue on with said hamburger.
Graphics and sound are really objective in terms that I can’t make a compelling argument for either of them though I will admit the really old designed areas in maplestory look no where as good as the newer areas in maplestory. The only 2D mmo alternative I like is wonderking which is pretty much a exact maplestory clone, however it has much better quest rewards that level up the character so you hardly have to grind and the voice acting makes it stand out. (I can’t remember anything else of this 2D mmo besides the quick travel is a NPC who teleports you to the area you are looking for instantly) I have yet to try windslayer which is another 2D mmo though I think I will stick to trying out wonder king again.
I love how completely sincere you look when you’re trying to laugh correctly.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I agree with you for pretty much everything here; I’ve just been around since the game first started. In fact, I only even saw this review because it was posted on the game’s forums (we like hearing about ourselves) which reminded me of how little OGPlanet advertises their version of LaTale. After watching this review, I went through a few others, and again, I agree with you on most points.
The crowding DOES become an issue at some points though. When the game was originally released and for the first couple months following, there was essentially no content for anyone above 10x, so everyone encroaching upon the 8x+ range was forced to grind in the same, non-instanced area. Since the game’s OGP release, there have been weekend events offering extra experience and item drop rate twice a day for saturday and sunday; it was during these times if you didn’t have a party in a channel with a set of mobs on one of the three viable maps, you were screwed. More recently however, with major releases such as the Third Job/Second Class Upgrade and Sub-Jobs, the new content was swarmed with people, as well. Though some of this was alleviated by instancing, many of the quests did not offer this. In particular, to get a Sub-Job, you have to complete a quest line that requires completing over 200 quests, two thirds of which are repeats of slaughtering the same kinds of enemies for raw kill count (x3), a quest specific drop (x3), a second uncommon quest specific drop(x3), and then all three(x3), with very little chance of carryover. Now, when you’ve had users like myself that were waiting for that content for nearly a year… it was almost impossible for anyone to complete it quickly; if I recall correctly, it took the first person to complete it over two days of near continuous play to achieve it.
But this is what I was talking about for the complexities of addressing mid/late game content as with each new release, new problems arise, though rarely they come from the community, situations like that still occur.
Regardless, we were all really excited to see the game receive some attention! I didn’t intend to sound critical or negative and I apologize if I came off that way.
Thanks again
Off the top of my head, he’s incorrect about a few details here:
-Trajectories for jumping are determined whether you’re standing still, walking, or running, but also by your movement speed, a stat that can be modified with items or buffs. There is also the ability to Jump-Attack-Skill (JAS) midair for every class to change trajectory midair. Most classes can do this from the very beginning, except mages.
-Use of the SPACE key; most players turn SPACE into their “jump” key to avoid his issue of accidentally wasting a skill and most people that actually like the game acquire Pets that will auto-loot for you, thus negating the V awkwardness.
-Armor; though he mentioned he didn’t get to higher levels (Despite the fact that achieving level 80 takes about a week of casual play nowadays) there IS class specfic armor that offers currently the best advantages in the game’s PvP
-Upgrading/Enchanting/Delevelling/Reoptioning; these features are never explicitly explained by an in-game guide, but there are many community guides to optimize their usage. That being said, a lot of the confusing points of the game (especially those due to bad translations) are covered by community advice on the forums or the ggftw wiki/forums for LaTale
-Quest Tracker EXISTS in the form of an Arrow button next to the quest’s name in your quest log, and it will send over a list of the objectives you have to complete to the right side of the screen (default); the only issue with this comes in that you can only track 5 quests at a time and some objectives are too long to fit on the sidebar.
-Hidden Quests are extremely rare and aside from the title ones mentioned, most of them involve finding a certain point on a certain map. These are typically the worst translated quests and almost always require community support to figure out
-Dot Nuri is intended to be an EXTREMELY difficult of a super mario bros. style platformer. Completing each of the 7 stages 20 times nets you very real permanent stat boosts that actually impact the character; very few people have done them all, though.
-Warp Capsules/Jienda Tokens/Town Stones; Warp Capsules, Iris Stones, and Jienda Tokens are alternatives to the Astro ($$Cash Shop) item, the Warp Crystal, that has infinite uses, but must be recharged each month with an item that also costs real money. Pets and Warp Crystals are considered to be the only cash shop items considered vital for efficient play while the rest just grant nice little perks. However, to use the warp crystal, you have to actually have visited a town’s stone and activated at least once.
-Death Penalty of 3% of your current level’s experience and 2% of your current gold is avoidable by carrying “Iron Wills” on your character at all times. They cost 50k ely each, so it’s a matter of cost/benefit analysis on whether or not you want to utilize them. Leaving most of your ely in the bank is the usual solution, as most towns have banks in them if you need to make a withdrawal. In late game, that 3% experience penalty results in several dozen BILLION experience lost; note that there are very few enemies in the game worth even a few million experience without using boosters.
-The plane; There are only three instances of this in the ENTIRE game and it’s just intended to be whimsical, not annoying. So to put that in perspective, there are at least a thousand individual maps and only six of them are connected by pseudo-load screens.
-Parties/Instances; You can have up to 8 people in a party currently, but this is only used for specific late game play. As for forming parties for lower level instances, the typical method has always been to just hang around the general area of the instance (which typically has OKAY experience or quests anyway) until you get a confident enough party. That being said, there ISN’T really any early game instances until about 25, at which point grinding is typically the objective, not farming.
– Regarding the incident where the person bought his items and gave them back because they were too cheap: there’s a lot of people that do this because listing items from a booth does not including commas as spaceholders, so misspricing occurs frequently. The particular person involved here, Kairen12, is known to do this quite often and is generally one of the more helpful people in the community.
As for the issues with the music/sound theme not necessarily fitting the action; this was addressed in a lot of the newer content for higher levels starting around 120. There is significantly better music for a lot of the new maps.
As for the the graphical issues, I’m pretty sure that’s just his rig: I could play the game essentially flawlessly on a ~1.7 GHz dual core 2 MB ddr2 five year old laptop with no problem until I eventually replaced it. HOWEVER, there are many issues in this game caused by user-end latency and ping, one of which being landing on the edge of cliffs sometimes shows that you’ve fallen off when you haven’t, which happens because your client tracked your trajectory differently than the server.
And my biggest qualm with this review was constantly mentioning how “barren” the server is. Yes, the community is significantly smaller than Maple’s, but Maple is also advertised exponentially more. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing a single ad for LaTale myself, just a promotion from OGPlanet. Regardless, there are still thousands dedicated users and at any given time several hundred on; some connecting from Europe or SEA despite their latency issues. Channel 1 is typically where most new users stick to, and it is also where the majority of people set up shops, look for parties, or wait around for events. Even then, there are only a few maps in the game where you’re likely to see a large crowd of people, and those tend to revolve around either grinding opportunities, shopping, or GM/GA events.
Overall, though, I find this to be a fair review. Addressing the late-game content would be somewhat tricky as the game has been going many significant and fun updates to ADD/TRANSLATE said content to the game.
Too long, didn’t read.
Wait that’s a lie. I read about half of it, and want to respond to parts.
1) A quest tracker is when the quests are posted on the screen, easily visible as you explore the world. If you need to pull it up in a menu, it’s not a quest tracker, at least in the traditional sense.
2) I think his discussion of the plane was more of a joke and a Take That! to Maple Story, with their 15 minute trips to Island X, as opposed to a quick and efficient travel time. No one enjoys long trips, even on WoW. (That one is more excusable if only because you are physically travelling through the world.)
1) It is on the screen, easily visible, you just have to tell it WHICH quests to track. It can only show 5 quests worth of objectives, but you can take up to 15 quests at once. However, there’s no in-game tutorial that tells you about the feature, and I’m sure many people don’t use it. Regardless, checking quest objectives is as simple as pressing Q then clicking the quest you want to check out. The tracker itself is turned on by pressing Q then clicking the arrow next to the quest name and then it shows the objectives on the right side of the screen until the quest is turned in or you click the arrow again.
2) Yeah, I know, especially how he ended the criticism by how short the trip was; I was essentially elaborating on the details of that particular issue.
I did read. And I have a tendency to leave comments that are entirely too long myself… Makes me wonder why it’s so hard to write scripts. I’ll explain myself where I need to here.
-A lot of details I touch upon briefly simply for the sake of time. I started to notice this one began to run pretty long (It’s currently my second longest episode.) so there were parts I cut out. I originally wanted to touch upon just how confusing the upgrading/enchant system especially the pet leveling system. Sometimes I feel “Ya know, the players should discover a FEW things on their own”.. and make my cuts accordingly.
-Which bring me to the second point. I don’t go into endgame because I don’t have the time, and I feel the game should be about the journey, not the destination. I get a lot of people who say things like “Oh, well yeah the beginning 90+ levels suck, but once you reach 100 THEN the game gets interesting.” A LOT of my audience isn’t going to hop on that bandwagon, myself included. I always feel a game should be able to hold my attention, no promise rewards later on as long as you suffer through it. Unfortunately that means I’m going to miss a LOT of later contact and sometimes things I say don’t apply when you get near the end of the game.
-I think an issue I see most often with newcomers to the show is that they find me through their favorite game. They KNOW the game inside and out and of course they will find mistakes… but you have NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WAS KICKING MYSELF when I found the quest tracker later on in the game. I was talking to MegaGWolf and literally stated, “What’s this arrow next to the quest log… OH, GOD DAMN IT!” But as you stated the thing is VERY easy to miss, and I’m more used to quest trackers opening by default when you kill the first enemy you need for one, or take the quest. I’m not proud of the misinformation but it’s a bit late to amend the review… well maybe I could add some clarification text down the line.
-“Barren” was a harsh word on my part, but it was a bit scary to log into the game, see only one server, and have it’s population labeled as “Few”. I’ve been to many MMO games where they at least had one “normal” or “high” population server and they were still shut down mere months later. It would be specially shocking for someone coming over from formerly playing Maple Story, whom I’d assume would be the people MOST interested in this game, to see a game that has nearly every channel empty, when, in Maple they couldn’t even quest on channel 15 without a player coming by to tell them to “CC PLZ”. A player new to the game might get the impression that NOBODY plays the game anymore, and may be unwilling to keep playing. This is why I mentioned to stick to channel 1 or 2 if you wish to come across other players more often. I just wish those same players would stop trying to invite me into a relationship.
Regardless this game is on my “not delete” list and I try to return to it as often as I can. Considering that this is something I’ve only done with 4 of the games I’ve covered on this show, that’s saying something. Trust me.
Kairen12 is in my guild in LaTale and is literally the nicest, most pure person I know. She is a great example for the LaTale community.
“Next time, I’m going to close out a company’s trifecta of MMO games, doing another ‘similar to an older title’ suggestion THAT WON’T EVER GO AWAY”
Okay, so this company has three F2P MMOs, and you’ve already reviewed two of them.
*looks at episode guide*
Well, you reviewed two games from NCsoft, Cryptic Studios and Nexon. Nexon has more than three games in their catalog, so nothing from them. The only other game NCsoft has at this time that can sort of be considered F2P is Guild Wars, but since you’re gonna review a game that’s ‘similar to an older title’, it would probably be a stretch to to call Dungeon Fighter and Rusty Hearts similar to Guild Wars. Cryptic’s only other game is Champions Online, and it is similar to (no duh) City of Heroes. However, I assume that what you said by “THAT WON’T EVER GO AWAY”, it would mean that the game you’re talking about is really popular. And I could be wrong, but I don’t really recall Champions being popular, or maybe it means that Champions is heavily requested for you to review.
I think you win with the call of Champions. I didn’t bother to check the guide yet, but it certainly seems to fit the bill.
And I have to agree that Guild Wars can’t really be compared to any of the other F2P games he’s reviewed so far. It’s essentially a deck-building system, but with skills. Unless he starts reviewing Magic or Wizard 101, I can’t see a comparison.
Thanks, I’m going to play this tomorrow. :3
2D, cutesy, & small playerbase are all things I enjoy.
Doesn’t mean I’ll be uninstalling the other 30 MMOs I’ve preinstalled & not tried yet though, & they barely take up any space on a terabyte drive.
Loved that little bit with Sad Panda.
Speaking of Maple Story Clones, I’m adding “Wind Slayer 2” to the list.
I’m actually quite happy you had an enjoyable experience with the community of this MMO or at least one that was tolerable.This was an MMO I was getting into about the same time this review was hinted (was gambling whether this was the actual game you were going to do actually haha) but was somewhat wary of after dealing with Maple Story’s community as well as other ones in the past. So thank you for the positive words about it. :] It’ll definitely hopefully encourage me and some of the other quieter people to be more active in the LaTale community.
I can’t wait to see your next episode though. Very curious as to what it will be.
QUIT COMPARING STUFF TO WoW!
Oh. Oh wait.
Quit calling every RPG a “Diablo Killer.”
Oh wait, nobody does that anymore….
The stinger: I see what you did there. xD
The real challenge is “seeing what I did there” in the “learning to laugh” sketch…
All I can think of is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FTJxfV3pc
Otherwise, you’re a more worldy man than I am, because I didn’t get it at all.
I still enjoyed this review though, and I awaited with bated breath the screams of anger at the travel system, but thankfuly La Tale does appear to have learned from Maple Story how not to do zoning.
I look forward to the next review.
I love this game, I consider it one of the best mmos out there and I had a lot of fun with it, but sadly I’m done playing mmos, I spent so many years of my life on them that going back is just pointless. But I recommend this game to anyone out there looking for something along these lines and yes I did enjoy maplestory, it was my first mmo and I recently got back into it and made a lvl 100 cleric. But I quit soon after since lvling was getting slow and I was forced to party with people. I was lucky to lvl during exp and mesos events is why but now that that’s gone I’m done playing. I dunno why ChaosD1 is saying the community sucks, when I played it again I never, ever met a person who was an outright jerk or tried to scam me or just spoke like a moron. I’m not saying they don’t exist ’cause they probably do but I guess I was just lucky since never had a single bad experience and it was fun reliving the memories. But yeah back to La Tale, I never had a problem with the translation, since you don’t need to read the quest descriptions to know what you have to do, the quest helper tells you what items you need or what monsters to kill with no typos on the names. It’s real easy to navigate and this is the most easiest game I played to earn a huge amount of money from quests alone since I never spent real money on it. Though in the 30s-40s-50s levels you’ll be spending the money out your ass on your weapons and equips if you’re not willing to grind for them, the drop rate is really nice as well. Do play this game if you want something fresh or different from your usual fair and if you don’t like it at least you tried. By the way I’m surprised you didn’t go more into the crafting system, it’s just about an even easier way to make money since the items you make sell for the same amount you’d get back from the shop if it was a normal loot. Also the upgrade system is hokey since there’s item durability degeneration every time you upgrade instead of say the slot system for maple. There are no scrolls to prevent failure either so your item could just break at any time, I’ve had it happen so much I just gave up on upgrading. Also the puzzles that add stats to your equips was a good system you should’ve covered in at least some detail, oh well, I’m glad you got around to reviewing this, I had a big smile seeing it on the front page. Thanks for bringing some attention to this underdog that I wish was more popular, I wonder if you’ll review Ragnarok online next.
Hm, looks like a mix between Ragnarok Online and Maplestory.
Aww, I was hoping it was going to be DCUO. I hope for that every week though…
DCUO is a new MMO, he’s said often that his rig is on the old side. You just keep dreaming. Jajajajajaja.
I ran DCUO on a 5 year old laptop. =P It looks good even on fairly old systems. If he can run City of Heroes well, DCUO won’t be a problem.
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