A friend and I have been playing at the same time although separately. We’re only level 30 so we haven’t really experienced and experimented with the higher level mechanics.
In his opinion, the game is pretty, flashy, dynamic and fun, which was a surprise, this being an MMO, and quests were varied enough to not be a drag. He stopped playing at 30 because he was starting to feel the grindy aspects that most MMOs have, with a special mention to the abrupt decrease in job leveling speed after second rank (job level grows at the same rate as base level at rank one, but becomes half of it at second rank). I didn’t feel the grind yet but I have to agree with the job growth disappointment, and definitely on how dynamic the gameplay is. It’s great to play a MMORPG that plays like an action RPG instead of a slow slog of chores and cooldowns disguised as an action RPG.
Also, a concern he had was the social aspect. Since we were playing solo, encountering other players only served to suffer from KS and seeing how everyone is a clone of someone else, which is very of-putting.
While I haven’t had much of the former (other than high-levels vaporizing everything in their way a time or two), I feel strongly about the later. It REALLY is tiring to find clones everywhere you look because of how limited character creation is. While this is alleaviated when people start branching into different classes and getting their black dye for a whopping two colors per hairstyle, it’s still something that shouldn’t be happening. It’s a shame, because this is a really REALLY pretty game, but character homogenity harms it.
I, and basically everyone who I’ve talked to about this, like to create a character in pretty much its final state, at least in their body traits. Some minor alterations, like different but similar styles and colors might happen, and some people might revamp their characters later on, but as it stands the later is the only option, having everyone go for the “novice hairstyles” for no real reason.
Not only that, but the game offers you absolutely no way to visualize what you can get other than your imagination because there’s just one hair color per style. I kind of get what they want to do with achievements, but on top of not working there’s just no reason to not have all colors in the character creation (brunette, blonde, gray, kind-of-redhead) availiable to all hairstyles, since achievement colors don’t cover them anyways.
And speaking of achievements, there are just not enough alternate colors (I refer back to the ones I just mentioned) and their requirements are very unbalanced amongst themselves. There are even some concepts in that list that I’m still not familiar with like “party quests” (are there separate quests for already formed parties?) or “treasure stealing” (I know this isn’t for hair).
I’m sorry I’m being so insistent on this, but since the answer given in that old blog entry was so nonsensical, I fear this won’t change if not stressed and explained enough
And finally, a very minor gripe I have: explanations about the UI. While there are these text tutorials, I feel they’re not enough to properly teach someone to navigate them and what each tab is for. And on top of that, there’s this “bug” where the tutorial page will randomly close when scrolling or reading. I hope this can be improved a little in the future.
Other than that, I’ve had a blast playing and hope I can continue doing so.