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Battlestar Galactica Online: This could be good... or really, REALLY bad.

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Anyone else trying the open beta?

To me it seems being browser based is more of a pain than a direct client. Each new zone is downloaded on the fly as you play. I've had to refresh a page several times to get all the data pulled down for the zone.

I guess as a plus they can patch a zone and only a client that specifically needs that zone will have to pull the data at that time. The downside is playing through at first is painful given the load times and retries that I have to do.

Another annoying thing for me is since it is browser based, you would be able to expect to alt-tab focus and perform operations in another window without it effecting the game. If I am in another window and right-click, the game interprets it even in the background.

I haven't gotten very far but am looking forward to progressing? Any other opinions?

--bockie
 
I will give this a shot when I get home, although I don't expect much from a browser based game.
 
I suppose I should give my impressions. It's not a space flight combat sim by any stretch of the imagination.

Navigation and flight control is clunky. Combat is simply point at enemy (sticky targeting), click button (autofire guns), make sure target stays within your cone of fire, and wait for enemy health bar to eventually reach zero. Maneuvering is simply to accomplish the keeping of the enemy in the cone of fire. All gun control is handled for you (missiles however are manually launched). In fact, maneuvering can also be handled for you. The only thing you need to manually control in order to have superiority for maneuvering is throttle control.

There is also 1st person interaction while onboard ships (Galactica) as well as outposts. This lets you walk around a fairly spartan area, interact with a few NPC's, buy and/or repair stuff, and get missions.

Missions advance a fairly loose story line. The story line only serves to get you a few credits and get you out into space where you go to blow shit up using the above mechanisms.

The one thing that has my interest piqued is that it appears that you can eventually buy ships above and beyond the viper/raptor (or cylon equivalents), potentially up to and including capital ships.

Mining/harvesting also seems to have some sort of need as not only is it the way you "claim" sectors for your given faction, but you can use those resources in order to craft items (and possibly better ships as well).

All in all, if you're looking for a dogfighting space combat sim experience, this is NOT the title you are looking for.
 
Two words for this game... EVE clone.

It's actually not bad... I went in expecting the worst and actually primed myself on crappy flash tower defense games to set the bar as low as possible going in. I'm really impressed by what they've done with a "simple" browser interface and the gameplay concepts are a lot more complex than I expected. It's more approachable than EVE but there are some odd carry-overs that will impact playability long term (no word on retraining skill trees, no way to queue training tasks that take "real life" time to complete and a quest system that seems a tacked on - having my first "scripted" encounter bug out wasn't a good way to start). Being able to simply click on the collect button when you mine something or blow up another craft while you're on the move rather than dinking around salvaging wrecks... pure WIN compared to EVE.

As someone who picked up and put down EVE it seems a lot more approachable though I think some of the grindy aspects will be similar as skills evolve, etc... It seems like a lot less theorycrafting and a lot more pew-pew which I like. I think the access to resources particularly early in the game let you get up to speed and experiment with different equipment and configurations more easily than I expected. There are only 4 mined elements in the game, all of which can be mined in "secure" space and really lead you down the path of upgrading your ship and getting into battle versus sitting back and just running a tradeskill (which I don't mind, I thought crafting was mind numbingly boring in EVE). While the combat is simplistic it seems more involved and mentally stimulating than EVE's orbit, flip on the guns and go read a magazine approach.

The 3D station bit is actually annoying, I know this was one of EVE's big evolutions (walking off of your ship and into a space station) but it just seems like it wastes time.. perhaps they will build in more storyline and such but right now, other than the ship designs, it's a pretty lose tie-in to the BSG franchise. I don't see a ton of value in this part of the game, note to self - discovering the SPACE bar to run was a life saver.

Bottom line - the game exceeded my expectations, it's an EVE clone that focuses on getting you into epic space battles fairly quickly versus building up this epic multi-faceted MMO with player run economies, etc... For free it's actually worth trying out; and serious kudos for what they've done with a "browser" game, it looks as good as EVE in my opinion without the giant install. If you haven't played EVE it's going to be a larger than expected learning curve but I'd say a solid two hours running through the tutorial mission and then spending some time in the 3 sectors ajoining the respective home areas and you'll know if it's your thing or not.
 
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