- Jul 6, 2004
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I've played the beta the past 2 weekends (the beta servers are only open fri-sun currently) and I thought I'd post some impressions here. I'm also bored at work so this gives me something to do...
Cliffs/summary:
Only pvp, no mobs to fight
Gameplay is very similar to WoW battlegrounds
Unreal 3 engine, looks great
Huge skill variety, 400+ skills
Up to 24 skills can be used at a time (limited hotbar like GW)
8 classes
The way the game is set up is very similar to WoW's bgs, you queue up for one of three types of warzones: elimination, bloodbath, and vortex (team deathmatch, ffa, and CTF roughly speaking). Each match rewards you with money and items, with more money and better items rewarded to the winning team. Items are distributed by selecting up to 3 items from a list to roll on and you can roll multiple times on a single item if you really want it. In addition to loot, you also gain "essence" from each match, used to gain new abilities.
Skills are learned via trials, and each trial requires essence to complete. Completing trials gives you experience. There are only 10 levels in the game and progression is pretty rapid right now (I am level 8 after 2 weekends of heavy play). The only difference between levels is an increase in equip points.
Equip points are required to wear armor and equip abilities. Higher ranked armor and higher rank abilities consume more equip points, so effective builds must find a balance between the both (there isn't enough points to wear the best of everything).
Gear is fairly varied, with multiple tiers of rarity and a lot of randomized attributes so that should add good replayability. Each class has its own armor set, but you can wear any type of armor you want.
Classes are also very flexible, you pick a class initially to determine what skills you start with, but you can pick up any other classes skills by completing their trials. Your character's class is really only a label to describe where the majority of the skills you're using come from. This means you have a ton of customization.
Abilities are varied, and their usage centers are elemental charges. There are 4 elemental schools, and most abilities will either generate or consume charges. The more charges you have in a particular school, the better abilities in that school become (so shooting a fire dart with 10 fire charges will do 60 more damage than with 0 fire charges, and 120 more damage than if you had 10 water charges). You have two elemental bars, fire/water and earth/air which oppose each other. Typically characters will focus on just two non-conflicting schools.
Charge manipulation is an important aspect of pvp in Fury. As an example, if someone is healing themselves a lot (water element), you can use an ability that swaps their water charges for fire, destroying their ability to heal for a while.
Since the game is in beta, it still is a little buggy. The top three issues I've seen thus far are UI bugs, connectivity issues, and performance. This game is a RAM hog, and 1gb really isn't enough. I'm using only 1gb right now and there is a few seconds of swapping when I enter a warzone. The game supports a wide variety of graphics cards (there's a low-end render for cards that don't support pixel shader 3) but the unreal 3 engine looks best with a newer card.
Right now, due to limited number of people (100-200) they don't segment the war zones based on level, so starting up can be painful as you will get owned repeatedly by high levels, but at least leveling is fast and you can still fight other low level people.
I've played the beta the past 2 weekends (the beta servers are only open fri-sun currently) and I thought I'd post some impressions here. I'm also bored at work so this gives me something to do...
Cliffs/summary:
Only pvp, no mobs to fight
Gameplay is very similar to WoW battlegrounds
Unreal 3 engine, looks great
Huge skill variety, 400+ skills
Up to 24 skills can be used at a time (limited hotbar like GW)
8 classes
The way the game is set up is very similar to WoW's bgs, you queue up for one of three types of warzones: elimination, bloodbath, and vortex (team deathmatch, ffa, and CTF roughly speaking). Each match rewards you with money and items, with more money and better items rewarded to the winning team. Items are distributed by selecting up to 3 items from a list to roll on and you can roll multiple times on a single item if you really want it. In addition to loot, you also gain "essence" from each match, used to gain new abilities.
Skills are learned via trials, and each trial requires essence to complete. Completing trials gives you experience. There are only 10 levels in the game and progression is pretty rapid right now (I am level 8 after 2 weekends of heavy play). The only difference between levels is an increase in equip points.
Equip points are required to wear armor and equip abilities. Higher ranked armor and higher rank abilities consume more equip points, so effective builds must find a balance between the both (there isn't enough points to wear the best of everything).
Gear is fairly varied, with multiple tiers of rarity and a lot of randomized attributes so that should add good replayability. Each class has its own armor set, but you can wear any type of armor you want.
Classes are also very flexible, you pick a class initially to determine what skills you start with, but you can pick up any other classes skills by completing their trials. Your character's class is really only a label to describe where the majority of the skills you're using come from. This means you have a ton of customization.
Abilities are varied, and their usage centers are elemental charges. There are 4 elemental schools, and most abilities will either generate or consume charges. The more charges you have in a particular school, the better abilities in that school become (so shooting a fire dart with 10 fire charges will do 60 more damage than with 0 fire charges, and 120 more damage than if you had 10 water charges). You have two elemental bars, fire/water and earth/air which oppose each other. Typically characters will focus on just two non-conflicting schools.
Charge manipulation is an important aspect of pvp in Fury. As an example, if someone is healing themselves a lot (water element), you can use an ability that swaps their water charges for fire, destroying their ability to heal for a while.
Since the game is in beta, it still is a little buggy. The top three issues I've seen thus far are UI bugs, connectivity issues, and performance. This game is a RAM hog, and 1gb really isn't enough. I'm using only 1gb right now and there is a few seconds of swapping when I enter a warzone. The game supports a wide variety of graphics cards (there's a low-end render for cards that don't support pixel shader 3) but the unreal 3 engine looks best with a newer card.
Right now, due to limited number of people (100-200) they don't segment the war zones based on level, so starting up can be painful as you will get owned repeatedly by high levels, but at least leveling is fast and you can still fight other low level people.