Topic: My first impressions.
I don't want to defend PO - and I agree about the grind nature of all the assignments. I can stress it even more though. While OP mentioned selectiong a RANDOM assignment - is actually not as bad. Thing is if you decide to work for a certain NPC corporation you will have to grind 3 assignments at the most. If you want to specialize your character set on military skills for example - you will have to grind ONE assignment. In other word repeat the same action about 50 times until you have enough standing to get to level 2 assignments and I don't see how at that point this type of progression will change.
Another thing that makes it all MUCH WORSE - if you are in a squad with friends - KILLS ARE NOT SHARED between squad members. So being in a squad is just that - being in a squad. Oh yeah you can use it to ninja loot everything lol. There is no target assist system, there is no target mark system, and almost none-existant group communication battle interface. Squad mechanics at this point are very useless - its just a box showing few lines of armor left on pieces of metal you control.
I could simplify the game at this point to the following:
1. Create an ugly face
2. Complete long tutorial that teaches almost nothing about the game
3. Get post-tutorial bot that you actually DON'T WANT and offer no choice of selection whatsoever.
4. Do one random assignment from your terminal so that your reputation spreadsheet can populate with +0.01s and -0.01s
5. Chose the Faction with highest +0.0x and start grinding their THREE assignments... lol
6. If you want to specialize on specific template of your career (military in my case) - you'll actually end up grinding ONE assignment and repeat it about 50 times until your faction raises to 1.01 - then you get access to level 2 assignments.
7. You can of course transport things, and you can of course mine things, you can reconfigure your bot as many tiems as you want to either run faster or mine faster or kill faster but in the end you'll just grind that one assignment if you want to get to level 2 assignments any time soon. Which are the same as level one. You just grind towards level 3 etc.
People say - game flourishes in corporation. Nothing really flourishes even in corp. Everybody will be doing some type of grind - either they will be grinding kernels to research prototypes or they will be mining to get materials for later production.
I am enjoying the game SO FAR, only because all the fantasy MMOs become sickening and because I didn't reach that point in time in PO just yet where I am gonna get sick by repeatedly doing the same thing for hours. Sandbox games are a good place to allow players expand their imagination and do what they want. problem with PO is at this point - there is nothing to do other than - grind kernels, brake them afterwards to research stuff and then build something useless. Or - grind mobs until finally you loot the ugly cube, buy 1000 items of something you want to do reverse engineering on - and destroy it all to have a chance of getting a blueprint.
This game needs a LOT of work. I am gonna be testing it for a month but I am affraid that in a bout a week I'll be getting sick of going to mine for 547th time or by going to the same location to kill same mobs for 352nd time. Even on 2 accounts it may get a bit ugly and boring as hell. I give it about a week or two. I am going to try to join a corp to make this whole repetitiveness a bit less annoying and i hope it will work out as I as many of you see myself in a great mech, being wealthy from selling stuff on market and having fun PvPing newbs. We'll see.
I am gonna break it down now to ceertain points:
1. Graphics
Good graphics and to play on max requires actually pretty decent PC. - One of the reason some people complain about LAG. Graphics could definitely be better. While the game is loaded with stationary objects and graphics are so so even on max settings - game still requires a very good PC to play it. Anything you zoom in very close looks quite ugly. If you don't zoom in - it looks ok. This game seems to have quite a lot of structures piled up and while 3D objects don't seem to be using any high resolution surfaces - it still loads the PC like its a DX10 game - poorly coded graphics engine. Very old and outdated.
2. LAG.
I don't have any, but my wife's computer can hardly handle the game unless it runs on lowest settings. It can run LOTRO on max with 2x AA without problems. So whatever people complain about is actually a game engine lag unless of course their latency to the server (ping) is over 500. You can verify this - your ping to the server shows on right lower corner next to word LAG. I don't know why they called latency/ping - LAG.
So i'd say this "LAG" is more of a unpolished graphics and inefficient game graphics engine.
3. Sounds and music
This is probably the best part in this game - especially music, its very Sci-Fi. Sounds however are very odd in some cases. Why would an assault droid that has 4 legs sound like its a glider? Arkha droid at least has some logical sound of multiple limbs moving... but other droids sound's are not appropriate.
4. User interface
Pretty crappy I have to say. I hated the interface in EVE and this one resembles it too much. Can't even change the damn font size. Did they buy some alpha code from CCP and then build their game based on it? At least we can increase/decrease size of the windows. But game itself seems to be built keeping in mind old CRT monitors that can't go higher than 1024x768. At leat all the interface fonts (not chat window) seem to be of a normal size somewhere around that resolution definitely not for 1920x1080 or even 1920x1200. Why same problem as in EVE? No idea...
5. Controls
Pretty much standard MMO template. Pretty much EVE template. Lock target, activate weapons and modules and have fun... lol. Oh wait, in EVE you had to orbit the target, here they give you a chance to strafe your droid around the target and keep the distance so that your weapons are effective and your target doesn't drop... lol.
6. Replayability
Worst ever. This game is definitey not for solo play. Not because its difficult to play solo, but because you will probably hang yourself after about 20 hours of grinding faction of your choice. Even in corp it will be more of a 'group grind' - but grind nevertheless. There are outposts now but at this point those outposts have close to nothing point of being in game. You can own them but they don't repsent any value. You can't have any support devices or buildings, nothing, its just a few vertical walls and a ceiling that you imagine is YOURS...
7. PvP
At this point PvP is go to beta Island - get blown up, return to your terminal and grind station until you have money to buy yourself an assault droid. PvP is gonna be like in a lot of games - bunch of people gang on one target - destroy it then switch targets and rince and repeat. There are no objectives behind holding any outposts so this will get quite boring eventually. Unless PO expands the gameplay a LOT next few weeks - couple of months, devs excitement will be replaced with sadness of people not wanting to come back.
As I said I like the game so far but it has a lot in it to not like it. or let me say - it doesnt have much to like it for YET. I hope this little underfunded company of 10 people will be able to pull it off and develop PO to at least what EVE felt like in 2000. This game needs a lot more reason for people to want to OWN those outposts. And do something other than gang up on each other on Beta Island.