Seed
Static | April 12, 2006Seed www.seedthegame.com is a different kind of online game. Different in that there’s no combat to speak of.Â
Up until yesterday I’ve been interested to see what such a game would feel like to play, now that I got into the beta and had a chance to test it somewhat I cant help but feel disappointed.Â
First off its still in beta, but considering how close the launch date is, even if developers like to push it back one month at a time, the one thing that springs to mind is that this game is nowhere near ready for release. In fact I’m not even sure its ready for beta. Lag is down right horrible, not to mention constant, regardless if your alone or not. The game is generally unresponsive, most likely due to the heavy lag. The graphics are ok if you’re into the cartoon look.Â
Game play is… well its different that much is certain. From what I can gather training works essentially like it does in Eve Online. Its time based, pick your skill and set it going. You don’t need to buy the skills though, once one completes it unlocks further skills, which can be trained, or branch out into other areas. Nothing you do while playing seems to influence skills, so regardless how much stuff you fix you wont get better at doing it unless you spend time “training” the skill. A rather ass backwards approach to skill development in my view but it was probably easier to code this way.Â
Production seems very detailed; items are made of components, which in turn are made of parts that are made of materials that are made of minerals (or other base items). It’s a fairly lengthy process or at least that’s how it seems.Â
There are several paths characters may take; Repair, administration, science and production are the baseline choices from which the skills then branch out as you train them. As far as I can tell there’s no restriction on what you can train.Â
At this stage of the games development I cant really see the game being any fun to be honest. Any repairs I attempted to carry out in game (which is the basic game play I’ve seen so far) worked for about 5 to 10 min after which time the thing would seem to break again. Which is nothing if not slightly frustrating.Â
So you cant kill anything, nothing ever stays fixed for long, repairing stuff means standing there watching the toon wave his hands around for however long it takes to finish the job and skill training takes ”real time” to complete (dumbest skill training system idea ever invented imho). All in all a fairly mind numbing experience. Although I must admit the lag in the game atm isn’t helping my view of the game play in any way.Â
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Uh … okay I had a brief look at the game site. So it’s a 3rd person Sci-Fi comic game. Did you try the the other career paths? Can you say anything about the story- and NPC-related features they mention here? Chat and community? What does the beta offer, can you access everything or just a small “map” like in the AA beta?
No killing things … hmm.
I managed to explore a bit but I didn’t get too far, the lag and clumsy movement system got the better of me eventually and I just quit trying. Before I stopped exploring I did notice that there didn’t seem to be any factories set up for the most part, and repairs only seemed to be needed in the start-up area. Don’t know how extensive the game maps are.
Cant say much about the story, what you can read in the site, and launcher, is essentially what you get. Personally I don’t find it very believable but at least it has a back story in place.
I don’t think the NPC features are fully enabled yet.
Trying different carers is just a question of training the skills, there’s no limits to how much you can know (that I know of). The only restriction is real life training time. They also adopted the oh so ever annoying Eve idea of skill difficulty modifier. The higher in skill you go and the more specified training you try to get the longer it takes to train. And boy does the time stack up!
Don’t get me wrong… its a great set of ideas… that should be in place to supplement the game play elements of a game that has a compelling storyline and hopefully some action. As it stands you can probably get political intrigue, beurocratical scheming and some crafting. If you’re into politics this game will probably seem like heaven.
Well it certainly reads interesting on the page. Of course, they have to fix the lag, but I remember the SWG beta client quite too well … it also was horrible.
I can see the problems with the skill system. Basically it’s not you who advance your character, but your money. Easy for the devs: Balance? What for? Just continue paying and become uber … in two years.
heres one more for the mix…
Pathfinding is total crap, and since direct control over your toons movement seems to be bugged to hell youre reliant on your toon being able to determine the path to the selected destination.
In the canyon area my toon was in the highest area i could find, selected something at ground level (or at least something that looked like it) that theoreticaly you shouldnt be able to walk to and the thing walked right off the edge of the walkway and ran through the air. Got stuck in mid air for a bit and then warped into the selected area
For the sake of this game i hope thyll keep it in beta for a few more months cause its seriously not ready to be released.