Thread: Beta Keys for Black Prophecy US Closed Beta

Yeah only the 'open' missions are pvp, the pve group missions are not. There are solo missions you can do as well that are more about the story that aren't pvp or have any players.

Sorry guys, I know it's just in Beta, but this wasn't for me... too complicated and, many problems for me. I uninstalled.

Warning: Excessively long post ahead

Phyrelight and I probably have the most experience with Black Prophecy out of the group that currently plays, so I'll give some thoughts to it.

It's an OK game. It's still in Closed Beta for a ridiculous number of reasons, of those reasons I'll start with first.

#1: Lack of faction exposure. The prologue lets you fly a Sapiens shuttle, which acts exactly like the Genide and Tyi ships. Originally, the prologue was supposed to get you in contact with both factions and let you fly both their ships for a mission or two; however, the devs goofed up and only put in the Tyi mission, so people now only know what Tyi ships are like, and flock to Tyi. This leads into a HOST of other problems, which is why I put this one first.

#2: Open World PvP after Prologue. After the prologue, the game lets you choose: Genide or Tyi? 90% of people pick Tyi because they've already had exposure to it. However, the bad thing about this is that the open mission areas (three sectors) are SHARED by both factions. So, when you want to progress in the mission line (which give the most experience and credits, as well as the best equipment), you have to brave the three Tyi flooded sectors. Oftentimes, there are level 12 Tyi in each sector to make sure that no level 6 Genide ruins their own level 6 Tyi fighter's experience. Thus, Genides have no way to complete these high reward missions, and thus have to do solo missions, which give only about 50 experience on completion, and take significantly longer.

#3: Inflexible equipment. Let's just face it, everyone prefers things to be symmetrical. It's something hard-wired in our mind. Some of the best, rare quality equipment can be put on your ship, but all of a sudden, you have a huge engine on the left side of your ship, and a tiny engine on the right. Or, you have 3 chain guns, and then 1 machine gun. It just doesn't look good. Aside from aesthetics, the explosives skill is extremely limited because its primary focus is on missiles, and you can't get missiles until you pick a faction. The only wing-mounted weapon it has is the horrible Grenade Launcher. Otherwise, the other two weapon types are generally well-balanced.

#4: Limited playspace. This is probably something that will be fixed on commercial release, but there is this huge universe, yet you can't go to any of it until you reach certain levels. There are huge sectors to fight in, but there's really on a small area that has anything to do. Sure you can fly out 2000 (meters I think) from where you came in, but there's nothing out there. It could seriously use some work.

Now, not everything about Black Prophecy is bad. There are very good qualities to it that I hope could translate into selling points.

#1: Balanced PvP. As long as you're fighting people within +/- 1 level of you, they're completely fair game. I've killed people two levels above me at one point because he was using energy weapons and I had a strong shield. I was using projectile weapons and was ignoring his shield and killing him because he didn't put much concern into hull durability. I've also been killed by a level 6 simply because he used a Lightning Gun to take out my shield, then piled on the hits and just blew me up. Some large battles in those open areas can break out too. One guy mentioned that there were a bunch of Tyi in one sector, and we organized a raid of about 8 people, including me. We all popped in at about the same time and proceeded to have a skirmish with the Tyi who were swarming there. It took us about 15 minutes of straight fighting to kick them out of the Sector. It actually felt good.

#2: Great visuals. I get the feeling this is what the game is about. Large, sweeping visuals of highly detailed planets, nebulae and ring systems. A large amount of detail was put into the artwork and visual details of Black Prophecy. It sometimes feels so immersive, you might actually be in space. Unfortunately, as I said before, you can't go everywhere, so you can't see all of this wonderful artwork and design. Also, it feels like the developers spent more time making the game look good, rather than making the game play well.

#3: Highly intuitive flight: The game generally ignores Newton's First Law. However, that makes the game very easy for any person to just pick up and play. It feels more akin to Freelancer than any other space simulator game I've played, and Freelancer was great. The lack of Newton's First Law also makes it so you can pull off some interesting evasion maneuvers, making combat that much more exciting.

So, I think that generally puts the game into view. There are a lot of other intricacies that wouldn't make sense to someone that hasn't played, and I can't really tell EVERYTHING about the game because there's a lot.

If you read up to this point, I must congratulate you,
Allane.

Btw, the pvp is much better if you play it as a group rather than a solo person showing up to those areas. This is the point of those areas as they want you to rely on your 'brothers/sisters' of your faction rather than being the solo ganker.

All those high levels can be taken down by focus firing on them, seen it happen a couple of times so far but the prologue does a bad job at getting you ready for playing with others except for the group instance missions at the spire.

Grenade launchers aren't horrible, but aren't as rapid fire as the lasers/cannons. They can do splash damage to tight grouped enemies and can devastate hulls when they hit, you just have to get used to them as they fire slow and the projectiles move slow, thus a longer lead distance. The missiles make up for that later and once you get some seeking missiles it is all worth it.

Limiting the space doesn't bother me as this isn't Eve or the old Jumpgate game, it is about close fighter combat, not firing missiles from five thousand meters out. Skill of the pilot actually matters in this game and a group of lower folks can make mincemeat out of higher levels if they are smart about it. They also limit it so you do have to fight the other faction rather than just playing against AI all the time and being worthless later on.

This game is fully released in Europe and from everything I've read they aren't really locking us out of anything, this is what you get. Fortunately for me I like it a lot.

Originally Posted by Alundil

Ragun - curious to know your thoughts on this one. I have downloaded it, but haven't installed yet (someone took me name I think ) but would like to get your thoughts as you're opinion is valued to me (and we also played that other internet spaceship game )

I'll play fair, and give you that it's a works in progress. Therefore many of the issues I had will likely be corrected over time... fair enough?

What happened? Bugs.... I created a character, started the tutorial, and it crapped out on me. When I returned to the game, everything seemed normal except the npc's would not give me the missions needed to progress. Solution: delete character and start over.

Starting over, I successfully completed the tutorial (having to go thru it twice for whatever reason), and came out with everything appearing to work normally. Then I made the mistake of accepting the "One Man's trash..." mission, which is bugged.

Even though I cancelled the mission, the npc's refused to give me another mission until I completed the previous one. Even though completing that one is impossible.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Team Missions that we did, that part was fun. But the prologue missions are repetitive, tedious and boring. And unless you can ask somone who has succeeded in the mission, how and what to do, your left pretty much clueless as to how to proceed.

I've no doubt when they come out with a finished product it will be a pretty decent game. But, as I said before, it's just not for me.

I'm loving it so far, it's really reminiscent of Wing Commander or JTL from SWG. I'm still doing starter missions but am having a lot of fun.