I love this game. I do. But, and I’m sorry to say this, it kind of sucks. I don’t plan on stopping playing, because I want to see it become something great, but, it’s just not a good mmo.
My first complaint is a common one, and one I doubt will change, but level scaling in the overworld is an absolutely terrible idea. In dungeons, it’s great, let’s everybody contribute some, but in the overworld, all it does is make it so someone who put their time into a class like Musketeer or Bard is at a severe disadvantage when alone. Because of level scaling, someone with a +6 weapon and +5 armour could die to enemies in Highsteppe if they’re playing the wrong class. Imagine being max level, and having the best gear possible on a class, and you still die to something you were fighting at level 3. It’s been said before, but I’m going to say it again: Level scaling gets rid of any sense of progression. Yes, you get more skilled, but skill doesn’t matter when cooldowns and fire rate make it so you can’t kill anything solo other than the weakest melee enemies.
My second issue is just… the world is empty. And I mean empty. There are no interesting secrets to find that aren’t for quests, there are only a few “Towns” outside of Highsteppe, and they only have like three NPCs each. The world isn’t even all that large, it shouldn’t be hard to populate, but you’ve had what, a year with Reborn, and still it’s empty. The world needs more variation between zones, more things to find and interact with in those zones, more NPCs, and more places that encourage players to meet up. For that last one, I’ve seen people say “There isn’t a large enough player count for other towns to be populated by players” but at the time of writing this, it’s 4 AM EST, and there’s almost 50 people on. The last few days when I’ve checked at 10ish, there’s been well over 100. Sure, there may never be another player hub that’ll be as populated as Highsteppe, but that’s because in the game’s current state, Highsteppe is the only place you need to go. With the exception of two dungeons, you could do almost everything in the game, other than the grinding pot, without leaving Highsteppe. You could max rep with all the mission givers, level to 30 on every class, and get +5 gear without leaving the starting area. Does that sound like good game design?
My biggest issue with the game though, and this is even worse as a Quest player, is the bugs. Desyncs, crashes, barriers not loading, projectiles hitting me when I see them missing, hits on enemies not registering. I could go on and on, and these bugs aren’t rare occurrences. These are common issues that have been known about since Reborn started. I’m sure some of them were even in Oldbus. This game is buggier than a Bethesda game, with much less going on to bug out. The fact that it’s taken so long for devs to even acknowledge some very old bugs says something.
I find games tend to be better when you can tell the devs really care about the project, but Orbus feels like a dream that was abandoned, and put on life support. The only time devs interact with the community is for scheduled events, and to shut down forum threads. They release an event once every season to make it seem like the game is still being worked on, but then the new content is always short, and lackluster. There’s never any unique gameplay quirks, and even the DLC coming up just looks sloppy. Seriously, my first thought upon seeing the cosmetic reveal was “Oh, guess I’ll never wear the DLC outfits.” They look like something made by somebody first learning 3d modeling, not a dev team two years after they started giving the game to the public. It’s amazing how disappointed I am about the DLC after being hyped about it for so long.
It’s very rare that new content is put in this game, and it almost never introduces anything truly new. Oldbus things making into the game, but bugs stay, they add more to the Main Story (By the way, who releases a game without finishing the main story?) and end up creating a major resource shortage that would mimic the tulip mania from the 1600s, and crash the economy… if the game had one.
Money means almost nothing in Orbus. Sure, you can get a few upgrades to storage, but after that, Dram is useless. A few one time payments in your first couple of months and then what? You can’t buy any new rooms to your house, or a new house, and you can’t buy a faster mount, they’re all the same speed. You can’t use Dram to get better gear, because you can’t buy gear. You can’t use it to buy resources for crafting, unless somebody happens to be selling that resource at that exact moment. The game gives you inconsequential amounts of money that means nothing. Where’s the trading with NPCs? Where’s the money management? It feels like Dram was an afterthought, shoved into the game at the last minute so people wouldn’t wonder why there was no money in the MMO they payed 40(or 20, now) dollars for.
I really want to have this game deserve some love, but in it’s current state, it just doesn’t. The only fun comes from the community, and even then, Fellowships are petty towards one another, players solo all the quests, and people horde resources they’ll never use. I just don’t get it.
but this is tiny to what I wrote from the beginning lol.