End of Nations Closed Beta Review

[gunnerwolf]

Okay so I recently received an email stating that I had been invited to join the second closed beta of End of Nations, I had also been invited to the first but I missed it due to certain issues.

Anyway, I thought maybe some of you might like to hear about this game, and, after checking the terms of service for the beta, I saw nothing preventing me from posting my findings here.

This second beta event takes place during this weekend, Friday the 3rd of August to Sunday the 5th of August.

I presume I will likely be invited to the following events also as, thus far I have been invited to both events that have been announced so far.

My rating so far (This is subject to change between now and sunday)

General Gameplay (7/10)
The game as a whole is rather interesting. Between matches you can customize your load-out, deciding which units you will take into battle, and what "mods" they will have equipped. Mods are modifications that affect things like range, health and damage.
You have a limited amount of unit points that increases as your "Commander" (Your character, you may have more than 1 of these) levels up, I believe an extra 250 unit points and 150 structure points are awarded every 5 levels. The base max of unit and structure points is 100 and 500 respectively. While 500 structure points is plenty for the maximum of 6 structures you may bring, the 1000 unit points is far too low. A Hero (A special character in a unique vehicle with unique abilities and a lot of health) will often cost 300-500 unit points alone, limiting you to 2 tanks or 6 light trucks.

Graphics (9/10)
While I did not manage to hold out on full graphics for long, I did manage to push my computer long enough to give a generous rating of 9 out of 10. The graphics are not designed to be realistic, they are designed to be adaptable while still looking good. The game has pulled this off almost perfectly, although at low graphics, with which I had to play the remainder of my matches lest I  play at 3 fps, the textures are mostly a smooth blur of 3-4 shades of the same colour. The models in this game are fantastic, huge, detailed, bulking tanks and small, detailed, nimble trucks both use remarkable models.

Playability (3/10)
This is where the game goes down-hill. When creating a commander, you chose one of 2 factions, the Liberation Front, an organization that believe in freedom and justice, and enforce this with big armoured cannons on wheels, or the Shadow Revolution, an organization that believe in order and control, who enforce this with small fast trucks armed with guns that punch holes through tanks, and huge yet fast tanks that have the ability to hide nearby units. At a glance it is a choice between big, slow, deadly tanks and strong air units, or quick hit and run trucks and stealth infantry. However, upon closer inspection, the choice is actually, unbeatable overpowered, overpopulated liberation front, or weak, under-powered, underpopulated shadow revolution. Meaning, if you pick Liberation Front, you will win every battle, but there will be nobody to fight. If you pick Shadow Revolution, you will find a match easily, but you won't win.
As the whole game revolves around these two factions fighting for the world, this is practically a deal breaker, and definitely ruins the entire game for me.

Online Interactions (5/10)
There is very little coordination in matches, but there is a great deal of talk on the faction chat. plenty of questions getting asked, one or two getting answered. However, if you can read and reply to the general chat channel in time before the faction chat pushes it from the screen, then you can get almost any question you have answered.

Online Networking (8/10)
While depending on the match location you may have to wait between 2 seconds and 1 hour, mostly the waiting times are pretty low, the longest I've had to wait was 7 minutes for a match. In addition, load times are fast, there is no lag what so ever, and the game runs quite smoothly.

Variety (4/10)
The game is not what I thought it would be. Rather than fitting custom attachments, weapons and other parts to a chassis, you instead have set units, with set weapons, and can add modifications that alter things like damage, range and health. Not as good as I hoped.

Final Score (3/10)
While the game has great potential, the armoury and customizing units is a let down, and the game it's self it almost unplayable due to the faction imbalance. Hopefully they fix this.

I will replace the "-" with a rating and the "<Description>" with a description when I have sufficient information to do so.

Hope you all look forward to this.

Take care.

[PZ]

Sounds good - looking forward to your posts!  :-X

[Art Blade]

Hello and welcome to OWG, gunnerwolf :)

I am sitting here smiling  :) because of two things.

One, what an entrance to this site. You pop up out of nowhere stating that you saw nothing preventing you from posting your findings here which is flattering  :-() So thanks for that  :-X

Two, you can tell that PZ was in a hurry because he missed to welcome you to OWG  :-D

Looking forward to reading more from you indeed, happy beta-testing :)

[gunnerwolf]

Thanks, although i regret to inform you that my findings are grim  :-(

[PZ]

...Two, you can tell that PZ was in a hurry because he missed to welcome you to OWG  :-D

Looking forward to reading more from you indeed, happy beta-testing :)

... alas, Mr. Blade, you missed my welcome to gunnerwolf in the shoutbox  :-\\

[PZ]

Thanks, although i regret to inform you that my findings are grim  :-(

Doesn't sound promising.  :-\\

[Art Blade]

PZ, indeed I must have -- I was in a hurry -- as you usually do welcome new members by posting in their starter topics :)

[PZ]

   I do forget from time to time however, so I appreciate the reminders  ^-^

[gunnerwolf]

Yeah so I think I've pretty much covered it as much as I can, because the faction imbalance makes the game almost un playable. I also copied and pasted the actual review from here onto the official End of Nations Beta forums.

[PZ]

Excellent review, gunnerwolf - kudos for that!  :-X

Too bad the game is so poor - 3/10 is one of the lowest ratings I've seen in a game one of our members has evaluated.

[Art Blade]

interesting read, your evaluation. Kudos from my end, too  :-X :)

[gunnerwolf]

Thanks, got a review of a new game I got into the closed beta for (No idea how this keeps happening) Smite, a MOBA game similar to League Of Legends.

[Art Blade]

if you report back to them really poorly and keep telling them how much you despise their incompetent display of so called programming skills, they might take you out of the beta testing loop  :-()

(I guess they liked your reports, though  ^-^ )

[PZ]

Indeed - quite often the bad reviews are considered more than the positive ones.  I recall being on a hiring committee once where each of the 20 or so members were asked their opinion of the candidate.  All except one thought the candidate did a really good job on the interview.  When I was asked (the last person at the table), I replied "I think he did an awful job..." (If you don't want my opinion, don't ask).

Our administration chose two people to visit this candidates institution for an on-site visit to discover more information, and guess who got to go.  :D