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The Matrix Online Launches
Another large, commercially built virtual world has launched. The MMORPG Matrix Online, based on the popular Matrix movie series, is now online and accepting red pills. From the launch announcement: "...a specialized role-playing live events team at Monolith will assume the roles of the actual Matrix characters and support the continuation of the game's storyline through choreographed interaction. Players will meet, battle and eventually team up with the familiar characters on high-profile missions or at player-organized events."
..And one leaked screenies. It pretty much sucks, according to everybody I've heard of who did the beta test. Not a whole lot of innovation gameplay wise.
YMMV.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I found this review at http://forums.evercrest.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi ?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=063745 to be pretty decent. Gives a pretty good sense of what the game is like.
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
MxO has a crucial flaw that seperates it from most RPG games.
Your attack roll is the same as your defend roll. Other games have a seperate difficulty check for attack and defend, so that if you fail a defend roll, you can still land an attack.
However, in MxO only one side may win a roll comparison.
All special abilities require that you win the roll comparison. To increase your roll comparative to the enemy via buff or debuff, you must first win a roll.
The use of equipment can increase your roll.
This means that if their equipment allows their rolls to overpower yours, the abilities you use are much less relevant since they are defeated before they begin. It's not to say that your abilities are never used, it's that they are used far less frequently than in other games. Many games have equipment that influences the outcome of duels, but the nature of the roll comparison is that even slight advantages in the base roll will create large discrepancies in the effectiveness between two players.
Most games working off the seperate attack and defend rolls allow for an exchange of abilities that will work sucessfully more often than not. This allows player skill in applying abilities to be important. (Not singling out City of heroes, but just as a n example, the base hit chance against an even level enemy is 75%, whereas in MxO, you'd have a 50% chance to hit an enemy since it's a comparison between two equally probably roll victories)
However, with MxO's single comparison, the frequency of an ability to land is drastically reduced. When your selections of power applications are drastically reduced in this manner, your skill in choosing which powers is much less relevant.
Aside from this crucial flaw, MxO performs suprisingly well in many respects. I expected to instantly dislike the game. But as it turned out, I enjoyed the game immensely until I had to accept the fact that this flaw in the combat system is not something plausible to change. If it were not for this mechanism that removes player involvement in combat, I'd be recommending this game.