Black Prophecy Open Beta

FTP Starfighter MMO Black Prophecy has gone into Open Beta.

For those who don't know its a twitch based game featuring space combat in instanced secotrs. It features, PVE, PVP and PVPVE missions. Since Jumpgate Evolution appears to have dropped off the radar, this will be the closest thing I'm likely to get to a multiplayer version of the starfighter gasmes I liked as a kid (Elite on the BBC model B FTW!).

Anyway if anyones interested its free to play at the moment and the devs say the cash shop won't be the type that provides those with the most cash an I win button.

You can check it out here:

http://www.blackprophecy.com/

Time to test out my new Roccat Kova+ gaming mouse.

Oh man, I reached Deadly on Elite. No matter how long I played after that it just never went any higher no matter what I did. Did all my space trading on a rubbery keyed ZX Spectrum.

I did my tour in Elite on a C64... and then the followup "Final Frontier" on the Atari ST 520...
The fun thing is, I still have both boxes, in my bookshelf ... It sure brings out memories!

Although now, I can't for my life understand now, how I could do such a repetetive and monotone game...but I guess the things were a bit different back then.

Yeah I know what you mean about repetition, I played Frontier: First Encounters to death on my first PC, think it was a 486, but I'm not sure.

I think you had to do the hidden missions to progress beyond deadly Shad.

Anyway Black Prophecies graphics are stunning and the combat is fun though I think it might become a little repetitive. The storyline missions seem to be borked on the english server at the moment.

You know what Nexx, what you said about the repetitive nature of Elite and Frontier got me thinking, all those games were about seemed to be getting a bigger ship, bigger weapons and amassing a fortune. Look at MMOs, we spend hours spamming the same hotbar combos to getting better spells, we grind skills, we farm mobs and dungeons for drops, really games haven't evolved that much since then, the only real difference between a game like Elite and an MMO is the interaction with your fellow players. Sure the graphics are better, the worlds are bigger but the fundamental principles are the same. Not that much has changed.

YMMV.

Just thought I'd give a few impressions on my initial experience with the game.

When I first logged the story line mission was borked, so I was stuck grinding mission terminal PVE missions which got a bit repetitive and boring, within a day or so there was a hotfix that allowed you to skip the mission and progress. The succeeding storyline missions are good with plenty of cut scenes and some nice acting. Sometimes the missions are a bit unclear on the objectives, for instance on a mission to recover some prototype technology from a wrecked ship it gave you the idea that you had to get to ship quickly and avoid the mines. This resulted in my first death going back I shot out the mines and got to the ship. On another mission to investigate some alien artifacts in an asteroid belt I was told to flee the area after activating some ancient defence system, this resulted in me failing the
mission, I suspect the real objective is to destroy the drones. I'll try this when I attempt it again.

Occasionally the missions are a bit glitchy, I was given the task of destroying a freighter carrying a shipment of drugs, it was a timed mission and I had destroyed all the escort fighters except one when I noticed the clock was running down so I proceeded to take out the freighters gun turrets and attack its weak points to destroy it, when i had done for the freighter I went looking for the last fighter to complete the mission and it had dissapeared so I had to redo the mission, this was done with 11 seconds to spare.

The combat is great, I've been flying on my keyboard and mouse and the control system is good at least in PVE, I tried flying on my joystick and mouse but turning the stick seemed to lock the targeting reticule making combat very difficult, using a mouse allowed me to move my sights making combat a lot easy. I've tried a couple of weapons, projectile weapons seem very powerful against tough ships but have a very short range, perhaps with a sniper modification to extend range and a fast engine to close quickly they may excel, I'll have an experiment and test out there viability. Energy weapons are good I acquired a couple of particle beams from a destroyed enemy and they seemed to have a long range and reasonable power. I really want to try PVP as it seems it would be a blast and go some way towards my child hood fantasies of being the best star pilot in the galaxy! I'm not sure if you can just do PVE at the moment I'll give an update when I've completed the prologue missions and chosen a faction.

Graphically the game is stunning even the lowest settings, occasionally I get a bit of lag despite having great ping.

The English speaking community is very helpful answering questions, unfortunately at the moment there are only two servers one English and One German, there is a massive influx of Russians spamming the chat with there own lingo despite warnings from the GMs, from the bit of Russian I understand they are exceptionally foul mouthed! When the game goes live they will probably band together on a single server creating an unofficial Russian server as they seem to do in a lot of games. Its just a bit annoying as they seem to be filling up the chat channel with loads of CYriilic script making it hard for the English speaking community to communicate at times.

The cash shop is open but at the moment, the categories seem to be in German, even on the English client despite the item descriptions being in English, the only things it seems to be selling at the moment are cosmetic items for your avatar and expanded bank slots.

I haven't tried crafting yet, I was wanting to experience the game play after the prologue, though I've acquired plenty of materials from wrecked enemy ships and a couple of blueprints from mission drops.

Overall I'd say the game is in good condition for release, there are a few minor problems, but its in a better state than Age of Conan or Vanguard were this close to going gold. There aren't a lot of SciFi games on the market and I'd say this is a welcome addition.

First I thought I'd post a little about skills in the game, completing missions and killing NPCs earns you XP, when you level you gain a number of skill points, the array of skills isn't very broad, putting points in engine allows you to upgrade your engine, putting points in shield allows you to upgrade your shields etc.

At the end of the prologue you have to choose a faction, either the genetically engineered Genides or the cybernetically enhanced Tyi, I chose the Genides as I thought their ships looked a bit cooler.

Open world sectors seem to be free for all PVP, I was on a mission in one as a neutral player and was miles form any enemy ships when I started taking damage, as a precaution I targeted the two nearest PC ships and ganked them as a deterrent. Mission terminal PVE missions don't seem to be able to be accessed from anyone except your team. There are also PVE and PVP quick play missions which take place in instances that aren't accessible to outsiders. I should point out friendly fire is possible.

Crafting objects is relatively simple, you place the parts in the constructor and it takes time for the object to be completed, I constructed a shield generator which took about 25 minutes, apparently you can buy items in the cash shop that reduce construction time..

Open Beta seems to be a stress test and an attempt to gather a lot of data to iron out the final bugs, much more like a traditional OB than the promotions they have been in recent years.

All in all I would say this is a great game, definitely the most fun I've had in an MMO since i started playing. In my opinion its way more fun than EVE online due to the faster pace of the game and twitch based combat. Its way more fun than Rift is, however YMMV.

Right I'll stop spamming the forum and going on about BP, i just wanted to express my thoughts on the game since my GF isn't really interested in hearing them.