Pax Dei: Another Early Access Disappointment

you know I'll start off by saying this if you just want to build some cool looking medieval structures like a Hut a home or even an entire Village Pax dayss get you covered as outlined by recent videos showcasing various Community builds you can make some cool looking stuff like genuinely these are fantastic looking medieval buildings I will not deny that although do keep in mind that building anything beyond a tiny wood dwelling does require cooperation with a large number of people people farming the vast amounts of resources needed and people proficient in the various processing skills required to refine those resources into the building components before you can make the buildings you can build a tiny little home yourself but you won't be building a massive Village or castles like these by yourself that requires a lot of people all working together as the developer outlined in their pre-release mission statement PX day is not a singleplayer game it's also according to that same post not a theme park MMO not a medieval simulator not a surviv game and not a fast-paced game after spending most of yesterday playing pack day in addition to time spent in earlier Alpha test I will add one more thing to the list something else that PA day isn't and that's ready it's just not quite ready and in its current state I don't think it's particularly very good either uh it does do a few things well players can come together and build very cool stuff as you've seen and Visually pack St looks phenomenal I mean like jaw-dropping at times how goodlooking this game can be in particular the lighting and environmental effects on many occasions I would be like walking through the woods in a field or looking out at some Vista and think to myself man this looks amazing but everything else about the game is simply not very good at the moment and that at the moment part is important because yes this is an early access title they didn't release packs Day saying it was a finished product very much the opposite but as with anything else the quality and completeness of Early Access games can vary for example two of my favorite games so far this year have been Early Access both in shrouded and no rest for the wicked even though those games aren't complete with more content and features still planned to come both of them still also felt fully realized generally polished and most importantly they were fun to play I sunk over 50 hours into the Early Access launches of both of these games but Pax day lacks any of that currently it doesn't feel fully realized it doesn't seem even close to polish and it hasn't been very fun to play unfortunately enough now funest objective um I have got no doubt that people are having a good time working together with 5 10 20 plus other people and building some awesome looking medieval Villages as of this recording there are some 8 to 10,000 concurrent players online and I'm sure many of them are enjoying themselves but for me the game still needs quite a bit of work before I'll consider playing it again and I know I'm not alone uh as of now Steam Reviews sit at a mixed with a rating of 46% now I am sure some of those negative reviews were due to the laun launch day server and performance issues There Was rubber banding there was the fact that you couldn't build anything for most of yesterday like placing down stuff would consume the resources but then the wall station or whatever it was you tried to place wouldn't appear or sometimes you would place down a structure and later that structure would vanish but the technical stuff aside much of which has already been addressed there are more important things that they need to take care of now I would classify this game as extremely early access like we need to put Early Access games into different tiers I think their estimated onee Early Access period until 1.0 release seems a little ambitious like Pax day feels very far from Finish it's not something that I would currently recommend spending full price on let alone the monthly subscription that the game intends to launch with uh so what does need work well pretty much everything else outside of the visuals and the building consider this the constructive uh feedback portion of the video for me the biggest standout disappointment absolutely is the combat uh it's awful I don't know how else to put it I don't really want to sugarcoat it just does not feel good some of the worst MMO combat I've ever experienced zero weight or impact feel to any part of the combat Loop were it not for the health bars floating over enemies heads I couldn't ever tell you if I hit anything like I I have no clue because it constantly feels like you're swinging at the air even when attacks do connect I've heard some people say that the game is using the baked in ue5 Tech demo combat I don't know if that's the case they might be exaggerating but but I would say whatever implementation of combat feedback that they have got right now it needs a lot of work it just is very floaty it feels weightless and it's not engaging at all for me improving the combat should be their number one priority I think that that alone would make playing the game far more enjoyable if fighting things was engaging I would spend more time playing pack day just going around clearing camps and hunting Wildlife Good Feeling combat carries a lot of value to me but simply right now combat impacts day it's not good at all it's like bottom of the barrel unfortunately the weightlessness and lack of good feel extends to another big portion of the game as mentioned earlier building stuff is pretty much the main thing there is to do right now in PAX day and half of that equation is gathering the materials needed for building similar to combat Gathering also feels pretty bad mainly because it feels like nothing at all between the sounds animations and UI feedback or lack thereof collecting resources isn't engaging either chopping down a tree picking up herbs mining rocks and ore it all lacks satisfying feel and feedback as with the combat it's as if you're swinging and missing even when you hit even when you hit a tree to chop it down doesn't feel like it happened there the feedback isn't there some things have no animations at all like harvesting animal parts for example while many of those that do have animations still lack that satisfying feel and while this feedback might sound silly to some uh there are plenty of games that have done good feeling Gathering and harvesting many survival games and MMOs have nailed this in the past I would look at them for inspiration off the top of my head I would say that the Gathering and crafting in both lost Arc and new world were extremely well done and those are games that are full of other issues but chopping down trees and harvesting ore felt good and impactful in both that part of the gameplay experience was satisfying gathering in packs day just like it's combat it is it it does not feel good another big thing I want to point out right now that I do think will push a lot of players away is the grind of the game progressing past the very basic early tiers of items requires tons and tons of grinding now much of this is clearly fuel by the developer desire to require working together as a group and one way to reinforce that requirement is that making progressing practically impossible for solo players they have achieved this goal in two main ways number one the sheer quantity of items required for progression and number two the proficiency skill levels that no single person could achieve themselves in a reasonable amount of time you are required various parts from various professions and leveling up those professions takes a heck of a lot of time such that you cannot continue until get with someone else who has progressed in another profession and so both of these things will prevent solo and I would say even small groups of players from what we can tell from progressing very far in the game but even if you are playing in a big group if you've got like 30 plus people that you're playing packs day with you still have a lot of work ahead of you uh the game has a massive number of items that you'll need to collect there are at least hundreds if not potentially thousands of different resource and item types there's a lot to manage even for people who are used to playing various survival games which PX day is not by the way that was in the list of things Pax day is not PX day does have the typical resource types you'll find various sorts of ores stones and Clays plants herbs fruits Woods fibers thatches animal parts over a 100 different Alchemy items the list goes on and on and many if not most of those also have several teers so for example there are three tiers of iron ore that we found in the last test and that goes for other resources as well so there are many different resources and item types further multiplied into their different tiers that you'll be using for crafting your items weapons tools and especially for building which you will then also need huge quantities of certain items if you want to build anything other than a basic Hut which leads me to another big issue right now for PAX day that is the crafting and storage so for starters there is no craft from Storage this is a clear feature inclusion that would immediately improve the game especially when you understand just how many chests you're likely going to need if you're playing so for example in the last test just a few weeks ago Liam spent his time just trying to be a cook like that is all he focused on for majority of the first few days and after about 4 days of playing with just him working on cooking and doing some gathering in between the processing portion of it they had over 50 storage chests just for cooking related items 5 50 and you can imagine how much of a nightmare it is to manually sort through 50 storage chests looking for items to do your cooking and that was just for cooking the game also has professions for Alchemy jewelry making carpentry armor and blacksmith leather working Fletching weapon smithing and tailoring and each of those professions have their own sets of materials resources and components that you will need storing manual sorting and retrieval of after Just 4 days in the last test Liam's group had over50 storage chest this was a group of 10 to 15 players uh online at any given time and apparently you're going to need to play in groups much larger than that which would presumably mean you need many more than 150 storage chest it's a lot to manage especially without crafting from Storage I think it would go a long way if they added crafting from storage and on a similar note those crafting proficiency levels will have a will be a big gate for solo and smaller groups of players as you level your proficiency you do this by engaging in the crafting activity so working at the bench whether you are doing Alchemy jewelry making carpentry actually doing those things levels you up makes you better makes it easier and you less likely to fail crafting of the harder recipes of that of that type but as you move into the later tiers the higher end forms of progression for these different professions they're going to require you to get high-end materials crafted by players with proficiencies in the other professions so for example if you are a cook eventually you're going to need to make a higher-end oven but you won't be able to do that on your own because you're going to need a Smith to craft the higher tier version of ore and you're going to need a tailor to make another component the ghost is part of that if either player in the group of people that you're playing with is behind in their progression you are going to get straight up bottlenecked until they level up which is exactly what happened to us in the last test this is going to affect obviously the solo players but even again those small groups of players I think five 10 to 15 people unless you are all actively playing at the same pace and at the same level you're going to get bottlenecked by other players who aren't up to the levels they need to be to make the thing that you need in order for you to progress so yes there is a lot to grind and again this is clearly done to reinforce the requirement of playing in groups and working with other people like the devs say this is not a Sol game the group Focus however extends beyond the resource crafting Gathering and farming and grinding combat as well outside of those early tiers of wildlife will require multiple players this is especially true once you leave the starting areas you pretty much need to be in a group if you're going to do any combat enemies in these zones will be way stronger than the gear you can craft at that time makes you so until you actually go in and deal with those enemies and then craft the resources around them that they're basically protecting you're not going to be able to do this in a a small group or definitely not as a solo in fact in these areas you will regularly see groups of like 10 people wailing away at a single boore that's not an exaggeration that's just what it's like and I want to make clear too I think it's perfectly fine to have a grind Focus game I think it's perfectly fine to have a game that requires grouping and working with other players if anything that's welcome most MMOs nowadays they cater to solo play it's a nice fresh breath of air to get something a little different I also think it's perfectly fine to make a slower paced game as well with more time investment required for progression but both of those things will likely limit the game's potential audience but that's okay these aren't bad ideas it's really just the implementation and more so the uh it's just not finished it's not polished enough and the motivation there to actually go through that grind and to go through the effort of of working with people and joining those large groups besides building there's there's really not much else to this game and really that's what I think the bigger issue is that's about all PX day is at the moment a big grind for resources and a requirement to play with huge groups to meaningfully progress combat is extremely rough this is a massive negative for me even the Gathering doesn't feel good which certainly doesn't help so yes outside of building things I guess PVP combat with bad combat there's not much else for you to do in this game not even to mention the game's monetization for what I would consider right now a pretty rough product they are charging $39 for basic access with their also being $60 and $100 tiers that Grant additional character slots cosmetics and plots of land which some people are considering and calling to wind these land plots provide a pretty big advantage over control of rare resources because they will spawn at set locations so with extra plots you can basically spread your ability to get these resources your your access to it and to storing it and to access to things like Dungeons plus once the game is finished they have also confirmed that it will require a monthly subscription to play I think in theory having a monthly sub for an MMO is fine but I will again say as of right now it's not quite there it needs to improve quite a lot before I would even consider paying a subscription and I want to reiterate as well I think the premise of this game is good I think right now visually it is gorgeous love the way it looks just like getting screenshots and walking around the forest of this game that's pretty cool and I also think the structures that players can build are rather impressive frankly like this is a really well done build yourself a medieval Town game but that's all it is right now if you just want to make cool medieval castles with a bunch of your friends in a pretty looking World Pax day does give you that but outside of that it's just pretty bones and frankly underbaked like I said it feels like an extremely early access game but I hope they make it better the pitch for the final version of what they want pack day to be it sounds great there's just quite a ways uh to go from what we've seen thus far I would be surprised honestly if the game actually launches into its 1.0 version 12 months from now it appears like they're going to need a little more time or if it does I would be surprised if it gets to a point where what that I would consider satisfying for a 1.0 release for paying a subscription fee there's a lot of Promise here at Pax day I just I I wanted to make people aware that the current iteration I just don't think is quite it doesn't mean that people won't enjoy it I have enjoyed games that I've just done building in I think a lot of people would consider EverQuest Next Landmark probably a bad game it shut down after all but I remember having fun with it although that was a little different because uh coincidentally enough EverQuest Next Landmark was a building game where you could build massive structures as a single person whereas again this does have that group focus and and we'll just see how that pans out in terms of audience size in terms of success as of right now the Early Access launch has not been very successful but I wish the developers well and I hope they can turn Pax day around and it ends up with a One point0 release that does feel worth a subscription cost we'll see thanks that's it for today as always appreciate you watching I'll see you guys next time take it easy

Channel: Force Gaming

Views: 68,750

Keywords: Pax Dei MMO, pax dei early access, pax dei review, pax dei impressions

Id: TDRJ64eiL54

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024