Almost nine months ago I gave a positive review of Global Agenda. And coming to today is on is on it’s last legs. The game offered something unique, a first person shooter MMO. Not only that but it was based in a crazy cool dystopic world. But it had some set backs that inevitably made it fail. I think many people knew it was coming when Global Agenda almost immediately switched from subscription basis to free to play model. In this little review I’ll just be going over some of the factors (I feel) made this MMO fail.
1. PvP never evolved
In World of Warcraft their arena system is popular because at the end of every season there is a major reward and new challenges offered in the new season. The people who lose keep playing to try and get better and the people who win either quit or continue playing. As well Blizzard hosted public tournaments where the very best would compete against each other in a very public forum.
In Global Agenda, PvP never evolved. Global Agenda boasted AvA (agency v agency), essentially a guild war.
Essentially what would happen is your agency would control a certain number of hexes. You would plan activities with your guild to assault enemy hexes or defend your own. Every time you gain access to you unlock something new. It could be financing, weapons, or supplies. As leader of an agency you would actually plan the defenses of your territories including stationary weapons that would aid in its defense. Basically if you do not defend your territory after a challenge has been issued for so long the other agency just steamrolls through your territory in a basic PvE encounter.
It was (I can say) terribly addicting if you have tones of time (like I do). However, it never changed. At the end of each season all of the hexes reset and you once again would start over collecting bases and building a massive defense. You would get epic gear points each week from controlling hexes and so eventually everyone just became insanely geared. There just came a point very quickly that everyone was full epics and no longer needed any loot at all.
The game did not evolve and made no plans to do so. So the people who had won an AvA and had all the gear jetted, there was nothing else for them to do.
By the time the first content release Standstorm came out and the level cap went up by 5 new gear was released but it felt very poorly implemented as people in greens suddenly became par with people who worked hard to get all of their purples. The game essentially could not develop a reason to keep playing their PvP content.
Recently the 4v4 league was released but there are maybe 70 players in it total…. which honestly isn’t far off from the total number of people still playing the game.
2. No new content
When you buy a game for the Xbox 360 you expect the game to have maybe 30-40 hours of total game play. Take for example Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The campaign takes less than 20 hours to finish. The people who bought it have probably put over 1,000 hours into the multiplayer. An MMO however is going to be different. An MMO needs to entertain the primary people they made it for and casual gamers who find the game. Take for example the people that Age of Conan was designed for were fast button mashing/reacting players. Global Agenda was designed for people who enjoy first person shooters like Halo.
However, that can only go so far. You will lose your player base to other first person shooters if all you are basing your model on is beating other games on play value.
The game starts off cool, you go to a starter zone where you get broken out of a prison. You then go through this very cool level of shooting robots which culminates with a boss who is insanely hard to beat. So hard it seems that you actually had to do some Missions (Dungeons) and Mercenaries (PvP) before you have the tools to finish the intro story line… kinda sad really. I finished the beginner story at about level 10. And once I did it… the story just ended. You get to Dome City and you sort of just run around Dome City forever queueingup for Mercenaries and Missions until you level cap.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the content you got to choose from wasn’t so limited. The picture above is basically the only PvP map you will ever see. If you paid for the premium service you unlocked new PvP modes and new dungeon maps. However because so few people subscribed you would have to wait through insanely long queues to get to them. Eventually in the name of getting things done you’d just suck it up and play the same redundant maps over and over.
3. PvP was not Balanced
When most MMOs come out they are fantasy MMOs with 8-10 classes with 2-5 specializations per class. When Global Agenda was launched each class had three specializations with four classes. That’s 12 specializations to balance total with one of them being designated as the only tank spec and one as the only healing spec. This makes the game basically ten DPS specs to balance. World of Warcraft by comparison has 30 DPS specs to balance, Warhammer had 37.
A game that is entirely balanced around skill based PvP should be in the least balanced. Every class should be doing a max dps with their optimal moves equally, not the case. They tried to balance it around a qualitative position. That is, well this class is close range so they need more damage. This class requires more accuracy to every shot should hit like a truck.
In the end the most OP classes ended up being a tank spec and a robotics support class. This game had a year of development. How could developers just not balanced it properly? People were shunned away from playing healing classes and the rogue class were both horribly gimped. Healers and rogues are meant to be 50% of the game.
I think robotics were probably the most infuriating period. If you haven’t played the game yet the Robotics would drop these missile turrets or autoturrets that did stupid amounts of damage and took about as much damage as a person. You could run around a corner and BOOM rocket to the face. It felt pretty brutal when you were unable to beat what is effectively someone’s pet.
4. First wave or burst
In a lot of new MMOs you want to be a part of the “first wave” so that you can do group quests, dungeons, and mini bosses together. If you’re not within the first wave you will have trouble finding groups at all and the ones you are apart of are not always with the best players.
Global Agenda ended up with a unique problem, you always died. When you queue up for PvP or dungeons you could be mixed with anyone from level 10 to level 35. Of course at level 35 you can start acquiring epics. So most of the time when you queue up PvP you always have this one super powerful guy running around 2-shotting everyone with anything at all (ranged shots, melee swings, poison beams, close ranged machine guns). It was annoying in the least and if you were not part of that “first wave” you were left behind to these one-shotting players.
As unattractive as this might be it REALLY sucks facing against level 35 PvE mobs at level 10. They do not die to your damage and they do more damage than you can possibly heal or tank. So what you end up with is dungeons that are nearly unbeatable or are not worth your time… so you’re forced into doing PvP in hopes that you have more level 35s than they do.
A game needs alternative content and soloing content, on launch this game was devoid of it. It always pitted you against people of varying levels and gear levels.
Solo content came out with their expansion Sandstorm. And finally
5. Wasn’t a Finished Product on Launch
If the game launched as Global Agenda: Operation Sandstorm it would have had 10x more success. With Sandstorm they put the level cap at a very appropriate level and increased the number of dungeons and PvP modes available. It set out competitive leagues. It created a quest based leveling system.
Operation Sandstorm is essentially what the game should have been. If Sandstorm was available on launch you’d see a larger game base. Instead the game has stagnated with what will largely go down as a game that gave too little too late.
TheGameGuru.Me 