While there are some still players steaming about the recent insurance fraud situation in Perpetuum, many others are excited about the plans that Avatar Creations has revealed in its most recent dev blog. After receiving player feedback indicating that the company wasn't doing as good a job of communicating its plans for the game as many players would like, the team decided to lay out its development goals well into the latter half of this year in a new dev blog -- and those goals look pretty awesome!
Starting off, players will be glad to hear that the upcoming PvE content that the devs were hinting at isn't just more missions and mob grinding. Instead, players are going to be treated to a new system: artifact scanning and discovery. By scanning down hidden spots, players can net basic goodies like salvage containers all the way up to special alien intel revealing special missions or new Mk2 robots. What's better, the devs intend to add more things into the artifacting system as things develop, offering a plethora of possibilities for everyone from the solo carebears to the largest groups.
Among the other plans are a new energy-credit system (which will give players the chance to pick up even more new modules and components), changes to the Assignments currently offered in-game, help for corporations seeking to recruit new players, area-of-effect explosions for your PvP fiends, new lands, terraforming, and much more. So if you've been curious about the plans for this fascinating indie sci-fi sandbox, then head over to the Perpetuum site and check out all the details in this wide-ranging devblog.
Reader Comments (7)
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 1:04PM Berzerk said
The game looks quite interesting, but I can't find anything about it that distinguishes it from EVE. The list of planned features seems to map almost 1:1 to existing ones in EVE.
Not a bad thing, per se, just weird.
Not a bad thing, per se, just weird.
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 2:10PM Space Cobra said
@Berzerk
That's what many commentaries are calling it, even articles here. It is just like EVE...but with Mechs.
Reply
That's what many commentaries are calling it, even articles here. It is just like EVE...but with Mechs.
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 4:33PM Integral said
@Berzerk
Man, I feel the same way. Like I do'nt want to hate on them for copying Eve because, let's face it, that's no small task. It takes an advanced understanding of algorithms and virtual economy to pull that off (I'm a computer science major lol). So it's not like they "just copied Eve" like that somehow makes it easy. But it also means that this games seems somewhat uncreative in a few respects. Hopefully they take it in an interesting new direction and bot games can coincide. I'm a fan of games that let me level up while I do homework (since I really don't have time for grinding)
Reply
Man, I feel the same way. Like I do'nt want to hate on them for copying Eve because, let's face it, that's no small task. It takes an advanced understanding of algorithms and virtual economy to pull that off (I'm a computer science major lol). So it's not like they "just copied Eve" like that somehow makes it easy. But it also means that this games seems somewhat uncreative in a few respects. Hopefully they take it in an interesting new direction and bot games can coincide. I'm a fan of games that let me level up while I do homework (since I really don't have time for grinding)
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 4:19PM tk421242 said
Your impressions are pretty spot on for the most part. It lifts many mechanics from EVE and utilizes them just with mechs instead. A few differences that I have noticed that stand out are the lack of a true autopilot mode and the way in which skills are trained. In EVE you can of course set a course that is a long distance away and just autopilot to it and go do something else. Granted you can be attacked but it is still a nice thing to have when wanting to run some laundry or something. In Perpetuum I have not seen that feature. You can point and click on the map and move to a spot or just autorun, but my mech several times has gotten caught on an object and just became stuck until I returned. Granted, I have only played Perpetuum for about 3 weeks, so if there is an autopilot and I have not discovered it yet forget I mentioned it :)
The learning of skills differs in that in EVE you have the timer and you place skills in it to learn them in real time, but with the 24 hour cap. In Perpetuum you earn points for in real time as your account is active and skills have a cash+point cost to train up. This is nice if you have to go away for a few days and come back, you have some skill points to invest then.
Just minor differences I noticed and like I said, not an expert on the game. I do think some of their audio is better than the audio effects in EVE. The missiles also look really nice when they launch, especially a volley of 3 or more at once.
The learning of skills differs in that in EVE you have the timer and you place skills in it to learn them in real time, but with the 24 hour cap. In Perpetuum you earn points for in real time as your account is active and skills have a cash+point cost to train up. This is nice if you have to go away for a few days and come back, you have some skill points to invest then.
Just minor differences I noticed and like I said, not an expert on the game. I do think some of their audio is better than the audio effects in EVE. The missiles also look really nice when they launch, especially a volley of 3 or more at once.
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 8:01PM tk421242 said
@Integral
I actually tried it out for the mechs, I grew up with Robotech so I was really excited to see a real mech mmo type game. The other factor that helped me decide was the pricing. It is a $10 per month fee to play, thats it. No big purchase with free month, just pay the $10 for a month and done. It is also non-recurring which I really like since I do that with all my mmo's by default just to avoid paying for a game I am not playing (who hasnt done that)!
One other issue I have though I did not mention is the odd size factor. In the game you are piloting around large mechs yet on the planet everything is huge so the mechs look small. Now this may just be me, but the scale makes it seem this way to me and I have an issue with that. Part of being in a mech is the appeal to be huge and towering over the land, do not get that feel at all in Perpetuum.
Reply
I actually tried it out for the mechs, I grew up with Robotech so I was really excited to see a real mech mmo type game. The other factor that helped me decide was the pricing. It is a $10 per month fee to play, thats it. No big purchase with free month, just pay the $10 for a month and done. It is also non-recurring which I really like since I do that with all my mmo's by default just to avoid paying for a game I am not playing (who hasnt done that)!
One other issue I have though I did not mention is the odd size factor. In the game you are piloting around large mechs yet on the planet everything is huge so the mechs look small. Now this may just be me, but the scale makes it seem this way to me and I have an issue with that. Part of being in a mech is the appeal to be huge and towering over the land, do not get that feel at all in Perpetuum.
Posted: Feb 17th 2011 3:02AM Bardbarian said
Is that a metallic phallus?







