Utilizing the news provided on the A:IR website and supplementing it with information gathered from G-Star 2017, MMO Culture provided a further look at the airships and weaponry.
It is now clear the majority of the game will be taking place at altitude with the main mode of transporation being this array of airborne machinery. There are also ground level ones like mechs that are utilized for both exploration and ground-to-air combat, but the majority of the design revolves around airships of various sizes and capabilities.
The way I look at these various pieces of machinery (ranging from personal jet packs to large transfer vessels) is they are an extension of the normal gearing progression (armor, accessories, weapon) in traditional games. It’s part of the progression system where the game world, exploration and combat end up taking place at higher altitudes against more powerful enemies. Machinery and weaponry can be enhanced in order to provide more movement speed, more defensive capabilities, and higher amounts of firepower.
There is of course ground based mission (command and control style) objectives involving large scale PvP besides the airborne realm versus realm combat. But it seems like that won’t be a huge focus of a characters progression.
Learning more about this/watching actual game play, I’m not sure how well this type of aerial combat focused MMO will do. I do see where the use of artillery is meant to try and appeal to the PUBG crowd since there is going to be this ulterior motive by Bluehole to get a percentage of those players to crossover into what is their actual strength (MMORPG’s). Similarly, Kakao is also going to look to get some crossover into their main MMO, Black Desert Online.
This design however is definitely more of a niche; one that now doesn’t really come across as appealing to someone like myself that prefers having a character that goes out into that world to explore and slay monsters.
I guess I’ll need to wait until the first CBT happens in order to see how the actual character leveling and gearing progression works in order to formulate a better opinion.
