blog
Aritcle
Don't Play Dungeon Fighter Online by Nexon
Category: Other Game: Dungeon Fighter Online Posted on Sep 26, 2009 9:17 pm
Like I did with Atlantica Online a while back (I need to go redo that entry some day), I have decided to speak out against Nexon's behavior in localizing the game for North America and Canada. So far it has been one of the worst localizations I have seen to date. If you were thinking about playing it, I recommend you think again. If you decide you don't want to, I will provide a few alternatives you can play if you desire a similar game. NOTHING was changed between Closed Beta and Early Access. No serious bugs were actually created until they implemented these new patches that did apparently nothing but worsen the overall gameplay experience. If the manage to fix a majority of these problems, then its fine but until they do, its complete crap.
1) The Fatigue System
Each day you can only enter about 150 rooms total. When you run out, you can no longer complete stages. All you can do is go PvP at the arena until the reset at 6 AM. This is by far the most restricting system I have ever dealt with. The average stage for low level players can be completed in under 6 minutes and this is almost always 8 or more rooms. This will not last most players more than 3 hours. Because everyone gets only 150 each day, new players can never hope to catch up to old players. The fatigue system specifically prevents them from doing so. The gap has already been established since Early Access Open Beta.
2) 1 Daily Life Token
The other versions of Dungeon Fighter Online all get at least 3 Life Tokens a day. The version run by Nexon in North America normally only gives 1 Life Token each day. Currently a special event is increasing it to 3 assuming you used up all 3 the previous day. You must use up ALL of yours the day before otherwise you won't get any at the reset. If you have even 1 left, when the fatigue resets at 6 AM server time, you will not get life tokens. With the lack of healing items, its near impossible for anyone to reasonably play this game.
3) Lack of Healing Items
For the most part, there is a severe lack of healing items. There are a few repeatable quests that you can spam for healing items assuming you gathered all the items from the stage. Otherwise you won't have access to much healing items. Stages don't provide much healing for players. All healing items are uncommon drops and the fairies from destroyable objects are quite rare. The only way to get healing items is with a bit of gold and Victory Points that can only be obtained in PvP. In my opinion, there is no valid excuse that players must PvP in order to do well in PvE.
4) The Game is PvP Focused
Only a tiny amount of players in any game truly care about PvP. The Nexon that published this version for the US and Canada made this explicitly clear. The game is for PvPers. Healing items are inaccessible without PvP. When fatigue runs out, you can go PvP for rewards still. PvE only exists so that players get stronger at PvP. Drops in PvE tend to be pathetic except for the boss at the end of the stage. That is the only one that even has a reasonable drop rate for a half decent item. Even then, the item dropped tends to be useless for players at the level it is accessible.
5) The EXP Rates Suck
So far, this game is worse than the level of 9Dragons and Perfect World grind. Quests give far too little EXP and there aren't enough quests to go around. Monsters tend to give less than 0.25% exp per kill even when you are in the 10s. Quests gives 10 times that but compared to what you need, it is still very small. On average you will probably have to start repeating a stage 10 times or so in order to level up even once. This will quickly drain your fatigue and you will have to wait until tomorrow. Some players in the 20s are claiming it takes them nearly a week's worth of fatigue to level up.
6) In Game Gold is Worthless
This might be seen as a good thing since gold farmers can't benefit from it, but it harms players more by being worthless. The only thing useful about it is that you can buy jars from the NPCs. That is also the problem. Jars randomly give you an item of a certain type and nearly all the time, its worse than a standard drop. Only on rare occasions does a rare item actually appear from the jars. You can't really spend it on healing items because healing items are obtained primarily through Victory Points in the arena and many players are unwilling to trade the healing item drops they obtained from stages themselves. All I can see this as is a selling point in the item mall. HP potions in the item mall...
7) Avoiding the Problem
Rather than fix the connection issues with the party system, Nexon simply divided the servers into East and West coast or tried to anyways. This is a poor attempt to get players to play with people near them so that they won't have latency issues. If they actually bothered to work on fixing the problem with the game that is causing this problem ,it would be better. Right now, all they are doing is avoiding the problem rather than fixing. At first Nexon surprised everyone by only allowing US and Canada to play, to this moment, they have not fixed it. It has been nearly a month since Closed Beta. I thought the whole point of it was to fix issues like this so where is this fix? Atlantica never took more than 4 days to resolve major connection issues. I'm waiting on you to fix this Nexon. Since the start of Closed Beta, NONE of the big problems were ever fixed.
Best Alternative - Lunia
It follows a similar play style, but for the most part is largely different. It is still run by stupid ijji. However, it will still have less of a dependency on item mall items than Nexon which is a good thing. Money also has uses and can be used to make more money unlike Dungeon Fighter Online.
Secondary Alternative - Battle of Destiny (most similar to Dungeon Fighter Online but not the best)
This is nearly a clone except that there are no classes. Characters and stat growth are based on the weapon used. Skills are learned using skill points and that specific weapon type to level up that weapon class.
Another Alternative - Grand Chase
Be careful which version you play, some are far too item mall dependent. Takes forever to get anywhere because you need to upgrade your character through quests in other to be able to play decently. Otherwise your character just plain sucks.
More Alternatives - Ghost X
I haven't played this one. So I dunno but other people seem to think its good.
Barely Related - Dragonica
Its still an arcade style game, but it is quite far away from what Dungeon Fighter Online actually is but it is still better than the crap Nexon has pulled out of its ass at the last moment. Its still more balanced than Dungeon Fighter Online which is amazing.
Tags: dungeon fighter online flame rant suck nexon fatigue
Ariticle url: http://my.mmosite.com/blog/b2840c6bf9af9811f013abf448d23fa7/blog/item/d000e6c5a0dc843ce7c5823e8f5aaebe.html
