The game I keep coming back to

[dWintermut3]

I was motivated to post this as I started installing Neocron after installing my new solid state drive, making it the 8th consecutive computer (well same computer new drive same thing) I've put Neocron on.

I find that I keep coming back to Neocron time after time, it was the first MMO I ever played, I didn't even have a credit card at the time I played the single-player teaser demo for a month before I got one.

I think it's for a variety of reasons, first of all it's UNIQUE. There's nothing like this, anywhere, I tried Tabula Rasa hoping it might be the same (remember that dog of a game?), I've played maybe a dozen MMOs from WoW to EVE to Star Wars and I keep coming back to Neocron.

It's the one MMO that gives me a real sense of a huge expansive world, not just a fun time playset to go run around in. It's a combination of art, the wastelands, the vehicles, the design, the open-ended leveling system, and a certain special something that make it feel so expansive even compared to modern MMOs or single-player games. I think a big part of the "not feeling like a game" is that the wastes are huge, there's buildings that don't have a "point" in the form of a loot chest or an epic boss at the back. I have a love-hate relationship with that, I mean it feels pointless at times, but it feels REAL too, the huge tangle that is Industrial Area and Outzone feels like the mess of a decayed dystopia, not a video game.

It does things that I've never seen any game do. Tradeskills that level through crafting alone, a crafting system that gives you stuff better than "raid drops" so it actually feels like it matters, vehicles you can drive, and shoot, the outpost system, APARTMENTS... NO GAME HAS EVER DONE PLAYER HOUSING AS WELL AS NEOCRON. Soul-light, the implant system, the LE implant, a brilliant solution to the "non-consensual PvP" problem that's deviled every game ever. DRONES, a prescient idea really. The reloading animations! they breathe life into all these fantastic sci/fi technologies in little ways.



I'm not sure if this thread has a point, maybe just my love letter to the game I keep coming back to, in preference to a 200-game Steam library full of 4k HD action bonanzas, eight computers and 12 years running.

[Drachenpaladin]

I wish the NST could also revive the single player demo. That would be awesome.
I have trouble getting it to run under Win 7.

[Jack Slater]

I get what you say!
Getting lost in the wastelands is hard and trying to take part in OP fights with a char that hasn't taken all the important genreps yet makes you feel that!
When I came back to NC in 2013 I wanted to just explore the wastelands and came across an abandoned mining side and went in. I found nothing and I had the feeling that just a few people have been here before. The design of Neocron has great potential and roaming the desert in Fallout New Vegas gave me the same chills when I came across a cave. Sadly you could always be sure there is some purpose in that place which takes away the magic of exploring it. A vacancy of content is definitly not bad!

Anyway I always wondered if there is a chance that some sectors of neocron/wastelands could be put together to get rid of synchronizing but I haven't got a clue how the sector design works technically.

Considering the trade skills I never felt that leveling the tradeskills felt good in Neocron! Any reasonable player levels his trader trough combat skills. I leveled a PPU without APU and thats crazy enough in such a low population game. But whats true about trade skills: It matters. And thats what I definitly miss in other games. Loot is nice put it shouldn't replace crafted stuff. But special loot like the Chaos Queen Flame Avalanche used to be better and I remember taking out two capped APUs with my mid level Hybrid because of the avalanche and his stacks. I hid and healed and they burned!

But I got off topic: Neocron is great and I would like to see it being alive and more popular in the future!

[Omnituens]

The layout of Neocron could only exist in an MC Esher painting - there are sometimes 3 sectors that would be in the same "space" if you pieced them together at the zone points, so would need a re-design to stitch it together in a coherent way.

[LiL T]

I keep coming back from time to time, there are reasons for my quick departure, every time it is always boredom from pve, pve in this game needs a massive over haul, it is no longer fun to lvl in neocron, it is the same thing over and over.

[dWintermut3]

I keep coming back from time to time, there are reasons for my quick departure, every time it is always boredom from pve, pve in this game needs a massive over haul, it is no longer fun to lvl in neocron, it is the same thing over and over.

The PvE is a bit dull at times, but I find the variety makes up for it, because you don't HAVE to do it. I play a lot of sub-optimal ways because I find it more entertaining, rather than go sewers->aggie cellars->MB bunker/cyc pit->El F-> Regents, play around a bit! Go firemob hunting when you're barely level enough, go to the worm caves, grab a vehicle and use it to level with, etc. I'm working on a cst I'm levelling through JUST CST and missions right now, but will eventually be a lowtech pistolero.