Faxion Online

UTV True Games | http://www.faxiononline.com/





RPG | Genre:Fantasy | Status:Development (est.rel 2011)

Faxion Online is a free-to-play PvP centric MMORPG developed by UTV
True Games , and if you’re thinking that the game sounds familiar but
you can’t quite place it, former Star Wars: The Old Republic Community
Manager Sean “AshenTemper” Dahlberg left BioWare in order to take up the
mantle as Faxion’s Senior Game Systems Designer. For my preview, Sean
was on hand to guide me and a few others through the game and answer
questions we had.
Faxion Online is set in the world of Limbo where
the forces of Heaven and Hell are in a constant war as they vie for
control of Limbo’s seven realms, each of which is inspired by one of the
Seven Deadly Sins. Faxion Online takes a fairly tongue-in-cheek
humorous approach to the world as well, making use of a style of humor
similar to that of the Dungeon Keeper games or the TV series Family Guy,
which is accomplished with the help of the game’s stylized art style
and exaggerated character proportions.

During
my preview we traipsed through the Fields of Hunger, an area inspired
by the sin of Gluttony, which was filled by some disgustingly huge
creatures and was utterly bountiful with food. The inhabitants of the
area had also constructed a giant wall around a landfill where they dump
the surplus food and trash, taking a sweep it under the rug approach.
If they can’t see it, it may as well not be there.As a PvP game,
Faxion Online doesn’t focus heavily on levelling or really even PvE
content. Players of either faction both start out in the safe-zone of
Purgatory, but once venturing outside into one of the game’s seven zones
it’s a heavily PvP focused experience.

The
game hearkens back to the MMOs of yore as an entirely seamless and
instance free world. There aren’t any instanced PvP battlegrounds or
even dungeons from what I understand; instead players will duke it in a
territorial control based PvP meta-game to secure the game’s seven zones
for their side. One thing that Sean mentioned that stood out to me was
their emphasis on the terrain design. When I played Warhammer Online, I
ran into a number of Shadowbane veterans who drew comparisons between
Shadowbane’s zones and WAR’s RvR lakes, which were often flat, and as a
result didn’t offer much in the way of using the terrain as a tactical
advantage. Those Shadowbane fans will be glad to know that UTV True
Games appears to be putting a great deal of emphasis on the use of
terrain in PvP. For example, the aforementioned landfill is strewn with
pipe tunnels and hills of trash that are sure to be of great tactical
use.The zones are broken up into several smaller territories that
must be held in order to drive up a faction’s score, which culminates
in a tally at the end of the day to determine the zone’s control. This
ensures that zergs of players don’t just turtle up in one area, which is
beneficial from both a gameplay and server-side perspective (Sean noted
that having too many players in one area is never a good thing).
Players will want to control these zones too, as they offer access to
special vendors and other amenities that are sure to be attractive to
players looking to better their characters. It should also be noted that
PvP kills reward XP and even loot (though not the killed player's
actual loot, each player has a “loot table” and will drop appropriate
loot), so it is entirely possible to level through PvP.

As
far as character development goes, Faxion Online offers three classes
per faction (they are fairly symmetrical, though there are a few
differences). Crusaders (Heaven) and Reavers (Hell) make up the Warrior
offerings, Diviner (Heaven) and Occultist (Hell) are the Mages, and
Guardian (Heaven) and Zealot (Hell) are the Healer classes. Attribute
points can also be allocated as they are earned whichever way a player
sees fit.If this is all sounding fairly typical, there is a
twist. Faxion Online heavily favors multi-classing. To that end, players
have a certain amount of skill points they acquire throughout their
leveling progression, but they can be spent across all three classes.
What’s the point of choosing a class then? Well, the catch is that a
skill that would cost you two points in your chosen class will cost you
double that in a second class, and triple that if you’ve already got two
classes trained and you’ve opted to go down a third. Points are spent
in “circles” instead of a branching talent tree, and each class has
multiple circles to spend points in. There aren’t any pre-requisites to
progress through the circles beyond just having a certain amount of
points spent to unlock the next circle. As long as a circle has been
unlocked players can freely choose any ability they want within it,
provided they have enough points. In addition to putting together a
customized skill template made up of abilities from up to three classes,
players can also train individual abilities using a time-based system
in order to rank them up and increase their power. Skill training can be
queued up and will progress while offline.

Combat
is a bit more tactical than your standard fare MMO. There is less of a
focus on giving players 100 hotbars and buttons to press, and more of a
focus on using the abilities that are available. The depth comes
through Faxion Online’s “Charge” system, which allows for many of the
games abilities to be charged to greater effect. When a chargeable
ability is activated a notched vertical bar begins to fill and the
player can then hit the ability again to cast it whenever they are
ready. As the skill crosses different thresholds on the meter it will be
augmented in a variety of ways depending on the skill, so players will
have to choose between executing ability quickly and charging up for a
vastly more powerful version. As a PvP game, Faxion Online also doesn’t
put as much of a focus on items as say World of Warcraft, either. While
items are designed to be desirable, Sean emphasized the fact they don’t
want to be in a situation where a player wins simply because he’s decked
out in the best stuff.Finally, Sean noted that UTV True Games is
cognizant of the fact that PvP gamers are wary of microtransaction
based games as they are even more sensitive to players being able to
“Pay-to-Win” and so things or services available through the item shop
will be earnable in game as well. For example, extra bag slots can be
purchased for gold or “True Coins”, additional skill training queue
slots can be purchased, and skill training itself can be accelerated by
one hour per True Coin if a player desires. The short of it is, those of
you afraid some guy is going to kill you using his Claymore of WTFPWN
+3 that he bought in the game’s item shop for $50 need not worry.