Drakantos - A pixel art "generic tibia clone" with characters instead of classes.

[WaterMage]

From steam :

ABOUT THIS GAME


Join forces with your friends in Drakantos, a free-to-play MMORPG that brings a unique pixel art style to a cooperative online experience. Immerse yourself in the fantasy world of Eldras, brought vividly to life through compelling cutscenes. Experience a seamless blend of gameplay and storytelling as you progress through the game.




Explore different gameplay styles! Each hero in Drakantos stands out with their unique mechanics, personal traits, and story roles. Breaking away from traditional class systems of MMORPGs, our heroes bring new twists into cooperative gameplay. With each update, we introduce new heroes, ensuring an ever-evolving landscape of strategies and dynamics for players to explore and master.




Team up with friends, fellow adventurers or even go solo, to delve into dynamic dungeons, leveling up your heroes, dropping rare items and acquiring better equipment. These missions will be changing over time with a different set of enemies, bosses, resources, traps and objectives with the potential for special events and twists, making every playthrough unique and challenging.




Drakantos offers more than a cooperative journey. For those who seek to test their skill against other players, our PvP system provides the perfect battleground. Boasting a variety of game modes, a ranked system, and regular in-game tournaments, you have the opportunity to rise as a champion in our online community! In the PvP only the skills and strategy matter, the stats will be even to ensure a competitive environment.



Drakantos isn't just a place for combat; it's also a stage to express your unique style! Unlock exclusive icons, titles, and cool skins to further personalize your profile and heroes. Collect dozens of charming pets and make your interactions more lively with over 30 emotes per hero, each featuring unique voice lines!




Skill Customization: Experience different styles of gameplay with the same hero by modifying their abilities with orbs and artifacts.





Housing: Get your own land and decorate it your way.





Market: Trade rare items, collectibles and more with other players.





Guild System: Ascend to become the most powerful guild on the continent!





Global Events: Minigames and some fun events may occur during certain hours, changing the pace of the game.





And more: Highscores, Day and Night Cycles, Crafting, etc..



A vast world full of adventures and mysteries awaits you!

MATURE CONTENT DESCRIPTION
The developers describe the content like this:

This game contains frequent combat featuring pixelated blood, fantasy violence, and visible corpses. Although stylized in a pixel art aesthetic, battles often depict intense scenes. Some characters wear revealing outfits or have designs with sexual appeal, such as athletic male characters shown shirtless and female characters with cleavage or accentuated curves.

Video :



Some retardera posts about the game in spoiler :

► Show Spoiler

[rusty_shackleford]

I recall reading that this is more like pixel art WoW

[WhiteShark]

"The devs are from Brazil and only white passing latinos in the team."

Ok, I'm interested. The aesthetic appeals to me. Could be fun.

[Tweed]

Are we sure this isn't another one of those porn games pretending it's a real game?

[Rienen]

They had a playtest a bit ago. It really wasn't my thing. It had generic quests and clunky, slow combat. My biggest turn-off, though, was that the movement was grid-based and not free-flowing. It led to everything feeling slightly delayed and awkward. Supposedly, they put out a video saying they're addressing that, but truthfully, the playtest was enough to let me know it wasn't my cup of tea.

[rusty_shackleford]

2d games never make me feel like the guy I'm playing as is my dude, so I've never gotten into any 2D MMOs

[Norfleet]

2d games never make me feel like the guy I'm playing as is my dude, so I've never gotten into any 2D MMOs

I'm not sure how being 3D would somehow change that. I could see this as an argument for third person vs. first person, but I don't see how that applies to 2D vs. 3D third person. But I don't see "my character" as "my dude" in the sense that I am my character, I see "my character" as "my dude", in the sense of "my horse". My stable of 60 alts is my stable of horses. Or mules. You always gotta have mules.

[maidenhaver mk3]

If I don't see a character sheet, he isn't my dude.

[WhiteShark]

I found a Reddit post with a summary of an interview with the director:

► Summary

• Wingeon has been developing Drakantos with a staff of only 20 people
• They planned an "organic" Closed Beta and were positively surprised, with more than 300k beta requests and almost 10k online players in the final day. It was also an unexpected success in the Japanese server and they believe it's highly related to the amount of oriental influences they brought to their lore and classes. Yuki and Yura were obviously the top played classes there.
• It was mostly focused on testing performance and stress testing servers and it went very well in these aspects
• For monetization they're planning a subscription-based one similar to Albion and Tibia, that unlocks all systems in the game. The free base game should cover a lot for a real taste of it. Pricing will be accessible especially because of the brazillian community that suffers with dollarized subscriptions in the MMO space.
• No battle passes, no P2W at all. Frost says they want players to be able to unlock most of the mounts and cosmetics by playing the game and conquering them. They're also considering to have some heroes being sold in the store like League of Legends, but will need to figure out how.
• Frost showcases how the cosmetics will function, with multiple add-ons (extra clothing like hats, hairstyles, variants of base clothing) and a very wide color system (with dye trade and rarity level, like GW2!) for every piece of cosmetic. This way they expect that despite the unique base hero, every single player looks very different and unique enough as soon as possible into the gameplay compared to somebody playing the same class.
• They got a lot of feedback around the body block issues, especially for melee classes that would not be able to even hit mobs when too many melees were around it. They already confirmed they'll remove body block for summons, friends and party members in the next iteration, as well as analyse more possibilities around this feedback.
• Many feedback about not being able to target skills with mouse. Frost says they at some point they defined that because they didn't want the mouse targeting to be an advantage for PC players over console and mobile, but with so many feedback about that they will definitely analyse and reconsider if it makes sense.
• Lots of improvement planned for their tiles system when it comes to visual accuracy for AoEs.
• Input lag was one of the biggest feedback they got from everyone. Frost showcases during the interview the input lag feeling is also caused because of the tiles system and the action only happening after the character finishes moving to the final point of the next tile. He demonstrates how they considered a secondary option (doing it during the livestream in a few seconds) that starts the action in the middle of the tile movement. The effect is the combat feels way more fluid but the movement animation during it looks a little more wonky, and they believed the community wouldn't enjoy it like that (chat during the livestream feels very split between the two options). With all feedback received they will work on a middle ground as well as focus on improving the real input lag.
• They have a lot of plans for PvP, they believe 3v3 will be the most compatible pvp mode for Drakantos and the next testing phase will be focused on pvp, but highlights they also plan to create larger-scale modes including Sieges. The game will definitely have a competitive scene as it's something very strong in Brazil.
• They also want to create a dungeon pvpve system that you could be in a trio and be attacked by another trio during a dungeon, similar to Albion but with volume of players control to create more fairness. Many things are planned for PvP that they will avoid spoiling too much for now.
• Some feedback about a lack of visual elements like experience bar and others have been noticed and they will review everything and add/adjusting some of them.
• They really wanted to show the amount of build variety the game is going to have but it was not the focus this time. They also didn't want to reveal too much yet on this topic.
• Skills are going to have tradable orbs that can change completely a skill. He showcases a orb from Yuki (Ice Kitsune that tanks) in which a skills that sends an ice wave can becomes a frost wall with the orb. Then shows an orb that changes the ice wave to a frontal cone with longer reach.
• Orbs exist to create a level of build variety that will enable you go from tank to dps changing orbs and completely changing your build gameplay. This will also create a healthier queue scenario for the dungeon crawling system so they don't need to be locked to specific roles, what creates longer queues. With this system people can change buids right before the dungeon begins and find a common ground of roles between the party.
• They already have created more than 180 artifacts, which is going to be one of the 2 additional ways to customize your build and gameplay beyond skill orbs. For example, there will be an artifact similar to WoW's demonic circle from warlocks that will be usable by any class. Other example is an AoE teleport for friends and foes. This will create even more build variety in their expectations.
• Trophies will be the second way to customize the gameplay and will be focusing on enhancing your character through specific passives. All of that will be tradeable as well.
• They're focusing heavily on horizontal progression. It seems lvl 30 might be the level cap of the game and all trophies and artifacts will be shared between your classes (which can be instantly swapped, similar to FFXIV). This will also create the experience of leveling new classes faster, making it even more alt friendly.
• They didn't want to follow traditional pathways of vertical progression when it comes to equipment complexity of attributes, but they got feedback about it that they will definitely look at to find possible ways to improve the current structure.
• We have not seen anything from the endgame yet, there's already 16 bosses that have not been shown and they will also have a "Demonic Clown" system in the entrance of dungeons to enhance the rewards and difficulty in very different and unique ways, similar to an affix system.
• For the open map they are working hard to create more interations to enrich the exploration experience. Initially Drakantos was going to be a dungeon crawler and recently changing to an MMO world with heavy emphasis on exploration brought a lot of to-do's for the open world that is a top priority for them right now.
• Besides Fishing that is already on the way, they do not have plans for other professions for the short term. If at some point they find a way to add professions that will actualy enrich the gameplay they will definitely work on them. What they do not want to do is to add a bulk of professions just for the sake of having them, so this part of the game will take its time to unravel.
• No dates were shared but Frost reinforces they're at full speed to launch as soon as possible, but do not want to cause disappointments by sharing dates ahead of time that might not be achieved.
• Frost says they're running some surveys to see players perception about Early Access so they can consider one.
• In a very beautiful moment Frost gets very emotional by the end of the interview when talking about how this game has been their lives for a while and seeing the huge amount of positive feedback made them feel so happy and lucky.

[Finarfin]

If PVP is not mandatory, I might check it out.

[WhiteShark]

If PVP is not mandatory, I might check it out.

The interview mentioned instanced PvP and PvPvE and another video I watched said there would be red chests in the overworld that would trigger PvP events (presumably to fight over their contents), but it doesn't seem to have open PvP normally. Apparently it was originally just going to be dungeon crawls, but they changed their mind and decided to make it an MMO with an overworld. This probably won't be a game for @rusty_shackleford because the dev said it's focused on horizontal progression.

[J1M]

The pixel art looks beautiful. I wonder if their execs know that their art director is just copying Blizzard designs.

Great things that would never happen: Microsoft partners this studio to make art for some scrappy North American indie team working on a single-player Blizzard game.

[asf]

weebsr

[WhiteShark]

More information: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 8024401623

They said there's going to be another beta soon, but they haven't announced how to join.

The PvP design has some interesting ideas. It says the following types of PvP will exist:

• voluntary dueling;
• red chests randomly spawned in the wild that start a free for all among nearby players when activated, winner taking all;
• organized 3v3 arenas; and
• a small chance for two groups entering PvE instances to instead be pitted against each other, loser receiving normal mission rewards and winner getting extra.

That last one is really clever, I think. It allows for spontaneous PvP without depriving anyone of their stuff nor allowing anyone to optimize for it specifically, at least not without sacrificing efficacy in the majority of missions that remain normal PvE. They also reworked the movement and targeting systems to be free-flowing instead of strictly large-tile grid-based, as they were before. Looks cool.