Big Time Game Review
Big Time is the newest MMORPG that is coming to the Web 3 NFT space with AAA quality. Having an interesting team behind them, this MMORPG could start setting the fundamentals that we are been seeking for this space to start growing for the better.
Big Time Studios has recruited experienced members that have worked for previous big companies with successful well-recognized games such as Fornite, Gears of War, Grand Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Overwatch, and more.
If Big Time manages to fully break the barrier of P2E games not being treated like video games, Big Time could change the P2E games for the better.
Big Time story:
Big Time's story is set in a distant future where all stars in our universe are starting to collapse, creating black holes in each star explosion. With so many black holes being created back and forth, soon there won't be any safe place for any living species to survive.
With our biggest savior Johnson "Paradox Corporate" advanced technology they own "time", allowing them to set "Portal Collisions", instead of being given to them for survival reasons so life in our universe does not perish, Paradox sells these collisions for profit.
After so much usage of the advanced technology that "Paradox Corporate" has abused said "Portal Collisions", this alien technology is out of control. While looking for a way to stop these portals, they summon brilliant minds that have existed throughout humankind's history to help train these recruits to keep in line with the Portal Collisions that have been created. Sci-fi will always be an amazing genre to watch, to read and to play and Big Time has a interesting concept on their hands.
Big Time's story despite having a great concept, is still raw due to his pre-beta state, so we all are looking forward to what they can come up with.
Big Time Gameplay
Source: Big Time Studios
Their gameplay is very active following the same concept of the dungeon crawler genre, similar to Path of Exile, Torchlight, and Diablo franchise, where your main focus - on its current state of gameplay - is clear dungeons that are scattered through the world; clearing them to grant your rewards for you and the party of friends you can go with.
The fighting style is very active allowing you to be in free movement while encountering creatures on the world map and the dungeon you'll dive into, the fighting system allows you to attack, dodge and use spells against your foes.
Reaction time on the controls is very fast without causing restrictions from a hardware perspective. Yet, the animation between attacks, spell casting, and dodge cannot be canceled by the player's will smoothly, only if you use the dash/dodge in case you need to do it; similar to Dark Souls combat system forcing players to not spam attacks in every situation they encounter.
This will enforce players to be careful about their tactics whenever they are heading against a horde of monsters. Surrounding themselves is not a good strategy since you won't be available to dodge fast enough.
What goes hand in hand with Big Time's careful play style is the basic attacks with his combo system. This basic attack combos consist of 4 maximum inputs through left click or right click. The left click is the Light hit and the Right-click is the strong hit.
Depending on which combo you use will be effective or ineffective in your battles according to which weapons you are using. Some weapons can cause effects like bleeding, freezing, burning, and knockback according to the combo and weapon that was used.
Energy potions and Health Potions are used to recover your so you can have enough Energy points to use your abilities or Health points to survive, but these potions do not recover your stats immediately, they recover your stats over time; this is a great feature creating a more strategic way to play the game looking for gaps between attacks instead of going with the old lazy way or tanking all the hits and spam as many potions you can. Having this feature adds more difficulty to the game and forces the player to find better gear, increase his skills and stats and play in a more coordinated way with the team.
The number of levels on this game for being in a pre-beta state is quite amazing, showing us how much a team can do even at an early stage of development.
Let’s break down some core features of Big Time's gameplay:
**Classes**
Source: Big Time Studios
Big Time has 4 classes to choose from:
· Time Warrior: (Style of play: Barbarian)
· Chronomancer: (Style of play: Mage)
· Quantum Fixer: (Style of play: Healer/Support)
· Shadowblade: (Style of play: Ninja)
According to what class you choose at the start of the game, you'll be trained by one of these recognized people for the human society and progress of humankind:
· Way of the Time Warrior (Barbarian) - Taught by the legendary Genghis Khan.
· Way of the Chronomancer (Mage) - Taught by the fabled Merlin the magician.
· Way of the Shadowblade (Ninja) - Taught by the spymaster Mochi Chiyome
· Way of the Quantum Fixer (Medic) - Taught by the Founding Father Ben Franklin.
Being trained by these people according to what class you picked at the start of the game is very interesting, hopefully, we see more important figures of human society being added to this path of classes in the future, allowing us to meet like "Robin Hood" on the "Shadowblade" path so he can teach us how to steal, for example. Sigmund Freud could teach us "Meditation" and call our inner selves and others' inner feelings if they get hit by a "confusion" effect or "Rage" not allowing them to control themselves, etc.
Four basic classes to start from that are very solid when it comes to playing style, is a nice touch that they add the "Style of play" right away on their Wiki letting us know what we are picking and not getting caught off guard. The only class that is missing from the basic classes would be "Archer" or "Ranger" since many are the users who could like the fast attack on a range distance and focusing on damage output; Mage can fill this role but has less defense and health points by default and his attacks could be more limited by the energy points.
Selecting classes in big time does not feel restricting and adds variety to player experience
Classes are represented by an accessory called "Pocket Watch" and can be equipped like any other piece of equipment on your character.
As you play the game by beating up monsters and clearing dungeons, you'll find yourself looting a "Pocket Watch" allowing you to switch classes.
For example, if you picked the "Shadowblade" when you started the game, and after clearing up some dungeons, you looted a "Pocket Watch" of "Chronomancer", this will allow you to also become "Chronomancer; giving you the option to swap between classes in case of need for the dungeon and the party. One thing to keep in mind is that each "Pocket Watch" have its separate level.
If a "Shadowblade" level 5 equipped a "Chronomancer Pocket Watch level 1" you'll become a level 1 "Chronomancer", with seperate progress on skills.
Source: Big Time Wiki
How can you level up the "Pocket Watches"? By playing with them.
This could sound a little bit "grindy", but in some sense provides more gameplay and diversity to the player's experience. Some like to have different alternative characters to their use, some just like to focus on one character. It all depends on what the players feel can do through their gameplay. The biggest downside of this is that you CAN NOT CARRY YOUR PROGRESS from one "Pocket Watch" to another even if they are from the same class.
If you equip a level 1 “Pocket Watch”, you’ll be a level 1 according to that “Pocket Watch”.
"What's the point to equip that other Pocket Watch if is a lower level than the one I've been using?" you may ask.
A higher rarity Pocket Watch - from the same class - will grant you better base stats than your lower rarity Pocket Watch.
The concept of the "Pocket Watches" holding the classes that we are going to use to play the game perhaps will carry a stronger imagery in the main story of the game, in a subtle way letting you know that everyone can do anything to help; we just need to put effort into it. And having these great people from history aiding you could open more personal conversations with these characters, information that probably some did not know, and more.
**Abilities**
Each class has its abilities represented on a Skill Tree, giving you freedom to choose how you want to level them up to improve your game experience by becoming stronger. The skill tree right now is not big for now on its pre-beta version, we will see how the Big Time team works with the Skill Tree system to make some amazing combinations.
Many of the abilities that are currently on display are more active than passive, so this has to be kept in mind whenever you want to increase your skill trees Builds in the game are still be tested by the community to find optimal combinations.
**Items & Rarity**
Source: Big Time Wiki
What are the rarities in this game? This game has a large list of rarity tiers for their equipment and Pocket Watches, including cosmetics.
· Common
· Uncommon
· Rare
· Epic
· Legendary
· Mythic
· Exalted
· Exotic
· Transcendent.
Having a large list of rarities makes the game more fun for those collectors that like to obtain as many items as possible of each rarity and element if possible, the biggest downside is that causes the drop rate of this to become harder to obtain any of the higher tiers creating both a breaking point of intense and addictive play-style from users until they reach a point of frustration.
Keeping in mind that we have Swords, Axes, Maces, Helmets, boots, shields, daggers, staves, etc, and adding the Pocket Watches, the pool of items is bigger as well as the drop rates. Handled well this can bring up some interesting measures for players that want to gear up and go for the best and increase their power on their characters.
Now that we know all this: "What class should you use?"
Big Time remains in a pre-beta state, meaning they still have a lot ahead to work on, this will bring the subject of changes along the way, so sticking to one class probably would not be so ideal. Classes will be tweaked, improved, or changed completely; the Pocket Watch system allows you to use other classes and encouraged you to try them out from level 1 so you can level up as you learn how to play with that class
Again, NONE of the classes are better or worse, it all comes down to the Dungeon you are clearing up and the necessities of your friends/party members.
**Dungeons:**
The Dungeons on Big Time is where the players will spend most of the time on "Time Collisions".
Inside these Time Collisions, you will be given objectives to accomplish inside these Dungeons represented by portals to obtain rewards. Killing the creatures, mining materials, and killing bosses as well yield in-game loot.
For Dungeon Crawlers players this is great allowing the player to get into the dungeons they feel more comfortable with and master the builds. Dungeon Crawler users are usually
**Big Time Art-Style**
Source: Big Time Studios
Using retro solid colors offering amazing views from their open-world scenarios makes you feel the need to explore and know every corner of this world; the shape of the characters has a similar feeling to Fornite's characters' sprites making them feel somewhat familiar with what we have in titles. Creating a game with this amount of Web 3 P2E and NFT game.
Despite having good aesthetics that the game has to offer; early players have shown criticism about the lack of detail in the character's modeling and item designs. Character models are too square, the character modeling itself does not have much difference between classes, gear and customs . This is a pre-beta it’s just the start, allowing players through the Passes to provide feedback; so far Big Time has provided a solid and playable game. More features will be added soon.
Their strong use of saturation in the lighting and the high contrast on nature has a great impact while exploring each biome.
The portal designs and the change of colors inside of the dungeons gives a different sensation while clearing your way beating the monsters that come after you.
Many do hope this can be improved over time since the amount of potential the game art style can offer a lot but the team needs to decide how much effort they want to implement on aesthetics to keep engaged the community in this regard. Overall, the modeling of the world is quite interesting making us feel that we are playing one of the best Web 3 games out there so far. They are in a Pre-beta state and they have delivered greatly.
Big Time as Play to Earn
Source: Big Time Studios
The play-to-earn system that Big Time offers is similar to the Web 2 games have to offer in this space. This can easily be taken as a Web 2 game model compared to many other Web 3 games.
Like any other P2E games that exist in the Crypto-NFT space, they have a token that has a certain value that is usually designated at first by the developers according to how much liquidity pool they added to the token, later on, the token suffers positive or negative changes according to the demand and offers by the players, community, holders, and token speculators.
Big Time has embraced COSMETICS as part of their value model.
Cosmetics have been a core component of MMORPGs, later on being moved to mobile games, and almost everything now uses cosmetics. Although, these cosmetics are commonly behind a microtransaction set by the company itself. For example, if you want to buy a Santa Claus outfit for your warrior on your favorite game, you have to pay 20$ to buy this costume via a bank account, PayPal, and such.
There's no other way to obtain this costume, only through this microtransaction.
This is where Big Time comes has developed a different approach. These costumes and skins can be looted by clearing the Portal Collisions, finishing the objectives inside the Portal Collisions, or being looted by the creatures. Drop rates are unknown, but what we know so far is that we can obtain them by playing the game.
This extra incentive to play the game adds additional rewards to . All costumes and skins are NFTs on chain, allowing players to own and trade these assets. Skins for your weapons, helmets, legs, armor, shields, and such; following the Web 2 economy system, these costume DOES NOT AFFECT YOUR IN-GAME STATS. Paying for increased power or advantages is not a driving factor for obtaining or purchasing skins, the value is in the rarity and aesthetic of the skin.
How is this game can provide a Play-To-Earn experience?
First, these costumes & skins have a limited supply according to the rarity that you looted. Let's say you looted a "Common" rarity skin helmet called "Halo" and have a total supply of 1000 that can exist on Big Time. Once 1000 "Halo" skins are obtained through the players, no other "Halo" will be looted, this will allow healthily building demand and scarcity.
Why healthy? gives exclusivity without any type of advantage in-game rather than looks, not power.
Prices are not set by the Big Time team but instead are being set by the community. Some costumes and skins go around 5$ up to 2000$, all comes down to the rarity and the skin aesthetic... And of course, personal taste. Items can be bought and sold through the Big Time official marketplace. You can cash out money from the game through a crypto wallet in USDC or directly cash out to your bank account if is supported by the Big Time platform.
Is Big Time worth it?
In his current state, anyone considering playing needs to consider this is a pre-beta version of the game and more things are coming up or are subject to change. Bugs do happen, but it has actual game behind it and difficulty, is entertaining and has replayability as a pre-beta. Participating now and providing your feedback can help create a better experience as the team and community develops. As you play and enjoy the game you may obtain an NFT that can end up giving you some value.
With "Dark Souls" difficulty in a sci-fi environment, and gameplay that is still in the works be a more successful game. Then yes, is worth your time, and a BIG TIME.
