Release 3 Thoughts | Good & Bad

Hi everyone.

I spent about 30 minutes in-game and here are my thoughts on R3.

• The graphics are good, but they seem a bit disconnected. The characters' skin are hyper polished and their hair is nearly plastic, but this world is rough and tough. I feel the ache when I walk through the villager squares, but the player characters and some of the guards look a bit too 'next-age' to fit in properly.
  
  
• I see the idea behind the stone and wood fences to differentiate plots, but it adds strain graphically and most importantly, it breaks immersion. Unless I'm missing something from the lore, man power and raw resources should be valuable and better spent on the lacking defenses than on convenient plot separating fences. I HIGHLY recommend finding another way to achieve your goal here. This is not, in my opinion, the way forward, at all.
  
• The running animations feel off. Swinging your right hand in front of you is not natural. Also, when you move to the left or right, your character begins to move locationally but the animation does not begin.
  
• The zones are not connected in an intuitive way. Perhaps these are placeholder relationships, or maybe because there is a missing mini-map I couldn't tell where I was, it felt like I was quickly running from town to town with no breaks in between, nor could I fully appreciate their diversity because the separation was arbitrary.

Thoughts?

[EDIT: your text editor does not function properly; it keeps removing and adding spaces when I try to adjust the lines between each point.]

 

The zones are missing the actual map. Right now you just run from town to town. So it's a placeholder thing.

In reality the places will be much further away from each other.

 

That's good to know, thanks.

 

Yeah, the graphics are still an area that need some work. The character models are noticeably "detached" from the rest of the world in my opinion, and sort of look pasted in. I think the world details look really good, but if the actual character detail doesn't get some serious attention, that will be a big negative in the game. My girlfriend was watching me play R3 yesterday and even commented, "the environment looks awesome, but the characters look fake".

The chat interface could also use some tweaking, because as it stands it's a bit cumbersome and clunky for real time use. In this day and age, the old "/w (name), " command to whisper to someone is not acceptable in my book. We should be able to double click a character to whisper to them specifically, or be able to use a tab for such. If we can select an NPC by clicking to speak to them directly, why not another player?

Performance optimization is another huge issue, but I am aware that is a process that doesn't happen until far closer to release.

Aside from those things, the game does seem to be coming along nicely. I am very much looking forward to release 4 and the first testing of combat! For me, that will be a very large indicator of how the control scheme is coming together. Running and jumping are one thing, but include swinging swords, bows/arrows and spell casting, and we'll see how the current control scheme is really working (or not working) out!

 

I agree with your girlfriend.

 

Agreed on the "/w", and "/p", and "/l".

Not having much experience in the modern generation of online games, the mere fact that such commands exist at all was quite startling.

Hopefully a more intuitive interface will be added for all those style commands.

 

My biggest gripe is my work schedule conflicts with their testing release schedule. Otherwise, the game is shaping up nicely so far. Still somewhat concerned about the right schedule to hit Q4-2014, though I hope they can deliver a polished product by then.

 

1) Character customization - seems about a third complete. They really need to sit down and finish it. Especially with just humans being available. More height/weight variation, muscalarity/obesity and more face variation just to name a few.

2) crafting - seems OK but some defintie work needs to be put into the drag and drop process. All items are hard to grab and don't always stay with the mouse pointer. Makes things very frustrating.

3) character orientation - when I go left or right my character turns but not the camera. This should be a coordinated process not me constantly jockeying my camera after each direction change.

 

I actually agree with this quite a bit! After being in all 3 releases now I have to say that these fences just being out there by themselves without a building on the plots just seems off. Why not use corner markers as they do in the real world? Plot types can be determined by the material of the marker; wood for village, rough stone for town, and polished stone for city initially. Something along these lines...



Now, forgive me for standing in front of the corner marker, but you get the idea. Then if we want a fence we can build one. We should also be able to determine the materials used as well. The plots differ by size and would be labeled in the deed, so why after it's been purchased would we be stuck to a material for the fence? Just think, another money sink to help keep the economy in check!

 

Just an update, I actually just watched the dev chat from Thursday/Friday (?) and they actually mentioned getting rid of the fences and going with the markers like I mentioned, hopefully in the next build.
So that aspect will hopefully be taken care of soon!

 

Oh nice I haven't watched that yet. I am glad to hear that I think a corner marker rather then the fences would look much better.

 

Aegis, that is great news!

 

I love how the dev team fails to acknowledge the animation and horrible presentation issues when it comes to character models. Someone new to the game comes by, EVERY SINGLE TIME, the first thing they notice is how horribly broken the character models and animations are.

Haven't seen ANY chat or mention of something like "Yeah the player models need more work" by the dev team. Facial expressions, more beard types, more hair types, screw all that, get the basics right first, a character that looks and walks acceptably.

Yea yea, early alpha bla bla bla, I don't expect it to be fixed right now, only for it to be "officially" acknowledged as an issue they are or will work on.

Player model proportions and animation are very important when it comes to other assets like armor, clothes and even weapons. I don't think they plan on redoing all the assets they've already done, and you can see they continue to create more stuff like capes and tools and whatnot to put in the bloody add-on store. I'd think they're very comfortable with where the models are right now, which IMO is a completely flawed attitude.

Would love to hear back from someone on the dev team, and please "But it's only early alpha" naysayers, spare me your lesson.

 

I agree that these things definitely need work. People have been talking about it all over the forums, but I've yet to see that particular issue acknowledged. It is really hard to say whether or not we will see any improvement in that department. Imo, as it stands, the characters look somewhat "pasted in" to the environment. Like a clay or plastic doll dropped into the landscape. I think the environments look great, but the character models and animations definitely need some attention. I hope that they get it.

 

Like this you mean ? https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/ugly-women.7131/page-4#post-119634

There are a couple of other posts made by Chris in that thread, that may be of interest to you as well.