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SoTA's Most Vocal Critic Speaks Out

Discussion in 'Release 5 Feedback' started by DNA Cowboy, Apr 25, 2014.

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  1. DNA Cowboy

    DNA Cowboy Avatar

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    [​IMG]

    As you all know I have been highly critical of the game in my 'minimum requirements for 21st Century rpgs' series of threads so it might surprise you that I found much to like in R5.
    Or perhaps I should say that I have high hopes for the finished product come October 2015, here are a few thoughts in the form of feedback:

    Combat: I like the concept of the magical casting art and animations a lot although the armour skills do not work in black, as the gamer struggles to see the animation against the busy world backdrop.
    The melee combat needs a LOT of work especially regarding precision targeting of the enemy, more often than not the stroke misses the enemy and even then there is no identifiable damage of same on your enemy; however, early days.

    I SO hope to see the card-based system work and this must be central to game development rather than end up with the hotbar system abhorred by many especially so given Garriett's heritage in producing innovative games.

    Graphics and Lighting: much improved which gives me great hope for the end product; however, the fonts are still not GOTHIC which must be addressed sooner rather than later as the basic modern generic font completely removes the players sense of immersion. I will put up an interesting piece on the differences between gamma and linear lighting and the ease with linear lighting can be introduced at little cost as soon as possible.

    Overland Map: I deliberately have not yet tried the map as I didn't want it to negatively impact on my overall R5 impressions; suffice to say that I will be addressing the Overland Map and monitoring development closely as I firmly believe that implemented poorly the map could be a game-breaker for many due to the overwhelming fact it throws you completely out of game immersion something that concerns me greatly due to the fact it had to have been blatantly obvious to the developers!
     
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  2. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Try the map, I would like to hear your opinion on it. For me, it still is a game breaker and destroys immersion...
     
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  3. DNA Cowboy

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    Will do, once I've done some research on the HMS Dragon/Vice Admiral Kulakov incident off the British Isles I'll jump on and try it out.
     
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  4. Foobard

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    Maybe they could provide a choice of font, because I'm fine with the current font, as it is very readable.
    Ye Olde English fonts may be difficult to read.
     
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  5. DNA Cowboy

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    Thanks for the response foobard, no-one is talking about Old English just Gothic fonts which are eminently easy to read and further was a promise shown in the prototype.

    ___________________________________________________________

    Now, the map.... it's awful, just awful and still a game-killer, unless the developers act soon they'll have a mutiny on their hands and guess who'll be leading it? I won't say whats really on my mind as young children might accidentally read it and be forever damaged.

    end transmission.
     
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  6. Lord_Darkmoon

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  7. DNA Cowboy

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  8. Isaiah

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    I don't think the map is a total game breaker, but it could stand to look more cloth like if they want to make it a true map, or open up like a scroll so you know that it is a map you're looking at.

    A person who sees the game for the first time and doesn't know about the dual scale map might be confused, and I can see how it would be a little weird or even look like you're playing a facebook game.

    One thing's for sure I don't like the idea of reverting back to the 3D map. Then it is hokey and facebook-like. It definitely needs the map to look like a map otherwise I think 3D map would be even more immersion breaking because a new player would then for sure not understand why the map is this way.
     
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  9. Lord_Darkmoon

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    The question is what it wants to be. If it wants to be a map on which you can just travel from point A to point B then it should be a true map, look and behave like a map.
    But if it wants to be more then it should not look like a map but instead like a zoomed out version of the world. And by "more" I mean the functionality Richard Garriott spoke about in an interview after the end of the Kickstarter campaign about a year ago. He said that there would be monsters roaming around, dynamic encounters, a day and night cycle and weather effects with effects on the scenes. If this still applies the I think a map would not make much sense and instead they should use a zoomed out 3D view.
     
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  10. Floors

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    How many threads are you two going to make to complain about the over world map ?

    Give. It. A. Rest.
     
  11. Isaiah

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    I agree it should look more like a map true map. However I like having a pointer on the map. Also if they show encounters roaming around on the map, and gypsy wagons etc., personally I'm fine with that, but let them make those encounters appear as some kind of highlighted symbol that we could recognize as something we physically see.

    That also means we probably shouldn't see encounters WAY off into the mountains. We should only see encounters one or two hexes away from us. If we are on a road maybe 3 hexes down the unobstructed roadways, but in a forest how can we see an encounter way off in the mountains when we can't even see the forest through the trees? Maybe encounters in such obstructed areas should not be seen in advance at all???

    However if we are able to see something in the next hex that's like a kilometer away. We shouldn't be able to make out if it's good guys or bad guys. In fact I wouldn't even want to know if it's an NPC group or a PvP group. From a kilometer away we should just be lucky to notice it at all.
     
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  12. redfish

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    Yea, this is why the devs were talking a lot about a "fog of war." Personally I prefer restricted vision (darkness) to fog of war, but that's one way to handle it. Its going to be curious how they plan show the fog of war on the cloth map; or if its just a matter of not showing encounters that would be outside of the player's range of vision, rather than demarcating the boundaries of that on the map.
     
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  13. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I wonder how they plan to depict encounters on the cloth map. When one of the reasons to scrap the 3D map was that the scale between Avatar, animals, cities etc. didn't look right they cannot have monsters being as big as trees or mountains when they want to stay consistent with the scale.
     
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  14. Isaiah

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    I would rather see the map being drawn and colored in (if it's supposed to be a place uncharted by you before), instead of fog of war. Fog of war worked on a 3d zoomed out map, but it doesn't work with cloth.
     
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  15. redfish

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    Yea, uncharted supposing you don't have a map. But in all of the Ultima games, we had a cloth map reference that we got from LB, and I'd suppose we can get one in this game too. What's more interesting to me is just making the map a zoomed out version of your field of vision as a player, which is how it worked in U1-U5.
     
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