R9 Horrible.

I played R9 for the first time. I couldn't stomach more than an hour of it.

I didn't see Andoris.
I didn't have fun.
I could cast every spell without reagents.
I got teleported around all over the place without understanding what was going on.

Worst release to date.

R9 has left me scratching my head. What direction is this game going in?

 

Ardoris is a little off the beaten path so to speak, they explained how to get there in the R9 Instructions.

In case you didn't see, someone already brought up the issues of reagents.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/casting-without-reagents.13953/

A lot of the teleporting are temporary workarounds since the whole map isn't part of the game yet.

Not challenging your reaction, just pointing these things out to you in case you didn't see. It's hard to keep up with all the details flying around....

 

To be honest this release is not very far away from the previous one. We have some new error but at least we have finally Ardoris. (You can go Ardoris using the moongate sometimes or a little boat in the port of Kingsport)

 

Did you make the mistake of going into some caves?

 

I've played all the releases. This one stinks. You can't add all this new stuff an expect balance - ever. You can't add reagents but then also not require them. You can't just add new areas of the game and expect people to find them and get the value out of them with limited playing time over the weekend.

It's really a step in the wrong direction and wasted testing time in my opinion.

 

I guess I have to be the one to ask....why? There wasn't much detail in the OP.

 

Actually I went into the sewers in Kingsport and ended up in caves by default. I then tried to get out and ended up in Ravensmore and Braemar and all over the place. I assume it's an underground connection between several areas on the map. But what's funny is that you can't really see it coming. I mean, you just walk like two spaces and suddenly you're being teleported to god knows where.

Developers are interesting people, and I'm not one of them. Sometimes I wish I was because they make such amazing things, and other times I'm glad I'm not because some of the really amazing things they make are absurdly frustrating and stupid. R9 is a good example of that...there's just a lot of stuff going on where I'm thinking "Really? Why was that a good idea?"

I'm sure they'll "fix it" but the reagents is a great example of something that never should've been done in the first place. Spells should require reagents, period. If an Water Elemental takes 5 reagents to cast so it can be "more effective" or you can just cast it at will for a less effective version, what's the point exactly? To make lazy people happy? That's the lamest reason to do anything in this game that I've ever heard.

 

Because I have all night and all day to play this game but in the course of the first hour I got so frustrated it became more fun to just come on the forums and rant about it than it could ever be to play through all the dumb decisions that were made for R9.

I'd love for R9 to be fun and playable, but it's just not (for me) due to the devalued magic system (lack of required reagents) and the confusing additions to the game. I mean, ok great we have maps. I can't read any of them because 1) they're in runic and 2) the font is very small.

All of this adds up, and I can't help but think that for a new player that is turning this on for the first time the frustration and confusion must be about 1000 times whatever I might be going through.

And that in and of itself is frustrating to me because I want this game to be good, I want this game to succeed. Otherwise how else would I justify all the money I put into it?

Honestly, I think the devs listen to the wrong people on these forums sometimes. They need to be MUCH more like Brian Fargo, the creator of Wasteland II, when he says things like "I'm not trying to capture some mythical mass market. I'm just trying to make the kind of game that we'd like to play."

What developer in their right might starts out designing a game where they make spells that require reagents and then later says to him or herself, "nah...lets make it optional?" The kind of developer that is listening to some cry babies on the forums that want to be tank mages and have their cake and eat it too.

 

Maybe they are implementing LRC right off the bat... I thought regs were required but I havent tested it out because I assumed I needed them and was to busy to hunt them down.

 

Have they said regents won't have any effect? Or is it they are just not done yet?

I kind of expect to be a bit lost in Alpha's, part of the whole package. Raging instead of giving feedback won't get anything changed. This post you did was better, but still hard and not clear it is more of a rant then a feedback. If you don't like something give points on it...that's really what testing is.

 

Here, this is EXACTLY what RG and Darkstarr should be say....


Watch at 2:15 for AWESOME Brian Fargo quote. Instead of playing R9 this weekend, I'm just going to replay this Brian Fargo quote over and over again. I might make this my ring tone.


And seriously, what really gives Brian Fargo weight when he says this is the fact that I played Wasteland II (Beta) and it's amazing, they did it right. Yes, it has flaws, but things like ammo are required to shoot guns.

Ya know what else is really interesting? Wasteland II got like 20 million in funding.

 

I immediately went into the game and cast a water elemental. I had to keep myself from uninstalling the game.

 

Feedback is always feedback.

As a person that has contributed quite a bit to the game development from almost beginning to the current date, I would hope that my feedback would be considered valuable even in rage form.

I know it's difficult for fans and developers alike to take this kind of direct "angry" feedback without feeling a little defensive and sometimes even dismissive. But the reason I'm being so "angry" here is because I'm angry. This is really something that should be a third rail of development in this game. Reagents are there for a reason, when you start fooling around with them you devalue that reason.

In my case, I want to be a mage. A real mage. I don't want people jumping into the game day one and cast high level spells no matter what freakin limitations they have. Magic should require discipline, not just the ability to press a few buttons on your keyboard.

 

For me the worst point is the new vendor system. They only sell litter all the time and very few useful articles. :O

 

You mean to tell me a Beta of an almost finished game is better then a pre alpha?

 

I'm not trying to compare Wasteland II to Shroud of the Avatar. I'm trying to compare the development mentality of the two games.

What do you think Brian Fargo would say if a few forum posters said "we think there should be unlimited ammo in Wasteland II"? Which oh btw I'm sure if we googled that we'd have no problem finding examples.

 

I kind of get the impression that even if everything else was perfect you'd still be railing against this release purely due to reagent preferences.

 

That definitely has me fired up. If all spells required reagents I'd probably be playing right now instead of making angry posts on the forums.

Which is also a great indicator of what I might be doing when the game launches.

 

This was from the original R9 instructions:

So when I read that initially, I thought Spells that are tier 3 and above (like water elemental) will now require reagents to cast. PERIOD - meaning that if you didn't have those 5 reagents then you could NOT cast it. But if you continue to read, it appears that you actually CAN cast the spell (as I witnessed first hand) you just have to expect a number of deficiencies that will make you less "effective".

So here's my gameplay feedback. Lame.

 

I'm new to the boards and game in general but I'm noticing a lot of us vs them attitudes already which is no big deal because its human nature.

I just wish everyone was smart enough we need to TRY and make us and them both happy if we want the game to succeed in the long run. I could care less about the role playing aspect of the game because I came for the UO community and PvP/combat but I'm smart enough to know we need to make the "trammy"/role player folks happy because theirs more of them than their are PvP folks and we need both sides of the camp to be happy.

I also think any feed back is good feed back and so what if it gets repeated 5x a day because that's people who paid for the game opinion.

Lastly is their a ignore function and how can I use it? Normally I just look over peoples post but its hard not to reply to some people who say the same thing in ever thread. I'm not referring to you drocis