This game is not very nub-friendly right now...

I understand the concept of the game is to be kind of "old school" without ?-marks above NPC's heads but is it really necessary to make things more difficult for the sake of difficulty? Here is a list of difficulties I've had in the game within 5 minutes of logging in:

• "Talking" to NPC's just makes me stare @ the chat window instead of the world. I don't see anything wrong with chat balloons and a radial button for selections "What's your name?" "Have a job?" etc. You can do that with the ?-mark/WoW-style NPC look.
• Maps, maps everywhere...but no map button. Very tedious to try to figure out where I'm going. What is so hand-holdy about a world map?
• Why can I sometimes drag some items/skills onto a hotkey bar and other times not? Very hard to tell what goes where sometimes.
• Shouldn't double-clicking an item in my inventory equip it for me?
• I tried left-clicking a skill to upgrade it but it didn't seem to work. Not sure what's up with that.
• It's very easy to accidentally jump into an NPC interaction/cut-scene when it town. Kind of immersion breaking.
• Can we get a new player chat? I'm completely lost in-game and have no way of asking for help. I mean, it might not be useful anyway because chat is so clogged up with NPC dialogue but...

Just my $0.02

 

Much of this may be because it is still early in developement.

But hopefully there is never a world map with radar and quest indicators. To me that kind of stuff destroyes the exploration and open world part of the game. You might as well just be on rails.

It would be nice if they have player drawn maps (static) that can be crafted and sold though.

 

I'm not looking for radars and quest indicators...I would just like M bound to a map of the world or something.

The map could have sections missing that I have to explore or whatever but...different maps sitting in my inventory is really annoying ><

 

I am not in game and have not tried this but, cant you just put a map in one of the quick slots?

If so then we would just need the ability to combine maps that we have found one way or another.

Just because we have made it somewhere does not mean we know the way. If we did then we would not need a map.

Having players be able to make the maps and sell them to others that do not know their way yet is more where I would like to be.

 

I have to say that I *fully* support the idea for a pop-up NPC dialog/conversation box, but I think it should have a place to enter text to send to the NPC. Highlighted phrases for clicking is fine, just like they work now. But I'm in agreement that I really don't like looking at the chat box for the conversation I initiated with an NPC. It seems too passive.

On a related note, I don't care for the cut scene approach to every NPC conversation, either. If anything, I'd like to see an option to turn that off.

 

you can put the maps in quick slots, but that's not very handy. Would be way easier to open the correct area map by pushing m (and in case you have more than one map of an area, I'd like to have an option, which one should be opened by pressing the button (I love options))

and +1 for the cluttered chat window. It's way to easy for me to overlook things at this point

 

Hiyas!

I hope they never implement ? above characters. I love the fact i have to talk to the NPC's in this game. I even love it more if there are "hidden" things you can say, which will open up secret quests!
I do agree that staring at a chat window when talking to NPC's is a bit lazy done, i would prefer if you werent "locked down" and able to talk to them freely.
I also hope they never implement a map button. Use the ingame maps, they do wonders? I am not sure if there is maps for all zones, but one could hope they would add Cartography, so people can make their own maps?
And also, why do you need a new player chat, just talk to people ingame? I have met several super nice people, willing to answer my newbish questions...

I really like the way this game seems to be going, please do not bring WoW style questing into this game.

A few things dissapoints me abit though, but i understand this game is not UO2.
I definately prefer the big free "world of no-zoning" in Ultima Online. And i absolutely miss the skill system from UO, even tho the deck system is starting to grow on me.

Overall i like it alot, and when i have played some more, i will write down some proper feedback for the team to read or ignore.

 

yep pretty much agree with all that but it's still early would diffently be nice if they made the chating with npc's easyer don't think they have any time to do it right now though it would be very helpful to new players bu us old UO players can mudle thru it

 

Well, I don't know about question marks all over the world, but I wish they would implement something. This is driving me nuts. I don't want to carry on long conversations that, for whatever reason, I'm having difficulty following. I spent 15-20 minutes talking to Myra, trying my damnedest to get her quest, because I was told she had one. Until a player, Tekken (and thanks very much), stepped up and lead me by the hand, I didn't get a quest. With no way of knowing who I have to spend time questioning, for me, it's been a complete and total waste of time, to the point of making me really dislike this questing system. I thought this was gonna be fun and cool. I've tried with about a dozen other NPCs but have no idea who I should be talking to and who I will waste another 15 minutes trying to dig a quest out of them. I still have only one journal entry.

This is the first release I'm trying questing, it was fun in UO and WoW....up to a point. Right now it's just upsetting me and making me think I'm wasting time. Oh yeah, I'm getting frustrated rather quickly (thats after spending my first 1.5 hrs trying to get a quest last night). Starting with no gold, not being able to figure out who will give me a quest, then (after being told who to talk to) trying to get that freakin' quest (still only have the one from Myra). I'm dieing right and left, didn't die often in R11, and having a much more difficult time leveling. I went as far as lvl 32 in R11.

 

I hope you have since figured it out, but this release you must use a skill trainer to increase a skill.

There is an option to disable the NPC text in the chat window. My suggestion would be to do so, it is what I did on my setup, and it cleaned up the clutter.

Press the down arrow next to the name of the chat tab to receive the options.

 

It would be cool if pressing M brought up the scenes map of the scene your currently in, if you're carrying the scroll.

 

No hand holding!

I actually like the fact that we have to work and not use lazy shortcuts. But to each his own right?

 

Well, i am one of those who prefer no quests in game at all. What i mean by that is, i dislike the quest-leveling system that WoW brought into the mmorpg genre.
EverQuest had quests, but those were item quests and speciel quests... none were truly needed, except for your epic maybe. Same with Dark Age of Camelot... and i honestly cant remember any quests in UO.

I love that system. And i love this system also. So far i have done 3? quests maybe, and i am level 25... i love it. I have talked to all, and i have loads of quests in my journal, but i dont feel rushed to do them, luckily, i will do them in time, not because i feel forced to do them, and so far, i have only had fun.

I know my rambling might not do you any good, but just go out there and explore, talk to everyone, i find that saying "how can i help" or "rumors", trigger most quests, so they get thrown into my journal.

 

I love that its confusing to start out. I love that you have to think in this game. I love the fact that, if it wasn't so, you would've never asked questions, and never met Tekken, who you will now call a friend in this world.

I think, in some way, this is why the game is as hard as it is....

 

LOL, it's not about being confusing or confused, it's not how hard it is, it's not about me making friends, it's not that folks have to think.....it's that it seems to be alot of unproductive time spent trying to locate a quest giver and then dragging the quest out of them. It's not fun for me to stand there and talk, for who knows how long, to someone that it does me absolutely no good to spend that time talking too....and an NPC none the less. Standing around and talking about the game with you, Town-Portal, and the others is not a waste of my time, because I enjoy it, I like to hear what others have to say.

 

I know that alot of people might feel the same way Haz, but i am one of those who gladly use 2-3 hours on solving a quest/puzzle ingame, instead of googling the answer (hello The Secret World, wonderful game...).
Just ignore the quests, i don't think they are a must to do. Ignore them, and do the stuff that you find fun instead

 

Well if you don't want to just click on the underlined words and check your journal "j" to see what was put there, if anything, there will be some hand holding which I hope stays, options for everyone please don't stifle us. JMHO guys. Hopefully this game will be around and appeal to the masses and to not have anything convenient would be just way too frustrating to most. I don't want to live without a way out, sure to figure it out is cool, but hey when I gotta run because of RL please let me out. lol

 

Great feedback on the usability issues. I disagree with some of the suggested solutions but would agree the existing implementation can be made better.

Like for the entire Conversation system. That will definitely evolve, but I would be against turning into a multiple choice / radial button style dialog tree. I want to retain that free form text box but there could be better ways to facilitate conversations. The system is heavily keyword based, so I would propose a new type of interface that allowed you to ask the common keywords, built a running list of known keywords (specific to this NPC), but still allowed you to explore conversations by free form text input. I think this slight modification to your suggestion would possibly solve some initial hurdles to conversing with NPCs, as they are the medium from which we do quests, buy/sell, train skills, etc.

Map usability can definitely be enhanced. I like the suggestions above about opening up the map of the current area, if you happen to have a map for it. I think most of us are in general agreement about not having a true minimap/radar system. I don't believe that usability enhancement is hand-holding since you still need to ultimately find the map (or buy / trade for it). We're only given some of these maps as convenience to test with and it's unknown which, if any, we will be given when the game actually launches.

I have a feeling the non-combat bar will go away and we'll get a better system of smart keybinds. Initially we had to put the right tool in our non-combat bar to harvest/gather resources, but they've since dropped that. I think it's inevitable unless there's a unique use for it. And it's causing confusion, as demonstrated here.

Skills can only be trained at skill trainers, as mentioned in the R12 Instructions and Player Guide. I do think the interface can prompt you if you attempt to do so, with perhaps a don't show me again. The red text at the top right of the Skill window informing you of this apparently is still being missed by players. And it looks like the Tutorial Hint system isn't being read either (perhaps too wordy?).

 

RE: skill trainers, they don't appear to work for me. It says left click to increase or right click to decrease...and left clicking an ability just selects it. It doesn't increase anything.

 

Do you have any gold on your person ?

There does not appear to be a message if you don't have sufficient gold. That caught me off-guard several times.