DocDoom's Initial Feedback After Long Break

So after missing several releases, I finally played a little. I only had about 15 minutes, but here are some of my initial impressions. I only just made it to Braemar, so I haven't experienced much yet.

Good:
-Character customization: This is so much better! I love it! Lots of choices. And the beards are starting to be just plain awesome!
-Graphics: Beautiful. They just keep getting better. I really feel like I'm there this time around. It's come a long way baby!
-UI: everything just seemed smoother. The game reacts to my input much more smoothly. It always felt clunky before, but some of that is falling away. Excellent. Looting was super easy.
Starting Scene: Fun. So much cooler than just being dropped off at a random town.
Enemies: I could actually kill Skeletons without feeling like it was a huge chore. Definitely a step in the right direction.
Steam: So smooth. A much better way to get into the game.

The Not-so-good:
-Movement controls: These still infuriate me. Playing the game is a chore. I honestly hate them and just cannot get used to them no matter how many times I play this game. The toggle to free look is worthless, because then you can't interact. Please, please, please consider an alternate control scheme that allows me to replace the pointer with a reticle and use a button for interact, so I can free look all the time. Please!
-Load times: I know these have a long way to go. I get it. But they suck so bad, it's painful.

As I get more time, I'll give my reactions to leveling, skills, npcs, quests, and combat.

 

The overworld map now! I love that! ^_^

 

Haven't tried it yet. I'm keen to get there though.

 

Hi docdoom77. Thank you for posting your thoughts and for the review from coming back from your break. I agree it's amazing what a couple of releases has done isn't it. I have been extremely happy with being able to see that the development team are not forgetting some of the ideas of what made this game so interesting for so many of us. I do look forward to seeing more and more of those things implemented in the upcoming months. I also hope that the game does not get released in a few months, but that it is allowed the time needed to create it to be the best game it can be.

 

Hopefully movement will continue to evolve and become more natural and fluid. I agree, it's clunky and a chore still.

 

What is so clunky about movement?

 

I find holding the right mouse button for camera control to be completely unnatural. I've played several releases (1-9 and this one) and no matter how many times I play, I just cannot get used to it.

I like Bethesda style controls for 1st person roleplaying. moving the mouse controls the camera and faces your character, WASD move you. You have a reticle in the center of your screen. Place the reticle on your target and press 'E' to interact.

That will probably be too much work. If we could just have an option to reverse the camera control option, so that I control the camera all the time, but if I want to move the cursor, I hold down the right mouse button, I might be able to get the hang of that.

The current controls are so bad for me, that if this were anything other than the spiritual successor to Ultima, I'd have given up on it by now. This control scheme simply does not work for me no matter how much I practice using it. I find exceptionally frustrating.

 

Ah, trust me, I know get it, I play so many different games, it takes me a little bit to adjust everytime I go back. I don't mind it, I am used to it now. But that's just me being able to adapt so easily.

 

The guy working on controls needs to read our release feedback.

 

I like that pathfinding to resource nodes works a lot better now. I don't have to back up 50 paces to gather some cotton.

It's also good to see some combat action animations like stone fist etc.

 

After playing a few hours non-stop there are players reporting problems with pain because you are not supposed to push a mouse button that long.

 

That's an excellent suggestion. The game has a reverse camera control option (Ctrl + M) but in that mode there's no way to show the mouse in the screen. If by hitting right mouse button we could see our mouse in that mode it would be great.

 

The current controls are dumb. 100% agree that the controls should be like skyrim or u9.