a few major complaints R28 first impressions

1. My avatar's new look is horrible. Not the design in general, but my face looks like the ugliest NPC. Could I have a complimentary "change your look" token or something. Seriously, this might be a deal breaker for me testing until next wipe.

2. Any key I seem to bind to "attack on auto attack" doesn't work, even the default "T" key. This renders the "use mouse look" toggle useless while in combat. Also a deal breaker.

3. The animations... whoa what happened there? My avatars mouth is often agape. He reverts to the "using a cane" stance very often. My axes come out while casting even while not in combat mode. He has a nervous habit of twitching the axe while standing still.

4. My framerate on many scenes is VERY poor now, almost unplayable. I take it this is due to the new avatar model.


I know some of these are bugs that will be squashed in the first week of R28, but right off the bat, in the first 30 minutes of play, I feel like this is a huge step back from R27. Its the little things.

Keep up the good work, but I thought it might be useful and possibly constructive to note that someone that has tested 20+ hours of every release since R8 is, suddenly in R28, suffering death by 1000 paper cuts as far as willing to test. Ill check back in a week.

 

My list, a few hours into R28:

• Using Body Slam frequently results in the avatar running in place forever. Runs on the spot, animated, despite being still.
• Titan smash does not stun, ever. Been broken for at least two releases.
• Memory usage on the client is reaching truly absurd levels. 5.5GB and climbing, for an incredibly simple village scene? That's broken.
• Vauban pass has more mobs in it than almost any other outdoor adventure zone. It's more difficult than all the zones it "protects".
  
• Mages and archer NPC's run constantly now, again. R27 was fine, R28 is not. This keeps breaking, and keeps getting fixed.. why?
• What is a +5 armor penalty? (splintering strike) Doesn't appear to do anything to the target.
• All harvesting times should be the same as field dressing / skinning. This waiting over 35 seconds for a harvest is silly.
• Disparity in health and focus regen, out of combat. Why? focus regen is way too slow. Why is it ok to regen health so quickly, but have to wait for focus, when there is no way to affect focus regen, out of combat? Ironically, it's actually faster to stay IN combat, if you want to burn a hotbar slot and use Passive Stance. This is all backwards.
  
• Night vision is reduced in effectiveness if you walk near an exit with it active, and/or cast it while the exit tunnel-of-blackness is active.
• Can't see active target highlighting when using night vision.

 

I just wanted to say I found Yew!

 

Thank you for your patience and your feedback but most of this is more appropriately posted in the bug forums where we can track and fix it.

 

@Doom Bringer

1. My avatar's new look is horrible. Not the design in general, but my face looks like the ugliest NPC. Could I have a complimentary "change your look" token or something. Seriously, this might be a deal breaker for me testing until next wipe.
Unfortunately, this is not a system we currently have available, short of remaking your character altogether. The new male avatar required some refactoring of the sliders which means that previous choices for the old model may appear less than appealing. As you suggest, the wipe planned for R29 will help purge the world of uggos.

2. Any key I seem to bind to "attack on auto attack" doesn't work, even the default "T" key. This renders the "use mouse look" toggle useless while in combat. Also a deal breaker.
Can you confirm for me that you are observing this even with auto-attack turned on? (numpad * by default to toggle between free attack and auto-attack). We are able to assign new bindings and activate this feature when in auto-attack mode as intended. Even in Mouse-Look mode. If this is not the case, may I ask what operating system you're using? I'm trying to think of other reasons for why you might be observing the problem described.

3. The animations... whoa what happened there? My avatars mouth is often agape. He reverts to the "using a cane" stance very often. My axes come out while casting even while not in combat mode. He has a nervous habit of twitching the axe while standing still.
Thank you for this feedback and report! Bugs have been created to address the issues of mouths falling agape in animations and weapons appearing when casting noncombat spells. If possible, could you elaborate on what you mean by reverting to "using a cane" stance, as well as the nervous axe-twitching you're describing? Perhaps how you set it up to occur so we can better isolate the cause of what you're describing. Thanks!

4. My framerate on many scenes is VERY poor now, almost unplayable. I take it this is due to the new avatar model.
We have several devs currently invested in improving the performance issues being observed between the new male model and potential memory problems (as expressed by Chris above).

as far as willing to test. Ill check back in a week.
We look forward to it!

 

Ranged NPCs are designed to periodically find a better position to fight from when they are "too close" to an enemy. R27 was not fine, it was *broken* - npc would sit there indefinitely taking damage at point blank from a melee combatant. They do not constantly run... they will try to get a few shots off, and if too close, find a better place. We will take a look at tuning how often they stand and fight as opposed to finding a better position.

See this post for more info: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...i-am-chasing-archers-again.45835/#post-530010

 

Ok, good to know that R27 was not working as intended.
With that in mind, the current behavior is extremely frustrating, and here's why; ( I can't read that post, it looks like it's in a closed/private/archived forum)

As content increases in difficulty, currently, more ranged humanoid/undead attackers are typically found as adversaries. As a challenge to overcome, players need to deal with this.
If a player wants to primarily be plate/melee, but be effective against ranged opponents, their options are: have a pet, using water magic slows, air magic stuns, earth magic root, or bludgeon stuns/knockdown. Of those choices, root is the clear winner, currently, given the synergies between plate wearers and earth magic.
Unfortunately, the way it works (regardless of the intent/design) ranged NPC's cannot be interrupted. Either they're stunned/rooted and won't cast, or they're casting constantly, or (now) moving to where they will start casting constantly. So, rooting them is the easiest way to deal with them, although if they're going to be like this permanently, snaring them may ultimately be better, by exploiting their desire to relocate all the time.

And I'm fully aware of the mitigating factors, but players being what they are, efficient and lazy, the shortest path to victory is the most popular. The worry here, based on 20 years playing this genre, is that root, discharge, ice fist, and bludgeons will all be nerfed into oblivion, leaving the DPS/Pet build as the only thing remotely comparable to just taking out the bow and finally giving in. And for melee/plate chars, that basically means root/bludgeons. But as knockdown without duration has no effect on ranged NPC's, and bludgeon stuns top out at 2 seconds (and are normally only 1-1.9 seconds) our toolbox is mighty small.

So, I appreciate your perspective, Scrambler, that R27 was broken. But here's mine: it was great, as a melee/plate fighter. For the first time, I was able to be effective against ranged attackers, who only repositioned themselves once, before finally taking their hits, all the while continuously attacking. And that's the other thing, archers were actually incredibly dangerous in R27, because they never stopped firing once they found their first position. They were far more dangerous than mages or melee fighters, because of their skill use and appeared to be completely ignoring armor/parry/dodge/absorption/resistance/etc. But at least I could hit them! Once they're moving constantly their damage output is zero, they're not dangerous, they're just annoying.

tl;dr? I'm happy to use root like everyone else, but I fear the day Root is going to be nerfed so badly that I can't fight ranged opponents effectively without it. I would much prefer to see an innate chance to interrupt, daze, prone or half-second-knockdown when a melee player is attacking a ranged NPC or a fleeing/moving NPC. This would allow for a much greater variation in build choices. But if root/ice fist & a pet are my choices, I will adapt.

 

Excellent analysis.... +10.

 

Good feedback, I shared your comments/concerns with combat designers.

 

Its more like, it wsa kind of broken in R27 (too easy), and its fixed in R28. They dont stand there FTL anymore. It ads a fun dynamic for prioritizing how to clear areas of zones (which requires careful strategy when multiple ranged mobs spawn near each other).

Are you looking at your memory usage closely? I monitory my memory usage constantly, as I might even have a workstation set up on one desktop, and use a secondary desktop for misc programs, and a third desktop for running SoTA and browser for chatting in forum. Combined together it takes up 3-4 GB of memory (mind you Im running database connections, web servers, have HD video streaming, spreadsheets open, massive amounts of text open in project files, etc), though it dynamically reserves about 14GB. SotA does reserve very large amounts of memory, though it rarely uses it (in fact if it did use that much, I have alerts set up on my machine to warn me). Pretty much every video game I run dynamically reserves a very large total % of available memory, its typical of that application class. I highly doubt one scene in SoTA is actively using 5+GB memory, though if you have 8GB total, that sounds like a normal amount for a modern, 3D game to reserve.

Usually the more avail memory you have, the more a high end game is going to reserve for itself. Its highly likely your operating system will allocate chunks of that reserved memory, entire GBs if necessary, to another actively running program, if it needs it.

I compeltely disagree with this . Im glad this game evolves further from the "click auto attack and win" style of gameplay. I am a leather armor class and often get pummelled by any archers in the game, but I so far am not finding their new defensive strategy too hard to handle. I usually dont need to do any CC on them, just be very tactical about if/where I chase after them, or prioritizing them for as much damage dump as possible.

 

Good post !

 

This is the private working set memory metric I'm referring to and yes, it was one scene, and yes it's repeatable.
It seems to be related to housing assets, at least, that's how I can reproduce it trivially, run around and load a bunch of decorated lots.
A typical small outdoor scene like West Perennial Trail uses about 2.5GB, so this new consumption rate in R28 is quite high.
Comparatively, I've never seen another modern game, on three different computers, use as much memory as Shroud does, for the same thing. It's atypical, for any modern persistent multiplayer online game, in my experience.
I guess that's why the next three releases are going to focus so much on optimization.

 

Hrm, well, Ive been running around all the zones in S. Paladis all day (including max populated NPC cities/towns) and havent used much memory. Id also still say any (modern) game I ever run uses about 2-3 GB memory (scaling how much it reserves according to total avail). I dont pay all that much attention to it as its super rare that any games use up a lot (though the latest linux port of Attila Total War def uses the most memory of any game I have).

 

@Chris ,
@DarkStarr
@Attenwood
Thanks for the response, ill dive back in for this patch and post proper bug reports.
You guys rock, this is why I am excited to be a part of the project.

PS my beard is back now so ugly face not so bad.

 

@Attenwood

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-cane-stance.48348/ heres a detailed report. The ax twitching has ceased.

using Ubuntu 14
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...y-does-not-work-while-using-mouse-look.48349/

The framerate is back to normal thanks again!!

 

~A.I. Dude... Archers~
@Scrambler
I wouldn't mind the running part so much with NPC archers, if they would slow down as they become injured.

With lots and lots of A.I. love...
~Time Lord~

 

That would imply that outlanders should also slow down as they become more injured too.

 

I'll admit to using root to hold them in place, but it doesn't make sense for them to shoot arrows at you while you stand next to them beating on them either. Maybe the solution is a minor change in their loadout and AI? Add in a dagger (or other fairly weak weapon) and if they can't find a suitable spot (ie, you keep chasing them around) they flip to the dagger and start melee-fighting. I think the key would be to make the secondary weapon much weaker.

This would allow the behavior to make sense (@Scrambler's concern), while still keeping them from being too annoying (@agra's concern).

EDIT: @Time Lord also makes a good suggestion, but I would expect that to be applied to PCs, too. I'm not sure how well that would go over.

 

~I wouldn't mind if everyone slowed down as they were injured~
Indeed, I agree @smack , @Oninoshiko ,If even by a little, would mean allot more fun through challenge.

~The Fellowship~
No more running away all full sprint with 5% health Instead, limping away because we got in over our head
One of the things in real battles that has this effect, is that it tends to make battle lines among groups and encourages groups to band together to create such fronts. Ultima was always about "Fellowships".

If only by a little, would mean allot and even more...
~Time Lord~