New Player (10-20 hours-ish (I lost track of time)) :)

So here's my take and walk through of my initial experiences:

TLDR Version:
I am thrilled to be playing the game, but there are some important components which are buggy and need to be fixed prior to launch. Foe example, not having moving maps align with character world placement is an issue. For someone who doesn't have hours of playing in a town or place, that map is crucial to navigation.

Heeeeere's Moxie!
First, here's a bit of my background (to give you an idea of my lack of computer knowledge, and as a baseline for comparison to your target demographics):

I was around 9 years old when Dad bought our first computer, the original IBM PC. He got busy working on LOTUS 1-2-3 and I started learning BASIC. But what really interested me was playing games, games like Zork, Castle Wolfenstein, Wizardry, Lode Runner, and Star Fleet I. We moved a lot and my parents didn't get along too well, so this gave me an escape to immerse myself in the computer worlds crafted by skilled programmers, visionaries, musicians and the like.

Shortly after the releases of the games I played, I came across Ultima III and then it was all over for me. I still have the original box, map and floppy disks...

One of the first things I had to beg my Dad for was extra RAM. I'm not sure how I did it, but we ended up going to the local computer store, popping off the shell and installing enough RAM to have the newest games up and running on the fancy thinkin' box.

When everything was finally set up on the computer, my adventure began; I furiously scribbled notes about all of the conversations, words of virtue and other important things. I also tried to steal from the banks all the time and that never turned out well. I didn't get too far in the big picture of things because of my age and comprehension, but I had a hell of a fun time killing orcs, skeletons, brigands and other creepy crawlies.

It was hugely interactive and engaging for me. I ended up playing a number of the releases in the series over the years, and was still never very good, but always loved the immersion in the story, character development and grinding away.

Another 25 years go by and console games, Ultima Online, and World of Warcraft, gain mainstream attention.

UO was a horrible experience and MMPORG for me. It was bad because the shards were overcrowded with players which caused a lot of lag. That, and the die-hard gamers had all of the lots available for housing, hung around the spawning areas and steam-rolled lower level character development. I gave that up pretty quickly and hopped over to WoW, which was a much better space for me.

You see, I'm not a hard core gamer. I need a noob area. I need someone to hold my hand, a forum to get questions answered. I need to have some accomplishments with character development because they are achievable, based on a few things; to successfully accomplish a milestone, some of the items the player needs are:

• To know the path or process to achieve the end result
• To be able to repeat the process without being overwhelmed or under-engaged
• To accomplish the behavior / process in a reasonable amount of time

WoW gave that to me with the character development and skill tree. They also blew my socks off with the vastness of the world. Their shortcoming was that to advance / grind, the player essentially ran the same campaign multiple times with a party to gain experience and drops of loot.

So, So, So, So, SotA
I'm mentioning all of this because it relates to my experience of SotA.

Obviously the graphics have changed in 35 years. But, the core of the founding series remains. You adventure outside of towns, in the open, in the dungeons and all the other places. Your conversations drive where you go and what you do. SotA has taken those early tenets and incorporated the best of the modern game-era changes within the game platform: skill trees, crafting, in-game ownership of property, interaction and engagement.

You have to understand though, when you pair that complexity with my simpleton nature, it can be a recipe for problems to arise. And without further ado, here is the feedback.

These Go Up To Eleven
Now, as I got excited about buying the game, I needed to check to see if it would run. I'm not that computer smart, although I've been using them for a long time; so, I have to have other people who know what they're doing do smart things for me.

The first thing I needed to check out was if my laptop could run the game. I looked over the specs published and the laptop I was using, a Lenovo Yoga 2. It has an Intel i5 processor @2.6 GHz,, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, Intel 4400 graphics processor. This meets the minimum requirements listed on SotA's website. For refenrence, they list (highlighted for emphasis):

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 64 bit or newer
• Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO 2.4 GHz / AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX11 Compatible ATI Radeon HD 3870 / NVIDIA 8800 GT / Intel HD 4000 Integrated Graphics
• DirectX: Version 10
• Network: Broadband Internet connection (Not required for Offline Mode)
• Hard Drive: 22 GB available space

The Yoga 2 meets all these minimum listed requirements. I backed up the Googling of the system requirements with another secondary check, a website that checks my computer against the listed requirements - https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri The site is also known as Can I Run It?

Turns out they think I can too. Well, remember back to my early days when I bought Ultima III and had Dad run out to get more RAM? It's kind of like that.

When attempting to begin playing the game, the processor and graphics card were insufficient to handle the loads. I went out later that day with a convenient excuse to by a new laptop. I am now the proud owner of a $1400 Predator Helios 300 to run the $40 game I bought. Don't get me wrong. I don't care, it was just an inconvenience to buy a computer to play a game which I thought I could play in the first place.

The First Recommendation of Moxie
My first, and most strongly emphasized suggestion is to increase the minimum computer requirements so that no one ends up in the situation I ended up in: purchasing a game that didn't work. I tried various solutions posted by the staff and community; change resolution settings, downgrade to Windows 8, etc. None of the solutions solved the issue. It comes down to the fact the minimum requirements listed are just not enough to run a program that is graphics and processing intensive.

The Second Recommendation of Moxie
The User Interface Map Window needs attention. As has been stated in reports, the Map orientation does not always correspond with Character position. In addition to not marking the Character position accurately, sometimes the red arrow is oriented the wrong way. Sometimes the map itself is oriented incorrectly - this happened to me in Aerie, with both map orientation and red indicator orientation AND incorrect location positioning. Talk about a nightmare in situational awareness. As a new player who is unfamiliar with the topography, local landmarks and getting around, having a reference map that doesn't work doesn't help. It makes my brain hurt, and braining is hard.

After a few hours of early level grinding, I finally made a disorientating mistake. I ventured out into the world and got lost . I took portal to Owl's Head. It was right about then it dawned on me as to how vast and extensive the world is. This is a GREAT thing. There is going to be a heck of a lot of things to explore and do. If I can find the time, my wife won't see much of me over the holidays. I'm sure she's fine with that. I got her a few games for her PS4, so she'll be happy too.

I pretty much ended up in Brittany and was trying to work my way back to my starting area, Solace Bridge (by way of Eastreach Gap, of course...

I did it; it was challenging - and by challenging I mean that I ran away from everything, yelling, "Tis but a scratch!" as I hopped away on one leg.

Moxie's Final Thoughts, The Nitty Gritty, and the answers to the Devs Questtions (Finally!)
Some of the suggestions I have for improvements as a newly inducted Outlander are small items in the bigger picture. I wish that the character's jumping height was increased. There are a number of places where hopping over rocks or other obstructions seem to be more difficult than the visuals relay.

The second suggestion I have is that the monster scaling seems lopsided. I'm popping around a Tier 1 playground and nothing scratches me. I never even have to cast a healing spell or use a potion or eat any food. I pop them off in about two hits of my arrows. But as soon as I start adventuring to the regional area, I'm surrounded by Tier 4 areas and I get my booty handed back to me. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground. So overall the challenge favors me to grind, but never really presents a challenge to me as long as I stay in the zone I'm following quests in.

House ownership seems like a really distant goal. That's a good and bad thing. It appears to me that all the Alpha and Beta testers / Supporters will have all the prime real estate prior to launch. That's a bit unfair to those coming into the game. Level playing field and all. It's similar to sending a two characters into an arean to battle a troll. The Paladin with plate armor+4, dual wielding long swords, with a necklace of HP regen is going to have an advantage over the newcomer with tight leather pants and a stick to poke the troll in the eye. With the ability to allow players to have ownership within the game, there needs to be some balance. I'm not sure what the solution to that is. Sorry.

Another resource I have access to because of the internet are the walk throughs and guides online. I don't use them much, because that takes away from my experience, but I do need them for things like Crafting. I don't have the time to jump from station to station to figure out that I need to hit certain stations. When Ultima III came out it had a World Map (fabric, no less), and 2 beefy manuals like an old school D&D Module. It had drawings of the spells you could cast and the reagents that were needed to cast them. That's exactly what I need for quick access when I'm playing instead of Google. I just need a user manual that lists the Reagents for let's say, making an Arrow.

Smelting 1 Ingot: Coal (1), Ore (4), Mold (1)
Milling 1 Board: Timber (1), Cresote (1)
Blacksmith Arrowhead: Ingot (1), Mold (1)
Carpentry Arrow: Board (1), Arrowhead (1) Feathers (5)
FIN

Easy pacheesi.

Here's a grammar police thing for me. In some conversations, white hyperlinks of key terms are not capitolized. Names of places, people's names and other items. This drives me nuts, especially since in other dialogues they are capitalized. It makes it look like the storyboard writers and proofers overlooked it. It needs to get fixed though because it is an amateur mistake. If a resume came across my desk, or if I read an article in the newspaper, it reduces the credibility of the author in my opinion.

Some of the early difficulties I'm having is the extensive travel without coconuts. I still have no coconuts. It becomes laborous and time consuming to get place to place with a World so vast and complicated. I would either speed up the minimum movement rate if you can, or have a mount (like a horse) early on in the game.

The next difficulty is not having access to a World Map when within a city or adventure area. Why is that important to me as an Outlander? Well, when I need to use a Lunar Rift I have no clue what region I am going to end up in. IfI'm trying to get to Aerie, should I go to Brittany Graveyard or Westend? If there was a method to swap between local/regional and the World on the User Inerface Map Window, thaaad be great. Thanks, Peter!

Her's a non-sequitur for you: As a newbie I will not be taking advantage of the PvP or Guild Warfare portion of the game. Again it's because of what I perceieve as a lack of a level playing field. Now if the PvP is for equivalent character levels, that's a different story. Sure, I might do that. The problem is - if that is the way PvP is set up, there isn't information out there letting me know the set up (that essentially I have a chance and I'm not going to get my butt handed to me.)

Hello, World!
Enough of the bad stuff, here's the stuff I love:

Once I was introduced to the size of the World, by my own mistake, I realized how vast and amazeballs it is. I am utterly blown away. Congratualtions to you and your development team, programmers, storyboard writers, musicians, vocal talent and all the rest for producing an indescribable world. The enormity strikes me with awe and excitement. And a bit of dread. There is no way I will be able to touch all of the content. But, I want to. I really, really want to.

The skill trees and crafting are integral to development of the character player. Crafting takes a bit of getting used to - and I think it could be emphasized more to focus on a very specific crafting skill at the beginning. Otherwise, you end up hauling a whole bunch of things around and being over-encumbered all the time. A solution would be to increase the carrying capacity a bit in the beginning and scale the progression back with the increase in levels (logarithmic decrease).

Ownership of property and merchandising seem to be a tasty carrot in my future. But I realize how far away that is, and that is a little discouraging.

But I'm Not Dead Yet!
Character Creation was fun and it's a snap. It keeps with the original vision RG/LB for the beginning path of the Avatar.

The tutorial Battle was super easy for Solace Bridge and a bit laborious for Highvale. I originally started out as a Warrior in Highvale, then realized I was using my Bow more than Bludgeon and decided to start over as a Ranger. I think Solace Bridge was slightly too short and Highvale too long to get through. They both served their purpose though.

As for the General stuff: UI, Controls, Audio and Video, my only input is that the background audio can sometimes take away from the gameplay. For example when I'm near an Inn having a NPC conversation I will hear retching (funny, yes!) in the background throughout the conversation. It goes on a bit too long. Similarly, children noises in the background and other things like that tends to be a it too muc. 75% of the current play would be more enjoyable.

C'mon Dude, It's Christmas Eve. I could be home right now, drinking this monster eggnog my brother makes with lighter fluid.
If it tells you anything about the fact that I've played for a few hours, it's Christmas Eve and I've spent a fair amount of time typing this out, it should tell you that as a player, I care. I really care about this series and wish you the best of luck in its success.

If there is anything you need further detail about (since I'm quite exhausted now and am not thinking clearly because of the eggnog) please ask follow up questions.

-Moxiepilot



In review, the answers to some of your questions are listed above in detail. The bullet points are here:
"This section of our forums will be our chance to accumulate feedback for earliest gameplay experiences. No-holds-barred. We want to know what you think! We hope to hear about:

• Bugs - Maps not aligning with character position,
• Improvement Suggestions - jumping height, mosnter scaling Tier 1 vs 4, housing - long term reward but feels very far out of reach, crafting reference (Ultima IV had booklet of spells, assoc. reagents); conversations- some key talking points capitolized names other tomes not. makes it look amateur to overlook the grammar
• Difficulties/Challenges - early travel without coconuts, no world map reference in town for Lunar Rift, carrying capacity, not going to PvP / Guild warfare
• Things you liked - world vastness, skill trees, crafting, in-game ownership of property

We want to try and focus on areas of the first 4 hour experience, so we hope to see input on areas relating to:

• Character Creation
• Isle of Storms
• Tutorial Scenes
  • Battle of Solace Bridge (Love/Archer)
  • Battle of Highvale (Courage/Fighter), basic for fundamentals of exploring but not enough with crafting, skill trees;
  • Blood River Massace (Truth/Mage)
• Soltown
• Subsequent Quests/Adventure Scenes/Crafting

• General
  • UI
  • Controls
  • Visuals
  • Audio

 

Very nice write up @moxiepilot . Thanks so much for your valuable feedback. I do have a couple of comments. I hope it helps. The mapping system is really new and they are still working on it so it is quite broken. So *crossing our fingers* that it will be more helpful and useful by the next upcoming release. .

Regarding jumping. It does take some time to figure out jumping. Believe it or not at first devs were not going to put jumping in but as you can see and we said noooooooooooo we need to jump. They added it and yes it is kind of a strange type of jumping but there are tricks to it. So you have to hold the space bar down longer and point to the direction you want to jump. You will get better at it. At first I was so horrible at jumping. We went to a dungeon called Chillblain's Compendium of Pain and Suffering and I could not jump. The group I was with were making these jumps accross these areas and I could not do it. I wanted to say ok I can't do it but at that time I could teleport to them, which now we cannot. We can get blink though and blink to them, but I did not get blink ever. I just got better at jumping. I had to slow down and hold the space bar down and release pointing my cursor in the direction I want to go. You will find as you explore this game that there will be plenty of jumping puzzle times and you will learn. .

Anyway thanks again and tomorrow I will be away from game unless I stop in earlier, well earlier for me since I am mountain time and then I'm off to the family and friends Christmas time, but after that I'll be back in game even if later tomorrow evening. . Merry Christmas and take care. Oh and that is fantastic you married a gamer. How often does that happen? Well that is probably really fun for you.

 

First of all thanks for sharing your impressions. I think the devs will love to read your feedback.

Regarding the map...well it is a quite new feature and as it is a website https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map/ you can access from the outside there are some bugs possible but telling the devs where problems appear seems to be the way to catch those bugs and yes the world is huge and just think about it the current size is round about 1/5 of the world map we will be able to explore till all episodes are released.

Regarding jumping, well you can jump higher if you hold the jump button...maybe this info is all you Need.

Regarding Tier 1..well to go from Tier 1 to Tier 4 is a quite big step. If you are around Solace Bridge you maybe should go into the south as there are some of Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas.

House ownership. Yeah that is a theme a lot of people are talking about. Basically the background is that large lots were one drive to buy expensive pledges to fund the game and thus free homes as game mechanic got difficult to realize. But there are a lot of lot owners out there that share their homes or rent them on the cheap. But if this isn't what you are looking for you indeed need some time to win one (lottery) or buy one.
Regarding the prime real estates...well there is motion in the market and every day claimed lots get back on the market if their owners stay away for a too long time but of course you will need luck or have to make a good offer to the owner to get your favourite spot.

Crafting could indeed need some guiding hands as this is a complex mechanic. I think the ability to click on semi products in your recipe book to jump to the corresponding recipe (if known) or a tooltip might be a good thing.

And regarding grammar...well there is a lot and I mean a lot text out there and I think it would help if these typos would be mentioned some more in the bug section as they are quite difficult to find in this "ocean of words".

 

This really made me laugh! I thoroughly enjoyed your good natured review of the game and hope to see more feedback from you in future!

Regarding home ownership: This is one of the aspects of the game that makes me most uncomfortable. Even though as an early backer I do own property, it always disturbed me that the devs started raffling off so many lot deeds over a year ago. Now the only NPC towns that have available lots for new players are peripheral ones that don't get a lot of traffic. It seems to me to be an unfair disadvantage to take options away from players who enter the game at this late date or after the game is officially released. Of course, there are still loads of lots available in Player-Owned-Towns. I could have placed my primary village home in any NPC town but chose to settle in the POT Rift's End. I have never regretted it.

 

Fixed some typos.

Two thumbs up for getting some of the 80's references @Kara Brae .

 

@majoria70
I can't believe you wrote that! Are you sure you didn't hack my computer and copy some old draft post of mine? I had the same exact experience in Chillblain's before I knew how to jump.

The only difference is, I didn't figure out the "tricks" of jumping on to things until a few years later. When trying to jump onto something, I would press the W key to move forward in the right direction and then the space bar to jump. I usually ended up looking foolish, first walking in place against the object I wanted to jump on to, and then jumping in place. It was always hit-or-miss to land where I wanted to. Only recently did I accidently hit the W key while already in the air. I was flabbergasted to perform a successful jump on my first try. DUH!

 

Great!

Hold down space, the height can be little increased and you see the char crouch and creating more momentum.

There is none i guess
The game is funded by this mainly imho and therefore the backers, supporters, buyers, donaters have what they have and the others dont, BUT...
1st of all there is plenty of space in Player owned Towns and also some nice Spots in some of the smaller NPC Cities.
You can buy and support by buying a Bundle or just a taxed deed in the Addon Shop. Yeah, most dont like it, but this way the game development is financed.
You can also Rent a Room in an Inn of another player or an entire House. Some even give it away for free.

B - Recipe Book

You should have talked to the Stable Boy in Owls Head. I know this comes a little bit to late.

There is the deed raffle, player vendors who sell Deeds and Houses, the Marketplace Forum or your wallet right next to you


Again great Feedback.

One thing i am jealous about is that you can make this first experience now and i recommend you nit to haste, search for all the t2 scenes now and then Tier 3...
And be challenged in all the great environment.
Dont grind too much in one place maybe, you get to that Routine later on
Instead explore the apropriate scenes /levels to be challenged.
With some levels higher the scenes may be still beautiful and fun to explore, Hut no longer challenging as you kill everything very easy.

You will find out more about SotA and this was or is the greatest time i had with it. I still learn and figure things out sometimes and that is what it makes the game great beyond atmosphere and graphics and such.

Good to have you around, i also played loderunner and Wizardry in the 80is

 

Oh and I did forget to mention. Don't worry more lands are coming each episode. This is by no means all of anything we will see. So there will be plenty of opportunities for housing areas

 

to be honest i dont think that is good, we already have too many ghost towns out there.
I would like to see more of an open adventuring "Zones" aka continent in the next episode.
One PvE only and one open PvP with full loot, no ransom, becausse no oracle and such.
A friend recently said to me, to sell that large amount of PoTs and having so many NPC Cities was maybe a big mistake, esepcially with the FMO/ SPO Feature.
World allways - too often feels empty!
Only few PoTs made it to have traffic, many are just Ghost Towns waitng for something to happen.

 

Well we shall see. More content will continue to come and the story will also continue on.

 

@moxiepilot - Thank you for the amazing write-up. This is the kind of constructive, well thought out feedback from a new player that is super-useful. I hope that @DarkStarr and team take notice.

Like has already been mentioned this too is one of my bugbears. So much so that I built a player-owned town in which I provide free housing players. I've acquired multiple tax-free lots and I let player who don't have housing use them for no charge. There are other players who feel the same way and have similar operations. If you would like to try out housing check out Knight's Watch, we'd be happy to have you as long as you want to stay.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...house-still-available-in-knights-watch.81737/

Welcome to our world.

 

@moxiepilot I am happy for you to be joining our Game,yes ther are many things to worked on..Check your Player Hanbook in your back pack.there are also books around called Hot Keys for the keyboard shortcuts. As for Housing, many towns have inns and prive home that let people stay till they getting on their feet...to the areas that you get your ass beatean ask peopleto go with you in a Party. There are many 1,2,3,4,5 skull areas to adventure into that you can find lvl 2 areas to adventure into.
My name ingame Is Druid Galiwyn , you can add me as a friend if you want, I am also an Ranger..

 

Welcome, and Merry Christmas!

Please type /bug in the chat window whenever you see a typo. That is how things change here.

Considering how confusing jumping is, without much upside, maybe it is an experiment that should be considered for the axe. Why not just let us jump to full height?

Re: the map. We didn't have one this time last year, things are changing fast! It'
a great reason to get your feedback in, you will see it appear in game. Like the world map toggle. Go put that in the Features > Wishlist part of the forum please. You are totally right.

I never use coconuts. And sometimes I whip out my flaming bagpipes and play "Knights of Cydonia," which makes me walk REALLY slow.

Have fun. I'll be back next week, and the S Mart Factorium will start operation. Come by if you want to do some paid crafting work. It's by Resolute.

Happy gaming!

 

Id like to point out this is a NEW player just starting, and his rundown should be looked at. He is right in a lot of the aspects he has written! Things need to be fixed.

By the way Welcome to the game!

 

also id like to add, when you get to that high level like most are, totally reroll your character (start over from scratch) to fully appreciate a lot of the gripes you've seen on the forums about the game, we are alpha and beta testors, I take that responsibility to the fullest, ive rerolled my level 80 character more than once and started from scratch to see how it is, trust me its as bad as it sometimes sounds! I'm not here to have the highest most gm character, I'm here to test and give feedback, that's what we all signed up for as kickstarters, and testors. We wanted to have something to do with the game development yet a lot of people are not here for that they just want the highest most gmd character out there before the start of the game!

On a personal note I think when the game does go live, all players should have to start at 0 level (we can keep all our little presents) and amounts of gold, but I think we should all start from scratch when game goes live, fair is fair.

 

I would rather lose my gold and presents, than all the time I've put into levelling my character. I can earn back gold and presents. That time is gone forever; for it to have been wasted as well is probably the only thing I wouldn't be able to forgive Portalarium for.

 

They sell these Obsidian potions you know what help developing.
I doubt people would have buyed them if they know there will be a Reset.
I never used an Obsidian Potion and i'm not against a partially skill points/ xp wipe, especially not if you think of the exploits that have been used in the past to gain tons of xp in minutes (DR Spiders, CP's and maybe more), but i would say this wont happen.

 

well i feel since we are the ones that were supposed to be testing things out and giving feedback, we shouldve been doing that, instead of max levelling to have the most powerful character in the game before the game is actually released! I see some bad mojo coming from that, especially if i am new, didnt know about the game and i see its a new game YAY! Just to find out it really isnt, and everyone is maxed, lots are taken already etc... boo! Im going to another game, That actually is new! where its even for me to get to where everyone else is!

 

I admit that I'm concerned about the wipe. First concern is that there doesn't seem to be much information about it. Is there going to be a wipe at launch or isn't there? If there is, will they wipe everything or just some things?
I acknowledge that we're testing the game, but conversely as someone who was an original back from the start, I don't want to lose the work I've put into my character any more than they would want to lose the work they put into the game. I'm not a GM anything BTW, I explore and craft. In fact most of my time has been spent playing around with the crafting mechanics.
So back to the questions... I assume that as backers with houses, we'll get to keep those. But will we lose all the items we have in the houses? I crafted all of my own furniture, will I not only lose my levels in crafting but all I created with my skills as well? What about the trunks of materials in my basement, do I lose that too? Crafted weapons and armor? The list goes on and on.
As you can see, whether they wipe or not, someone's going to be unhappy. But in my honest opinion, the idea that the game is somehow "unbalanced" without a wipe is a load of hooey. What's wrong with launching the game with an established community of knowledgeable players with available resources? How will that make the game unbalanced since I suspect some folks will powerlevel as they probably already have and others will take the same slow and steady route they usually do.
If balance is the issue, then perhaps Portalarium should do something to better control the game's economy than worry about player levels and experience points. Perhaps put in some controls for maximum pricing of items on vendors. What truly ruined Lord British' other game was the lack of control of the economy so that new players could never afford to buy from established players because prices were too outrageous and unreachable by new players. But if controls had been in place to prevent price-gouging, then perhaps new players would have been urged to stay.
Anyway, my two cents is that I am opposed to a character wipe. I don't want to lose anything I've worked for all this time be it my name, my houses, my skills, or my items. But at the very least, and as someone who considers himself an investor in this endeavor, I believe I have a right to know what the plan is so I can plan my own participation between now and launch.