My comments on the game thus far (features & technical)

SO I got a chance to play around a bit tonight before packing and leaving for vacation, and I have to say I love what I see so far.

I just wanted my voice to be heard so here it is, I couldnt find a consolidated thread for opinions. I'm not gonna bother mentioning obviously incomplete issues like shadows etc. It may seem like its all complaining, but thats only because I am just mentioning things that need work. Overall it is *very* impressive and I am LOVING it thus far. Obviously incomplete but I already can't wait for more.


1 - Please enable more zoom levels. I really wanted to look around without having the character obscure the view, a first person zoom would be awesome (or just make avatar invisible). I also found myself *really* wanting to zoom out further to get a better grasp of the area around my character. These are really vital gameplay mechanics I hope find their way in.

2 - Open door macro - I am guessing there will be macros later anyway, but one to open the door in front of the avatar is just crucial (a la UO). double clicking the small double doors is annoying, especially since you gotta do it to both or get stuck

3 - Jumping. I can't relate into words how much I wanted to jump over fences and off the balcony instead of walking around. Please make it so.

4 - Camera angles on stairs is horrible. Keeps zooming in and out and I cant see where I'm going. In fact Camera next to walls sucks too, keeps cutting half the wall out but keeping the other part then randomly zooming. It needs to be seamless, cheat if you need to but so far running around indoors is a pain

5 - Winding stairs in the Tower (Village) need to be wider, or at least have railings. It's hard running up them and not falling (also I've fallen and gotten clipping errors and almost stuck)

6 - A way to run faster would be *very* nice. Also the movement animations are off, but I'm guessing you all know that.

7 - Founder's Knight Home is even more worse when compared to the Benefactor's one than we all originally thought. Wow. Really went back on your word here. Also the parapets are still inaccurate (gaps are too big). Actually the Benefactor cottages are way nicer than the Founder ones too. Really lame that the founder exclusive houses suck. Total bummer.

- Lord's home *Looks* a *lot* better than it did on the pics. SO I take back a lot of the negative things I've said about it before, but it is laughably cramped inside. No Private Master bedroom? wtf. Inside doesnt match outside either, looks like there should be an extra room or something in that front column part. That really needs to be fixed. The Knight Benefactor is almost the same size indoors.

- Baron's House is incredible. There is a huge difference between Baron's and Lords. WAY bigger difference than between Knight and Lord; granted the price different is larger, but I would assume that the jump from village to town would be significant in the same respect that the jump from town to city is. Overall the Lord's home still sucks. But it does look nice aesthetically.

- Will we get ability to build NPC style homes? So far they are the nicest most sensical ones. I love their designs...

8 - Wheres the minimap? I get not giving us quest pointers (and agree with) but not having a minimap is downright poor gameplay mechanics. Something like UO had would be perfect. "Town square is North of here" - great which way is that haha.

9 - I have dual monitors, the mouse cursor can freely leave the full screen game monitor and enter the desktop on the other. Guessing this will be fixed later but just in case its unique to my rig, you guys should look into it.

10 - the rivers seem to have some kind of invisible forcefield around them

11 - any chance to toggle day/night cycles for ease of play/mood? Day time looks BEAUTIFUL and really fun to play. Nighttime, not so much (read: Not at all.)

12 - Loving the look and feel of the inventory. Thanks for bringing back UO style pouches/bags etc.
- There should be a way to quickly send items to your inventory without dragging each item there from a chest. Like a "hold shift and double click" sort of thing.
- Love how the house placement of items/decorating works. Well done.
- Potted Plants. Awesome.
- PLEASE allow us to leave stuff on the ground *not* in our homes. Like weapons, furniture anything. It really makes the game more believable and a great way to get free stuff online

13 - (Edit: This bullet is regarding the chat system which has been talked about in detail in the first two pages of this tread. My ideas on how to fix it have evolved so before you reply to this point check out the discussion, left here in its entirety for posterity) The whole way of chatting is annoying. You type what you want and the NPC are retards as always. "Where are you from?" "Your Mom's House" "I haven't heard of that place, but at least it doesn't sound like a blatant lie, I'll let you pass for now" LOL, I think its more believable to have options you wont necessarily use than see stupid responses like this. Can we just click and select what will work and not instead of guessing which keywords the NPC has been programmed with? I know theres a bunch of people on these forums that like to type chat with the equivalent of a wall, so maybe we can toggle chat style?
-I have to type out the white bold words instead of just clicking them... Is this Lord Brittish Teaches Typing?
-Otherwise everything is very well written and the story is intriguing. If you 'play along' it works well.

14 - Clothing and items look really well (like everything else in the game, GREAT JOB). However I think my augmented plate gauntlets & leggings were bugged as they appeared neon white on me in game.




Game performance is great so far, really happy with it.

thats if for now. will edit and add stuff later if anything comes to mind.


My rig:

Intel Core i5 Haswell; 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 760, Windows 8.1. Dual Monitors. 4 Harddrives with 3 externals USB 3.0 HDs.

MOD EDIT: Language

 

Oh also forgot to add that even though the music sounded nice, it felt really out of place. Not sure why... it just did. It sounded way too modern to me (it sounds like it was just recorded in a studio). I would've preferred some renaissance style music more.

 

+1000

Very well said.

 

While I agree with most of your items, I think these are things that can be chalked up to pre-alpha.

The one I'm going to strongly disagree with is your bit about conversation with NPCs. I don't really see what your complaint is. You want pre-programmed responses that force you to "play along," but complain that the NPC responses aren't very good unless you decide to "play along." It's very confusing - if you have the freedom to type what you want, you want to respond in a silly way. To keep yourself from doing that, you would rather be forced to respond in a pre-programmed way. Why not just choose to "play along?"

Are you really having trouble guessing which words are keywords? Maybe I was educated differently, but keywords was something drilled into me during elementary school. Also, they are bolded(which you know, because you mention it after complaining that you have to guess the keyword).

I'm really not seeing the problem here.

 

I'm well aware its pre-alpha. But wanted to make sure to mention my annoyances, that is after all what we are supposed to be doing.

My complaint with the conversation is that it forces me to play along by having me type in specific things. If that is the case just write down the stupid things and let me click it. If I have the ability to type in whatever I want, but only get a meaningful response to like 10 phrases (keywords, actually) just give me those 10 options and skip the utter waste of time that is typing out phrases, ESPECIALLY since 99% of what you really want to say to these bots isn't recognized.

I am well aware of how keywords work. However, this isn't a 3rd grade reading comprehension quiz or Learn to Type FAST! software. "here's a paragraph with underlined keywords, now retype these keywords to progress further" It's 2013; let me click the damn hyperlink, read the next paragraph and move on with my life.

My complaint is that the conversation system is stupid and time consuming. It does nothing to add to the gaming experience except appease a handful of old school RPG geeks on these forums who want to relive their youth and playing an RPG that has you type in your thoughts/questions/actions whatever.

I want to explore and see the world, not stare at a text client conversion with a BOT. If I am going to be typing and chatting, it's going to be with HUMANS.

 

I'll try to demonstrate just how wrong you are:

You go to Town A. The baker in Town A tells you about his cousin in Town B. She is looking for someone to retrieve her ancestral locket. You should ask her about it.

You go to Town B and talk to the cousin. She never mentions the locket. Fortunately, you have talked to the baker and know about it, so you use the keyword to ask her about it. A new line of conversation starts.

In-depth conversation and exploration will lead to more quests/options/whatever.

It's not just a bunch of old school RPG people looking to be nostalgic. It is crafting a system that allows for a huge depth of exploration and doesn't give you a in-game walkthrough.

 

You're not actually suggesting that the player is burdened with remembering the locket? The character knows about the locket, to I should see that option in front of me.

 

I hope I don't have to keep a notepad with all the information written down that I glean from my conversations. The last thing I want to have to do is start flipping through pages of notes trying to remember something instead of playing the game.

 

I agree completely with the white text portion of your post. All I am saying is that I don't want to type that crap in. I talked to the Baker? Great. I found his sister? Fantastic. Now I have an extra topic to speak about I can click in my list of this NPC's list of recognizable keywords I've "discovered".

The part of this whole system that is broken is that it is not automated and I have to memorize/type in the words.

 

Of course not. I'm arguing for a fully automated game where the most optimal choices are just made for me.

 

Hahahahaha! I typed my response to PrimeRib before I saw the response post. Priceless!

 

"It doesn't do the work for me, so it must be broken"


I'll remember to log this same kind of complaint when I lose any form of combat.

What you need is a good TV show to entertain you.

 

Whatever suits you. But I like games where I'm presented the information so that I can make intelligent choices myself.

 

I don't really care if there is a keyword list, as long as it is an option that can be turned off.

 

How about there is a keyword list, but it will always contain every single possible word trigger. For all the NPC's. All the time.

You don't have to type, you just have to click! And the information is right there presented to you! CHOICES!! (1000's of them - hope you like scrolling better than typing)

 

And I don't really care if there a chat box manual way of entering these words, as long as it is an option that can be turned off.

Thats not fair and you know it. It's broken because it brings nothing to the table, it just requires more time to do without adding any positives.

If you are suggesting players play this game with a pen and pad and write down all potential keywords then we are expecting vastly different games. In which case the conversation system isn't broken, it just plain sucks and an archaic, time consuming way of playing (that last sentence is in fact my personal opinion).

If you are suggesting having those keywords underlined like they are now and require us to type them back in, instead of clicking them, and somehow that is better, then I am at a loss. That is in fact a broken system; seamless chatting is the key to good gameplay, this is not opinion.

I see no reason why we couldnt have both play styles and make it a toggle (toggle clickable keyword list). I am always up for solutions that allow players to play their own ways.

 

Waste of time. It should only be populated with keywords you have already discovered and those which this NPC has been programmed to reply to.

 

I'm hoping the main game isn't too much of typing what someone says back to them. We do know that NPCs will respond to things they haven't said so you wont see them highlighted. That adds in the investigative layer I was wanting to the game. What I'll likely end up doing is making a text document for each town with every keyword i've found along with notes on important people and things. I'm looking forward to that, I've never had to do that in a game (Didn't play the original ultimas). In the Dev+ section there have been some reveals on what was going on behind the scenes when we talked to them. Put simply, you need to respond according to how you want to be in the game or there will be consequences. You might not have noticed it but it was in there, and the longer the game goes on and as your reputation builds it will have bigger impacts. You wont be able to simply just paste in a block of text everytime if you want a good experience.

They mentioned that would be in there, but then seeing (being told) what changed for us was really cool to know that it did impact the game.

 

This is all your opinion. What you are seeing as broken, I am seeing as depth.
The only opinion I agree with is the last one quoted above.

I only mock you, because you started in with "this is stupid." If you want to be that way, don't expect a great deal of sympathy in the return posts.

If your entire post was in the nature of the last sentence quoted above, we can be civil and come to an agreement.

Obviously, what we look for in a RPG is quite different, but don't come at me with insults about it, or I will taunt you a second time!

 

The point is by presenting a list of standard keywords (greetings, name/job/health, gossip/rumors, etc.) and just clicking on those to open up a further list of NPC specific keywords that are then clicked on until no new keywords are in the list results in only 1 thing: clicking without reading, thinking or considering.