Hail and well met! New Avatar Feedback.

First and foremost, what a game!

Definitely a good feeling to be able to stretch my legs in a fantasy such as this again. Reminiscent of UO without all the EA regurge.

I highly enjoyed Tabula Rasa, and played UO on the Atlantic shard, for a long time after original release. I am a huge fan of Richard as well as Tracy Hickman. I have not found the time yet, but I will be sitting down in game and reading through my library of books found during my adventures, and I am super excited for that.

I would like to cover my thoughts about the "first" few hours of the game, specifically detailed below in what was asked by the higher ups.

• Character Creation

Character creation is not bad, but adding more options for hairstyle, color, body type/customization, and races would be a coooooool thing. From that statue in the lava it almost looks like we could expect Tieflings to either be extinct or possibly out there. Now I know there are tons of other games that do this, but in this case I think more is better than less.

• Isle of Storms

Overall very nice starting area, less lag than expected with all the floating celestial objects. I think one thing that would be cool for this place is to maybe add a start chest for some lowbie equipment or "getting started" notes locked down to the world for review. I think the hardest thing to understand from the get go is the XP system, so that would be helpful.

• Tutorial Scenes
  • Battle of Solace Bridge (Love/Archer)

This was the first quest chain I started on, and I think the most fleshed out so far. The sub quests for this were also pretty easy to finish (at the Soltown camp).

• Battle of Highvale (Courage/Fighter)

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I stumbled on Highvale last, I had to exit out of the map and go back in to what was "The battle at Highvale" to get the quest chain to start after going through the moongate. This was pretty good as well, I think the healer walks way too slow, and the key you get from the person at the beginning to unlock the gate, I could not find said gate to finish that quest chain, but was able to skip over it and start the rest up in Resolute after. Courage chain is broken towards the end, but that is in the works it sounds.

• Blood River Massacre (Truth/Mage)

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I think I did this in single player, and I am unsure if I was able to start it with my main toon on multiplayer. I think I ended up talking to the guy in the treehouse within Blood River to get the quest chain started, but I do not recall finishing it, I will have to review and get back to you guys later on this one. (The oracle indicates I have strayed from the path of truth, so I think I may be stuck somewhere on this one)

• Soltown

Very good starting town. I think more crafting NPCs should be added for recipe convenience but is very close to Ardoris. The npcs for the most part have quests here, and most of the quests are easy enough to figure out and complete.

Ardoris - Quest chains for the rulers are not easy to follow but eventually seem to lead to the tower as they should (have not completed that part yet).

Quest(s) that I am having difficulty with are the student book finding quests. I did a reset task from a town crier and lost the progress in my journal for these, but the NPCs still want me to pass the books in.

One quest that was really neat was the children being murdered in town. It was very well done, the hints were enough for me to figure out where to go, but the murderer was super hard to find to confront.

Resolute and Aerie - Quest chains for main lines seem to be in place, but again not very easy to follow. I think my biggest problem is always finding the right NPCs for the next part of the chain. They seem to move around a lot. On a second note I did not find many quests in these two towns to start with, and the ones I did find were all cleared out when I reset my Task list with a town crier.

Kiln - I explored a bit and found this place, seems to be getting closed to finished, the quests were in place for the town and the town's dungeon, I did not explore these yet as I am very low level still.

Brittany - Unfortunately I am playing on a dated system, so any of these towns are lag central for me. Was not able to even explore NPCs and find quests.

• Subsequent Quests/Adventure Scenes/Crafting

Adventure Scenes - Maybe adding a cutscene for each zone as you first load into it, showing the general layout and maybe some "hotspots". Most areas are pretty well done, the ones that aren't, do have the construction signs, so good on you guys for that. Level markers are mostly accurate (skull signs), some places rated as a 3-4 are actually one higher or lower, but you can always leave if it is too hard and try somewhere else.

Crafting. There is a lot here that is missing, and the recipes are very expensive for beginners to try to fill their books with (I realize that there are other ways to get these, but I have not ventured towards a guild yet).

I enjoy the beginner tools that you get, but super expensive to repair these to full durability again, I end up just tossing the old one and buying a new one.

Crafting itself is very easy and straightforward, Some UI work needs to be done with the craft windows to make it a little easier to do multiple amounts at once.

Have a very hard time finding Mandrake Root.

Also, Prices of low level gear are astronomical. It is almost as if we don't want to see new players at all.

• General
  • UI

UI needs a bit of an overhaul. I REALLY LOVE the fact that you can turn your bags into Ultima bags instead of the list, but the problem is the window size. Really need to work on getting the UI to be completely adjustable.

Would also like to see the mouse hover "identify" be a little quicker when it comes to hovering over items in your inventory.

I like the fact that you can pin the map and the chat window to a certain spot, but I would like to see a way to "pin to background" so you can just set it and forget it without the windows getting in the way.

I see what you guys are doing with the map system, I like it, but the biggest problem I am having is when finding new areas or meeting new NPCs, it obviously does not update "live".

• Controls

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Controls are good, maybe set a default for q and e to work as the character turn buttons, or have different control sets to flip through. Obviously I realize this is up to the player to customize, but it would help people coming from other MMOs to transition easier movement wise.

• Visuals

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Visually the game seems to be a little dated, I hope there comes a day where it can all be optimized to FFXIV level sharpness (minus the lag and memory leaks)

My biggest Peev so far is the load time between zones. I have a USB 3.0 HDD, and it easily can take up to 5 minutes to load an area. I am going to attempt to get a SSD just for this game, but it honestly should not be a requirement. There has got to be a better way to cache the resources for each scene to cut these load times in half, but again, I realize we are still developing the game here, so I understand.

• Audio

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Audio is excellent. Music is awesome. One issue I seem to be having is all the orgasm sounds in town, and Demig's camp is kinda crazy right now..

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This is it for now, I will add more soon I suspect.

 

@Xenix Brastar . That was wonderful feedback. Thank you for taking the time. Yes there is still much to do on this game imo too. If I can ever assist you please feel free to friend me and add Majoria to your friends list. I can trade some recipes with you and emotes too and more if you like or just try to answer questions. It sounds like you are great at finding your way. The map system in game is now a player made map but imo too it needs some improvements which is probably in the works. So yes lots of performance things being work on continuously. Because of no instancing housing for one thing this game has a tremendous amount of things to load in towns. Most players love shinies and deco and get creative with what can be done with them on their lots and this affects loading the scenes too. . Anyway here's hoping the next months to the commercial release will improve much game play and load time and add in the feedback from constructive players like yourself. So welcome to Shroud of the Avatar may you enjoy the journey.

 

@majoria70 Thank you so much. I will try to reach out the next time I find myself in game.

 

@Xenix Brastar good feedback. The good news for you is that both FPS and Load Times are the major thing happening in this months update!

 

@Xenix Brastar I also wish to thank you for your great feedback. Impressive! I have some additional questions if you don't mind. Many of us are involved in providing suggestions to enhance the new player experience, making the game easier to mechanically play but keeping it challenging to accomplish, etc.

How did you "learn" to play the game? Sub-questions like:

• Did you use the Question Mark in the upper right part of the screen to open the google document? Did it help? Did you read it all or scan for bits and pieces you needed to know?
• Did you figure out the hot keys pretty easily? How?
• Did the tool tips help?
• Did you use the New Player or Player Created Resources forum here to learn specifics, like watch any videos?
• Could you navigate around the over-world map pretty easily? Did you get lost?
• Did you meet any Hospitallers (they have title tags)? Did they approach you or you ask them?
• Did you use Discord to meet people or get help?
• Was there anything frustrating about learning "how" to play the game?
• Did you have fun and did you do any fishing?

Thanks!

 

Nice and welcome avatar!

 

Welcome @Xenix Brastar !!!

 

• Did you use the Question Mark in the upper right part of the screen to open the google document? Did it help? Did you read it all or scan for bits and pieces you needed to know?

I have not used any external game help, I have to run it in windowed mode to avoid the lag with minimizing the game. I have read most of the in game tips, and I felt they were sufficient.

• Did you figure out the hot keys pretty easily? How?

Avid gamer, it came pretty easily.

• Did the tool tips help?

Tool tips were sufficient.

• Did you use the New Player or Player Created Resources forum here to learn specifics, like watch any videos?

I watched one video by Ms B Haven on youtube for XP and XP pool info.

• Could you navigate around the over-world map pretty easily? Did you get lost?

I ended up running into the Moongate in Solace Bridge and ending up in Blood River pretty early on, and eventually found my way to the Aerie. A few boat rides later I was in some strange place and ventured across a desert and found Kiln. Went to a few more main cities and eventually squeezed back through a canyon and made it back to Soltown. I would say getting around the map is not very difficult, I like to adventure myself. I find myself carrying far too many stones for long distances most of the time though.

• Did you meet any Hospitallers (they have title tags)? Did they approach you or you ask them?

I have seen them, have not interacted with any yet.

• Did you use Discord to meet people or get help?

I have spoken with a few gamers from EvL and they offered to let me join their Teamspeak. Thankfully a very friendly community. I like Discord, but have not attempted to connect with anyone.

• Was there anything frustrating about learning "how" to play the game?

I was not expecting such a neat XP system, so it took some time to understand how to be able to level your skills as well as gain positive XP. I could go for more low level cave systems, but I may not have found them yet. I have been trying to finish the Courage questline, but seem to be stuck right at the end of it. I think the thing I have been struggling with the most is FPS lag, obviously in populated cities. Again the loads times are not the best with a USB 3.0 HDD, but my system is getting dated.

• Did you have fun and did you do any fishing?

I am enjoying the hell out of this game. It feels like coming home. My fishing skill is nearly 70, have not quite found the right spot yet.

 

WELCOME! This is the best game 4 ever. Except Mario.

 

You don't need to be in a guild, many players will be happy to share recipes with you to get you started. If you've not already, enable zone chat in your chat window and post a message when you see you're in a zone with a few other people (hit zero key on numeric keypad).

Unless you just want to look up where the books are using an external website this quest will take you a long time to complete on the basis of happening to come across them as you adventure. Some hints below (no specific locations) to reveal if you so wish:

Spoiler: Book Quest

• Many (but not all) of the books are in locations you visit while doing the love quest line
• All of the books are by themselves (i.e. at no point do you need to search through a book case full of books)
• There is a second quest associated with the same set of books, currently it's possible to complete both of them (this may be a bug fixed later), collect two of each book as you discover them

Usually found in and around graveyards and other areas of undead activity. For new players the skeleton roaming encounters are a good place to get it.

Our main channel and the channels associated with our public events are open access, please feel free to pop in any time if you have a another question.

 

West Veiled Swamp near Soltown has some.

You can also get some from the Skeleton Plains Road Encounters. Be careful though, the skeletons can gang up on you. It also has lots of Nightshade at night.

 

Welcome to New Britannia!

Note that when you do have to buy reagents, while the magic vendors do have all of them, players can grow mandrake, nightshade and garlic and usually sell it cheaper.

 

Appreciate the feedback, and thank you for the welcome! Hopefully will see some of you in game.

 

Welcome Avatar @Xenix Brastar Marvelous feedback! I like the forums avatar you've chosen It reminds me of this song my GF is always singing whenever I've been playing the game too long I hope you find that as cute as I do ~Time Lord~