Very first impressions FWIW

Reasonably well-experienced, middle-aged MMO player (both themepark and sandbox). I've only just gotten out of the place that's on fire, on the boat, and up the hill to the camp, talked to a few people, sold a few things and killed a few wolves, so this really is just a punter's barest first impressions and "feel."

To me there are three overall things that make for an MMO - the persistent world itself (the world itself has to be the number one star of the show, it has to feel like a BIG, real and varied place), responsiveness (slickness of control) and ease of communicating with people and working with them (teaming up, etc.).

I can't really say whether the world is going to be the main star of the show yet, as I haven't explored much, although what I've seen does like nice so far. Communication and ease of team-building, again, I can't say yet - not deep enough into it.

But on responsiveness and feel, I can say that while the game feels less clunky than it did a year or so ago when I first tried it, it's still not really there yet.

1) Why is there "mouse smoothing," or whatever it's called? The camera swings about as if the game were a console port, instead of being precisely controlled by my hand. Really terrible first impression for a PC game (in the sense that while I appreciate some like it, the option to turn it off HAS to be there and easily accessible in Options from the get-go otherwise you're instantly going to turn off a lot of people for no good reason).

2) Again, the animations are stiff and odd, one doesn't feel "at one with" the character - not as bad as a year ago, but still quite bad. The bow firing animations and the semi crouch are quite nice, but really it all needs more character and a bit more speed, to make it gel. (Not asking for ridiculous "Asian" style animation speed, but you need something more like WoW-level animation slickness.) Can you still afford to have "placeholder" stuff in at this stage? Shouldn't you really be looking at the basics of avatar control and feel all being in place by now?

3) The art design of the menu, etc., is all over the place. You have olde-worlde font in some places and sans-serif in others; "stock" windows-like menu style mixed in with stylized bits. This creates a very bad first impression, it makes the game feel like a Frankenstein's monster cobbled together from bits and pieces, as opposed to feeling like it's a unified thing with its own outstanding character.

I understand that it's still early days, but I'm not sure you can leave this to the end, especially the matter of responsiveness/animation, it's such an integral part of what makes combat moreish enough to do 24/7.

I think you'd get people looking more favourably on the game, more willing to test its depth and intricacy, and more willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt when they get to the "in the weeds" level, if you looked at these more basic elements and got them up to scratch.

The synergy that gives a game a AAA feel is quite delicate (it also includes sound as well as art design), and you need some "synergy person" looking after that, someone who has the rare ability to separate in their mind, the feeling of familiarity with everything that they have from working on the game, from being able to simulate the feeling they'd have as if they were a new player coming into the game for the first time. (In music, this skill is the "producer's" skill par excellence - being able to apprehend something you're deeply in the trenches with as if you were coming across it for the first time and had never heard it before.)

Anyway, just some first impression thoughts FWIW, looking forward to playing the game more!

 

*waves*

Thats my speciality, however I have been ostracized from the whole industry, because the talent also comes with being critical.

And well as I'm being repeated over and over, almost every week... theres enough critics in this world, we don't care if they're really bad theres too much of them if we generalize alot and not care

 

@gurugeorge Good feedback. These are issues that have been brought up before and I agree the game really shouldn't feel this clunky only a few months away from full release. This is stuff that should have been perfected and finalized years ago.

Unfortunately, with all that is left to do in the next few months, I suspect that what you see is what you get in regards to the things you mention.

 

The nearest MMO-like game I can compare this to that had many wonderful features and aspects, but fell down badly on clunkiness of control, was The Secret World. Time and again, comments about the game were, "There's some really fantastic stuff here, but the combat just feels clunky and awkward, the animations are goofy, etc." It was a very similar story with SWTOR (although that also had other problems too of course). ESO also started with clunky combat - but they managed to pull a more refined, flowing style out of the bag after a few updates.

Surely the most basic thing about a game is that the combat has to be something you enjoy doing, and want to do more of.

Please note that what I'm talking about here is very different from the mechanics of the combat, or whether it's "action" oriented or "point and click" or "tab targeting" - any of these styles can be made to feel either slick or clunky. Again, it's more of a subtle thing to do with a synergy between responsiveness, animations and sound fx.

At any rate, whatever the "it" factor I'm talking about here is, this game doesn't have it - yet. And as I'd like to see the game successful (because I want to have a big sandbox to play in), I dearly ask that you guys look into it as a matter of high priority.

I'm not expecting the super-responsiveness and complexity of animation of a multiplayer game like Warframe, nor even something to the level of the MMO gold standard of WoW, but surely you could get a decent level of slickness and responsiveness to the level of games like, say GW2 or LOTRO?

 

totally off topic but did you try the remake?

 

Yeah, they've improved the combat a bit (it's a bit more "actioney") but it's still not really stellar in terms of feel. The build system has been simplified - it's lost the charm of discovering synergies from all that complex mass of options, but it's probably gained some ease of use for new players. Crafting has been much simplified, for the better.

The rest of it is pretty much the same - great story, voice acting, puzzles, tons of atmosphere and immersion, etc., with a few of the quests a bit streamlined, but still great in those areas. Dungeons the same great dungeons. From what I can gather some of the vets of the previous version are pissed off that it's a bit cash-grabby in the way it's set up now (beyond a certain point you do have to start shelling out to be competitive, or so I gather), but on the plus side, the influx of cash probably means the story will continue to be developed where it wouldn't have been if the game had stagnated as a nearly-dead MMO.

I started playing it and enjoyed it as far as I've gotten so far (just a casual side-game atm), it's still got largely the same atmosphere. Trouble is, for the story, part of the charm was the thing unfolding - if you already know much of it, it loses some of the mystery. Still a game everyone should try though, especially if you like the themes.

 

Except that this is very much not a AAA game; the budget is nowhere near that. You can't expect AAA-tier polish without a AAA-tier budget and staff.

But the controls ARE clunky, IMHO even more clunky than they originally were. The "reticle" thing is a pain in the ass to use, especially at low frame rates where camera rotation has up to a second of inertial lag. I normally use the tab key to switch modes, but they recently rebound the tab key to switch targets (I'm fine with still using the G key) and left the mode switch key completely unbound.

I'd love to have game controller support (especially if motion direction was unlocked from camera direction), but that's not in the plan for official release. (which is probably going to happen at the end of the year)

Really, at this point, performance has priority over UI polish. They are right at the point of working on memory performance (it leaks quite a bit), and everybody is sick and tired of the constant "hitching".

 

I use tab to switch targets, right mouse button for mouse-look and the reticle is turned off.

Yes!