Further Adventures In Feeding Back

So in between the delight in finally seeing our Once and Forever King return to Sosaria (as he left before I had a PC that could run Ultima Online), I managed to sit down and actually try adventuring in the current release of Shroud, and I wanted to give my thoughts as to how the game plays as a game again.

Firstly, I arrived in Braemar as so many did, to bump into some of the staff discussing development. Apparently my idea of having quest giving NPCs give some sort of emote signal (hand wave etc) rather than Question Marks over their head is already in the pipeline in some form. Which is a relief, as I was soon to discover as I proceeded to head to Ardoria to do the actual quest line. There shouldn't be any spoilers ahead, so safely read on.

The first problem was that performance was miserable in Ardoria; moving around proved painful, and I saw my instance close twice before I eventually gave up. Having plenty of time to look at the scenery as I stumbled and juddered through it, I am also not convinced by the clearly oriental palaces compared to the Roman-esque aqueducts and Victorian England style player slums. I'd really like to see some effort made to differentiate cities in future publishes; obviously player housing can't be limited in style, but the current subtle influences (paper lanterns in Adoria say) aren't distinct enough as yet.

On the other hand, after visiting the Oracle and then noticing that the Eye on the roof of the building is the same as the one on the flying insect "Watchers" and on some of the markings of the spiders, I was really impressed with the depth in wider lore that is being laid down. The effect of the Oracle's head was nice too, although not too clear on Fastest settings alas.

The quest itself? It has potential, although the Tour Guides calling them Castles with the Ardoria NPCs describing them as Palaces was jarring. The fact that NPCs are all identical is a known issue, but it did lead to something I think would be worthwhile later... You have to find an NPC at one point who is in one area, but isn't named and the building isn't very noticeable. And that's ok, why would you automatically know who someone you've never met before is? After about 30 minutes of trying to locate him I got the right one, but he stayed generic and I thought "how nice it would be, if once introduced the NPC showed their true name to you from then onwards".
Possibly even a little hue around them you can apply to show you "know" that person, or have spoken to them to your satisfaction. Or even just when you double click them a simple "smiles in recognition" appears in chat once toggled. That way you'd keep the "discover unexpected quests from wandering npcs" element, but reduce the amount of repetition that comes from orientating in a city with such a fixed viewpoint.

As for the journal? I like it! One small problem however is that it's written in discovery order, which makes sense from a character point of view, but not from tracking a quest if you take a break. Some sort of "bookmarks" you can place in the book, or ability to scribble notes is needed; but I think these are planned already?

That quest line isn't complete I think, so I wandered off then to the Challenge Dungeon. Here I experimented with combat; I stayed with the pre-built Swords set for now, and I got to Round 5, despite having forgotten to sheathe my weapons in order to heal. I'm still not convinced about the "feel" of it so far; the sound and especially the animations don't feel "solid" enough, you don't get much sense of whether you're hitting or missing your target. The stags were just silly as they ran into the walls as soon as they spawned; the bears couldn't easily path find into the little corridors around the edges, and the Skeletal Archers can't see you or shoot you if you're up against the wall of the plinth they are on, and they forget you're there.

I then wandered off to the PvP zone and knew how the skeletal archers felt; It would be an idea to have the upper floor extend as a cage out over the walls, so you can look down and see people fighting up against the walls. Also the exit could do with a little more distinguishing, I got visually lost again. The atmosphere otherwise was good, and the arena clear visible... except against the wall I was on

The final part of the tour was into Vertas Pass. I think the cold started to get to me pretty quickly...



Yes, I am indeed trying to talk to that spider! Why? Because for some reason when you double clicked it ready to attack, my character kept saying "Hello", as if it were a conversing NPC! I did eventually work out it was a bug as well as an arachnid...!

It wasn't just me having a brain freeze; one elf in particular would constantly path find into a wooden fence, and be intermittently out of range;



At least so it felt... that "spongy" combat again, it's possible I was just missing; as you can see I didn't have the chat tab up so I didn't see the combat text to be sure. Still I think the scenery is coming on nicely, even with the currently incomplete tileset and models the mood they evoke is good. Set music will help that even further; Ravensmore having the dungeon-esque music constantly is extremely atmospheric. More on Ravensmore later!

Having achieved my hat, I went to Owls Head to see if I could give it to Moo the Cow. Cows cannot wear hats yet, 20% off my review score there then! And for once Owls Head had open housing plots. I realised this would be my only chance to place in this city, so I sold all the loot I had so far... The trading UI suffers badly if the game server is lagging, and it's not yet fully intuitive. You can't right click to remove an item from the sale window, I think? And backpacks in general need a lot of work; small items like bows (Thanks, Dark Elves!) are still too hard to grab, and having the ability to auto loot corpses and send stuff you're likely to sell to a sub-pack where it won't cover everything with it's unclickable badness is essential I think.

And then the game crashed for me, and I gave up for the day. Returning on the 'morrow I went looking for a house. I wanted one within sight of Moo the Cow... just to say I lived there once And there was an empty plot right next door, but when I clicked on the sign it I realised it just didn't have a house. I looked again at the sign and it was blank, oh silly me. And then I noticed the Row Houses next door were for sale. Hurrah! So I purchased the one on the corner... and realised how odd it is that they have no rear windows to look at cows or anything else. I'm assuming that's because they're designed to be back to back in some places? It also leads to a question; I didn't at this point have another house on me... will those plots be empty at launch, or do you get the house free like I did? Or will it be filled until purchased, and then deleted until someone puts a house back in themselves?

I decided now was the time to get my first ever Throne Of Bone. Interesting fact; if you press Num Lock to toggle auto-run on the Overland map, it forces you to run north. After wandering around Owls Heard I could no longer find Winslow or his quest (that tracking NPCs problem again) so I couldn't do it the expected way, and googling led me to Kingsport looking for an "Iron Gate" one blog said had a sewer and led to it, but no longer does. It's in Ravenhold in fact. Again, that navigational issue, I spent about 20 minutes running back and forth over the land until looking at the map showed the entrance to the dungeon was down on the coast.

On that coast, you can see a bit of what might be dithering to simulate distance? But which looks atrocious when allowed to be seen clearly without scenery in the way;



It's on the cliff face just to my left; if you run left and right it stays fixed, but the cliff moves underneath it. Urgh! Again I'm on the fastest settings, and running relatively old hardware however. (Win7, ATI 4670 512mb, 4gb ram)

Inside the dungeon is where I discovered I was seriously undergeared. I just could not beat a chest mimic!



Unless I triggered nearby skeletons, and then ran into a tight corridor so they started fighting amongst themselves first. Interesting fact; Chest Mimics eat skeletons alive too! I tried swapping to a custom deck, but it was my weapons and gear that were the issue alas.

Another interesting fact; the reward hat deletes your hair, which leaves everyone looking like Darkstarr... I find this highly suspicious!



Unable to fight my way to the end, I resorted to luring everything onto the spike traps, or abusing the poor AI to kite around the rooms until I finally reached my very own Throne Of Bone! It would be nice to later on be only able to get one for defeating the Lich King there, rather than from a chest nearby. It would also be nice to have taken some sort of moral penalty for knocking the lid off everyone's tomb so I could loot the weapons they were buried with!

The short cut at the end to return outside was a nice surprise; especially as I'd spent 5 minutes or so on the way down, trying to click all the bricks on the other side, d'oh! And then it was home to place my first bit of hard earned decoration;



... and to ponder on how I felt in general. Well, the game is coming together for me; but I've played Ultimas since 1989, including enjoying Ultima IX of which the gameplay at least has a definite tang of. But I do think more modern gamers are going to struggle with the questing as it currently is now. I know we want to avoid the Dread Question Mark immersion killer, but a little more information would be useful.

How about notice boards with quests on? Even maybe having mysterious letters occasionally turn up in your post box? "I hear thou art the bane of the undead; pray help me!" Just something which would fit the world but would give a bit of focus to the sandbox fun.

Combat needs a lot of work still, as mentioned. It's still the weakest part for me. I didn't touch crafting this time around, although I did loot an enormous amount of Spider Legs, no one wanted to buy those; some sort of awareness of what is useful at mouse over for random loot would be nice; based on crafting skill though, so if you're not an alchemist yourself you wouldn't necessarily know what you can do with 5 badly bent spider legs...

But it was delightful to sit in my Throne and flip through my journal and feel a sense of achievement after a few days of actual adventuring; the "soul" of the game is already starting to shine through I think. In the immortal words of the email circulars however; polish, polish, polish!