Hector's Giant Noob List of Noobish Suggestions and Bug Reports

Hi, I'm Hector al'Hector! I tried the game in the free trial month in May. It's awesome, so I bought the game during the telethon.

I have a whole host of noob observations, frustrations, and suggestions, which I thought I'd gather together into one big post.

Remember that I said the game is awesome, and I'm really enjoying it overall. So please take these suggestions in the spirit of constructive criticism rather than complaint.

Also, these are "fresh noob" observations. Veteran players may understand these things better (or have grown used to them) but to the extent that you want to attract *new* players, these issues are potential obstacles. I'm sure some of them are on your to-do list for the under-construction game, but just in case they're not. . . .

Lag. I understand that the lag, especially in cities, is a new problem and you're fixing it. Good!

NPC vocalizations. Oh my god, the audio effects for HmmmMMMmmmmmm, Yooooohooo!, and various crying NPCs are seriously annoying and very grating. I sometimes have to turn off my speakers. I desperately hope that they are placeholders, and targeted for replacement soon. Also, while the crying is often an important audio clue to engage with NPCs, the HmmMmmm and Yoohoos, at least, are far less necessary, and could be way less frequent.

Opening splash screen music. I'm sure that the computer file is a placeholder, but a more orchestral recording should be high on the list before release.

Quest bugs. I still have active missions on my uncompleted quest list that I've either completed, or somehow skipped past and can no longer complete. I know there's talk of resetting all our quest history once before release which will fix this problem, sort of, but if it can recur it's not really fixed.

• Spoiler

  Something about reporting to the farmer that I killed the alpha wolf. This finally did disappear from my quest list, but stuck around long after I had already completed it once, and nothing I could do would make it go away. Except wait, apparently.
  [*]Tell Captain Kinsey about the Ebon Dawn Ritual Master. Can't complete (or already completed).
  [*]Discover what divides Siranto and Khasi. I've already completed the tower and gotten the keystone.

Mission flow. When you're supposed to ask around, it would be nice if more NPCs could give hints about who to talk to.

• Spoiler

  For example, I thought to ask the tailor in Soltown about the red cloth first thing so that flowed well for me, but that didn't occur to my wife and she got frustrated asking lots of other people and getting nowhere.

Conversely, it's possible to get lucky and possibly bork mission flow if you ask the wrong person too soon.

• Spoiler

  My wife asked the guard in Soltown about the red cloth before discovering the deal with the merchant, which would have prevented her from seeing the richness of the story. Similarly, as soon as we learned about the black arrows in Ardoris, the first NPC we happened across was Rolf. . . .

Lowbie Recipes. Where are the lowbie recipies, and why aren't they available in the initial lowbie zones? Seriously, there should be a good five or so recipes for each craft available in Solace Bridge Outskirts or at least Soltown that use only ingredients lowbies can easily get in the area and are useful to lowbies. I'm looking at you, Cooking, particularly, but all the crafts need lowbie recipe love in lowbie zones. And every single "Craft X from Y Scraps" should be in those lowbie zones too. I'm still I'm not sure I have anything I can do with some of the scraps I'm salvaging, and that's just silly.

Crafting stations in lowbie zones. It's quite frustrating that there's no public carpentry station in Soltown and I have to run back to Solace Bridge Outskirts to use that one. From a lore/immersion point of view, it's kind of neat that some stations are simply not available some places, but practically speaking it's just a frustrating time sink, and especially when almost every station is available almost everywhere, the immersion value of just a few being absent isn't that great actually.

Combat skill balance. I'm using spear and shield. I like it for the animations and the feel, but man is it underpowered compared to bow. My wife's bow user two-shots mobs it takes me forever to kill. Then I switch to bow and mop them up, too. This is a problem--especially when I'm much better off standing at melee range with a mob shooting it with arrows than I am using spear and shield. Should there be a melee range bow penalty? Maybe there already is one, but it isn't enough. Bow users should flee from melee, or drop that bow for a melee weapon!

• Idea to make me instantly unpopular with the bow users: taking melee damage while using a bow should also deal durability damage to the bow also. That'll teach 'em to take their delicate weapons up to the front lines!

Party members on my map. Or my compass. Please! We keep losing each other. And if they're on my compass, party members should be a special (customizable?) color.

Pop up help to suggest setting skills to "Not Training." When you first get a skill (any skill) to level 40, there should be a help message that pops up to say something like: "Congratulations. You've just reached level 40 in one of your skills. Level 40 is an accomplished journeyman level, and many avatars find that level 40 is adequate for everything they need to accomplish with some skills. You could continue to train the skill, but at this point it will be more difficult to progress, and you'll get fewer returns on the time spent training. Consider setting the skill to "Not Training" in the skills interface: Press K, find your skill, and click the green up arrow in the upper left corner of the icon. Cycle through "Training," "Maintaining" and "Unlearning" until you find the grey dash that indicates "Not Training." At that setting you won't lose any skill levels you've learned so far, but you won't train it up any further either, and will instead use your experience to train your other skills."

Pooled Adventuring Experience vs Pooled Crafting Experience. I was so confused until I finally realized there were two entirely separate experience pools. I thought I was gaining and losing huge swings of pooled experience depending on when I looked the skills window. This is an easy fix: label them "Pooled Adventuring Experience" and "Pooled Crafting Experience" rather than the generic "Pooled Experience" for both.

Fix or drop guide books to skill features. The guide books for new features like "Free Attack" that you get when you acquire the skill feature are pretty useless. They mostly tell you how to acquire the skill (which you JUST DID), but not how to actually use the feature (which you still don't know). Rewrite or just don't bother.

Double tap dodge. 1) Why not out-of-combat too? 2) Why not forward? 3) In another game, I could rebind the same effect to Shift+[move key] which I *much* preferred.

Left Mouse Button Weirdness. In some other games, left+right mouse button = run. This works in SOTA too! But when in combat, the left mouse button is also charging free attack, which is weird. It's especially weird when I'm just trying to run and yet I'm charging my attack. I'd like to be able to unbind left mouse button from free attack and bind a different key.

Fishing. Please give fishing some love. I know it has been on the list but has been pushed back. Oh, and while you're at it, the current mechanic where you can't fish in the same spot without reducing your chances of catching anything seems counter to what real fishermen do. (Of course, maybe they're just relaxing and don't actually want to catch anything. And while we're on the subject of relaxing fishing, it would be delightful to be able to sit while fishing.)

Player housing in Soltown. This is probably a sensitive subject, but Soltown is the first player housing newbies see in the game. The wide variety of housing architecture is disconcerting and some of the decorations are jarring (I'm especially looking at you, snowman near the graveyard), and it isn't a great advertisement for keeping game world immersion along with player housing. I can get over this, of course, but honestly it's going to make me want to avoid some areas just because of player housing choices. Conversely, I'm looking forward to seeing some well-managed player-owned towns!

Map layout is an ugly square. It doesn't look realistic; it looks like a computer was asked to fractal a land space and fill most of a perfect square, but make sure it was surrounded by water. It looks dumb. If you could extend an "unexplored wilderness" land area (for future expansions) from some parts of the current coastline to break up the square, that would be really nice.

Hard to see path on overland map. I keep finding myself slowed down off-path, pull up the sotamap, and realize I made a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Zone borders are meh (and unnecessary?). Mountains make fine borders for zones, but the forest and swamp borders seem arbitrary and confining. I run into invisible walls instead of running into actual game object trees, which is frustrating. Is there any reason zone edges all the way around a zone can't just be routes to Novia instead?

Jumping is underpowered. Especially in a game where you can't climb, jumping height seems anemic (even with hold and release). Also, there seems to be a built in delay that prevents you from jumping twice in succession, so climbing what should be pretty easy rock features is that much harder. Also, getting out of the water seems nearly impossible even if there's only s small embankment to climb.

Durability damage to crafting tools. Is my smithing hammer made from paper? What am I *doing* to my cubit measure, beating it against a stone wall? Occasional durability damage to the tools is fine, but the rate right now seems crazy.

Buying a replacement tool is cheaper than repairing it. That's wrong.

MOAR COMBOS! Combos are a really neat mechanic and I'm excited about them. But it seems like there could be lots and lots more. Also, almost all of the combos seem to require magic, and for heavy armor users in particular that's problematic. Just a few additional combo ideas:

• Puncture + Charge = Joust (charge an enemy with an increased chance to crit and a chance to knock down)
• Dig In + Push = Hold the Line (create an area of effect for a short time that knocks back enemies when created and knocks down enemies attempting to enter)
• Absorb Impacts + Bolster Balance = Immovable Object (immune to damage and knockdown for a short time, but can't move)
• Trip + Taunt = Bully (knock down target and gain a ton of aggro)

Trolling NPC craft vendors. I don't know if the behavior of Wu Shi Zhen & Chip Leland at the craft station is Ardoris is intentional or a bug, but it is some Grade A trolling and I want to punch them in the face. "I'm currently off duty. See me in my shop when it opens." Try again 5 seconds later "Greetings, let me know if you'd like to buy anything." You click buy . . . "I'm currently off duty. See me in my shop when it opens." Seriously, F this guy.

A bug: There are two guards caught in the stairwell rubberbanding down, down, down in the Ardoris bank.

Caravans, Balloons, and Boats. I like the idea, but I haven't yet found any caravans that go anywhere I want to go. I'd prefer not to rely on teleport scrolls to strangers (or even guildies, if I ever join a guild) if there could be a good network of caravans.​

Again, I love this game! These are just noob observations and ideas.

- Hector

 

Yeah cooking can be hard to get going when you first start out.

I hope they make finding ingredients easier since it should be possible to cook something no matter where you are in the world.

I started a new offline character, but decided to go to Owl's Head to get a food supply started.

They have the ingredients to make baked salmon and also rabbit stew, which is the best food I have made so far.

 

Good opening post!

Welcome to the forums, Hector!

 

if there were only those basic tools, that would be wrong, but those storebought tools can be enhanced with engravings to improve their stats, and the expense there is the engraving kit. once engraved, it's worthwhile to keep repairing than make anew.

 

Excellent feedback and suggestions. I share many of your frustrations, but love this game and its potential too!

 

Actually the two 'private' expert pavilions are open to anyone in Soltown. So you get the expert bonus as well.

 

First of all, excellent feedback post! @Lum the Mad @Chris @DarkStarr

I also find the NPC vocalizations to be annoying. Last release, I decided to restart the story in offline mode. The immersion was immediately killed for me when I appear in a strange, alien world and there's a girl waving at me going "YOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!" in a very annoying tone. Also, playing a serious quest and the NPC is all cheery is also immersion breaking. I would love to know if these are the final vocalizations. I do believe the game desperately needs some vocalizations, especially the main characters, but I question our current ones.

I also have accidently broken quests by stating the wrong keyword to an NPC further in the quest. I'm hoping most of these will be ironed out as we go though.

I'm hoping these will simply be fine turned as releases go. Also, welcome Hector!

 

Welcome to the game, its great to have someone who wants to make it better.. there is a feedback forum for each release as well as a place each release to post bugs.

While on so many levels I agree, whats wrong with the player owned ones just behind mrs Yooohoo .. which I believe are even the +5 crafting tables.

But you can, if you change the attack key, i changed mine to a 4th mouse button because as left click for free attack also is select, i found I was also changing my targets if my mouse moved, mobs/pcs got in the way.. leading to all manner of profanities

​

 

Thanks, everyone, for the warm welcome!

As for whats wrong with the player owned crafted tables in Soltown suggested by Crandall and Liz the Wiz, I guess the only problems were that a) I didn't know about them, and b) even if I did, I think my first assumption would have been that it's not cool to just walk up and start using private property on a private lot without permission, even if it is out in the open. But if I should reframe that thought and assume that if it's accessible to me then I'm invited, that's great to know!

I'll play around with my control bindings and see if I can fix my mouse free attack & move weirdness. Thanks, Liz!

- Hector

 

@Hector al'Hector as I said, I do agree to a large part that for a town that is going to be such a heavily used part of the world because its the first town you meet when starting as love/bow it doesnt really have the amenities that go with that status, it actually has less crafting options than the outskirts they added couple of releases ago, as the outskirts do actually have 1 of everything, if you find them. Soltown does not. it has smithing/smelting, tanning/textiles/tailoring .... no cooking, no alchemy.. Unless you go visit the guy who has a pavillion behind the blacksmith who has all craftnig table, which shows how great player stuff can be because it can bring to towns stuff they never had.

BTW thank you - you inspired me, I found yet another bug I was in Aerie, and found a bug yay more bugs

if you struggle with the whole finding keys keep an eye out for Lana, feel free to add her as a friend and I try stream my SOTA life, so I can show you things it comes in useful people do the "How do I" its like hey, hop on my stream and I can show you..

 

welcome, Hector al'Hector to this great and growing game if you need help ask questions here, in discord or on my youtube page which is packed with many video tutorials and gameplay. look forward to meeting you in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHaJtTffuLWz33z6OBtbhhA

 

Welcome @Hector al'Hector !!!
Good feedback.

 

Haha! The sounds in general aren't the greatest i think to the point of downright silly.

I'm a cook myself and i agree. It would be cool if lowbie food becomes alot more viable even for high end players, cause this will add to the sandbox feel of the game

Nice feedback and welcome to the game