Initial R6 Impressions thread - feel free to add.

Hey All,

So I've finally got around to posting some impressions on a release having not really commented much since R4. I love how the games moving on and have just finished my first session with R6.

Things I liked -

The skill system as it stands is very familiar and very easy to use and I imagine it will get a lot more polishing before release.
Not sure if the bags have been abandoned and I know this is contentious but I much prefer the current inventory.
The atmosphere of some of the settings is really quite beautiful and evocative....some really nice work here.
The chest mimic - Damn that thing made me jump! Fair play to whoever thought that one up!

Things I didn't like -

Looting - It's still really hard to click on a dead character to loot it's stuff
Spells and combat - this feels quite annoying at the moment with far too much hacking away at your opponent to try and hit and visa versa
The overland map - Sorry but I'm just not convinced by this as a game mechanic at all. It feels horribly clunky and just serves to destroy my immersion to little avail - I wouldn't be in any way sad to see it go.
Lighting - Some of the environments are a little too realistic...I don't want to miss things because it's so dark that I just can't see them.
Running away - I do quite a lot of this and prefer not to do it backwards - I found myself only able to run away backwards from an elf.

I'll add more to this thread myself as I explore a little more but first impressions are 6.5 out of 10. Mostly fun with a few bits that made me growl.

Keep up the great work!

Darius Falc

 

Hey just so you know they are doing away with that overland map. We are going to still have an overland map but it will be in 3d. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/navigation-through-new-britannia.10474/

As for it being too dark did you use a torch? You can equip one on your character and use z to unsheathe it. Though unfortunately right now it also seems to put you in combat mode which is rather weird but it works for now.

Oh and I forgot to add the running away was definitely weird. Trying to run away from something and wondering why my character would not turn around. Then sometimes even if I would get her to turn around and run normally after a moment or two she would be backwards again!

 

I think there was a lot more graphic detail added, casting light and healing should not automatically put you into combat (not all spells are combat), gaming seemed smoother, making teams consistently worked. NPC convos still need work. Overall its coming along. If they can manage to add a magical throwing axe of returning ( a la U4) i'd be impressed lol.

 

As far as I can tell, the running backwards thing is due to still having the enemy targeted while you're running away from it. If you click elsewhere to lose the targeting, you can run forwards again.

Your Avatar is just trying to keep an eye on what's chasing him/her...

 

The light thing happened to me in the last patch when they changed the lighting, now most places like sewers are borderline unplayable or I have to move the game across to my second screen to be able to see it as it has slightly higher gamma/brightness than my main/larger screen.

 

The inventory bags are still there, just have to turn them on or off in options. I prefer the bags rather then the inventory list but the bags lag to bad right now for me.

 

I like the direction of the game only dislike is that I can't run it it all on any system I have

 

My overall impression is that on my Windows box the game looks much better; alas, on my Mac, it's kind of an unholy mess, very glitchy.

 

hehe my experience is the exact opposite, my mac runs fine, just slow, my pc is having issues

 

I agree. I don't understand why anyone can consider this map thingy good design. It breaks immersion completely. I want to be able to travel from the north of the map all the way to the south on foot, I don't want to be warped onto some kind of fast travel map all the time. Even when I just want to follow the road to the next hex I get that friggin map...

Speaking of these hexes. To me New Britannia doesn't feel like a world at all. It's a bunch of hexagonal maps you warp in and out. Most of them -especially the forest hexes- have artificial borders you can't cross which is also a big immersion killer. This game isn't a sandbox, it's a collection of a few dozen very tiny sandboxes.
While I can understand the design behind the hexes (easy editing, easy instancing...) it's simply no fun.

Other than that it's probably not fair to judge the current state of the game.
Graphics are nothing special yet, especially player characters. Combat is lacklustre at best. Respawning in the same spot after death is pretty ridiculous, unless getting reskilled by npc's is part of the design .The chat interface is rudimentary and talking to npc's takes practice. Finding locations without a mini-map is annoying but I could get used to it if the npc's would actually give decent directions.

 

They are workin on it. Personally I think the Gfx are coming along nicely
I know the bards circle can work their magic. Every track released is a big step towards greatness

The infamous well sound is annoying. I just got a crash report to submit to a dev

 

Map - the overland map is getting a massive overhaul and will be 3D with a lot more interactivity. It will not be available until R7 or R8.
The hexes are an unavoidable necessity to prevent the game from being split up into shards. RG has said it would be far more costly (think millions of $) to have a seamless map design.

 

I just want a world map blanket with the puzzle peices. Would be a cool item.

 

This is my first experience with the old map. I agree tho. Can't wait to see the new one. That old one was crashing me to desktop so good riddance?

The new lighting is amazing I love the way it adjusts when you resize. When I get my new Lappy for around 1k hopefully u guys can help me pick one with good shaders so it doesn't go kaput on me like my Mac air as soon as I turn lighting on. Portalarium lighting programmers are cutting edge!

 

How do people really not know that the map is getting changed at this point?

 

rune_74 Said; How do people really not know that the map is getting changed at this point?


Because there is so much information out here in our forums and most people have little time in their real life to read it all. I try and read it all, I truly do, yet I still find myself blindsided by amazing info I must have somehow missed.
but, this is one of the reasons I stalk my friends, just to see what they have found here to interest their tastes. Some things have developed, then been trashed canned and re-designed or been replaced by a completely different design that it's at times difficult to tell what is in or out of our very quickly developing New Britannia.
~Time Lord~

 

I realize I'm probably in the minority here - but I found the cloth overland map style rather endearing. If there's a way to make it user preference (between cloth and 3d), that'd be awesome imo.

 

Unfortunately, the devs mentioned at some point that maintaining both versions would be a drain on their limited budget.

However, I'm hoping that the art resources already created for the cloth map can be reused in some fashion elsewhere in the game, so it was not a total loss.

 

I'm loving the game this time. R5 was a little rough runnng on my computer, so I didn't get to do much. So far I've decorated my house with the stuff I snagged from NPCs and also some I crafted myself. I watched a bear take down a skeleton soldier and then it turned on me! (Nice AI) I haven't done nearly enough exploring but it is very fun already. I do wish for a little more sandboxy-ness and I am not a fan of the fast travel either, but this is, so far, really great. Looks beautiful without killing my mediocre card and is starting to feel more like a world.

 

OK...some more stuff from my latest round of exploration:

Love the lighting! Really! Reflections off helmets and sunbeams...scrummy!
Some of the hills are really hard to run up on the elf map...not sure they're supposed to be.
In Kingsport a couple of the music transitions are really abrupt - don't think the sound sources are set up with the right characteristics.
Kobolds slide...no really they do...and they'res not a lump of ice in sight.

Combat...OK...I'm back on combat again...this still feels *really* clunky. I think there's just too much hit missing, it feels like I'm flailing around to little or no avail much of the time....mana disappears too quickly for most fights....it all just feels a little bit like "boxing robots" if anyone remembers that game from when you were a kid...only difference is that no one's head pops off.

Darius Falc