[POLL] How was the Pre-Alpha Release 1?

I found even among the few features included it was still somewhat lacking. The graphics quality was quite decent but still pretty low quality compared to current games so that was a little disappointing, but not a game breaker.
Despite this everything at least met the expectations given by the devs for this release so I gave it a 5.
To copy the template from Donferth here is a breakdown of each part of the game.

Installer
It was a standard installer with the option to change the install drive and location. It installed with no errors. Installers don't do much so I would have been surprised if there had been.

Patching System
The first time I opened the patcher the update was finished before the tv show I was watching and had no errors.
The day they opened up early access it patched again updating the patcher as well. Again this worked with no issues and after it restarted the game updated in no time.
I like that they are using p2p for updates. Often new games have problems with updates due to so many people trying to update at once and this should alleviate some of that.

Login / Registration
I logged an around 7pm MT the first day play was available as I had to work. By the time I tried logging in all the initial issues reported on the forum had been resolved.
I was presently surprised at the short loading time after entering my credentials.
I was very disappointed to find the options screen was not available util after your character loads. I sometimes change various graphics settings which often require restarting the game.
Besides this I adjust my volume level quite a bit depending on the situation and who else is home so being able to change the game volume before logging in can be quite important.

Character Creation
Character creation was simple, effective, and worked without a hitch. It was expected to have limited options so I was not surprised when i found only a few things that could be changed.
Ultimately character creation needs to have options for changing a lot more so you can make your character look truly unique.
I look forward to seeing the other option planned for character creation.

Single Player Online
This idea seems a little unusual to me at first and in truth i'm sure I still don'nt understand it. In the current pre alpha state it was no different that an offline rpg except the tracking and stats the devs are getting.

First Town (Owl's Head)
I was impressed by the size and the details given to make this look like real town. I have not had much time to play yet as I have been working every day since access opened and look forward to exploring it further.
I looked for flying birds as one reviewer saw for quite a while and was disappointed that I never got to see any.

Conversation
At first most conversations worked well. they greeted me and I greeted them back. In same cases they even asked how I was doing.
In most cases however I would respond to what they said and would get an 'ehh' or 'if you say so'.
I was not surprised however as conversation were expected to be severely lacking and in this first release we are giving them data to improve it with.

Bag Inventory
I immediately noticed how the bags were exactly like in UO. I have newer had a problem with that bag system and when I played UO found it quite effective.
I have since gotten use to bags separated into squares for placing your items and automatic placement so I will have to get use to this type of bag again.

Equipment
In the short time I have played so far I have not found any equipment to test with yet.
I did open the character panel and am quite familiar with this method of equipping gear. It is very easy to use and allows you to easily see what you are wearing.

House Claiming
Claiming was easy and when I claimed a new house I was warned that everything in my current one would be removed as expected.
The only thing I would add is some sort of message confirming you have bought the house. At first I didn't think anything had happened and tried it a couple of times just to be sure.
In fact it wasn't until I changed my house and got the message that my items would be removed that I got any sort of indication the house was mine.
Not counting the ability to decorate it of course.

House Decoration
I found a few decorations and other than the fact that I forgot how to rotate items it worked great.
There were a few times that my character got stuck in a wall, or more often the floor but I assume this is due to the related know issue.
I also found that I was able to place an item where I was standing and was unable to move without picking up the item first.
I assume this is something that is being added later on so did not submit a bug for it.
Other than that decorating worked well and once I remembered the keys to rotate an item it was quite easy.
Maybe we could add an in game help system with FAQ's we can see from an ingame window. I use dual screens so opening it in a browser is no issue but I would still use an in game faq page as it would be faster in most cases.

 

I had no issue with my inventory... not one... honestly. I didn't try to overload them to cause a bug (which I should have as a good bug tester always boundary checks) but I honestly didn't have one issue.

 

Step by step testing by the crowd is a very good way to get all bugs/errors reported for each step of the building PRE-ALPHA process! Yay, for letting we who are the crowd/fans/supporters in on helping the bugs/tests be found during the building process. Focus on your volunteer 'job', crowd. That's to find the bugs and report them. That helps us all to have a great adventure later -- bug free. "There is no game" is a KNOWN ISSUE.

 

LMFAO @ GREAT! That is just silly. I didn't expect much, but I did expect my avatar to walk like a character from a 2013 game. I expected to be able to move smoothly & not even notice let alone be frustrated with simply moving.

I voted 1.

I guess I expected more then most. I do play alot of quality quality games so this was shock to me for it to play this badly and feel so OLD! I just hope I am a wrong & everyone else is right.
But just being honest in comparison to every AND I MEAN (EVERY) other alpha, beta or game I have been apart of this is a pretty bad start, here's to hoping for something better for R2.

 

Ok, I uninstalled my killer e2200 gigabit ethernet controller driver...blue screened several times trying to update it to qualcom's newest one. I finally on the 3rd forced restart when the pop up came up do I want to allow qualcom to make changes I chose no and got into the game...YAY! It does look much brighter and nicer! Great Job Guys!

 

How many games have you played in an Alpha state? I would be willing to bet none of the quality games you mention ever let anyone outside of the company see the game this early. Most like even their beta was really the final game and they were only stress testing the back end servers.

You are comparing SOTA Pre-Alpha to AAA released games and that just isn't fair. The game has been in development for less than a year it is unreasonable to expect fluid movement and animation. Blocking still needs to be polished and most artwork isn't done. Most games would be in development 2 or 3 years before you say even screenshots.

From your posts you are obviously disappointed, and although I don't mind you being critical your comparisons just are not fair. You are judging a house before the walls are standing.

 

There were many ways to cause issues it's just surprising that you didn't encounter one. Maybe you didn't play that much...

 

It would be good to get an idea from the Devs if the quality of animations is on their list of things to improve? For me it's the biggest issue thus far.

Otherwise I'm happy with the pre-alpa... exciting to think what will be accomplished up until October given what has been done already!

 

I think that the graphics for the backgrounds and buildings are beautiful, I fell through the floor a few times in the houses though and couldn't get out without restarting the game.

Logging in was smooth, I had a couple times that it said couldn't connect to server, and 2 times I got nothing but a black screen with the sound, music, and icons in the top right for inventory and such. These things could have very well been due to the fact my net has been running slow, plus since it is the pre alpha there will be some problems.

House decoration was a nice change from UO, it was not as hard to put stuff on the wall and the fact that things like the shelves turn themselves when on different surfaces was nice. House claiming was nice and easy.

Conversation was good, having things bold that have more of an explanation to is nice, it has the old Ultima feeling to it. I love not having the npc give you 3 statements and you choose one in order to follow a chain or quest.

I also like not having the screen covered with journals and such, the screen is so wide open, plus having no 'exclamations over the npcs head' makes the scenery feel whole and natural.

The town of Owl's Head is very big, there are a good amount of player housing plots available, more than I had expected. Will there be any way to cross the more shallow water?

Character creation didn't seem to work right for me, but that could be because of my slow net. One time however I created a female and when I logged in it was a male...that was odd.

I was not able to find any other equiptment, and one time I logged in my character was naked (except for shorts).

 

I am worried about the conversation system.
you must guide me to my missions if the npc don't understand me.
maybe if you ask 3 times and it does not understand you it can say go and look at that place or person.

 

1st, Ty Umbrae you are correct it is very early still. I am not JUDGING it as final. I am stating things I do not like clearly & noticeably. I think my issue now is not knowing WHAT THIS GAME IS? Is it for RPers to gather in pubs or can 30 somethings like myself crack skulls, crunch build numbers to make epic classes and have a good adrenaline filled 1v1 or group battles.

Honestly I agree about Pre-alpha and at this state these devs should not have allowed us in aswell. I have been apart of a few games PRE-ALPHA, it is a new thing ALOT of devs do now as part of KS perks. So Pre-Alpha is not as UNCOMMON as it seems to some of you.

I am a BIG TIME gamer: Check my site: www.NOLIFEGAMER.com

I only play RPG/MMOs as you can see from my site. I am disappointed so far in the Pre-Alpha because imo it is not up to par for ANYTHING! Noone is comparing this game to a TRIPLE A, SotA needs to worry about a PASSING GRADE. Noone with sense is comparing this to a Triple a title and if they were they got slapped back into reality. BUT CAN WE MAKE THE GAME FUN? Can my character move freely like a 2013 character should? Can we have some BASICS like running & jumping? These should all be in a PRE-ALPHA. after the release of the LB video and the backlash on the forums from many about how bland the combat was. THEY SHOULD HAVE EXPECT THE SAME AND WORSE from this R1.

Of course we are gonna judge it, of course we EXPECTED what we saw from the LB video & maybe a little more since that was 2 months ago or something like that. I did not expect this, no I did not! I can only hope it gets better. But until then we are stuck together. All you positives & some of us not as positives

 

I share this concern. I can give the devs all the time they need to work on this system, but the pre-alpha was very rough. I couldn't have a single conversation without things falling apart on the NPC end. I felt a lot like I was talking to a crazy person (like No-Bark from FONV):

 

Install / Patching System: It was smooth as silk, patched good. I un-installed and loaded the second installer with same results.

Login / Registration: I had a small problem as it didn't think I was a "Dev+" member, but they fixed it early.

Character Creation: I created and played a few chrs, even a female chr, do they look like "Toons" sure they do it's a computer game after all, should the female chr look better, sure she should, it's pre-alpha so don't get your panties in a bunch. Changing eye, hair color didn't seem to do anything. It would be nice to be able to use the appaustrify (') and space ( ) in my chr name of O' Tool.

Single Player Online: I'm use to it, I don't wait for no one. I remember UO, everyone wanted to meet at the Bank, and then the all used up all their regs before going out, and when it was time to go, everyone needed to "reg up", and were gone for 15 minutes, they can always find me at our destination, I hated waiting.

First Town (Owl's Head): Looks like a decent town, pretty large, it would have been better with a map or compass.

Conversation: Hardly what I would call complete, even with basic speech like "hello", I don't understand. "who are you?", I don't understand. "what are you doing?", I don't understand.

Bag Inventory: Same as UO, cluttered, dis-organized, hard to find anything, nothing stacked. I tried to overload my chr with items & wieght, both must be turned off. Not that I mind a "free style" bag, but everything should stack with other like items and give a count.

Equipment: There is a decent amount of equipment, although I didn't find the "throne of bone".

House Claiming: It was pretty basic, but alot of homes were already placed. I don't know if by players or devs, I didn't see any "decos" in them, I thought even in single play online, we would be able to see others home decos.

House Decoration: Again there were quit a few to choose from, I just hope that they are all craftable, I had some trouble with pillows crashing me when I put them on the floor, and one of the carpets did it to me too. It was rather difficult to agline items with walls using th "Q", "E" keys for rotation.

Metrics: I've seen this thrown around like we are suposed to know what it is, to me it's "meters, centimeters, kilometers", but as far as games go, I have no clue. Somebody said it was "invisible" or "in the background", behind the scenes, you know. If that's true, then "Big Brother" is watching us, why tell us?

All and all, I give this launch a 5, very good work guys, Beautiful music, Beautiful scenery, all the animation can be better, the sky was Beautiful, Day to Night and back again was really nice to see, smoke from the Volcano in the distance, Fog was good, could be better, clouds moved a bit too fast, the windmills are too much in sync to one another, all the grass sways in the wind at the same time. Seeing the Moon in pieces was kind of sad. And I didn't notice the Sun. I used the "fantastic" settings and had good performance, none of the problems others have said, I must have build my machine good, I'm not a "geek", but I know what I'm doing.

Bonus question: I would work on chr movement, although it was easy to master the mouse with just the "w" key to move smoothly, I would much rather see a "WoW" style mouse type movement. I want a "Walk" mode, and a weapon "dis-arm" (sheathing it in my belt) would work for me and any weapon.

PS: the sfx was super, the Tesla coil was awsume, and the directional sound was something I didn't expect, it would be nice to hear someones footsteps coming up from behind.

 

Install/Patching: Fine, didn't have any problems.

Login/Registration: Fine, worked well, could likely lose one of the login screens, like the one with just 'Play' as an option.

Character Creation: Limited selection of options but works well enough for now.

First Town: Looks nice, tons of player plots! The two market areas look good, decent layout. Might want to make the guards have some way to stop people from entering like a turnstile or toll pole. I entered in the "wrong" gate (went exploring the town outside first) and had to go find the one with the guard outside to stop everyone from yelling at me to go check in with him. Alternately put someone you can check in with at both gates. Note the Tesla tower FX, town lighting, sun/moon ray effects, and broken moon sky are great! Can't wait to see an NPC going around and turning on/off the public lighting.

Conversation: I really expected this to be more done if it was to be a focus of the test. Right now it doesn't work very well, even for the characters that seem to have non-token responses. I was able to get the key, or at least the text, for going to free Myron from the clink but it seemed to be fairly random, when I asked how I could help it didn't seem to trigger it. I couldn't get any info about how big his debt was, nor about how long he was going to remain in the clink. Asking about the undead and throne of bones went a little better, but I still got several repeated responses before I got something new. When asking about the rulesets for the Tesla guard tower I learned that they were controversial, but when I tried to follow up I got nowhere. Don't highlight it if I can't ask about it more! At this point I think I would have liked some well done conversation trees better.

Bag Inventory: I've made another post about this, but basically it was flawed but useable. I really am looking forward to being able to select list mode later and will likely use it the most. No need to go to the grid/slot system though. It'd be nice to have bulk and weight as limits to what you can carry for a change.

Equipment: Item models look good and swapping gear worked fine.

House Claiming: Worked great for swapping the houses around. Likely should have all the items go in the town bank, at least if there is one, later on. You might want to have the sign change to differentiate between "unclaimed lot" and "claimed but no house yet" for the initial land rush.

House Decorating: Really liked the ability to place your own light sources and that shadows were even enabled with them. Wish there were some interactive items. I'm guessing you will need to add an edit mode before that can be done.

Misc: UI was fairly basic and still lacks basic options so I expect to see a lot more there in the future. Need to change the cursor type instead of just the color for interactive objects. I'm betting some items will want menus for interacting later as well. Auto-run and press both mouse buttons to move forward while in mouselook mode are big wants for me. No ability to get over fences and small walls or jump down off of small ledges was annoying as well. Add jumping or at least some kind of ability to navigate these types of terrain. Hit several invisible walls walking around in buildings as well.

 

Oh I forgot, crossing a small stream shouldn't involve much, just wading in to yous hips, splashing your steps, no swimming. I hated that in UO, the PKs just hid at the bridges.

I would like to see "WoW" swimming added, and "LauraCroft" jumping, hanging, pull ups, crawl, tumble & rolls that would be awsume...

 

For a Pre-Alpha I gave this a 5 really enjoyed my time exploring and decorating homes and was truly impressed when I logged in.

Just adding my findings below:
Game controls I'd like to see the default mouse/keyboard control system that is used across most MMO type games like GW2, with options for customization so people can alter this as they see fit. (I think this makes it an easier transition from MMO veterans to get into the game)
Barrel breaking / sound effect I know this is early but needs some work.
Player lots - I want to be able to easily distinguished on the For Sale signs what the lot is if it is a Town, Village or City Lot just by reading it. (If you guys don't want to use text then perhaps a picture that can be easily identified)
Run and Jump options in the game I can imagine this is all being worked on but would be great to see in R2, it's amazing how important the little things are.
Problems with the inventory system - In general just didn't feel right sometimes items wouldn't fit in bags sometimes items would just disappear or come back after logging back in and most importantly to me the bags kind of felt cluttered like items stacked on top of other items. (Low concern for me but something I think needs work on)
When dealing with dark small items in ones inventory they can be difficult to see with the current bag system.
Not sure if it was intended but night felt really dark in the city like the city lights weren't providing enough light in the streets, not sure if this is by design but just my opinion on it.
I liked seeing the animals and people wondering around the streets was great, I'd like to see more of this like dogs chasing cats and mice running around vendor stores, kids running around playing tag and so forth in the future really makes the game feel alive.

I experienced very few bugs and found this a pretty incredible release for pre-alpha build looking forward to R2, great job.

 

I did not have much expectation other than seeing the construct of a starting game and some basic game mechanics. With that, I think PA Release 1 was good.

Install / Patching System Worked fine but Norton360 smart firewall needed to be disabled.
Login / Registration Worked great.
Character Creation Worked great.
Single Player Online Worked great
First Town (Owl's Head) Nice size for a town, bigger than I thought. I didn't feel like a step ahead of say something like a Bree in LOTRO. So looking forward to seeing other towns and cities.
Conversation Worked. I could see the mechanics at play. The content was limited. Agreed with a bug reporter who said NPCs offer too much at start sometimes.
Bag Inventory Fine, but I'd like a grid. I think they're working as advertised, so I ought to say 5, but I don't like them, so 4.
Equipment I lost interest in looking for equipment, so I will not rate this.
House Claiming I did not try this. My comment on houses is that Knight houses and below seemed smaller / more confined feeling than I thought they would, larger houses seemed as large or larger than I thought.
House Decoration This worked great. Highly intuitive and easy to use. Minor bugs where items could be lost in their move.
Metrics The frame rates worked fine for me on a 2 year old PC.

 

Honestly, I know it is a pre-alpha, but I was not impressed (even KNOWING it is pre-alpha). I'll probably get torn apart here for writing this, but here it goes:

First of all, it happened much too often that - after selecting the only character you had - the game loaded, black screen "downloading dynamic content" ... and suddenly I was back on the screen where the only choice you had was select "Play".

Best-developed part of the game to me seemed to be the "housing show-off" (look what nice houses you can buy in our shop).
Animations were rough, walking speed a bit too slow, no jumping,
animals walking through walls but my character cannot walk on a landing stage without a problem,
very "soundless" world (yes, it's pre-alpha),
NPCs have sometimes totally unsuitable responses to totally sensible player statements in conversations ("Hello" - "I don't understand"),
bags covered most of the screen, seemed a bit too big for me (might be only with certain resolutions, monitor sizes?)
bugs that are obvious within 5 minutes of playing ... should have been obvious to the devs, too (many clothing or armor pieces missing textures), but were not "known issues" ... do you really need the players to find bugs like this?
generally this game does not look or feel like the time and money that was spent on it so far (yes, it's pre-alpha).

I can see potential (conversation system, housing and decorating, etc), but this game seems to be very much in it's beginning stages (if this is what a pre-alpha is, then ok ... I never was in a pre-alpha, only in one or two alphas).

 

About 13 hours I'm guessing... not as much as I wanted but more than "not that much" for a two day window... as Saturday has been a family day due to having family here for the holidays.

 

I played maybe 4 and experienced disappearing items and other oddities. There is honestly no way in 13 hours your experience was "flawless". Maybe the answer is that you didn't use the bag system!