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

One thing that I was curious about was the lack of falling, and whether that was tied into the current lack of jumping? While walking the battlements on the stone wall of the inner town I couldn't just walk off the sides, even if to make it a shortcut to stairs leading down, the kind of thing that just helps shave a few seconds off. Kind of reminded me of Zelda games where you need a magic item to jump at all. I hope that we won't be so constrained in later versions, since there was a few times walking down hills that I would stop because there was a little dip or boulder or something that may have equated to being a ledge.

I also hope there's a weight/size limit of bags at some point, seems kind of crazy to be carrying around so much stuff at once, and as was mentioned previously perhaps some kind of speciality bag for large things like entire fountains and stuff...

Add me to the character models need a TON of work camp.

Also I found some of the foley effects to be a bit wearing after a while. The sound of footfalls was too loud I think, and the animal noises were very repetitive and artificial sounding to a degree (though I could still tell what they were).

Install / Patching System: 5 (worked just fine)
Login / Registration: 3 (or 5) (worked fine did it's job perfectly, but my god the music BLARED at you as soon as it loaded I thought I was going to have a heart attack. If we can lower that or disable altogether for future log-ons it will be a 5)
Character Creation: 4 (was able to make a character and get in game quick, though a lack of models and actual good hair was apparent)
Single Player Online: N/A (how can you really compare this to anything else yet?)
First Town (Owl's Head): 3.5 (Player housing is great, but it seemed to be what 90% of the town was. It kind of seemed more like a player housing showroom than a real vibrant town, it seemed too regimented imo. It was hard to tell what building were NOT player housing at first, and just having mage towers and druid trees in the middle of the other stuff didn't really make much sense. More NPCs needed moving around from place to place to add some more feeling of life to the place too imo. That said the graphics were nice and I liked the overall style.)
Conversation : 3 (I have been a proponent for this since it was mentioned, but it needs some work. I'm not seeing too much difference between this and playing U5 or Hero Quest back in the day. The biggest thing is being able to differentiate which NPC you're addressing. If a peasant and merchant are standing beside each other and I want to talk to the merchant I shouldn't have to do a whole bunch of fancy manoeuvring to ensure I actually get to talk to him. Some variety in responses when they don't understand might be good as well)
Bag Inventory: 4 (I like the bag-in-bag inventory systems personally, as I mentioned above I hope there's going to be bag encumbrance limits at some point. I also echo the "main backpack" being a different colour and saved or something like that. In addition, it may be nice to be able to label your bags with either a small title under it or showing up when you click it once)
Equipment: N/A (tbh I didn't really interact with any equipment aside from chests and furniture - was there some?)
House Claiming: 5 (works as advertised. Perhaps a musical announcement when you do it or some kind of indicator I dunno. I wager it will be more involved in the actual game though?)
House Decoration: 4 (I forgot the command to spin furniture around so that limited me, but I recall seeing it in a video before so that's my own fault. I did have some clipping issues in the Viking house placing dressers near the curved walls on the top floor)

 

I think for the most part I wouldn't expect there to really be any falling in the game but I do hope for minimal jumping to at least feel it when I press space bar instead of nothing even if I can't actually jump over anything.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

Overall I think this is on a very good path and testing the pre-alpha makes me want to upgrade my pledge.
Nevertheless I would like to stress the things I am unhappy with (just consider the rest as good):

* Character movement/control:
First of all: Constant right-clicking for moving around is awful. This is the part most annoying about the current release.
As many people have stated moving around feels weird and slow. The running animation makes it feel like the character is creeping across town, even though the actual speed is not bad.
I would really like to walk/jump off small obstacles/ledges and I think allowing the character to jump would make getting stuck less of an issue.

*Character appearance
I realize that lots of things are not implemented yet, but two things that are, could use some work:
Character hair really need some love. The hair looks like for playmobil figures.
Clothing and armor often seems overly tight. This is OK for rigid items but looks very bad for clothing.

* Conversations:
I love the idea but to make this successful the NPC's need to be able to understand a lot more/ have a greater variety of things they can react to. Currently it is more frustrating than feeling immersive as even simple questions are replied to with nonsense.

Regarding housing I refrain to comment in order to mention something I regard as much greater of a problem: There seem to be way to few claimable plots. At this number per town it seems unlikely that demand for houses among the 26000 backers can be satisfied in the game world, not to speak off the (at least potentially) huge number of people who might be interested in buying the game. Why give something that may only affect 1% of the population such an importance? I feel that this issue can make or break how enjoyable the game is for people not with it from the start / people who do not have the money to pledge enough to get a plot.

 

Well, i rated it a 4/5 but to be honest it met each of my expectations for what the devs lined up for us.

I understood the conversation testing to be 'Metric gathering for waht players will want to say' rather then testing of an implemented system, thus the sparse content n that regard. So I spent my time testing plenty of things out and say some absurd, and some expected phrases that I'd like to use. So in the conversation side I don;t think we've been given the 'full experience' yet as we are helping to build guide phrases and key words for future releases.

Decoration was nice and easy and I know it has been mentioned, but 'locking' down items would be great, aswould a 'snap to' for cardinal direction to help set up a table straight with chairs. Or a fine tuning for rotation such as holding ctrl slows the turn speed right down. It was a bit tough to get everything looking neat and straight. Also some other glitches which have been reported like the second level knights home having unusable space above the stairs due to the floor not registering properly. This is likely where I ratcheted down one point for the experience.

The town i felt looked really great and had a nice flow. After about 15 minutes I knew my way around so i think there are enough landmarks (like Fire Lotus tavern, the Markets and so on) that a map isn't a requirement. but nice to see that the game environment is diverse enough that it is possible to get a sense of direction based on the differences.

Bag Management, well, I don;t really like the bag system inherited from Ultima. At the very least though a house should have 'lot storage' where it is grid based and you can go through all your decorations and furniture to just make it easier to decorate. The bag system was a hassle that wouldn't be so bad if it was limited to your Avatar equipment and items. Release 2 should prove interesting for comparison.

The download and patching was a treat, if a bit dull looking. Mechanically it worked wonderfully. Just not very aesthetically pleasing next to my other launchers. But not really important.

I have to say though, the most pleasant surprise was the fun in treasure hunting. No I know that it can't be a case of plopping chests full of paintings and guillotines and what not in the game, but it was a lot of fun searching every nook and cranny to get a hold of those items. It was rewarding and likely the fun of that is most of why I played so much even after decorating my house. Finding some sneaky chest was just really rewarding.

having said that, it's be great to see the same sort of 'treasure hunting' in the game as a non combat activity. Following maps to look for clues or something. I bit out of the scope for feed back on Pre-Alpha 1 but I had enough fun doing this search and collect that I wanted to share it.

Great job so far and hopefully the future releases are all as engaging and productive (Even if a few backers insists on judging mechanics not yet implemented for testing).

 

I have to say that for an Alpha release this is extremely boring. I am getting rather concerned that there is WAY too much focus on housing here and this isn't going to be what 80% of backers are expecting as most of the backers are old UO players, hoping that they were going to get their UO experience. I will see how they go in Release 2 but so far all I can do is run around and that's really not very exciting.

 

The whole purpose of this Pre-Alpha is for testing purposes as described in the Original Post. It is a chance to have the Dev+ peeps help find bugs and a first look at the game. Of course you can run around and look at stuff but that was not the intended point. I did a lot of running around also though! :}

 

I had to go with a 5 rating, here is just a few reasons why:

1. This is PRE alpha, and is less buggy than some MMO releases.
2. I thought the conversations were too simple, until I realized you can "stumble" onto more conversations. I'll let you guys figure that out.
3. Dropping little hints, like "out of place" objects that you were able to pick up off the ground and take home with you already there. (UO nostalgia)
4. The placing and relocating of objects is already the best system I've ever seen in place.
5. the "stress tests" were never even felt by us. Any burp in the system was quickly fixed and gameplay continued as normal.

 

Taking a second look, I'm sticking with the 5 score because based on what the Release was giving us, it delivered. It was known going in that there would be plenty of bugs and weirdness going on, so that's not what I judged. Instead, did we get what they said we would... and the answer for me is very much "yes".

If I had one area I would mark down, it would be the scaling of objects in containers. Something seemed screwed up beyond the bugs we expectded to see in that smaller objects were generally HUGE in the cointainers and larger objects were much smaller. The large objects being smaller makes sense, but the smaller ones being so much larger does not.

Other than that, it's been a good weekend seeing the first semi-public iteration of Shroud.

 

That is a really good idea. Keep the old school for personal travel, as it simulates the "awkardness" of time in the real world moving things, but make it easy to manage your home.

 

Install / Patching System - worked just perfectly

Login / Registration - worked perfectly

Character Creation - worked perfectly, BUT....I know it will be improved in the future. I wasn't expecting to even have choices of hair color/style. Yes, the plastic shiny hair, etc. made me feel like I was playing with Fisher Price toys my kids used to enjoy. They were large and toy-like. But I didn't take it too seriously, believing there would be big changes by release in a year. Character movement seemed unnatural.

Single Player Online - worked perfectly but I'm not sure how much interest it will hold for me, depending on the amount of things to do in the world. It will be nice to see the multi-player functionality

First Town (Owl's Head) - It was nice, an easy layout. A bit small for a town. The windmills were a bit obnoxious, it isn't realistic that there would be that many in one small area. The tesla tower was just odd. It seemed incongruous and did not mesh well with the rest of the building style. I realize past UO series had elements similar and perhaps that theme will always be a trademark. It didn't look magical and mystical, but rather like I said above.

Conversation - Worked fine - I wasn't expecting conversation at all, so I was surprised some characters said anything. It was amusing to try to ask questions or get different responses, and discovering the limits of those responses. I do like the key words, it gives the player hints as to the kind of keywords to ask. It's kind of interesting in approach, rather than just having a popup list of questions, meaning you have to at least pay attention to key words to get the information you need.

Bag Inventory - This was probably about the most obnoxious thing I experienced. Not only did the things in the bag not feel in proportion, they flowed out over the graphics of the outer bag. I like the ability to organize one's own inventory in a bag, rather than square slots. But this was too small of a bag/too large of items. Graphics need tweaking. I have no problem with carrying a large forge or something else in the bag. But when it almost fills the bag and you can't see anything beneath, and even with manipulating items, it's way too hard to sort.

Equipment - I didn't like holding the sword as if it could stick anything in my path. It seems there's ability for dual weapons but the 2nd weapon didn't show equipped. Not sure about that. When I found new armor in a chest, and equipped it, there was graphics clipping. The white pants showed easily in spots, over the tunic, when it should not have. But it looked pretty decent. A bit paper-dollish (moreso than UO).

House Claiming - Really simple and worked perfectly. I'm assuming signs will be customizable in the future. Fences and signs seemed pretty bulky though.

House Decoration - Really easy to place items. It was not intuitive that items could be turned, so I wondered if there would be decorating tools. After watching Richard place house items in a video, I discovered they could be turned. Again, many items are oversized for the house. The player is oversized for the house, or the house too small - most evident in the smaller houses. Walls are not textured enough, too flat. Rooms were strange footprints. The smaller houses felt like I was running into the wall as soon as I opened the door. Doors were too big (thick). The double staircase in the Lord's house seemed to be for disabled people - the stair height too low and/or not enough texture to distinguish there were stairs. There seem to be wasted space in the houses, due to either stairs or the way a door opens. The Viking home's indoor colors made everything seem washed out, hard to distinguish there were stairs/beams/poles. Too much of the same color brown and not enough textures. All homes, in general, lacked enough texturing, inside & out. If one can't build their own house from scratch, it might be a nice feature to enable players to have house paint kits. Make the colors reasonable so we don't have neon pink or yellow houses. ;D

Metrics - ??

Generally, I crashed many, many times. It seemed to happen when I would claim a house on more than one occasion. Other times, it was when I was conversing with NPCs. I ran on both high and low quality settings for the graphics to see if that made a difference. It didn't.

Overall, the game was working a lot better and more than I expected. The crashes were tolerable since there wasn't much to do anyway. Not like interrupting a big fight or other important things. But once the game is launched, that amount of crashes would be intolerable.

 

As for music, I think some of us are spoiled by Skyrim and other massively funded games. It isn't cinema quality. I'd probably have it turned off all the time.

 

I voted for a score 3.

+ Installing, patching and character creation worked quite fluently. Only had to restart the game after installing because the screen went black.
+ The town really feels like a town (when it gets populated). I was very happy for the size of it.

- Really choppy even with a high-endish system. Yes, i know it is not optimized but makes me want not to test it too long.
- The speech bubble is too small and text goes too fast. I have to read everything from the text log.

Just the first impressions. Thanks for the release devs!

 

Install / Patching System: No problems there.

Login / Registration: N/A. I was already registered!

Character Creation: I sure hope the character generation goes into more depth later. What was shown is at least promising. If I can't spend 2 hours fiddling with my eyebrows/nose, I am going to be let down pretty bad.

Single Player Online: It sure was.

First Town (Owl's Head): It was really nice, scenery wise. I hope the real version has more people in it than what was shown. There were more guards than people!

Conversation: Felt just like Ultima IV. I hope the system is fleshed out a bit so that really comical things aren't possible just because whatever you said has the right keywords in it. I spotted some inconsistencies which I am sure will be sorted out.

Bag Inventory: Aside from a few issues, I really like it. I would like to see a grid-option, though.

Equipment: Because I can't fight yet, this is N/A. I liked putting stuff on that I found in chests.

House Claiming: Seems legit.

House Decoration: Aside from some bugs, I liked it. Much less tedious than UO's house decoration setup.

Metrics: Game ran OK for me. I didn't drop/lag/explode.

 

I was surprised on how good it ran on my three-year old laptop. Even with video mode set to "Fantastic", it ran smooth as silk and it didn't seem to skip a single frame, not even in the most "busy" areas.
Maybe I won't need a new PC just to play SotA

 

I gave it a 4; only because of the bugs present (clipping, falling through walls etc). I know this is a pre-alpha, and in all honesty should probably award it a 5. As others have said - within the limitations advertised, and what the demo set out to do, it was amazing.

Full marks to the dev team, who have shown amazing dedication and determination to interact with and respond to us.

 

I gave it a 4* because there is always room to improve^^

On the first impression it was much better than I expected it to be. what me bothered the most were the controls, i hope there will be a cameramode which always follow me from the back.

What was really good, was that you could get a Dev in the chat during their working time.

 

One thing is for sure: when they communicate about the next release they need to put PRE-ALPHA in flashing 72-pt font because people just don't get this.

Amazing to still see people calling it the alpha.

 

I found it encouraging. The ability to interact with so many items in game really reminded me the "old" Ultima games, along with the promising conversation system. I also liked how big the town was.
The performance even on my older computer was surprisingly good after the developers had warned the game was not optimized at all.

- Patching was flawless. Absolutely no problem here, and it was also pretty fast. I let the launcher run to seed and help others too.
- Login and registration was flawless too.
- Character creation could use some work, but was just fine for such an early alpha.

What I think the game should really avoid/remove/improve:

- Support for international keyboards. A little detail, but which made the game a pain to test for many of us.
- No invisible walls. I understand this is pre-alpha, but the invisible walls around water should simply not exist. If one enters water in full plate armor, well, his choice... he should simply drown and eventually die! Invisible walls that stop you from falling should also not exist... you fall from too high, you die too! That was my biggest negative for this early version. Such a RPG should be about freedom to explore, not cheesy invisible walls blocking your passage when not needed.
- Animations and graphics need some improvements, like e.g. female hair which looks like its made out of shiny plastic (playmobil or lego, anyone?), and the characters are definitely a bit on the "stiff" side.
- Jumping needs to be in the game too.

It didn't test as much as I would have wanted to because of the awful keyboard layout for my French keyboard. I hope this will be resolved in the next test so I can enjoy the game more.
But good job so far, please keep it up!

 

I had a pretty good experience with the pre-alpha. Connectivity went well, I liked the graphics, controls were slightly different, but simple, and in all I'm amazed at the progress.
I really hated the big bushes outside of town that you could not run through. I understand colliding with curtain things like trees and fences, but these things really annoyed me! It's not a game breaker, but just my two cents on a piece of the design.

 

Gave it a 4. Most of the systems they wanted us to test was working fine. I realize that many things are temp, but the reviewer who said it looked better than Skyrim was high.

The shadows looked pretty bad unless I had them turned all the way down, and then the "swimming" I saw around the edges was still present. I know there will be many iterations before they do a polish pass (likely a year from now), but I don't think outright lying in reviews is helpful to this game at all.