[POLL] What is your *overall* rating for this Pre-Alpha Release 6? (UNOFFICIAL)

Ok everyone, for those of you who've had a chance to playtest this Pre-Alpha Release 6, what is your *overall* rating?

Here were the areas highlighted in the release notes for R6:

Visual Improvements (Lighting Fine-Tuning, Shaders, Characters, Environment)
Player to Player secure trade (temporary drag-and-drop only)
Crafting (animation)
Combat (secondary effects, animation, sheathing)
Looting (bug fixes, targeting)
Emotes (looping emotes)
Dialog (quests, responds to more things)
Navigation (archways)
Player Housing (more houses)

Feel free to break out your ratings to those categories above or any others and elaborate in the comments below (or link to a thread you may have started already).

Note: This poll is designed to show trends of overall sentiment with each subsequent Release. It's not designed to rate it as a final game, but merely as a snapshot of the community's opinion at that point in the development cycle. Previous polls here: R1, R2, R3, R4, R5.

Thanks for voting and looking forward to your overall feedback!

 

Did'nt have time to play it - only logged on for a couple of minutes - so I'm not voting

What I noticed - Jumping - I really like the new animation for it and the running seems to have drastically improved

The arches - I still think they are odd / weird to have random arches all over the world / just does not seem real BUT they were splendid .... great work!

 

(On the off chance you can change it: Your poll says "Release 5", not "Release 6").

Love the visuals, but would have preferred a little more substance, however I cannot fault the team for going the polishing route at this point in time.

Overall, a fine intermediate release.

 

I'm prepared to take a hit on this from everyone else, but I gave it a 2. The polishing wasn't as evident as I'd expected. Plus, choosing multiplayer at the start of the release led to a great deal of frustration (lag and kick outs) that continued in trying to operate the UI, which as much as I've tried it still doesn't feel all that natural.

I know that this is pre-alpha before someone chimes in on that, and I do not have expectation for it to be more than what they promised, but what I experienced was raising my frustration so that I said - I better wait until this game is more polished. R5 and R6 have been like this now.

 

9/10 (or 4.5/5) for potential and prealpha.

If it was existing game I would gave 2/10 (1/5), because it was buggy as hell and I run into too many issues.

I met a lot of great players though (hello smack). I am afraid that population will change in the future but so far I did not met any jerks and people I met were mostly friendly and helpful. I hope I will meet them in the next release.

 

lol well watch Mad Hermits video on the home page, it should help you. It did me. All I can say is try to be patient.
I think we are at the worst of it now, but who knows I just know it's going to be great in so many ways other games aren't.
***cheers**** fellow SOTA supporters**

 

Argh, yeah thanks for spotting that. Cut and paste error Perhaps a moderator can change it as I can't edit the poll after it's been posted.

 

What Majoria said.

 

My feeling is 3 over 5 (medium). This was a release just fosusing on improving what we already had, so was a little more bitter for me that previous one, but it was correct.

 

I played everyday, thanks for leaving it up on the Holiday...

Visual Improvements (Lighting Fine-Tuning, Shaders, Characters, Environment):
I thought it looked "Fantastic", but I'm not sure it was all your doing because I upgraded my video card & used an HDMI cable to my HDTV (720p). I went from a nVidia 450 GTX 1g to a nVidia 560 GTX Ti 1g, not a huge step but it's the max my PCIe 2.0 x16 mobo can handle and I got improved video scores under MS performance, I had 7.2s and it jumped to 7.7s for both video & 3d game graphics, and WoW what a difference the game had.
You still need to fine tune stuff like the contrast of dark shadows to bright sunlight, shadows are never that dark with all the ambient light being thrown at mid day, the sewers were more realistic and a torch/spell was very usable as a light source. The day/night cycle seemed longer, but the shadows still race across the ground at sun set/sun rise, but mid day they seemed ok.
Chr head change was good, very handsome/beautiful, but where are all the old heads? The library should have just gotten bigger, I'd like to see some gnarly pirate/bandit faces, along with the Beautiful stuff. Go from one extreme to the other, then let us chose.
As I said "Fantastic", and thanks for adding all the raised bricks after the secret door video, that wasn't fair at all.

Player to Player secure trade (temporary drag-and-drop only):
Never tried it, didn't know it was in...

Crafting (animation):
The animation was awesome but the alignment is still way off, the smelter is pouring the molten metal off the end of the table, and the blacksmith is hammering on the table instead of the anvil, the others seemed ok. The miller should be pushing a log through the mill.
For the tables with fire pits, why isn't there an apprentice standing there periodically pumping the bellows? Seems odd the fire increasing with no bellows pumping...

Combat (secondary effects, animation, sheathing):
Secondary effect wasn't very apparent to me, I seen the animations but no effect to my blows, maybe the hit/miss is too high.
Sheathing was way cool, but my weapon didn't appear strapped to my back, so that was odd.

Looting (bug fixes, targeting):
Was still tough, not sure why, seemed like there was a timer or something in the background that would expire, after killing 3 bandits, I couldn't loot them all, all the times.

Emotes (looping emotes):
Crazy, I Love them all, but I bought a mug of mead and brandished my weapon, I would arm the mug and brandish it, instead too funny.

Dialog (quests, responds to more things):
It wasn't apparent that the NPC was still talking, so if you typed in additional txt, it would muddle the conversation. Clicking on the key words seem to help.

Navigation (archways):
They are way cool, nice artwork, but I agree with others, you should have the option of exiting a hex and going to the hex on that side if that's what you wish or to go into the overland map for fast long distance travel. I don't see why that's not possible, IMO.

Player Housing (more houses):
I didn't get a spot, but I've tested housing in the past...

My rating is: 5 Good job it's coming along nicely...

 

Although the visuals are definitely on the rise in regards to quality, did anyone here experience some very strange looking shadows? I should have taken some screenshots, but the shadows in many areas looked very unnatural, undefined and somewhat "sloppy". Notably trees and things of that nature. I know these are all things they are working on, but this was something I seemed to notice more since the switch to the linear lighting model.

 

lol yes we have a new lighting model, so it is all in the works. It was very interesting to me comparred to the last release
I could definitely see some omimous looking shadows lol I loved it though.

 

There were certainly things about this release I liked better than all previous ones, but in some ways R5 was smoother for me. In R5 I had trouble finding bugs, R6 was less so. But hey, I like finding bugs in an alpha test.

Visuals: I thought they were better. However, there are some observations: the bump was turned up so high, some of the bricks and edges seem to float off the wall. It looks odd. At one point, while everything looked fine on my screen, the mac next to me was nearly black (with the brightness maxed). I don't mean like night, I mean black, torch and spell barely lit the face, ground black, out of sight, forget moving. There was a time where things looked fine to me, but to everyone else I was horizontal and swimming through the dirt. (Jumping produced an interesting possessed effect.) Another time my screen was fine, but others saw my leg severely deformed (like miss rigged odd). BUT my screen was fine - save for the bump too high.

Player to player trade: loved it! So much easier this time. Fantastic! Hardly care if it improves for testing, though final game will need a system in place.

Crafting: animations seemed ok. The problems have been stated by others. It seemed to be less buggy and less prone to crash this time.

Combat: effects are getting better. Couldn't say I could see the secondary effects taking place. Sheathing is nice, but funny that weapon disappears. I get how hard it would be to put every weapon on the character's back/in a pack whatever, but disappearing seems a bit odd. Still, I really like the draw/sheath thing so I don't know what the solution is.

Looting: better maybe? Targeting is still hard when there are lots of MoBs or active ones attacking you.

Emotes: great. Love the talking emote while chatting. Nice touch. The others are great too, though the dance looks a little odd in full plate.

Navigation: the archways are convenient for sure. As I understand it, they are placeholders, so I have no complaints about marking them for testing. They helped.

Dialog and housing not tested. Dialog I am not interested in yet and housing I have tested previously.

So, overall I give it a 4. Probably a 4.2. R5 was a definite 5 for me. This was the most stable release for me by far. I think R6 has made vast improvements, but there are a couple of things this release targeted that I don't think are finished yet. Lighting and bump still need tweaking. Progress has been made and I am pleased overall. Looking forward to R7!

 

Oh I forgot, about combat the defensive roll moves were a pleasure to see, dbl tapping the keys seen's to work fine, animations looked good too...

Will we be able to add those moves to the deck/bar to be included?

 

I gave it my first 5. Playability. I finally played and did everything I wanted without crashing or lock ups (until Monday I got that 50% loading issue). Graphics much better than we had(competitive with other MMOs). Gameplay, combat worked a lot better. IT felt like a really solid start for a game, multiplayer worked well. Everything is coming together nicely.

I did notice effects occurring, in particular roots/knock back. - I utilized that as a mage. got rid of them once I went with full plate.

 

As I recall the goal of R6 was polish polish polish
Results were that it was definely was very polished
Look at all the pics in the screen shots for R6
I had to vote a 6 oh wait 5
I did have a heck of a time getting started, had to actually delete my Avatar and start over lost my home and Crafting supplies... so what!
I still had a great time and a lot of it
I spent every waking minute of spare time I had online.
Looking forward to more to explore harder quests...
which I could post my pics for some dam reason they just won't i'll figure it out.
Thanks TONS Dev's

 

I wonder if we will swim underwater like in ultima 9

 

I voted 5.
One reason is the polished graphics, as this was the goal for R6.
But the main reason is the great community which brought back the UO feeling. I had a really great weekend.

 

I voted 3.
Graphics improved, but there was nothing in the game that actually I wanted to come back for besides checking out the housing for the new lord's house.
The hex system and overland map vs Open world keeps hacking at my opinion and having fun.

I don't want to run the quests until the game is released, I have tried in previous releases and combat is still weak, I didn't try this release.
I also didn't even play on Monday even though I had time because there was nothing driving me to want to go do.
Even more disappointing was Not finding any plots open even when going on early and even in Dev+, eager players were hovering their fingers over the mouse lol.
I suppose once more features etc are in the game it will become fun, at least I am hoping as a backer.

 

I had good fun. I managed to get a plot this time and did a bit more crafting. I like crafting but hadn't really played with it until this release as i basically knew what to do but it was fun making things i needed like armor so i could make lots gold and buy nice things for house.
The combat was improved, i really liked the double tap for evasion. I'm not sure if it did actually do anything but i enjoyed spamming it at times. Waiting for the main release though.
I fell in love with the 3 story village plaster house, i cant quite decide which one i like best the open plan one or the one with rooms. Id love a combo of it, open plan downstairs and the rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor. It really is a nice house, small and cozy but surprisingly large inside, it takes hardly any room on a village spot and is really great house.
I did like the graphical improvements eventually, on the first day everything was out of whack and my skin glowed a bit but after that it was all so nice when the lighting was working right. There was an absolute glorious sunrise in one forest location, the sun coming up along a path/road with trees either side. I was quite happy with the graphics/lighting as in R5 but there has been am improvement in this release. Still look forward to better character heads, although i could easily live with what we have.
Performance was poor for me on multiplayer, especially in Owls head. Its always been a bit dodgy there but i could handle it before on both computers, this time it was slow mo and it wasn't due to other players proximity as at the time there wasn't anyone there really. There was a big performance fall for me this release, which was a little disappointing as everything in that vein had been going fine for me. I'm sure they will work it out though.