Post R7 ramblings...

Sadly I haven't had much of a chance to try the game out as much as I would like. I hit the forums once in a blue moon, I read all of the Updates that are sent out, but I know there's things I'm missing. This time around I sat down with my son not only to get his input as a gamer, but in return to share with him my love for early Ultima.

He'd seen the original video and the 3 month video (his main reaction was "I hope they're going to improve the combat"), but this time around he was pleasantly surprised in many ways. He was also very critical in others.

I thought I'd share his thoughts and mine. If there are things we say are lacking that aren't, please bring me up to speed. If there are threads discussing concerns I mention, please lead me there so we can appropriately join in. This game, and it's predecessor, have always had such a fantastic community base, and we both appreciate and respect that. I think that's part of what appeals to him, over so many other MMOs today.

---

We were both delighted to see a 64-bit client. In today's world, this just makes sense. My own rig can't really take advantage of it, with only 4GB RAM, but his could. We are well aware that it didn't quite work as planned, and it was painfully obvious, but it's a start. In general, the game needs some serious optimization, though - I'm lucky to get 20fps on the lowest settings (ATI Radeon HD 4670 256mb). His laptop runs 80-mod Skyrim on highest and gets 60+.

The graphics and settings looked amazing on his system, far better than on mine, though we both were disappointed at the size of the instance areas. I'd felt this before, that there just seems to be not enough space before you go to the overworld map. I know there have been discussions about a seamless world, and I get that isn't the direction this game is going to go, but they still feel confining.

"I love that I was walking through the forest at night, quietly wishing that I had not gone complete A.D.D. and skipped past the store that was probably selling torches. Then getting chased to death by orcs and archers. Though the surviving aspect of this was ruined by the fact that I could simply run straight out of the scene and not have to worry about anything ever again."

Some suggestions he raised:

-Eyebrow color change option. I believe this is just a known issue, though?

-Removing non-Adventure scenes. I understand there is optimization to be had, but a lot of scenes are so small that it almost takes out the "open world" aspect of the game. These should be visible from a distance and able to walk toward seamlessly like a real, open world.
-Removing this weird overhead map world view movement. I don't understand the point of this when everyone would likely prefer the freedom to move around and build everywhere in their normal, third person view.

- A short in-game tutorial. People can switch it off of course, but it's incredibly hard to beta test a game if you don't know what to do to test it. Train your testers to test, and you'll get better results. A help menu web page just isn't enough for most people. (ie. flesh out the "directions" document a bit)

-Camera following improvements. WASD is how people move, I'm sure. But never have I seen a game where the character outright moves left and right (aside from Dark Souls) and lacks auto-adjustment from the camera to move behind them. This could make or break combat easily.
-This leads to movement improvements. WASD has popularly been known for the following: W= Move forward (Check.), A = Turn/Stafe left (In this game, my guy deliberately moves left. He does not turn left. He does not strafe left.). S = A, except for right. D = Move backward, but don't deliberately turn the guy around and run into the camera. (Which...in this game, my guy isn't walking backward facing forward, he's running at the camera.). Q and E keys work just fine, and are perfect strafing keys. Why is this such a big deal? Well. Even with camera following improvements, having a guy deliberately RUN toward out-of-focus areas (AKA areas where the camera shows the least amount of environment) is easily how people die. When people die to this, they don't blame themselves, they blame game mechanics that should've adhered toward a front-facing camera. This is literally what happened in Dark Souls, and was not only part of the reason the game was so difficult, but lead to roughly 20% of player deaths.

I have to agree with much of this. I haven't had this much difficulty with game controls since Space Shuttle by Activision. Having to constantly hold onto the mouse to manipulate my view WHILE I run, WHILE I move, WHILE I fight, is severely limiting. Even DDO/LOTRO isn't this limiting. ...and PLEASE add the ability to keybind strafing keys. Sorry, I don't mean to sound whiney, but I have less frustration trying to house hunt on Google Maps than I do trying to do much of anything in the game where movement is required.

-Gamepad support (Xinput especially). Every time a developer says this isn't possible, I laugh all the way to my Joy2Key and play the game from my Xbox controller anyway. Shroud has building aspects, but aside from that I have yet to see anything on here that would stop controls from being optimized to a gamepad (PS3 or Xbox 360 controller.)

-Nameplate revamping. (He hates the color schemes for the nameplates over players heads.)

-Better ideas for the Hotbar. Hotbars should /never/ be auto-hide. Well...they can be useful in a way, but if you want the hotbar to have an option to be out of the way, also have an option for auto-transparency (low opacity when not in use), and/or resizing options.

-Detail in character texturing needs improvement. Simultaneously, outside world texturing needs options to degrade. On the lowest settings, my guy shouldn't look like Lara Croft from the first Tomb Raider game...in a world where even the staircases manage to look photorealistic and high resource-grabbing on the lowest settings. (I believe it was mentioned somewhere this was being worked on?)

-Fixed lightmapping on foliage/other things. These trees have a completely different lightmap than the overall world. It looks like they don't fit in at all and were just placed there on the lowest settings. No fixed shadows behind it. On higher settings (I tried this on Good, as there was no optimization anyway and therefore no frame difference) the trees looked fine, but the point here is that even on lowest settings, a fixed lightmap on foliage that wouldn't impact performance AT ALL would be fantastic, and has been done in many, many great MMOs. Thankfully, the grass seems fine. (He's aware there was a major shift in lighting method recently, and that elements are being constantly adjusted. I'm posting his comments, though, in case something he noticed is an actual issue I just took for granted.)

-Reputation. You can say WoW all you want, but my thoughts on it are deeper than that. I'm talking towns with angry guards when you show near, maybe even imprisonment, and if you do your time or offer something in their favor...well...maybe you'll be able to hang out in that town again. Have an incredibly good rep here? Maybe the baker will offer a discount on something, or even give you a loaf of bread for free for that day. Because that town worships you. (As this is a Richard Garriott game, I can only hope elements such as this will become part of the game. I, personally, would not want to see a quantifiable reputation system, but your actions should absolutely have an effect on how the world perceives you.)

-Weapon should automatically draw when hitting the Attack (T) key. Even if that means waiting until the draw animation is over. You don't want players thinking the reason they lost a fight was because they forgot what the sheath key was or forgot to press it while spamming T.

-----

Looking forward to R8!

- Lonadar the Wanderer

 

Part of the old games style was for the tutorials to be written in the game manual.

I know its hard to get people to read those things these days but I think its going to be must to have a hardcopy/printout of a 'manual' done like the old eigties nd nineties games.

Sent from my GT-S5690M using Tapatalk 2

 

I like your feedback, so I'm going to try and hint at some things as requested.
Yes, the optimisation is nowhere near done, since that is usually the very last step in development. "Make it work, make it right, make it fast"-saying kind of describes that best. Most of the LOD levels aren't done yet and there's Chris had pointed out that they are still collecting data on the machines in use, so that they can propperly draw an 99% target requirements line. There's still a good bit of air left, but on the other hand, you've got to consider that all the Houses that are being built by players can not be used to determine Occlusion Culling (or, I should say not the precomputed Umbra version that comes with Unity), so that's likely a considerable factor. Where we are already with the next topic, dual scale vs mono scale , or small sized instances. If you want to create a detailed, good looking, populated Scene in Unity, you have to scale it down. The advantage of a flexible, versatile Engine, is a backdraw in that case, namely lacking the optimisation for that kind of scenario. At least that's my humble experience and I'd love for somebody to prove me wrong.

Avatar design (eyebrow topic) was currently revamped and is being worked on.
As for a short in-game tutorial, it would do you no good. Yes, there should be a short explanation of what to be expected (or rather of what you can not YET expect ), but never give your testers a fixed list (unless they are paid ). You always want them to have their own wicked ideas, because that is likely where your system breaks first, some usecase you didn't think of while writing the Code.
There is actually already a result for your actions in it's uttermost basic form. The way you treat the first guard you meet and if you accept a certain offer or not changes the way some NPCs react towards you. But that is something I'd wager comes at the very end of the development process. You first print a Lorem ipsum with your newly designed printing press and only later on worry if you have a propper Shakespear text for it

All in all, I'd say, most of what you have mentioned either has a reason or is under construction.
I hope it helped at least a little bit and I wish the both of you plenty more nice journeys in this strange realm!