R3 Impression... so far

Well, let's start with the good shall we?

-Love that the town guards no longer wear plate!
-The moon rift graphic is looking awesome!
-Love the removal of barks.
-Loved what extra story I got to see.

And the not so good.

-Choppy, laggy, jerky, and damn near unplayable unless I was virtually alone. Didn't have this problem in R2.
-Every freaking chest was empty. Increase the drop rate or just have them auto-refill. I can't test anything if I can't find anything.
-My choice is either turn off local chat completely or have my chat log inundated with a billion nonsensical conversations.
-80% of my standing jump animations result in me humping the air. funny? Yes. Useful. Yes... er I mean no.

I only played about 15 minutes. Even putting the graphics on the lowest setting, I was constantly sliding around instead of walking, the screen jumped all over. I could barely interact with anything. It was not a fun experience.

 

Yeah this was pretty much my experience though I didn't get to much into the story. In addition to all that the game also seems to crash a lot and in fact I have not been able to get out of owlshead because the game crashes if I use the moonrift thing.

 

On the one hand, the pre-alpha is kind of doing it's job, working out bugs.

On the other hand, if it's nigh-unplayable for so many people, the ONLY thing we'll find are the bugs. That sucks, because some of the best improvements so far came from R1 and R2 players, saying: "hey what about this feature?"

Ya know?

 

Yeah it does seem this release is more buggy then the last. I keep reminding myself its a prealpha and hoping that with myself and others reporting bugs things will get fixed before release. But not sure how much more I am going to play this current release. I mean with all the bugs and crashes I can't do much more then run around Owlshead and look at the houses and talk to the npcs. Even crafting is glitchy/buggy as heck. I am going to try and uninstall and reinstall later and see if that makes my game any more stable/less buggy. I would at least like to see the new town!

 

I have a beefy rig, so I can play this release fine with some jerkiness, which I expected, but the game is just not shaping up to be what I had hoped. I've become extremely skeptical given we're supposedly eight months from release. I really hope they pull it together. Just my opinion...

 

If this was beta I would be very concerned but alpha, not so much. My experience was similar to yours, it was laggy and unplayable past the character creator. This is an ambitious game, no doubt they might hit some snags along the way.

 

The game is fine imo for a prealpha *even though I do find it frustrating at times!* But right now I do have strong doubts the game will be ready in 8 months. I do hope that if it comes down to it they delay release if necessary. I rather wait an extra few months then have launch be a disaster because the game is unplayable for many people.

 

I think just too many people are on the servers.

I had brief moments where it was running better and the whole experience was better.

The rest of the time I felt like everyone here.

They are making improvements, but there's really no excuse for the state of the chat system, IMO.

At least not this far into development. I find it amazing anyone thought that Chat like that would be acceptable to anyone

 

???

 

I understand the issues about lag and not having any chests. However, when I logged into single player online, I was rather surprised. It ran with no lag whatsoever, much better than R2 for me. The crafting is really shaping up. Like, surprised me how much better. Like add recipes only for a real game. (OK, there are still some glitches, but it is much better than R2.) And since we can use the same chari in single and multi (at least for now), I will simply craft in single (or horde up stuff) and then go multi and test it.

The moongates and road travel do seem to cause crashes. Again, not so much in single player mode, so I assume this is an issue with making everything multi-player.

Overall, for an Alpha, I am happy with what I have seen so far.

 

Frankly I'm amazed by what I've seen so far. This is *PRE-ALPHA* folks...not even alpha. I've worked in the gaming industry and I've seen many games at what I'd call pre-alpha and believe me what they've managed to get working at this stage is quite unbelievable. You shouldn't be expecting to see anything like the completed game at this point. As for getting finished in 8 months...they're going to have combat and a slew of other things in R4, that's a pre-alpha release game that almost has all it's key systems operating....amazing. They may not get everything they want finished for launch but this is going to be a very complete game in 8 months time if they can continue at this pace.

Things that I know will improve significantly:

- Performance - they actually said somewhere in the notes that's this would suck...it's the first time that's they've put every one in a world together and they said that it wouldn't be optimised
- Character models - I'm pretty much sure that these will be improved and updated as will character creation.
- Animations - some of theses still suck...I noticed that we still have gliding sheep. I'm with you on the jump doc...still a deeply horrible animation.
- Atmospherics and world realism - you can see near the inn what some of these will look like..nice!
- Chat system - they told us that it would be global for R3 and not much else.
- Crafting - they're still tweaking and I'm guessing will be up to release.

Things that do actually still concern me:

- The character control system - this is still deeply, deeply horrible...it actually gives me motion sickness...please, please give us a movement system where I can attach the camera to the avatar a la LotRO.
- The quest system - Just because we haven't seen it yet.
- Scale - they've kept the play area small for the tests to make it manageable but there is a lot of the map to fill in.
- Expectations - So few games have been developed in this very open way that people don't know what to expect of these early releases. More needs to be done to explain game development to folks so that we don't get a lot of negativity in the forums.

Keep up the good work portalarium. can't wait to see R4 now.

DF.

 

We are 11 months into a 18 month cycle right ? It's been a year since the kickstarter. november is the launch date.

you can call it alpha, pre-alpha, or beta, or whatever, but those are the facts.

 

And your point is what precisely? This is a very complete game for this stage in the development cycle. Of course there is a lot still to do but they will scale and crunch into launch. I don't know if they'll be exactly on time but don't expect them to be six months late either. They'll have an internal schedule and from the release notes they're hitting and even exceeding some of their timeline objectives.

I don't know if this game is going to be what you want but I do know that they're not going to miss release dates by much if they continue at current pace.

DF.

 

*Slaps forehead* Doh! I didn't even realize there was a single player online mode available on this release. I'll try that tonight!

 

I do think like I have said before things are fine for a prealpha game. But when you take into consideration that they only have 8 months left and not a huge team or budget I don't think it is unreasonable for people to be worried. I mean many people can't even get into game right now because the game will crash before they do. And even if you can get past the first loading screen good luck getting past any other loading screen! Not to mention all the other bugs and glitches. Now for a prealpha game this is the sort of thing I think one should expect. But for a game that is supposed to release in 8 months, that is another thing imo. Now they have done good work so far for having a fairly small team for an mmo and a small budget. But they are still only human and can only do so much and 8 months really is not a lot of time to get all the stuff that still needs to be done done, or fix what needs to be fixed. Now I don't think they will need to delay release by 6 monthes or anything that drastic but 2-3 months I don't think would be unreasonable.

 

I'm loving what I'm seeing. There was a bit of a lag here and there but I'm sure they'll optimize the lags out soon.My biggest complaint and something I feel must be addressed is the global chat. Reading what everyone, everywhere is saying is confusing, not fun and a complete immersion breaker. Please give us the option of turning that off and letting us hear (read) only the players and npcs that are in a realistic talking radius.

 

I found multiplayer to be unpleasant for a few reasons.
I have a fairly beefy computer, but the more people around, the more sliding, jerking, and choppiness.
Nothing in the chests, so I can't do anything.
Doors wouldn't work for me in Multiplayer. I could not open a door, or pass through the doorway.
I could see other people run in and out of the Tavern, but to me the door never appeared to open, and I could not pass through.
I continually get hung on stairs.
There were often no NPC's for me to interact with in Braemer. Not sure about the other towns.

In solo mode, the game ran very smoothly, NPC's were there, doors worked, chests were full, stairs were much less troublesome.

I like the tunnel effect when leaving town. I had enough time to avoid unintentionally leaving the scene while exploring.
The treeline around Braemer does look like the backdrop of a stage play, but once I realized it was the edge of the scene, I accepted that and was able to follow it around the perimeter.
I like the vertical buildings in Braemer. I was pleasantly surprised by the loft at the top of the ladder. Would make a good player home.
The green misty graveyard was great, but I wanted it to be bigger. It was spooky at night.
In the daytime it looked untended, which I would not expect for a graveyard that close to a populated town.
It makes me think there is a reason people don't go there to tend the graves.

The lighthouse looked smaller to me than the screenshots. Not sure why.
I love the carpet that was a rejected coin design! There will be plenty of those in my castle!

Overall, I like where this is going.

 

I agree things are looking good for a pre pre alpha. I, however, don't think there's any possible way they'll release it by October..and if they do, it will be an unfinished, unpolished product. I'm guessing a release in Spring 2015 . I hope I'm wrong !

 

Yeah I think a Spring release unless we are talking very early spring is unlikely. I think even if they have to delay release *which is looking more and more like it would be a good idea* I am thinking more like January or Febuary for a release date. But we will see. I mean if R4 is a lot less buggy and more stable then this release and if combat and all the other things they are adding in that release are fun I could see there being a lot of new pledges. Which in turn may allow them to hire more people. In that case I could see them maybe successfully making the current deadline with the game in a good state.

 

I sure hope so, Kaisa.

I'd rather them polish it up and then release it then the other way around. But..if they can do all that by this October..I'll be one ecstatic New Britannian!