R5 Impression - Great Work!

So here is my 1st impression of R5

Color palette - awesome - great blend of lively colors / with blend of lighting and darkness

Fire / Lighting - awesome - this has been good for a while but it keeps getting better ... the caves although dark / and specially the basements "feel warm" due to the lighting of wall candles and use of torches

Graphics - Great - Whatever you guys are doing keep it up - the avatar models are looking better and the "bald head" looks great ... in general everything looked a lot more "crisp" ... played in fantastic for 90% of the time (1 day ... still 4 to go)

Uneven surface - I'm probably the only person that cares about this but this is real cool to me ... makes me feel like I am actually hiking

Skeletons - The "aggressiveness" is perfect

Mimics - Fantastic - Never thought I would ever get to see the "tongue" again ... lol (for the games I play)

Scenes - Great - They feel "larger and fuller" ... the paths feel "wide enough" and certain instances with "landmarks" make it easier to navigate ... I didn't even use the compass

AND the Map - Fantastic ... the "texture" of the map adds a lot of flavor ... colors are great ... the clouds and the waves are cool ... the trees / variation / scatter of mountains was a big improvement from before

Of course there is still room for improvement ... I'll post critiques when Smack posts his Release poll ... but this is the first 5 I will give

The mechanics are working

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Anyone else feel free to chime in - if possible keep this thread positive / and save critiques for Smacks poll

 

How's the card combat thingy? What is your impression of it? Thanks. ^_^

 

They have not implemented it yet - at the moment it is a standard "mmo" system ... set skills on a hot bar

- reason as to why its not implemented / its not ready

- AND THIS IS MY ASSUMPTION - they stated back in the day that if the deck system was not "fun or engaging" they would revert to a "tried and true" combat system

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the deck system works as advertised! I hate the standard mmo affair ... I'm looking for something new and different from what is currently out there

 

Decks didn't make it in this patch. Right now they are single skills useable at all times.

 

Initial Impressions:

Being stuck at Synchronizing 50% for a while was a bum deal, but I finally figured out the issue and got logged in properly.

The color seemed a lot darker overall, but as I moved around, I guess my eyes adjusted because things DID start to look better. However, it still could use a bit of a tweak here and there.
The lighting at dusk/dawn is MUCH more dynamic and amazing and it's nice seeing the moon in a clearer sky standing out MUCH more prominently. Also the need for an external light source in dungeons is a HUGE plus.

The Overland Map is VERY much improved. I LOVE the cloth texturing and the more subtle hexes. The animated portions are a nice touch and it's starting to come together.

Say it with me now: "You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together." The entirety of Release 5 = Success on that alone!

Combat takes a step forward in interactivity. Still limited, but a good look at things to come. It already is starting to feel more tactical even before the actual "card system".

Mimics... I will get tricked by these 100% of the time I guarantee it. I simply CAN'T NOT open a chest.

Oh yes, one more... the Sewers area (which I /zoned to by chance trying to get out of The Clink) with the fetid water that causes HP damage... NICE touch... I wonder if there will be some form of boots to deal with that.......

So far that's what I had a chance to play with in my first few hours of R5.

 

I mostly agree and the mimic is my favorite monster now... or I hate it, Im not sure.

I love the improvements in animations and graphics. The overland map is also improved, but still Im not sure if I like that style... And the combat is more funny now by far. Finally was a good idea to include the health bars (Im not saying that they should be for the final product, but for now were useful).

So, one of the best since R1 for me. (Well, I hope that the 50% bug will be not in the final r5)

 

That is the card system, but you're not assembling decks yet.

You assemble your skills in a deck, and it randomly pulls the cards and puts them on the hot bar. In combat, you choose from abilities on that hot bar available at that moment.

 

The "random" aspect is not in place yet - that's what I was referring to ... which what most folks are apprehensive about - I'm hoping it works well and dev's keep it once they implement it

 

Thanks for the post Dermott; nice to know what I missed out on

I hope the 50% sync thing is a bug they will fix; just in case could you share what you did?

 

Thanks for the post Dermott; nice to know what I missed out on

I hope the 50% sync thing is a bug they will fix; just in case could you share what you did?

 

For the Synch 50% problem, I relogged in under Single Player since it seemed to be a loading issue with Owl's Head. Other people had success if they logged in with single player, moved out of owl's head, then swapped back to multi.

 

It was mentioned in chat last night that they believe they tracked the sync problem down and have a fix in place. It is meant to be part of today's patch.

 

Combat - Could not initiate combat. Skill bar would not appear until mob was attacking me.
During combat cards would gray out and not return....dead me
Clicking on cards even when available would not always lead to them working.....dead me
After dieing I could do nothing except after a while /stuck would send me back to the beginning of the instance. But still couldn't move, had to close game and restart.

Overland map - movement was OK. Liked the loss of the hex lines. But over and over I would get to 50% "syncing" and then get stuck there. Reboot put me back into the instance I had just finished with and then lead to another syncing issue. I see jiirc says this was figured out....yay

Crafting - no gathering tool. Went to buy one to find I had zero gold....oops

 

Getting the first weapon is a bit of a struggle ... there are basements in Kingsport ... one of them as a chest with armor and weapons

Dying - you stay dead for about 30 seconds to a minute and then you pop up

The syncing problem only occured to be when I wanted to enter a town

Cards worked for me

 

Unfortunately at the present time you needed to initiate combat for the combat bar to come up. So you had to auto attack with a melee or ranged weapon to get the combat bar. That may be necessary based on how the deck combat system is meant to work. Then again it could be a bug or a problem with the combat system overall. Not sure and a dev hasn't stepped in to clear it up. maybe the new patch will change things on this issue. It is a pain if you want to use magic to start a fight and the wand just sucks for a weapon, 3 damage on auto attack when a blade does way more damage and I can still cast without penalty (at least right now).

I think there is a bug where sometimes when casting (at least for me since I wasn't trying out melee in the dev test) where you would get a large lightning /electrical ball around you and you couldn't do anything. Dirt nap was incoming ever time time.

With zero gold the first thing I went to do was kill stuff. Lots of gold incoming that way right now.

 

Darn! I was really hoping they'd give us some starting equipment for testing purposes. I grow tired of wandering around looking for basic gear at each release.

 

We all get something - look in your backpack! ... not everyone gets the same

 

Cool. That's a step in the right direction. Thanks.

 

There is another way to bring your combat bar up, hover your mouse on the bottom of the screen, however, this is a different combat bar than the one you setup using your L skills, I was able to hit L to bring up the skills, drag one of the skills off, toggle L menu off, then bring up the hotbar that you can see out of combat. Obviously a bug/issue but that is a work-around you can use so you have spells/skills available outside of combat.

It is buggy enough still that it makes playing it for more than an hour frustrating. Had issues with seeing my party members in hex, we'd have to exit/enter repeatedly. Had issues with skills/spells not working (healing in particular messed us up). The overland map looks better but still lacks a ton of controls that makes me hate going into it. I went into detail on this in another post.

Looking forward to bug squashing and the actual card combat to finally make it in.

Areas I think they need to focus on: bugs - so many issues right now I think it's the worst release other than R1 which was borderline unplayable. Overland map needs major interface/functionality overhaul, I don't even care about the visuals/map appearance right now, focus on making it an extension of my adventure.

Areas I think they did well on: Graphics, looking better all the time. Animations I think these look great, especially all of the emotes. So it's obvious they focused on what a lot of people were complaining about before, dated graphics. I'd put the current level just below skyrim, well above oblivion. I think it's a good point to be at.

 

I have to agree with the OP, after 4 hours of play I was impressed.

However some of the rooms in the smaller houses are more like corridors than rooms.