The Intro(Blood River Massacre) Needs Work

A number of things seem out of place and thus, break immersion.

1. The magistrate seems to have no skepticism about you at all. Plus, he is a powerful warrior of light or something, why would he ask you, the peon loser nobody with no gear to come with him and help him solve the mystery. Your character is human, for all he knows you could be one of the humans who attacked the place. A bit of paranoia and skepticism on his part would be more realistic. He seems way too trusting, and naive to be a magistrate.

2. Some of the produce items that you pick up near the bard seem to re-appear when you leave the area and come back. Bug? I dont know, but it doesnt make sense and breaks immersion.

3. The BARD. First, he speaks as though he knows you, but doesnt know you. As if somehow your unknown affiliation to the magistrate equates you to be some prophetic chosen one. Its a terrible dialogue sequence that makes no sense whatsoever and should be entirely rewritten by someone with better writing skills and imagination. Or maybe the bard doesnt even need to be there. I found out later that the magistrate had him guard the gate. A bard.. I suggest just making that guy a guard companion for the magistrate. That would make more sense. The whole "prophecy chosen one" cliche is old and is a turn off and really has no place in an MMO. We cant all be the chosen one.

4. The elf orphan. Is he retarded? His dialogue would suggest that, considering he thinks that by stealing the loremasters dagger caused the town to be attacked. The dialogue seems to vaguely suggest that the dagger may be of some importance/significance, and it makes little sense why such a dagger could be so easily stolen by a retard. And it makes little sense as to why a retarded elf child would even think to steal something like a "special" dagger from their town leader of all people. The other thing that is out of place is the location. The course of the dialogue also suggests that the child may be the town leaders child. If thats the case, why are they dead in the loft of a barn among ... naked farmers? Also, the goody 2 shoes magistrate whispers to me, 'psst, hey, lets ditch this retarded elf orphan..." Yeah... I think this part of the story needs to be totally re written. It makes ZERO logical sense.

5. Much of the town is made of wood, if not all of it. A couple of buildings in the center of the town are burnt to the ground. Shouldnt the whole town be burning? I mean usually when a town gets sacked, they burn everything.

6. There is a catapult sitting beside the barn, FACING the barn, with some rock ammo sitting nearby. What were they aiming at? It looks like they would destroy the barn if they fired it. The catapult itself is out of place. And its disproportionate. Meaning... its a tiny catapult. Why would there be a catapult in a little tribal elf village? And why would it be sitting in a place where it is completely useless? I mean, the town doesnt even have any kind of defenses other than a shoddy wooden wall, that I could see.

7. There are many unusable containers that have a mouseover, but you cant open them.

8. What is this? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854093636

9. The lorekeepers journal. One would think that a lorekeeper would be sophisticated enough to identify different factions among humans and .... other elves?(the black ones!) So these elves are sophisticated enough to read and write, design a catapult and tower gates, and stone bridges, but they cant speak like normal people?

10. The magistrate says he doesnt like scavengers... then what the heck is he doin traveling with me? Im looting all the dead bodies while he is right there!! Yet he says nothing. After listening to this magistrate, all I feel like doing is killing him and taking his stuff. "looting the dishonorably slain.." what a joke this guy is. Seems he could do with some rewritten dialogues also. Toughen him up a bit, make him rough around the edges.

11. The game keeps telling me I need a sword after I already have one. I have the axe equipped. But, I would rather be using a staff. No staves here though.

12. The tree in this image isnt meshed with the ground. It is near the stone circle in the intro village. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854116433

13. Both the town gates are barred/barracaded. It appears that no one even broke into the village to kill anyone. So how did they die?

14. When opening the gate and leaving the town, it seems that I can just take a left turn and not even have to go across the bridge at all. Is that intended? I dunno. The game told me I would need to travel with the magistrate or the path would be too difficult. Turns out I didnt need him at all.

15. One thing that I did find cool though. If I wanted to, I could sit in the town and practice spells all day, and fighting the mechanical bugs. Though I havent done this for very long, I might stay here for awhile to practice my skills. This little tidbit gives me a sense of freedom, and I like that. I hope I get more of that feeling in the rest of the gameplay.

16. I found the blood river cave. Or what the game says is a cave... Obviously something else they will need to polish up. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854791688

Immersion is paramount to a game like this, and all of these items I mentioned break that immersion. Dialogues do not mesh together well and are not very informative. I hope you guys will get the message and fix it. Pretty graphics and animations will never make up for immersion breaking issues.

 

Love your feedback well thought out and logical.

 

Thank you for giving your feedback. We could do without the personal attacks though on the author, it devalues the feedback you are giving and is unnecessary. Use your communication skills to get your points across not personal attacks please. Other than that your feedback is appreciated.

 

Its not personal. Just brutal honesty. But, I will lighten it up...

 

The scripts should be rewritten so that the player is following the magistrate around instead of him following you around. He could then express his agitation at you for lagging behind and looting corpses. (but he still waits for you nonetheless, OR, after he leaves town, the player could then go back and search the town for loot.)And then, when he is ready to leave, he gives you the dagger and asks you to deliver it to "someone" because he as to be somewhere else, and then he leaves you. Once he is gone, the elves show up to block the bridge or even enter the town to fight you... Or there could be a way to sneak past them. You could even have a way for the elves to let you leave peacefully, by having the orphan following you and you turn him over to them. This way there is more story and more choices for the player.

 

Update: After the magistrate had left me to travel for Aerie I took some time to fully explore the blood river area. After awhile I came to the other end of the stone bridge, and there he was again, robert the magistrate. But now he is only wearing clothes, no armor or weapon visible. He repeats his former leaving script, as though we had not yet left the village.

I talked to him for a bit, following all his dialogue prompts. He then tells me that elves are not living creatures. That they are constructs created by obsidian sorcerers from hundreds of years ago.

How is it then that they breed and have children, and eat food and have pet cats if they are just constructed automatons? I probably could have found this out sooner had I talked to him more at the beginning, but either way, its a big inconsistency in the whole story. He said they were created to be soldiers. Yet in this village, they appear to be simple farmers who cant fight. Major inconsistencies here. Or at least, a lack of information to explain it all.

I went back into the village found robert there again at the very starting point in his weapon and armor. So there are currently 2 roberts in the area.

 

Very good feedback.
That tutorial was awful. I wouldnt be surprised if they lost more then 25% people during it. ( im averaging around 30% of people i brought in )
Ive stated numerous times the tutorial needs an overhaul.
+1

 

Well I dont think its supposed to be a tutorial actually. It seems more like just an intro to a main story quest. Theres a ton of books they placed here for you to read and study the lore I assume. Ive started reading them. Honestly I didnt really want to read them, but im forcing myself to just to see what part they are supposed to play in the game. I can tell the devs this much, I didnt want to spend time reading all those books after just starting the game and I pretty sure alot of other players wouldnt bother reading them either. It looks like some or maybe all of them were written by tracy hickman, so they may be worth reading. Of course the suspension of disbelief is affected by the presense of the books too, in the mud hut brained obsidian rejects known as elves, village. I suggest splitting the book collection up. Place some of them in the treehouse outside the town. I see the word "copy" on some of them, I am going to assume it means that these same books are in other places in the game. If thats the case then some of these books dont need to be here. Do you really want players to spend hours here reading all these books?

But maybe somewhere along the way I will find out that the elves didnt build the village. Maybe they just stole it from human farmers and were occupying it? As yet, that doesnt appear to be the case.

There is also a couple tree houses in the mix. One in town, and one outside of town. One belongs to the lorekeeper, and I have no idea who the other one belonged to, but its pretty empty. Are we meant to think that the fabricated war automatons were partial to living in trees like the elves from other games?

The graphic of the blood river area are indeed beautiful. But the suspension of disbelief is not there. I give the benefit of the doubt and assume that the this intro mission was thrown together in haste and had a low priority. But the thing is, this blood river massacre is the first thing all players are going to see when they first play the game. Their first impression is always going to be a lasting one, and in this case, its going to be a bad first impression.

If they re-did the blood river massacre intro to be their best foot forward then players would have a good first impression and want more. That is my suggestion to the devs. I suggest that for a little while that they pour all their efforts into the intro mission to make it the most amazing experience possible so everyone who begins the game wont easily forget how awesome it was, rather than how bad it was... First impressions are lasting. And many times, the last impression. I hope they get the point and take action on this.

I changed the title to "The Intro" so it doenst confuse people.

 

So I logged back in today at the blood river village. I read a number of the books. Maybe about 1/3 of them before I got tired of them. Im not going to read the rest, I got better things to do. I thought more of them would have been written by tracy hickman, but it seems only the one book was. And as such, it also was the most interesting of the books I read. The poetry book was also interesting.

Today the village seems to have completely reset. All corpses have loot on them again, and all the breakable containers are back and can be broken again to collect their loots. The NPC dialogues havent reset though. So Iam going around the town again to loot everything. Then I will see about fighting my way across the bridge.

I found an elven farmers diary. This one was well written and explains a bit of the elves background. It seems the farmer was more sophisticated than his lorekeeper. Perhaps the 2 should switch roles.

 

I have finally left the Blood River Massacre scene. I am now creating a new topic to talk about the issues I find called "Soltown Issues"

 

You are doing such a great job. I am really enjoying reading your feedback now. Thanks for taking the time to provide important feedback and for caring that you get your feedback heard

 

Tutorials are awful, Majoria, it's a fact... You often sound personally offended, when people give honest brutal feedback. . I do agree though that sarcasm is not the best way to encourage Portalarium to improve anything. hehe.

 

Its not a tutorial. Its an Intro.

 

Im still wondering if any dev has even read these posts... They only seem to pay attention to the EA testing and developer beta forums.

 

We read all the posts.

 

Good job @Teralitha Tokomi.

 

We are fixing many of the technical issues in Blood River this release but honestly the majority of your feedback is "I hate the writing, I don't understand elves, and I don't see why a traumatized child whose parents were murdered would talk oddly". We'll have to agree to disagree on those points.

 

Without opening a discussion who said what and what intention was behind that.. I did not read @Teralitha Tokomi s post that way.
You might disagree with his sentiment on books and the importance of lore but I believe his concern is very valid for new (main stream) players.

 

Well those were a new player's first impressions. And only a couple of my 16 points were about the inconsistent writing style. If you guys dont care about immersion, attention to details and new player first impressions, then dont even bother with the intro, just remove it from the game, because its terrible.

"Traumatized child" having a traumatic experience doesnt lower your IQ. Typically a child who has been through trauma just wont speak at all.

This devs response suggests he only skimmed through the post without trying to understand what was written. If thats the way its gonna be I wont even bother writing any detailed feedback anymore.

 

Oddly, that was the same impression I gathered from much of your criticism about why much in the scene was placed where it was. You seemed entirely unaware a massacre had taken place there and why there were bodies stacked in a barn, for example. Which is fine - the way to discover the backstory there is for the most part in items (letters and the like) found after the fact in the world, but it also makes your consequent feedback on things like why they look like "naked farmers" or why "they can't speak like normal people" (they're not normal people, they're a race which has difficulty relating to humans) somewhat problematic to respond to.

There are things you pointed out that we will be addressing (such as why you would care about a bonesteel dagger, more background on why the battle ended the way it did, and removing the links to Soltown that no longer make sense) but it's clear you disagree with many ways the story itself is written and implemented, and that's not particularly actionable feedback.