Your thoughts and concerns for Release 2

I've seen some good progress - no more graphical issues that ruined R1 for me, I have a mac version that works pretty damn well, and I like the overall direction, graphic style, etc. It's sharp looking.

On the bad side, animations are really quite sad, especially the character animations.

The amount of clipping and or pathfinding issues inside buildings is the worst.

It's still way far from where it needs to be and it makes these alphas quite difficult for me to "enjoy" atm.

My 2 cents

 

CRAFTING:

The Good:
It took a short learning curve to get used to the smithing process, but once I made my sword I felt like I got the hang of the system immediately. It isn't a difficult system to understand, (input) and (output) seemed very logical, and it made more sense after doing it than when I just watched the video. I also think this system is great for giving us the ability to discover the creation of new items.

The flip-side:
However, I felt a little tired after the process of making the sword, and I can't imagine making very many items over and over. Personally after I make an item the first time, I wouldn't object to having a list of things I know how to make and have the ability for it to auto select the resources I need (with my approval). I'm sure crafters will memorize the process after a while, but I figure I would at least mention it. (see my conclusion below for my thoughts on mental fatigue).

Again, I don't think this is a bad system I think it's a very logical and creative way to craft items, and it is also a great way to allow players to discover new ways to craft things. However like I said I just felt a little tired after the process. On a side note I also didn't initially notice that the ore i found was stacked until I switched to list inventory, and then when I switched back to bag mode I paid more attention and noticed the quantity listed under the name of the item.


COMMUNICATION:
This is my first visit to New Britannia so I didn't get a chance to chat with NPC's before now. However I kind of got lost as to who I was speaking to and who was talking to me whenever there were more than one NPC in the area. I remember reading some place that we can select a person by clicking on him/her, but if I didn't read the forums I wouldn't have known that, and maybe that could be a source of real confusion for a new player.

Maybe I've been corrupted by the modern day MMO, but I felt too lazy to want to follow up on the information I received. Not that I want arrows etc, but I'm not good with names anyway so when a guy says hey go check for so-and-so for such and such I kind of noticed I glazed over a bit. Maybe I'm just getting use to playing the new game, and discovering the new controls (very likely), and maybe the tired feeling I experienced during crafting was also due to getting my mind use to doing these things (very possible). I don't know. SEE MY CONCLUSION FOR MY THOUGHTS ON MY EXPERIENCE OF MENTAL FATIGUE.


CONCLUSION:
Maybe a quick jump right into the game approach might be a little too much for "some" people. Perhaps processing all the new environment and controls might overwhelm a person new to games like this subtly on a mental level, and maybe a little more hand holding in the first hour or two with popup dialogs to help a new player get his/her bearings might help ease people into the world. (I do understand this is a pre-alpha and those things will likely exist).

After thinking about my feedback on crafting and communication, I do attribute most of my exhaustion to using parts of my brain I'm not accustom to using in my daily life. It's quite possible that this feeling of fatigue will diminish after exercising it in the game over time. It is also quite possible that these feelings might be less intense if I were already playing other online RPGs.

It's been at least 4 years since I've played any MMOs or console based RPGs, and maybe I'm mentally out of shape for it without realizing it. I'm willing to bet there will be others who refuse to play other WoW type RPGs that will try this game because it's a Lord British game, and they might also need to get that part of their brain trained-up/worked-out to be fit enough to get immersed.

I hope this was helpful feedback.

 

Absolutely agree with this. Crafting needs to be intuitive and engaging, and right now it's clumsy and confusing. Why do I need to put exactly the right number of iron ore on a smelter to make ingots? If I put on a stack of 20 it should just use the proper amount that matches the rest of the ingredients. I don't mind finding recipes through trial and error, or making things one at a time, but having to drag the exact count of ingredients over to the table every single time is tedious, especially for basic things like smelting ore down to bars/ingots. In my opinion, as long as you have the right ingredients on the table, the crafting should work, and just automatically take the proper amounts out of the stacks.

It would be nice if you could double click the tools to get some info from them. Maybe bring up a list of the common items that tool is used for, since when crafting, I had not even the faintest idea of what I could make, which just made the guessing of ingredients and exact numbers even more frustrating. There is a whole lot of crafting tools, which is great, but it needs to be a lot more user friendly and clear what they are used for.

Other than that, I am very happy with the addition of the jump button, and I like how it was done too.

The camera feels better, but it is still lacking 'stickiness', by which I mean if you turn and run sideways to the camera or turn right around and run towards the camera, it should automatically correct itself to back behind you after a few seconds or a few steps, instead of running blindly until you rotate it enough with the mouse. The example i'm thinking of with this is WoW, though it's been awhile since I played that and I might be remembering wrong.

My only other gripe for now is that the crafting stations feel a bit oversized when placed in a house. I think they should be about 15-20% smaller. For example with the edellman founder house, I placed a smelter and blacksmith table in the alcove on the back wall, but had no room to place anything else there or even walk between them. They protruded around the corner on the one side even, taking up space on that wall too, they just seemed way too big. I don't expect to be able to place every single station in a basic house but considering how many crafts there are I should be able to place a couple without feeling like its using up my entire housing space.

 

Thanks to jumping you can now jump on the fireplace's top part in the viking house... awesome
that's where I'd put my bedroom in the viking house and save some space upstairs.

 

CORRECTION: My post below is invalid - I'm able to login now.

I'm a "First Responder" to Sota and it appears I need to put down more money to play this beta. Is that true? I'm curious then what does my Kickerstart funds allow me to do during the beta period? Will I get the full game? I took a risk with my money since I believe in the team, and now I'm being asked to wait for the full product. It's unlike other Kickstarter games I've helped fund. Also I'm a Mac user, seems like my feedback would be appreciated during this beta period.

I'm either misunderstanding here, or feeling a bit jaded..

Can someone from Sota respond and explain the rationale?

 

First Responders should be in Pre-Alpha. If you are having an issue you should send an email or PM to Support.

 

Just played my first session of R2. Got about 45 minutes in... 5 of that was finding Guard Micheal... I went the wrong way to start.

I love the jump! I don't mind holding it down before hand.

I still hate the camera controls. A lot! I tried to be open-minded, but I'll be glad when that let us change it. I just can't stand the movement or camera controls. Completely unnatural to me.

Crafting seems very tedious and way too trial and error for my taste. I don't get excited about crafting to begin with, but when it's a huge pain, that's even worse.

Please, please, please give me the option to limit the text in my chat box to just me and whoever I'm talking to. I really don't need to hear mort whining about his book the whole time I talk to the tavern keeper. It's annoying and confusing.

I'm so glad they added in the inventory list option. It really made life a whole lot easier. I only wish toggling between it and normal was quicker and easier. Maybe a hotkey?

 

What is natural?

 

Initial reactions:

The Shattered Moon

First of all, the design change makes the entire construct look much better. Whether or not that's how it would look in reality, it looks/feels more "correct" having the debris trail spread to a point of smaller debris with larger chunks converging in the center.

Secondly, the orbit path flows MUCH BETTER. Really happy with seeing it.

Jumping

The jumping mechanic is VERY welcome, but it DOES take some getting used to. It feels like it lags until the feeling that the jump happens when you LET GO of the spacebar really sinks in compared to other games which it happens with the press of the spacebar.

Graphics

Seeing a NOTICEABLE improvement in graphics and textures. The stone textures particularly look amazing, so kudos there.

Water looks good in that it doesn't look like it's a repeating pattern, however the movement of the water seems a bit TOO random. I would say that "counter currents" need to be a bit more subtle compared to the main current of the water.

The Volcano is still "Mount Blurry" when up close.

Falling off the edge into the foggy void behind Mount Blurry is A Bad Thing™... a REALLY bad thing.

The cloaks on the paperdoll do not seem to lay correctly on the back of the character. The ingame model does much better.

UI/Technical Stuffs

With crafting is the need to reset the game for more reaources. Currently, this requires a complete exit from the game and restart. Having some form of "Reset Game" command would be helpful for testing.

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That's my first impressions in between testing and watching the Hangout. More to come!

 

See ho WoW handles it, for a good example.

 

Agree completely. {Bites tongue to prevent regurgitating earlier conversation system criticisms.}

Re Crafting: Not sold on the current implementation. I need to invest some more time on it but first impression it felt tedious/not fun, as others have stated.

Re Inventory/container lists: Though the Ultima7-style management did grow on me in R1, in R2 I enabled the list view and felt relieved. A "take all" button would be nice. But at least I could select everything using the "shift" key before dragging from one container to another. I also think some extra levels of categorization are required. EDIT: Then again, there is a handy "filter" option...

Re Jumping: Passable, better than no jumping at all. Wouldn't want any jumping puzzles though...

House ownership/decorating is still great. Found myself abandoning every other activity just so I could experiment with that all over again.

 

Since testing the R2 I've been dying to give my impression... and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS GAME so far, and I know its only going to get better.

The Avatar now moves at a decent speed (and with the mouse) which is fantastic. The ability to reassign the keys should refine this further.

Jumping was useful, great addition. I actually wouldn't mind a few jumping puzzles.

Wading through the shallows was useful, and fun for exploration. Hoping swimming is next.

As much as I lauded over the 'free bag', I soon ended up using the 'list inventory'. I will to continue to try out both as much as possible.

The graphics are full, rich and fantastic.

Suggestion: There is a pier in Kingsport near an rocky plateau rising from the sea nearby. It would be good of there was a wooden platform leading from the pier to rocky feature, to enable exploration of it, and to admire the view.

And lastly I will once again praise my favorite feature... the brilliant conversation system. Great work.

 

I found the list inventory to be very convenient, while the bag inventory looks of course better but could use some kind of grid arrangement or at least the possibility to automatically stack identical objects.

Moving around was also much better with the increased speed, and I love how they've implemented jumping.
Mouse movement is still slow and painful though

I love the conversation system, reminds me of Ultima VI (one of my favourites in the series). With some tweaking I'm sure it will become near-perfect.

Crafting, I had little time yesterday and I'll try some more today.
However, I also believe that you should be able to put more "consumable" resources and still get the desired result by consuming whatever amount is needed. That should only apply to consumables such as ore, coal, wool, hide and so on.
Also, some recipies make little sense. I think I could create a wooden log with just a cubit measure and wood, but would fail if I added a saw to the table?
Of course I should fail if I try to use a hammer to smelt ore, but when I try to use a saw to cut wood, well...

 

For me? The engine used for Bethesda games has perfect controls. Mouse controls camera (no holding a button) and your character faces where the camera faces. It uses WASD, but S and D strafe, since you can turn by moving the mouse in the correct direction. It took me no time to get used to that set up the first time I played a Bethesda game, but I can't get used to SotA at all.

I understand the direction they took due to the need for mouse interaction with the environment, but a crosshair and key command ('E') for instance would work fine, then brink up the pointer when you're in a container or crafting table or such. If they let me completely rebind, I'll reverse the current system, so that I hold right click (or better yet 'E') to enable the pointer and free look with nothing depressed. Much more natural to me.

 

I didn't have much time last night and left some stuff out.

I'm liking the character generator. I hope that we can go very thin or very fat, as well as very short (would love to play a Tyrion-esque character!). It's coming along well though. Love the eye colors and it was nice to have some facial choices. As far as the hair, I hope that it will be greatly refined over the course of development as it is very platicy right now (plasticy is a word!).

I loved the look of the weapons I found. I really had trouble deciding which one to walk around with. I like that the axes and hammers actually have variety!

Also, somebody, in some thread about R2 (can't remember where) complained about chat boxes exiting after every exchange. I'm fairly sure that is a setting that can be toggled on and off. I turned it off right away and it felt just like the convos in R1.

I did notice that the tavern keeper didn't recognize "bye." He recognized "good bye," but "bye" confused the heck out of him. I didn't have that problem with other npcs.

That's all I have for now. I should get some play time in tonight after dinner.

 

Happened with me as well. Seemed that each time it happened, I was using a crafting table and had somehow opened chat, then couldn't close it (even with escape key). Had to quit game.

...

Conversation -- I've noticed that some of the issues I have with the chatbox getting filled up with conversation from adjacent NPC's really comes from years of playing games where I only see the text in a chatbox (not above the heads of the NPC's). I am having to retrain myself to look above the NPC's head, which makes following what they say much easier... Even so, the large blocks of texts can be difficult to pick out from a crowded chatbox if you need to go back and look at them, especially if there are several nearby NPC's who are very talkative.

Overall, I'm really liking what I'm seeing in the conversation system. I enjoy talking with the NPC's and trying to ask them questions that test the boundaries of what they know and can do. One slight issue that could be improved is them not knowing the meaning of things they say. For example, I had one NPC (Merchant Koval in Kingsport) say "It is good to meet you, Kuno." but when I said "It is good to meet you" he didn't know what it meant. There is an issue with NPC's knowing stuff they shouldn't know, either...

Spoiler

The Alchemist NPC in Kingsport gave me herbs and potions for Winslow as soon as I asked about them, only problem was I hadn't even talked to Winslow yet.

^I imagine such things will be ironed out, just wanted to make a note of it.

Also, Merchant Nahche (Kingsport) is perhaps a little confused. He says his name is Joana

I picked up on these things because I make it a point to ask all NPC's their name and to introduce myself... In light of this, if it's not too much trouble, I hope that eventually we can't see their names unless we've learned it. Like... you walk up to an unknown NPC and it just says "Guard" or "Merchant" in your chatbox until you ask, and learn, their names. Not sure how doable that is or if it's even worth the time it takes, but I would welcome it because it's a bit strange to ask NPC's their names when I can see it right in my chatbox... Okay, maybe asking their names is what's strange, but hopefully my meaning is clear

As far as the other stuff I've noticed:

Crafting -- Took me awhile to get it, even with cheating from the R2 Instructions. One problem I had was I was trying to do carpentry stuff at the milling station. I was also just grabbing stacks of items and trying to craft (until I saw how to pull items by precise amounts). Totally agree that there is too much dragging, but I think I heard them address the very issue in the $3 million hangout (i.e., RG mentioned discussing it with Starr? and agrees it needs to be tweaked some after making many ingots in a row). As long as that's addressed, I think it is promising and I will enjoy trying to figure recipes out. I do think there might be some ideas from GW2's discovery system that could be useful, especially UI elements and presentation, but I know a lot of people around here don't like that game, so take that suggestion for what it's worth.

Camera -- I've mentioned it a couple of times already, but might as well just throw it out there again, it would be great to have free "mouse look" so I can look around as I run without any change to the direction I am moving. Many games use clicking and holding Left Mouse Button, then moving around the mouse, to achieve this effect. I realize this might just be something that's yet to come, but maybe it's a purposeful omission. What I do know is that I wish I had the ability to look at beautiful scenery as I auto-run (without disrupting my path of travel).

Music -- Really appreciating the new tracks. Glad to hear many (if not all?) are from community-members. One of the songs makes me want to hop around like a drunken bunny, and Guard Michael was unfortunate enough to witness this sad spectacle. Ah, that poor, poor guard. How will he ever overcome the traumas that these thousands of rude Outlanders put him through? Maybe the Kingsport alchemist has some herbs or potions that can help the guy out...

 

have a simple question - how do I get out of town? I've talked to the Lord for killing bandings/undead but am unable to leave town! havent been able to do a single combat!

 

For me, I get a headache about ten minutes in and have to exit, out of frustration. Navigating from point A to point B feels like work, all the spinning, zooming in and out, holding mouse buttons down, WASD and Q and E, ect, its too much for me mentally and ends up giving me a headache, maybe Im weak minded. I haven't tried crafting yet but from what I've read I think I'd get frustrated with it pretty fast. I know, I'm not supposed to be worried and things will get better but at the same time I wonder if Im going to end up playing hours a day like I'd want to. If the end product is not to far from what it is now navigation wise, that will be a real bummer me. I loved UO and because of that happy to support SotA. Im 5K into my pledge now and had planned to up that significantly, but to be honest at this point upping my pledge is doubtful. Im sorry to be so negative but thats were Im at.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/release-2-instructions.6104/

Combat is not implemented yet, crafting is added in R2 (partially)

 

Pros - Love the conversation system. It really makes you "read" the dialog and interact with the NPC (rather than just selecting an option from a menu).
- Love the exploratiion ... just two towns and lots of area to cover.

Cons - Crafting .. wow. Way too tedious. Seriously? It is 2014 and we are dragging and dropping individual pieces around? Way too time consuming after the first time experimenting. I am here to play a game .. not simulate medieval blacksmithing.
- While I love the exploration I feel the towns are really way too cluttered with player housing. I mean you have to walk through pointless housing to find the "meat" of the cities. Realistic, yes .. but may get tedious after the first few times. Maybe it will feel more alive when the houses are actually owned and used.