Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Very First Impressions Coming in Cold
rittchard
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I know these can be annoying but if I don't jot them down now they will be forever lost. And sometimes a very first impression can be helpful to someone, I hope.
This is kind of silly but I loved the music playing on the patcher. I've never paid any attention to any other patcher so it's kind of significant.
Character creation was a bit underwhelming, but I'm presuming it's a placeholder and it is certainly good enough for Alpha testing.
First moment in the game.... graphics looked kind of off, but I switched from Windowed Fullscreen to just Fullscreen and the resolution updated to make everything look fantastic. Very impressive. I immediately wanted to take a screenshot. But... I couldn't find a screenshot key. Hrmph.
The opening quests leads you to a particular NPC, but at first glance he doesn't seem to be anywhere nearby and there doesn't seem to be any direction leading you to him. It's not a big deal, as some quick wandering leads you to him, but this could be streamlined a bit.
I read the tutorial and understand that content isn't really being tested, but... from a new player experience, the first thing you encounter is the quests/quest engine so it has to be evaluated at some level. Because if it is too jumbled or lacking, players may lose patience and quit. It seems like the devs don't want to have the traditional ? and ! all over the place for better immersion, and I guess that is OK. It's such a standard now though that without some clarity as to who to talk to it can be a bit irritating. I like that they are trying something different, but I'm not sure how effective it is. I ended up collecting a bunch of quests and it was kind of a mess. The flow seemed off as well, since one of the first quests you get is to buy harvesting tools but you don't have any cash for it and there's no immediately clear way of earning cash. Mobs drop "essences" but it wasn't clear to me if I should be saving these or not, so I saved them at first. Eventually it seemed like the only choice was to sell them to move forward - I don't know if that was the intent but it could be clearer and save some frustration.
I bounced around a lot in the next couple of hours, and did a LOT of running around back and forth. Mostly I was looking for lumber to harvest, which I never found. Is this because of one of the "known issues" ? I have to say after playing a ton of games recently with resource gathering, not being able to interact with the hundreds of trees I walk by is a pretty frustrating experience. I tried all sorts of ways to get something but was unsuccessful. Hopefully this is a bug, but even if it isn't, it seems odd that only specific trees can be interacted with. Definitely a big miss in an open world compared to something like Valheim.
Combat was fine, nothing special and nothing bad. I chose a cleric and the Q attack seems a little wonky like I move too much and have to reposition after each swing, but it's not a big deal. I ended up killing a lot of mobs because I wasn't sure what else I should be doing. The quest markers and locations all seem hit or miss, sometimes I would see things on the map and other times nothing. This is all relatively easy stuff that can be polished later.
So that's about it for first thoughts. The core engine looks fantastic and seems like there is a lot of potential. Polish and clarity are going to be important, though, to satisfy the masses that have been spoiled by tons of other similar games.
This is kind of silly but I loved the music playing on the patcher. I've never paid any attention to any other patcher so it's kind of significant.
Character creation was a bit underwhelming, but I'm presuming it's a placeholder and it is certainly good enough for Alpha testing.
First moment in the game.... graphics looked kind of off, but I switched from Windowed Fullscreen to just Fullscreen and the resolution updated to make everything look fantastic. Very impressive. I immediately wanted to take a screenshot. But... I couldn't find a screenshot key. Hrmph.
The opening quests leads you to a particular NPC, but at first glance he doesn't seem to be anywhere nearby and there doesn't seem to be any direction leading you to him. It's not a big deal, as some quick wandering leads you to him, but this could be streamlined a bit.
I read the tutorial and understand that content isn't really being tested, but... from a new player experience, the first thing you encounter is the quests/quest engine so it has to be evaluated at some level. Because if it is too jumbled or lacking, players may lose patience and quit. It seems like the devs don't want to have the traditional ? and ! all over the place for better immersion, and I guess that is OK. It's such a standard now though that without some clarity as to who to talk to it can be a bit irritating. I like that they are trying something different, but I'm not sure how effective it is. I ended up collecting a bunch of quests and it was kind of a mess. The flow seemed off as well, since one of the first quests you get is to buy harvesting tools but you don't have any cash for it and there's no immediately clear way of earning cash. Mobs drop "essences" but it wasn't clear to me if I should be saving these or not, so I saved them at first. Eventually it seemed like the only choice was to sell them to move forward - I don't know if that was the intent but it could be clearer and save some frustration.
I bounced around a lot in the next couple of hours, and did a LOT of running around back and forth. Mostly I was looking for lumber to harvest, which I never found. Is this because of one of the "known issues" ? I have to say after playing a ton of games recently with resource gathering, not being able to interact with the hundreds of trees I walk by is a pretty frustrating experience. I tried all sorts of ways to get something but was unsuccessful. Hopefully this is a bug, but even if it isn't, it seems odd that only specific trees can be interacted with. Definitely a big miss in an open world compared to something like Valheim.
Combat was fine, nothing special and nothing bad. I chose a cleric and the Q attack seems a little wonky like I move too much and have to reposition after each swing, but it's not a big deal. I ended up killing a lot of mobs because I wasn't sure what else I should be doing. The quest markers and locations all seem hit or miss, sometimes I would see things on the map and other times nothing. This is all relatively easy stuff that can be polished later.
So that's about it for first thoughts. The core engine looks fantastic and seems like there is a lot of potential. Polish and clarity are going to be important, though, to satisfy the masses that have been spoiled by tons of other similar games.
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