(Another) New Player's Perspective - First Impressions
Hello All,
I just got the game last week and spent quite a few hours, leveling a bard to Level 7/8. briefly touched other archetypes such as Cleric and Tank and wanted to share my impressions so far since I do believe it is important for the developers to get as much feedback as possible.
I also believe that the first few hours are crucial for any game as it is what "hooks" you to a game and the decision whether to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours going forward is made then. the below are my first impressions (and of course the obligatory disclaimer that I understand its still in Alpha and only the first few hours).
I believe that this game has great potential, but that it also suffers from over-complicated systems and a fairly mediocre new player's experience. the character creator is great and very detailed, the races are diverse enough to keep (I believe) most of the players engaged and interested. so far so good. it might be useful to give each race a racial trait (could lead to "Meta" builds but I am sure there is a way to balance it). there is a very strong resemblance to a bunch of other MMOs in terms of how everything looks and feels - guild wars, ESO, UO and so on which I believe was made on purpose.
You are then thrust into the world and an NPC greets you and explains where to go. very good, but on the minimap you can see a lot of quest indicators that stays on even after talking to the NPC, which i found to be confusing. after a few slain goblin I head to one of the camps filled with NPC and nice things to click on. there is not really much of hand-holding here so i just pick up everything including commissions and hope for the best. its sorts of works, but i do feel like there is no over-arcing story here - i.e the settlement is facing a combined threat of goblins, mercenaries and undead and by completing the quests you can "save" it. every task and commission has its own tiny ministory and they do not really connect to each other. this generates a "checklist" of tasks to complete in order to gain XP which feels very generic and bland.
the graphics can be somewhere between spectacular (landscape) to.. potato level (mainly mobs, some animations, NPCs) and it can look at times eye-straining blurry. I run everything on the highest level of detail and still it looks very unclear and unpolished. the UI is very poor and I think a whole redesign of it is very much needed (especially font sizes!) - its (the UI) a mess presented in low resolution that is a sharp contrast to the beautiful landscapes we are seeing.
the combat itself feels smooth and satisfying (at least for the Bard) even if its a bit too much on the hard side - I can only handle 2 mobs of roughly the same level at once and with the mob density and difficulty it can feel a bit rough at times. a bit of rebalancing here would improve the experience in my opinion. also, I chose the medium armor from that delivery quest but I feel i should have selected the heavy armor for more survivability. grouping was easy and I didn't encounter any problems but it felt the same as every other MMO - an obligatory "hello" and "goodbye" in the beginning and the end and that's it. I am not complaining about the players, but if grouping is mandatory (or at least very recommended) maybe some grouping tools would help or just treat every player in the area like its part of a giant group and let them share kills/loot/xp etc. the drops are mainly glint which I don't have anything to do with at the moment so i just vendor it. the game is not clear regarding it.
now I get to the "weak" part of the game IMO - crafting. I like crafting in any MMO I played (and I have played most of the western ones) and in this game its seems like an overly-complicated and tedious chore - I get that the vision of the game is to force you to group and create vibrant and dynamic communities, but I believe they have completely missed the mark here. after getting a commission to mine 20 basalt (20 nodes, mind you) my bags were quickly filled with gray basalt, green basalt, blue basalt, copper, rubies, zinc etc. i had to do several trips to the storage clerk just to complete this task and together with the slow starter mount it felt very tedious. I also do not understand why there are so many rarities and tiers and power levels for each resource and why crafting the most basic equipment requires unbelievable amounts of work. in my opinion the entire system can be simplified (not dumbed down, there is nothing smart in adding more RNG) and be made feel less like a chore while still preserving the overall vision. maybe tie the rarity to the artisan level - the lowest levels can only loot and work with grey items, the next one with green and so on.
that's it for now, I thank everyone that managed to survive this wall of text until here. any comments will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Belegc
