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Some thoughts from playing the game for a few hours
ethion
Member UncommonPosts: 2,888
I'll do kinda a journal of my impressions.
After I finally got the game patched I loaded the game expecting something good.
I was extremely disappointed with the character creation primarily from the graphics. It was very blah and not good looking at all. Selecting options for cloth/leather/metal made little difference in appearance. The faces were so poorly rendered I really didn't see much in the way of details. There were lots of options but it felt like there were less options then COH. So finally I had made a character and selected an power set.
I loaded into the game and things felt really unpolished and again the graphics looked horrible. So I went into options and changed my resolution and went into advanced settings. I tinkered around some and bumped the rez upto max. After I was done and back in the game the difference was amazing. It went from looking aweful to looking pretty darn good. Whoever setup the default graphics settings for the game should be shot.
After playing for awhile doing quests I've gotta say I was completely overwhelmed with information I didn't know how to use. I got items with stats but I'm not sure what stats are important for my powers. I'm not sure if power regen means energy regen. I don't know if crits work for spell like powers or only melee. I'm asked to select between science, arms, and mystic and told each can make items but not with certain stats. Leaves me kinda unsure what is important.
The UI is kinda confusing too. Probably one of the biggest mysteries was when I just started and there was an option to pick up an object. Cool I selected this option. Now I was carrying an object. Hmm how do you drop it, throw it?? My hotbar was full of the same option to hit something with the item. Clicking did nothing. So I finally tried picking up another option and it dropped the one I had... Somehow I showed my character's starting modified stats, you know which ones I got bonus points for. For the life of me I can't figure out how to show that again.
Interacting with objects in the world was also kinda cumbersome. The menu was nice but clicking the menu or hitting z didn't seem to do anything. Eventually I noticed a tiny bar filling. This should be like 3-4 times larger. Being so tiny I actually didn't even notice it...
Eventually I completed the quests and got through the tutorial. I did an open quest which was great but didn't seem to have any rewards... This was a bummer I really liked doing these in warhammer.... Without a reward what is the point of doing them?? It also says you get resources every time you kill something but I'm not sure how to look at these resources. Thankfully they aren't in my inventory 
Finally I got to do an instance. This was really pretty fun. Thankfully I had that NPC with me to take out the boss cause he was super nasty. The scripting was very good.
After I completed this it sent me to an area where everyone stood at attention and was pretty nifty. There were two NPCs to talk to with quest markers. It looks like talking to one of them is a choice. I'm not sure what the choice really was but after talking to one the other wouldn't talk to me. It looked like I could go to the desert or canada area but I had a quest telling me to go to canada. Glad I didn't go to the wrong place... After getting to canada I took a teleporter that got me to the outpost or something. I was talking to the npcs that are trainers for crafting I think. In any event I was reading the help info and something blew up and killed the NPC I was talking to... wtf she was just laying there dead... Now what.. So I moved to another NPC and spoke to them. Not being sure what stats were important I decided to put of choosing a craft. I decide to find the powerdome or whatever it was.
I looked at my map and saw a marker and headed that way. I saw a building and thought I had to find the entrance. I ran around the building discovering to my surprise that this outpost was surrounded by mobs that wanted to kill me. After running around and getting dangerously low I made the loop back to the trainers and fortunately guards killed the bad guys following me. Finally it occured to me to try going through that stargate ring although I thought that was where I came from.... Anyway going into it took me to the powerdome to get new powers. This was a cool area You can try out new powers before committing to them.
So first impressions of the game were I hated it and thought it was really poor. After tinkering a bit with the graphics and figuring some stuff out my impression improved.
Graphics - good
UI - poor
quests - very good
world objects - poor
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Ethion
Comments
Really good to know about the Rez. setting. Still waiting on that dam patcher =((. O well maybe later tonight i can get in game
Played Aoc/DDO/FFXI/WAR / LoTRo / CO / Aion
Playing Rift
Waiting for FFXIV to be the game it should. so sad =(
Yeah first thing to do is change the graphic settings, especially in the "advanced" section... doesn't make it AoC wow.. but it makes it a hell of a lot better...
The entire control system (even UI) does feel a bit console-ish. The game does gives you 3 kayboard setups at the beginning - i went for fantasy games but i doubt there's THAT much a difference.
The shift for block i quite liked, if you hold down shift you block attacks and since Super Villians tend to power up their attacks, you'll get used to blocking. I hate the "Z" too, it does give you a blue bar to click on instead...which tends to respond faster than the key... which sometimes sticks (during one of the first quests with the blocking from the firing squad).
It's fun though, and highly addictive especially once you head to canada (preferred that to the desert) ... then finish the storm quest and you're almost hitting level 10. Although i made the mistake of flying around... and got two shotted by a level 25 mob. It was funny... the range of travelling powers are awesome (i opted for flight), and being able to mix and match is nice... you can use claws and still blast away for example.
Crafting felt a bit blah and kinda tacked on... didn't really like the feel of it. (does anyone). Some of the drops are awesome... i got a 1 hour charged snow storm, which takes most mobs healths down to 50% when used. Still getting used to picking out equipment and working out where everything goes on my paperdoll.
Fun... but i'm not sure if i'll still find it fun within a week... i crashed once changing the map at the top right.
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
I think it is important that you read everything you come across. In the beginning when you pick your powers it tells you which stats are important. You know part of the fun in an RPG is writing these things down. If you pick archery for instance it says dexterity is important. Too many people neglect reading. The information is there but people want to be spoonfed and refuse to make an effort.
I really think this information should always be accessable. If you miss it when creating a character or just forget it should it be gone forever? Really there is a LOT of information being tossed at you rather quickly and people just want to get in and start playing then start really thinking about the details when it is time to make decisions... There is also no in game help, another lack.
One thing I do give the game is it appears to be more complex then COH so if you enjoy a more complex game this is attractive.
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Ethion
A couple comments on my impression of combat. this is way to early to really be conclusive but so far the combat seems rather bland. What I mean is I'm finding that much of the time I'm just hitting my primary damage attack. Fights are like hit 1,1 (twice to autotarget and turn on autoattack, 2,2,2,2 till dead. Sometimes I do 4 for healing, and sometimes i'll do 3 to break roots. Course maybe as I get more powers it will become more complex. But generally with no recharge timer using abilities is pretty much whatever does the most damage until you need utility.
Oh and one more thing when you are fighting you watch for when the villians are powering up a big attack and block.
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Ethion
Ok last update for today.
Played some more and I'm off the second tutorial area to the main game area. I made it off and I'm lvl 9 which seems like it might be a bit low since most of the guys around have gray exclamation marks. Meaning I'm too low level to get the quests. Didn't spend much time exploring the new area. I crashed. Seems like every time I go into the build interface and start messing with my builds it crashes.
Anyway the canada crisis part of the game made this game feel a lot like a standard MMO and not like COH. You are outdoors and doing standard type quests. If you watched lost the quests are pretty funny. Most of the quests were pretty typical of MMOs although I thought some of the tools and usage was done better. I'd still say the quests are very similar to any recent MMO and better then most.
Combat hasn't improved for me I still have the same abilities although I did discover you can upgrade your abilities which is nice. Some of the things you discover that are tools you can use are pretty good too.
So far I don't see anything that makes grouping desirable or any real way to setup groups. There are no looking for group commands I could see or any easy way to communicate to people in other instances to try to pull people together for a group. Canada Crisis zone was only upto 40 people per instance it looks like canada main instance can be upto maybe 200 per zone. Don't know if this instance supports all the levels from 10-40, if it does then this will be like playing on a server with only 200 people making any thoughts of grouping near impossible. Course with sidekicking maybe it won't be so bad...
Anyway so far I'm having fun and haven't uninstalled the game
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Ethion
You may want to try some different power sets too. I found that I fine some to be really engaging and fun while others--while mechanically fine--do not fit my playstyle.
At first I thought the game was great. With the lack of classes made me very happy and excited. It when I found out the game was very limited on the pvp. ((it has a small pvp duel like setting nothing really impreassive.)) Which I blame to the fact you can not turn your hereo into a Villain. The badly made PQ they ripped off of WAR. It hard to understander stand what gear I can wear. I end up getting items that will only replace items that are better in the gear. Over all the game feels very cheap and well play the beta love it hate it. I do not see this game doing so well.
One thing I think is there are like 3 exclamation points on the map in an open quest area. I found that this area seems to have loot. I'm not sure if it is a reward or not but the more I did the better it was.
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Ethion
Well I played some in canada and I gotta say this game is so overcamped it isn't much fun. This is normal for most new games but with the dynamic instances it seems to me the game will always be crowded. I also noticed that the mobs over various levels are tightly packed. So you can be fighting a lvl 9 mob and a stones throw away are some lvl 25 mobs. Not very good stuff in my opinion.
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Ethion
I had similar experience like OP at first when I was in CB. I have to say that this game is not beginner friendly game. You have so much new things to learn at first about this game, that some players will get frustrated. But when you have played this game for a while, and maybe created one or two toons more, you will notice that there is so much to do and many possibility how to customise and make your own hero.
First time, I also missed the recommend stats, but that wasnt a problem for me. I chose force power set that says it require endurance, but hell I didnt get once anything to end. I get everything to int and str and I was killing everyone in PvP. Seriously, if you take some time and think and read what your powers and stats do, you can make realy darn good hero even geting nothing to recommenend stats.
"To live in the world becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books."
Some other minor 'objections' from another noobie (some minor spoilers I guess):
- the 'z' key, and the stupid blue button popups.
If you are within range of a bench/trashcan/lampost then a small button appears saying 'press z to pick up X'.
If you are within range of a loot corpse, then a small button appears saying 'press z to loot corpse' (or something like that).
If you are within range of someone that you can speak to, then a small button appears saying 'press z to talk to X'.
If you are within range of a certain mission, then small button appears saying 'press z to take mission'.
In practice, this is pretty much the worst system I have seen any game implement. Players are picking up lamposts/benches rather than talking to the mission giver, many players are missing the popup quest, corpses are going unlooted and I am going mad with this system that has obviously been designed by a complete *****ing lunatic.
I have a keyboard, not a gamepad - and talk is very different to pickup/throw...
- usable items 'glimmer', when almost every other game has standardized on 'sparkles/dust rising out of it'.
There's a number of issues, but I know that a lot of players aren't taking the annoying quest that I mention below, nor finding the kitty as this simply isn't registering.
- there's 1 quest in the starter zone that is incredibly annoying... long queues forming to wait for the respawn, this 'should be fixed'.
- the first PQ it's not immediately obvious that the players actually accomplish anything ('defend for 2 mins', pretty sure the NPCs could do that on their own - and since the device has no health bar, what are we defending exactly?).
- the "equipable items" are poorly explained, and the icons don't seem to represent what the item 'does'. I think the most important part of an item is the 'where it goes' (primary defence/secondary offense etc.) and yet you need to mouse over it and read the description to even discover that...
- stats are a complete mystery. The powerhouse isn't much better, in that it doesn't explain things very well at all.
- it's pretty unclear that the 2 people that you meet after the first instance are 'either/or', my first character just took the reward from the first person, apparently locking them in to the desert path.
- the helicopter after the mission does not even have the 'glimmer' hint.
- the teleporter on the helipad to the powerhouse was confusing everyone. We didn't realize that we were taken to the door, not into the powerhouse.
- the tutorial/help text is very poor for 2009. "Wall of text" is not solved by putting 1 paragraph on 25 different screens.
- the default font in chatboxes/missions etc. is not that easy to read. Especially with the scaling issues on a wide screen - please let us change it to a sane, legible default! (likewise I can't for the life of me work out how to lengthen a chatbox - widen is easy, lengthen = no idea where to go).
Graphics... hmmm.. The obvious graphical 'oddity' is the LOD on the red car at the beginning of the game - for some reason it turns into a red brick at about 50 feet. Everything else was good, it's just that one car that really screws everything up (and since the car is shown at minute zero, that's quite a mistake).
Besides that, the game was quite good - but issue #1 - the 'z' button is severely annoying. Make a separate console version please.
When there are multiple options you can use your mouse to 'click' the proper button. You can stop pulling your hair out now.
When there are multiple options you can use your mouse to 'click' the proper button. You can stop pulling your hair out now.
a)
Players in-game clearly do not understand that. It's unintuitive, annoying and seriously bad design.
b) The blue box is something like 10-20 pixels tall? On a 1920x1200 screen, it's absolutely tiny.
c) The blue box does not position itself in a constant place, I think the closest/first appears at the top, if you move out of range they replace themselves, and I believe if you turn in the wrong spot they will also re-arrange themselves. It also requires reading the whole thing, as there is no obvious way to tell what it means besides reading it (it's not even colour-coded???).
d) It's completely needless. Pick-up-able lamp-posts etc should flash up a lamp-post icon or whatever - and then be picked up/thrown by pressing 'x'. NPC interaction should then be 'z'. (you do not get a prize for squeezing every command onto one button). [thinking about it - escape from hold is also z - I guess if you press it too quickly, you'll pick up the nearby lamp-posts? haven't tried that - but I suspect it would do that]
If you use mouse+keyboard, then obviously you need to release the left mouse button, locate the cursor on screen and then click the button.
If you use keyboard-only, then you'll need to grab the mouse, locate the cursor, and then click the button, release the mouse and return to the keyboard.
I fail to see how that can be considered anything other than shockingly-bad.
Don't get me wrong - I could write a book on LOTRO/AoC interface failings, and I mostly like those games... but 'z' in champions-online is probably the worst interface I can remember in an MMO.