Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What a joke.
Nomad40
Member Posts: 76
I remember when I first read about this game.
You can play a dragon? You can gain power from your hoard? SWEET!!
I had been taking a break from WOW lately playing COV when I got an email for a free trial of Horizons. This is my litmus test for games, if I don't like the trial I am not going to waste money on the game. So it was with much excitement that I clicked the download icon. 3 hours and many headaches later I had the file. Once installed I had issues with the patcher. What a pain! After almost giving up I rebooted and viola! the game launched. How odd is it that the game goes through a browser to launch? Seriously. How hard is it to write a launcher up? Anyway...
Excitedly I made up my dragon character. I must say there is a decent amount of customization here, nothing to write home about but not terrible. Once my character was in game I was ready to go. Here things went downhill very quickly. The user interface is one of the worst if not THE WORST I have ever used. In the hour I spent playing I was unable to find a way to remap the keys to the style of control that I like. Couple this with a sharp learning curve for skills, a help system that is anything but helpful, a tutorial that is hands down THE WORST I have ever been though, and the fact that a dragon can be killed by a rat and I quickly found the fun dying.
I have play tested many of the most popular MMOs out there. I have played most of them. EQ, DAOC, SWG, EVE, GW, COV, WOW, etc and I have never seen a game with such promise that was hampered by such mundane things as a bad interface and controls. For anyone who was actually able to overcome these issues and have fun with the game I commend you. I don't have that kind of patience. I want to have fun and this just was not fun. Too bad.
Comments
Not to belittle your experience, I'm truly sorry it was poor. But....
In the first 5 minutes of the tutorial it shows you where the options panel is to remap your keys.
And, there are no rats in this game.
Are you speaking of the same game? Or just in metaphor?
Also...the initial design of more than 4 years ago had you gaining power from your hoard. But that's been gone since long before launch.
I'm confused. Perhaps I can help?
Obviously patience or lack of it is the limiting factor in your travels through the 'many' games you have 'Play Tested'
launched however most companies by this time in a games life would have
streamlined the tutorial and controls.
The big issue I have is the style that the tutorial is set up under. The lack of a simple help database (and by that I mean simple to find, use,etc) and the lack of a players manual.
I have read through a few fan sites and after a few IMs from friends decided to give it another shot this evening.
I will admit I may have overlooked where it told me to do this but as an example.
As a dragon you are told to go mine in the valley below during the newbie jaunt. I searched around and found the area and the GATHER button lit up. When I clicked it the message said I could not perform that action with the equipt item (or something along those lines) since reading a bit more I am still stymed on how to get this to work.
http://horizons.gamersinfo.net/guides/default.php?id=7
Because dragons dig with their claws and don't equip tools, you have to "cast" a spell to tell the system what it is you're intending to do. But the quest SPECIFICALLY tells you the directions. This I know because I playstested this particular tutorial 8 times before it went live.
It also tells you before you reach this NPC how to drag and drop the abilities into your hotkeys so that you can simply click on them when you come upon the resource. You then just click on the hotkey and start gathering the resource. All of this is in the tutorial - both in the pop-up blue boxes and in the NPC text.
You may want to restart the dragon tutorial over and read it a little more slowly. Being a dragon is a very very different experience than any other from nearly any other game on the market.
You'll find being a bi-ped very familiar. But dragons...those are just odd.
Edit* - and yes, I agree on the players manual. But, the one from the launch would simply be far too outdated at this point and no new one has been written since.
Just the thing for a noob to check out to get the 'feel' for what they are doing.
In the case of the write up it tells me to go to skills and drag over and drop the spell and even gives some advise on macroing. Top notch stuff. Perhaps they should hire the guy that wrote it to do their website.
Heh, Gamersinfo is Ophelea's site.
I'll admit the intro into the game is rather frustrating. I just started playing less than a month ago and I came very close to uninstalling and ignoring this game forver before I got hooked on it. Long startup lag, porting lag, and a few bugs.
The big savior for me was the new player assistance channel and the wonderfully helpful community. They showed me how to fix most of things I was having problems with. Which is my advice, if you get to one of the game's problem spots... ask other players for help. You should soon overcome the difficulties and be hooked.
The dragon tutorial addresses this pretty clearly: Open your character window, click the abilities tab, click the Craft radio button, and drag all your craft abilities to a bank of hot keys. Want to mine ore? Hit the hotkey for Dragon Mining.
The default UI is OK, but a little experimentation will show you that the UI in HZ is very flexable and can be adjusted to a broad range of preferences. I'd suggest joining the Dragon and New Player Assistance chat channels at your first oppertunity. Spend some time asking questions and getting your abilities set up, then go hunting. A good UI layout will help a lot. My daughter started playing a dragon when she was five, and had no problems laying waste to the gruok population on Skalkaar - with a well-configured UI.
I will caution you that dragons are not for the impatient. They are very much a delayed gratification design. In return, they become far more powerful than any other single class in the game, if you invest the time and work required. Will you fly in 14 days? No. Will you own a lair? Highly doubtful. Will you know if being a dragon is right for you? I should think so.
If you have questions, ask politely and make note of the answers you're given. This community actually uses "please" and "thank you" in conversation; doing likewise isn't required but it certainly doesn't hurt. You should have no problems getting answers to your questions in the channels mentioned above. I would strongly suggest reading the tutorial materials carefully, since it does cover almost everything you need to know about basic gameplay, combat, and crafting.
Good luck, and good fortune to you.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
In defense of HZ, the tutorial they have in place now is actually quite good and holds hands fairly well. I'd have to say if you didn't get it, then you'll struggle with most other games.
The option to re-map keys is where it is on most games, under Options. If you think re-mapping keys in HZ is bad, try FFXI or Silkroad Online for a gag.
It isn't bad at all. It's a no-brainer actually.
Still, if you're determined not to like a game, then no amount of preaching will change your mind and it's a pointless exercise.
But...you could be playing Dark and Light, which makes HZ look like a truly polished effort.
Handholding is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about covering the wide variety of ways that players learn.
The game skills system is a bit different from others in that you have to 'GET' that you use the machine and have to activate the skill associated with it. Once you know that you are pretty well off. This is a bit of a change from the other games I have played and I already admitted that I missed that part in the tutorial. I closed the window on accident and could not figure out how to get it back open. That would be one thing that they could do is before anything else say "This is the tutorial button. At any time if you want to bring up the tutorial click here."
There are good tutorials and bad. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this one a 3. It could be a lot better than it is and if this is the improved version I salute the current players for their determination.
I really want to like this game. Last night I went home and played though the first part of the dragon quests. It is still too early to pass judgement on the game as a whole. The tutorial and set up (patcher) could use some attention.
The old tutorials were a nightmare, indeed.
As far as opening the tutorials again, usually running back to your starting point or greeting the initial NPC will trigger it again. I understand what you mean by people learning in different ways; however, it's unrealistic to expect any tutorial to be equally effective at reaching everyone. There will be some people who assimilate it perfectly and there will be some who just can't get it with that presentation. Myself, I found the tutorials in Auto Assault & in the Wish beta frustrating and annoying beyond words. YMMV, as always.
The HZ player community recognizes this, though, and that's why we have New Player Assistance chat. Someone who isn't getting the tutorial as presented can get the information they need in NPA. That isn't a failure of the tutorial, though; the tutorial does present the material and concepts needed for beginning gameplay. It's simply a fact of life that all variables cannot be predicted and accounted for.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
That being said my character is well on his way and I will post back as I progress thru the trial.
Actually getting the tutorial back is one of the very first things it tells you. Simply click on the question mark in any box.
The tutorial isn't perfect, but it is pretty good and better than most for sure. Really anyone who is seriously interested though should join the New Player channel as you can get far better help from the Horizons community than any tutorial it is possible to design.
As for polish, I'll agree to that. But WoW and EVE are the only games I've seen that feel "polished". It is no doubt why those games are doing so well, but those games also don't appeal to everyone.