Corax
01-29-2019, 02:38 PM
Hello! I got the demo last night and gave it a spin for a few hours. Here are some comments and suggestions.
Startup
The game client started in windowed mode, with a teeny tiny window. I immediately went to the menu to change to fullscreen, but the graphics didn't fill the screen, leaving vertical black bars on either side. The game client isn't detecting my screen resolution. I later found settings once I had created a character—these options should be available at the login/character creation screen. I didn't see a button or anything to open settings on the character creation screen.
Character Creation
On to character creation, where the game really makes its first impression on the player. What I saw was a character preview model, nearly half covered by the character info pane. The cursor changed to a rotate icon when over the right half of that info pane, and clicking or dragging moved the obscured character preview rather than the visible controls. This is not a good first impression, and may be turning away potential players.
I was afraid to create a character, because I couldn't tell if I would be able to delete it or create a new character if I screwed up. The character select pane is not displayed unless you have a character. I think it should always be displayed, so that the player can see their affordances for managing characters right away. If there are no characters, the screen should load as if the create character button had been clicked, of course.
Once I had created a character (and logged out to the character screen), the create character button was disabled. I presume this was because I was playing the demo, but a tooltip giving the reason would be nice. Also, there is an 'X' button to the right of my characters name. Presumably a delete button? But there is already a Delete Character button under the preview model. Does clicking either prompt for confirmation? I don't know! On the Macintosh, buttons and menus that prompt for more info have an ellipsis after the title; that would be good to have here.
I understand the development focus is on gameplay right now, but in addition to the above, the character graphics need some help for a good first impression. I probably don't need to go into detail about this. I will say that I hope this game includes options for character height and girth. I get tired of playing bodybuilders and supermodels. Let me be slender or chubby.
Basic User Interface: Thumbs Up!
Upon creating my character, the rather abrubt cutscene dumped me onto a pretty nicely rendered island, with foes to battle right away and an easy to grasp interface. There was just enough help as I gained new abilities so that I knew what to do. Project Gorgon is clearly off to a good start in this regard! I liked having labeled buttons on objects and corpses so I could know what interacting with them would do.
The various resource bars are nicely distinguished and easy to see. My one critique would be to make them all the same length. I don't want to be calculating relative percentages based on varying max bar lengths. I turned off the resource orbs on the bottom right away as they took up a lot of space.
The minimap was ok, it did its job. Call me silly but I prefer a round minimap. I found that I wanted to put marks and notes on the minimap as in some other games and was frustrated that I couldn't. Much later I found the world map, which does allow me to put (private) labeled markers. That's very good, especially the way this game doesn't coddle the player with regard to quests and puzzles.
The chat panel could use some options for transparency & colors. Even though it's the bottom corner of the screen, I like to keep my chat big and see-through. I also got very confused trying to do open chat after someone messaged me privately. The demo doesn't allow access to the global channel, but the demo channel is hidden in a submenu.
Action bars do their jobs. I don't understand why they only have 6 buttons each, but I know games like Guild Wars made deliberate design decisions about limited access to actions so that may be the case here. I like having the different bars use Control and Shift keys. (Hey, we also have an Alt key... :p) I haven't yet tried to configure my bars but I understand that's possible.
Graphics, Animation, Camera
The graphics and animations are pretty good for an alpha release, and I understand those are going to change a lot, so no more comment than that.
The camera control needs work. I found the camera very difficult to control with the mouse, sometimes barely moving, sometimes spinning wildly with a tiny movement of the mouse. I actually got killed a couple times because of that. :D I did mess with some of the options with regard to camera control, and will see if that's something I can adjust rather than an actual bug (although it's an actual bug that the game doesn't pick good defaults, in my opinion).
Gameplay & "Story"
I am not a fan of the amnesiac trope in RPGs.
I am especially not a fan of being told I am an amnesiac hero who's forgotten how awesome I was. Let me just play a character of my choice with a back story of my choice, fitting a beginning adventurer of course.
I emphasize this because it seems to be a prominent and intentional part of the new-character experience.
I loved having quests appear organically, without giant glowing exclamation points or pulsing dots on my (mini) map telling me where to go to get my lollipop. I had to take notes, I had to keep things in mind, it was great. Knowing I could put notes on the world map would have saved me some time, but other than that I was shown enough about the notebook and such that I could keep my own records.
As I noted in a separate post, I would like to be able to select and copy text in character dialogs to paste into my notebook.
Taming a rat was fun, and it looks like I'll be taming more creatures later. It also looks like taming pets is strictly temporary; I like that! There were some pathing issues with the pet rat but that's a problem every MMO I've played has had with pets. The UI for managing the pet initially appeared half-under the minimap (because I had enlarged it). A different default location, or maybe layering over the minimap, would be good.
Combat labels such as "Vulnerable" and "Rage attack" weren't clear to me. Was I vulnerable or was my target? Was I rage attacking, was it an opportunity to rage attack by pressing a particular button, was my target rage attacking? I didn't know. There was also an icon of a red circle with a sword that was unclear. I am sure I will learn about these by asking in-game, but I figured I would point it out here. Maybe there are cues such as color or font that could distinguish things I am doing, or can do, or that the target is doing.
Reporting Bugs
The bug reporting interface is pretty rudimentary. There is no screenshot capability: I should be able to click a button to do a screen grab (minus the bug reporting window itself), or upload a file from my computer.
I don't know how much info about my computer is automatically recorded.
A template on what information is desired would be most helpful. As a former software engineer, I know all about bug reports that don't provide enough information to even begin a diagnosis, so users need all the help they can get to provide good info.
Conclusion
That seems more than long enough for a first review, assuming these are even wanted. :) I enjoyed my first few hours in the game, and look forward to exploring more and meeting people during more populated times of the day.
Startup
The game client started in windowed mode, with a teeny tiny window. I immediately went to the menu to change to fullscreen, but the graphics didn't fill the screen, leaving vertical black bars on either side. The game client isn't detecting my screen resolution. I later found settings once I had created a character—these options should be available at the login/character creation screen. I didn't see a button or anything to open settings on the character creation screen.
Character Creation
On to character creation, where the game really makes its first impression on the player. What I saw was a character preview model, nearly half covered by the character info pane. The cursor changed to a rotate icon when over the right half of that info pane, and clicking or dragging moved the obscured character preview rather than the visible controls. This is not a good first impression, and may be turning away potential players.
I was afraid to create a character, because I couldn't tell if I would be able to delete it or create a new character if I screwed up. The character select pane is not displayed unless you have a character. I think it should always be displayed, so that the player can see their affordances for managing characters right away. If there are no characters, the screen should load as if the create character button had been clicked, of course.
Once I had created a character (and logged out to the character screen), the create character button was disabled. I presume this was because I was playing the demo, but a tooltip giving the reason would be nice. Also, there is an 'X' button to the right of my characters name. Presumably a delete button? But there is already a Delete Character button under the preview model. Does clicking either prompt for confirmation? I don't know! On the Macintosh, buttons and menus that prompt for more info have an ellipsis after the title; that would be good to have here.
I understand the development focus is on gameplay right now, but in addition to the above, the character graphics need some help for a good first impression. I probably don't need to go into detail about this. I will say that I hope this game includes options for character height and girth. I get tired of playing bodybuilders and supermodels. Let me be slender or chubby.
Basic User Interface: Thumbs Up!
Upon creating my character, the rather abrubt cutscene dumped me onto a pretty nicely rendered island, with foes to battle right away and an easy to grasp interface. There was just enough help as I gained new abilities so that I knew what to do. Project Gorgon is clearly off to a good start in this regard! I liked having labeled buttons on objects and corpses so I could know what interacting with them would do.
The various resource bars are nicely distinguished and easy to see. My one critique would be to make them all the same length. I don't want to be calculating relative percentages based on varying max bar lengths. I turned off the resource orbs on the bottom right away as they took up a lot of space.
The minimap was ok, it did its job. Call me silly but I prefer a round minimap. I found that I wanted to put marks and notes on the minimap as in some other games and was frustrated that I couldn't. Much later I found the world map, which does allow me to put (private) labeled markers. That's very good, especially the way this game doesn't coddle the player with regard to quests and puzzles.
The chat panel could use some options for transparency & colors. Even though it's the bottom corner of the screen, I like to keep my chat big and see-through. I also got very confused trying to do open chat after someone messaged me privately. The demo doesn't allow access to the global channel, but the demo channel is hidden in a submenu.
Action bars do their jobs. I don't understand why they only have 6 buttons each, but I know games like Guild Wars made deliberate design decisions about limited access to actions so that may be the case here. I like having the different bars use Control and Shift keys. (Hey, we also have an Alt key... :p) I haven't yet tried to configure my bars but I understand that's possible.
Graphics, Animation, Camera
The graphics and animations are pretty good for an alpha release, and I understand those are going to change a lot, so no more comment than that.
The camera control needs work. I found the camera very difficult to control with the mouse, sometimes barely moving, sometimes spinning wildly with a tiny movement of the mouse. I actually got killed a couple times because of that. :D I did mess with some of the options with regard to camera control, and will see if that's something I can adjust rather than an actual bug (although it's an actual bug that the game doesn't pick good defaults, in my opinion).
Gameplay & "Story"
I am not a fan of the amnesiac trope in RPGs.
I am especially not a fan of being told I am an amnesiac hero who's forgotten how awesome I was. Let me just play a character of my choice with a back story of my choice, fitting a beginning adventurer of course.
I emphasize this because it seems to be a prominent and intentional part of the new-character experience.
I loved having quests appear organically, without giant glowing exclamation points or pulsing dots on my (mini) map telling me where to go to get my lollipop. I had to take notes, I had to keep things in mind, it was great. Knowing I could put notes on the world map would have saved me some time, but other than that I was shown enough about the notebook and such that I could keep my own records.
As I noted in a separate post, I would like to be able to select and copy text in character dialogs to paste into my notebook.
Taming a rat was fun, and it looks like I'll be taming more creatures later. It also looks like taming pets is strictly temporary; I like that! There were some pathing issues with the pet rat but that's a problem every MMO I've played has had with pets. The UI for managing the pet initially appeared half-under the minimap (because I had enlarged it). A different default location, or maybe layering over the minimap, would be good.
Combat labels such as "Vulnerable" and "Rage attack" weren't clear to me. Was I vulnerable or was my target? Was I rage attacking, was it an opportunity to rage attack by pressing a particular button, was my target rage attacking? I didn't know. There was also an icon of a red circle with a sword that was unclear. I am sure I will learn about these by asking in-game, but I figured I would point it out here. Maybe there are cues such as color or font that could distinguish things I am doing, or can do, or that the target is doing.
Reporting Bugs
The bug reporting interface is pretty rudimentary. There is no screenshot capability: I should be able to click a button to do a screen grab (minus the bug reporting window itself), or upload a file from my computer.
I don't know how much info about my computer is automatically recorded.
A template on what information is desired would be most helpful. As a former software engineer, I know all about bug reports that don't provide enough information to even begin a diagnosis, so users need all the help they can get to provide good info.
Conclusion
That seems more than long enough for a first review, assuming these are even wanted. :) I enjoyed my first few hours in the game, and look forward to exploring more and meeting people during more populated times of the day.