jaspen
02-21-2017, 03:25 PM
I want to first start off by saying I do enjoy this game. I am a lazy writer, I have poor penmanship and my limited vocabulary could easily be written on a lunch napkin. Half of the words would probably be of the vulgar variety. With that said, what I write lacks grace and may come off a bit more coarse than intended. While this will be a long read, each point is still overly simplified and curt.
I have only been playing about 7 months so there may be items I am not thinking about in my ideas below. Something may exist that I am unaware of. Feel free to point out things I am overlooking. Also, keep in mind I never got to see the old boards so I may be pointing out something someone else has already mentioned in a post. I am not trying to steal the limelight, just offering my useless feedback.
I have a huge list of GUI issues and suggestions. I am more than confident a lot of issues will be corrected when the new GUI comes out. I will mentioned a couple items concerning it but more so generalized. I won’t list things like recipe filtering, sorting by level, expanding the left column, etc.
Lastly, I am keeping each point to a single paragraph on purpose so excuse me there. There are just my thoughts and in no way do I think they are right or represent everyone. Now enough with the disclaimers.
Augmentation skills need to be combined in the recipe section to one category. The recipes themselves need to be simplified to help preserve what life our wrists have left. One box for decomposing, one box for extracting, and one box for undo, for example. For transmutation you could simplify at least distilling to one box as well. If a person doesn’t have the skill, they can receive an error message saying “you cannot decompose helms yet.” The description on the recipe can fill them in on anything else they need to know. This would be great for group content and as well as help solo players in high spawn areas.
The new GUI needs customization. One of the biggest reasons, besides giving people the flexibility to make things look like they want or assist in how they play, is to account for people with various impairments. A great example of this is for people who are color blind. They need complete control over color options.
Gardening, if there was a way to either to plant in a grid based around the player, or predetermined grid on the ground in the gardening area itself, would help a lot with managing the garden. This isn’t about making it look pretty, which would be a nice side effect, it is about manageability. If not, perhaps a GUI that shows the status of current plants you own. If within range, you can use that GUI to water, fertilize and harvest buy clicking the buttons there instead of having to find the plants and click their buttons instead.
Clicking, for me, is a major issue in this game. I have problems with my wrists in general. Sometimes I almost think the game is programmed to select everything but the actual item, player or NPC I want. Yes, I know you can somewhat workaround with lots of keyboard shortcuts but that is often way less efficient and takes away from other keybinds and accessibility you would rather have. Instead of a single click of a mouse you have to press a key over and over to get to your target. I believe part of the problem is hit boxes being overly large and the game sometimes seems to put priority on certain items/players/NPCs over others. It seems it assumes you want to click a player instead of vendor for example.
Looting is almost a mini game of its own. Keybinds for various actions like loot all, butchering, skinning, etc. could be useful. Highlighting green gear would be useful as it is still used for augmentation and transmutation skills. Make it flash like other rare loot or simply outline the box around gear with the color of its rarity. It is extra time having to constantly check the loot to see if it is mundane gear or not which probably is more helpful in grouping situations but is also nice in high spawn situations. Having an area where you can mark certain loot as unwanted would be nice so it doesn’t even show on the corpse or is auto destroyed upon auto loot. Can remove later if you wish to start looting that item again.
I would like to hear more on performance in this game and whether there are known issues. I have a high end system and I get dismal performance. Mouse look constantly jerks pointing me in random directions and some dungeons, like the lab, it can become close to unplayable with low framerates (8 or lower). No matter how low my settings go the problem exists. If this is a widespread issue, are there settings that you suggest?
Greater flexibility with particle effects would be nice. I realize they can’t be totally turned off as we also need to know when bosses and mobs use their special abilities. Can have options to turn off for players and/or lower their intensity (Number of particles or brightness of particles). The high contrast and flashing can be extremely disruptive to other players.
There is a lot I would like to bring up about chat. Like font size changes, color options, combat spam, time stamps, better tabs, ability to chat on in selected window and which chats go in which tabs, etc. Once again we will save that when the GUI comes out as a lot will probably be fixed then.
The ability to turn hide/unhide dropped items and tombstones could go into helping with performance and getting rid of eyesores on the landscape. I hate trying to loot and pray to a tombstone instead or pick up some random trash someone has dropped. Perhaps an option to destroy loot would help with this problem as well but I can see an argument not to.
A bug tracker would be quite helpful. If one does already exist, feel free to point it out to me. This would be a place of known issues for people to reference. I realize you guys have limited resources but in the end of the day I believe this would help. Not only will it prevent you from having to read tons of the same reports of known issues, to you, it would make players feel better that you know about something and going to fix it. People tend to assume the worse and have a higher chance of quitting thinking you don’t care or not looking into a major issue that is affecting them when in reality you are busting ass trying to fix it. This game has what I feel to be way too low of a population for a free game that is as polished as this is and this could be part of the problem. It is hard for some to understand that the game is being developed even though you may spam them with this is an alpha please report bugs and make suggestions.
The cold and heat mechanics in the game are unique and I give you credit there. Personally, I am not a fan of them. At the end of the day, and when the novelty has worn off, it feels like nothing more than a fly at a picnic. In essence we are just giving people personal dots in some zones and these zones usually appear to have very low rate of people utilizing them. I have heard some say it is challenging and that would seem to apply more to inventory management than the actual gameplay. Having to greatly alter your armor for specific areas, carry an even larger variety of consumables, change your skillsets to hunt in that area (which i have seen) or constantly swapping out consumables and gear based on the area you are about to hunt, is not my idea of creating challenging content. Perhaps, implementing multistep quests that help you learn how to survive the area better lowering their affects per quest or an outdoor survival skill that you can raise to lower it would be more engaging and accomplishing. The last thing we need is more forced crap in our inventory. I understand consumables are needed to get money out of the economy. Inventory is a topic I will refrain from for now as I feel there is a lot that could assist with at least neatening it up since we do often have to carry such a large variety of things from food, prisms, baubles, potions, flowers, gear sets, quest parts, etc. Would be nice to organize stuff we use separately from stuff we loot.
I love variety and while I am not a big tradeskiller, I would like to see them have the option of selecting the look of the armor they are crafting. So a leather worker gets to choose from all the various leatherworking graphics. This would lend itself to more variety in outfits and let people invest more in their characters. Obviously you could just allow people to choose the look of their gear through another skillset, vendor purchases or whatever but this idea would at least make it more interactive with other characters.
I hate to bring this up as I know you guys have already said you will be expanding all dungeons but things are getting a bit cramped with the small population we already have. I find myself standing around more than hunting as I hate constantly running somewhere just to find a limited number mobs and everyone is fighting over a kill. I am seeing some tension between players and “rude” behavior following. Not sure if the engine can ramp up spawn rate based on how quickly they can be killed or not though I could see problems with that.
Okay, that is more than enough for now. I don’t even want to proofread all that dribble myself. With that said, don’t be too harsh with grammar mistakes. If enough people don't shoot holes in everything I listed I will list out further items later on.
Let me know your opinions.
I have only been playing about 7 months so there may be items I am not thinking about in my ideas below. Something may exist that I am unaware of. Feel free to point out things I am overlooking. Also, keep in mind I never got to see the old boards so I may be pointing out something someone else has already mentioned in a post. I am not trying to steal the limelight, just offering my useless feedback.
I have a huge list of GUI issues and suggestions. I am more than confident a lot of issues will be corrected when the new GUI comes out. I will mentioned a couple items concerning it but more so generalized. I won’t list things like recipe filtering, sorting by level, expanding the left column, etc.
Lastly, I am keeping each point to a single paragraph on purpose so excuse me there. There are just my thoughts and in no way do I think they are right or represent everyone. Now enough with the disclaimers.
Augmentation skills need to be combined in the recipe section to one category. The recipes themselves need to be simplified to help preserve what life our wrists have left. One box for decomposing, one box for extracting, and one box for undo, for example. For transmutation you could simplify at least distilling to one box as well. If a person doesn’t have the skill, they can receive an error message saying “you cannot decompose helms yet.” The description on the recipe can fill them in on anything else they need to know. This would be great for group content and as well as help solo players in high spawn areas.
The new GUI needs customization. One of the biggest reasons, besides giving people the flexibility to make things look like they want or assist in how they play, is to account for people with various impairments. A great example of this is for people who are color blind. They need complete control over color options.
Gardening, if there was a way to either to plant in a grid based around the player, or predetermined grid on the ground in the gardening area itself, would help a lot with managing the garden. This isn’t about making it look pretty, which would be a nice side effect, it is about manageability. If not, perhaps a GUI that shows the status of current plants you own. If within range, you can use that GUI to water, fertilize and harvest buy clicking the buttons there instead of having to find the plants and click their buttons instead.
Clicking, for me, is a major issue in this game. I have problems with my wrists in general. Sometimes I almost think the game is programmed to select everything but the actual item, player or NPC I want. Yes, I know you can somewhat workaround with lots of keyboard shortcuts but that is often way less efficient and takes away from other keybinds and accessibility you would rather have. Instead of a single click of a mouse you have to press a key over and over to get to your target. I believe part of the problem is hit boxes being overly large and the game sometimes seems to put priority on certain items/players/NPCs over others. It seems it assumes you want to click a player instead of vendor for example.
Looting is almost a mini game of its own. Keybinds for various actions like loot all, butchering, skinning, etc. could be useful. Highlighting green gear would be useful as it is still used for augmentation and transmutation skills. Make it flash like other rare loot or simply outline the box around gear with the color of its rarity. It is extra time having to constantly check the loot to see if it is mundane gear or not which probably is more helpful in grouping situations but is also nice in high spawn situations. Having an area where you can mark certain loot as unwanted would be nice so it doesn’t even show on the corpse or is auto destroyed upon auto loot. Can remove later if you wish to start looting that item again.
I would like to hear more on performance in this game and whether there are known issues. I have a high end system and I get dismal performance. Mouse look constantly jerks pointing me in random directions and some dungeons, like the lab, it can become close to unplayable with low framerates (8 or lower). No matter how low my settings go the problem exists. If this is a widespread issue, are there settings that you suggest?
Greater flexibility with particle effects would be nice. I realize they can’t be totally turned off as we also need to know when bosses and mobs use their special abilities. Can have options to turn off for players and/or lower their intensity (Number of particles or brightness of particles). The high contrast and flashing can be extremely disruptive to other players.
There is a lot I would like to bring up about chat. Like font size changes, color options, combat spam, time stamps, better tabs, ability to chat on in selected window and which chats go in which tabs, etc. Once again we will save that when the GUI comes out as a lot will probably be fixed then.
The ability to turn hide/unhide dropped items and tombstones could go into helping with performance and getting rid of eyesores on the landscape. I hate trying to loot and pray to a tombstone instead or pick up some random trash someone has dropped. Perhaps an option to destroy loot would help with this problem as well but I can see an argument not to.
A bug tracker would be quite helpful. If one does already exist, feel free to point it out to me. This would be a place of known issues for people to reference. I realize you guys have limited resources but in the end of the day I believe this would help. Not only will it prevent you from having to read tons of the same reports of known issues, to you, it would make players feel better that you know about something and going to fix it. People tend to assume the worse and have a higher chance of quitting thinking you don’t care or not looking into a major issue that is affecting them when in reality you are busting ass trying to fix it. This game has what I feel to be way too low of a population for a free game that is as polished as this is and this could be part of the problem. It is hard for some to understand that the game is being developed even though you may spam them with this is an alpha please report bugs and make suggestions.
The cold and heat mechanics in the game are unique and I give you credit there. Personally, I am not a fan of them. At the end of the day, and when the novelty has worn off, it feels like nothing more than a fly at a picnic. In essence we are just giving people personal dots in some zones and these zones usually appear to have very low rate of people utilizing them. I have heard some say it is challenging and that would seem to apply more to inventory management than the actual gameplay. Having to greatly alter your armor for specific areas, carry an even larger variety of consumables, change your skillsets to hunt in that area (which i have seen) or constantly swapping out consumables and gear based on the area you are about to hunt, is not my idea of creating challenging content. Perhaps, implementing multistep quests that help you learn how to survive the area better lowering their affects per quest or an outdoor survival skill that you can raise to lower it would be more engaging and accomplishing. The last thing we need is more forced crap in our inventory. I understand consumables are needed to get money out of the economy. Inventory is a topic I will refrain from for now as I feel there is a lot that could assist with at least neatening it up since we do often have to carry such a large variety of things from food, prisms, baubles, potions, flowers, gear sets, quest parts, etc. Would be nice to organize stuff we use separately from stuff we loot.
I love variety and while I am not a big tradeskiller, I would like to see them have the option of selecting the look of the armor they are crafting. So a leather worker gets to choose from all the various leatherworking graphics. This would lend itself to more variety in outfits and let people invest more in their characters. Obviously you could just allow people to choose the look of their gear through another skillset, vendor purchases or whatever but this idea would at least make it more interactive with other characters.
I hate to bring this up as I know you guys have already said you will be expanding all dungeons but things are getting a bit cramped with the small population we already have. I find myself standing around more than hunting as I hate constantly running somewhere just to find a limited number mobs and everyone is fighting over a kill. I am seeing some tension between players and “rude” behavior following. Not sure if the engine can ramp up spawn rate based on how quickly they can be killed or not though I could see problems with that.
Okay, that is more than enough for now. I don’t even want to proofread all that dribble myself. With that said, don’t be too harsh with grammar mistakes. If enough people don't shoot holes in everything I listed I will list out further items later on.
Let me know your opinions.