Goblinworks Executive Founder
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So with another week of Alpha testing behind us I decided I am going to start writing up reports after each testing period. As such, here is my week 2 Alpha Report!
After the second week and a good number of hours played I can definitely say I am starting to get the feel for things. On top of this, I do feel that getting in, even this early and starting to test and get a feel for the world and how it works will provide a slight advantage once the game actually starts up. As such, for anyone that is really passionate about this project and has the available funds I would recommend getting in if you can to start to get a better feel for the world.
The combat still feels a little off and sluggish, but I expect that will improve moving forward. I think a lot of this might be related to the animation timings. The increased speed and (it seemed) longer leash distance did make the mobs more difficult. I think these could be increased even a little further if the advanced AI isn’t as much of a priority. I still have yet to delve into the PvP combat to see how it plays out, mainly due to wanting to be able to do other testing and not trash my reputation thus limiting my other testing.
I played most of the game on fantastic settings and it definitely increased the look of the game a lot! I can’t wait until this is optimized a little bit so it runs a little smoother with the fantastic settings, even so I was still getting around 30 FPS (when not live streaming) on fantastic quality. The graphics aren’t AAA by any means, but I would say to people complaining about graphics quality that these are still pretty good for the early state that the game is in.
I played with the crafting to a small extent, at least getting a first look at it. I can see there is a pretty good amount of depth to the system without making it overly complicated. On the harvesting side, I am hoping there will be more depth than just going around to various nodes around the world. I thought I recalled there being mention to harvesting operations and such which I think would feel a lot better than the nodes that are there now (which feel like the standard node you would see in WoW or many other MMOs). I did really like how you could use other things then direct crafting materials to craft things. For example, to make steel you could use Iron or you could use broken weapon parts from enemies. One thing I would like to see is the ability to break down actual loot, like weapons and armor to use in crafting as well. I plan to delve into this a little deeper the next time around.
I was happy to see this week that some of the areas to the South/West that were causing crashes seemed to be fixed. I really like some of the different terrain areas and can see a lot of potential for future gameplay with wars going on. There is a significant FPS improvement going from the forests to the mountains and even the plains. I am assuming this has to do with the trees. The world still feels really big even though it is a reasonably small chunk of the overall map. I did find in the very North East region I ran into the invisible wall even though there were still hexes I thought I should have been able to get to. I tried jumping up the mountain but didn’t manage to get up there. Are we going to see the map expanding at all during alpha or will it only expand on EE?
- In full screen on the login screen or on the character select screen there is not an exit button in order to exit the game. As such you have to alt+tab out in order to close it.
- Related to the above, when using full screen if I alt+tab I cannot alt+tab back into the game it just sits there in the task bar.
- Stephen provided a list of feats needed in order to advance in a role. My main is a cleric and in order to get Crusader 1 which is necessary to advance to Cleric 1 it required Heavy Armor Proficiency 1. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if it was simply not added to the list.
- Related to the above I found that when you get a Role it does not display on your character sheet initially. For example, I got everything to get Cleric 1 the achievement showed up, but on the character sheet under the Role section it was not there. However, when I got Cleric 2 then Cleric 1 would show in the Role section of the character sheet.
- On the action bars across the bottom, I cannot figure out a way to un-slot things from them. I can only see how to add or overwrite. Would be useful for organization purposes to be able to remove them as well.
- On the character sheet, it looked like most of the Knowledge skills were there, however one I did not see was Knowledge Regligion.
- Not sure if this was a feature or a bug but you can stand a really long distance away from a node in order to harvest it. On top of this it seemed like this would help to not agro NPCs but I can’t be certain on that point.
- The map pin you can place on your map gets reset when you die. Not a big issue but something that could be fixed.
- Trading was not working at all, as far as I could tell. I got it to work last week but I couldn’t get it to work this week.
For the Cleric you it was noted you need to pick the Glory Domain in order to advance to Cleric 1. Do the domains actually have any effect on anything at this point? If not what is the plan for them in the future?
For crafting, I didn’t get to delve into it too much, but are the recipes that you loot expendable or once you have them do you always keep them?
Can we also potentially get a couple more character slots enabled for testing? Would be great if we could have maybe 10 character slots.
Goblinworks Game Designer
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In full screen on the login screen or on the character select screen there is not an exit button in order to exit the game. As such you have to alt+tab out in order to close it.
I think the programmers have this in their list. We mostly play in windowed mode around the office, so I don't think we noticed what a pain this was until watching everyone at PaizoCon.
Related to the above, when using full screen if I alt+tab I cannot alt+tab back into the game it just sits there in the task bar.
As above. There's nothing like having to fix machines every time someone hits the windows key by accident to make us devs notice there's actually a problem ;) .
Stephen provided a list of feats needed in order to advance in a role. My main is a cleric and in order to get Crusader 1 which is necessary to advance to Cleric 1 it required Heavy Armor Proficiency 1. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if it was simply not added to the list.
The lists don't include the full prereq tree, only what's specifically required for that achievement without their own prereqs. A lot of the listed feats also require a minimum ability score and achievement totals as well, which have a lot of variations on how to get them. Eventually we'll have any of the role's features and armor feats count toward the role level achievements. I think one of the goals for the UI is to eventually get in some kind of guide that will let you set an achievement goal and see a step-by-step course toward it, but I don't know how tricky that will be.
Related to the above I found that when you get a Role it does not display on your character sheet initially. For example, I got everything to get Cleric 1 the achievement showed up, but on the character sheet under the Role section it was not there. However, when I got Cleric 2 then Cleric 1 would show in the Role section of the character sheet.
Right now, AFAIK, it's pulling the rank of the role feature, rather than the achievement rating, which is problematic because that only goes to 14, not 20, so won't often match with your actual level. We're working on getting that to display right (it needs some hooks between the character sheet and achievements that aren't in place yet).
On the action bars across the bottom, I cannot figure out a way to un-slot things from them. I can only see how to add or overwrite. Would be useful for organization purposes to be able to remove them as well.
Agreed. I'll mention it to Tork to put on his list of UI improvement requests.
On the character sheet, it looked like most of the Knowledge skills were there, however one I did not see was Knowledge Regligion.
We dropped a few of the knowledges that seemed redundant. Engineering became a craft skill, Nobility seemed unnecessary when we had Seneschal and Officer as trade skills, and Religion seemed like it would have too much overlap with Iconographer. Knowing about Undead got moved to History to give it a little more to do.
Not sure if this was a feature or a bug but you can stand a really long distance away from a node in order to harvest it. On top of this it seemed like this would help to not agro NPCs but I can’t be certain on that point.
We're going to talk to programming about fiddling with this. It's probably the default interaction distance for everything.
The map pin you can place on your map gets reset when you die. Not a big issue but something that could be fixed.
I'll ask Tork to include that in his next UI requests.
Trading was not working at all, as far as I could tell. I got it to work last week but I couldn’t get it to work this week.
Yeah, it was pretty flaky this weekend. Seemed to be going down on a per-hex basis, from what I heard. The programmers know they need to get that more stable :) .
General Question
For the Cleric you it was noted you need to pick the Glory Domain in order to advance to Cleric 1. Do the domains actually have any effect on anything at this point? If not what is the plan for them in the future?
Man, sure will be cool when we have tooltips, right? ;)
Glory currently should be giving you a Base Defense bonus (that increases as you improve the feat). Long term, once we have Auras, it's meant to give that to all party members within your aura.
For reference, of the other features that are currently required for advancement:
* Heavy Blade Specialization gives you increased Attack/Damage/Critical chance with Longswords and Greatswords (starts with +5/+0/+0, respectively, and improves as you upgrade)
* Cut-Throat gives you sneak attack when the target is not targeting you and when the target is Flat-Footed, which includes +10 damage and an increasing chance to apply Afflicted when you're Sneak Attacking as you upgrade (this seems to be completely bugged and not working at all right now, making Rogues way less effective than intended).
* Evoker makes your attacks apply Burning, Slowed, and Oblivious on Critical Hit (with an increasing amount of stacks as you upgrade).
All features give you a specific selection of keywords for your expendables that increase as you improve the feat (and will matter once we can get expendables learnable).
for crafting, I didn’t get to delve into it too much, but are the recipes that you loot expendable or once you have them do you always keep them?
You keep it forever, once learned.
Can we also potentially get a couple more character slots enabled for testing? Would be great if we could have maybe 10 character slots.
I'll ask.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Thanks for the info/feedback Stephen. I figured that was the case with the armor prof, but wanted to make sure. I almost put an achievement tree idea on my Crowdforging Alpha post, but I'm ok with it being out of game for now. I do think it would be good to have in the long run for the casual players though.
Also, for the interaction distance, I forgot to mention this but you can use distant(or is it distance?) shot further then what any of the NPC archers can use. I'm not sure if the NPC archers just don't have that feat and are only using closer range shots but I thought it was a little odd I could shot at them 2-3 times before they were even in range to shot at me.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Yeah I did the same up to Cleric 2 but for all of the Stats. Was going to post mine sometime in the near future as well. Was hoping to get to Cleric 3... which actually brings up another question I had that I forgot to ask.
I think it was Crusader 3 or one of the feats required to get to Cleric 3 that required a Divine achievement. However, I could only find 1 divine achievement and it had something to do with the escalations as far as I could tell. Is there really only 1 divine achievment? Should there be more?
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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There are several achievement types: Adventure, Arcane, Crafting, Divine, Martial, and Social
Each individual achievement you get generally gives you one or more points in one or more of those types. These accumulate, and are never spent, they just serve as a threshold. So if you see something that says Divine 7, it means that you need to have accumulated at least seven points via acquiring Divine achievements. You aren't spending them, you'll just need an ever-increasing threshold to meet higher level requirements.
Presently, you can get Divine from bless and convert escalation events and from defeating targets with Focus attacks. You'll probably mostly get them from focus attacks, of which there are presently not a lot, so it may take a while to get more than a couple of points in Divine. It looks like you get 2 for the first, 2 for the second, 4 for the third, 6 for the fourth, and by that point you've killed 125 targets with focus attacks.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Thanks Stephen, yeah I pieced together the what the types of achievements worked, however when I looked in the UI Achievment list I only saw one that listed it as Divine (maybe the others were just missing the UI text).
Are there plans for other divine achievements other than killing things with focus spells? Maybe for healing?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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How is that any easier to farm then going right outside of town and killing a couple of bandits or wolves (for most of the adventure/martial achievements)?
It is pretty limiting if the only way to get divine achievements is by killing things with divine spells especially for any of us that want to be heal/combat or heal/utility clerics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see some serious effort put into making the crafting system interesting. If crafting is intended to be a viable play style in its own right, it needs to be interesting. Watching a bar fill up is incredibly dull, even if the rest of the mechanics are deep (i love the whole idea of material quality and skills affecting the final product, for instance).
An optional mini-game of some variety, with high skill at it resulting in a small bonus to Quality, would be an ideal way to keep it from becoming mind-numbing for those who run crafter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really, really hope that we can do some crowdforging on the crafting to make it interesting in itself, rather than the current system. The current one will do for now; Crafters will be plenty busy getting resources, sourcing materials, finding buyers and the like.
But I love games that have crafting systems that I can mess about with for an hour or two and actually have fun. Even if it was just a little mini-game that reduced the time of crafting would be cool.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see some serious effort put into making the crafting system interesting. If crafting is intended to be a viable play style in its own right, it needs to be interesting. Watching a bar fill up is incredibly dull, even if the rest of the mechanics are deep (i love the whole idea of material quality and skills affecting the final product, for instance).
An optional mini-game of some variety, with high skill at it resulting in a small bonus to Quality, would be an ideal way to keep it from becoming mind-numbing for those who run crafter.
It seems this is not popular.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think what was off putting with the mini-game suggestion was the word 'mini-game' and all the baggage that calls up.
Had the idea instead suggested something like 'improved product possible adding X gemstone and silver wire' it might have gained more votes.
Minigames are unpopular for a (to me) significant portion of the playerbase, especially those minigames that require high manual dexterity and precise mouse-clicking. Such minigames may be interesting to some but for others (like this aged and decrepit Being) they are a PITA.
There must be other ways to make crafting interesting. Rare materials that require teamwork to procure comes to mind.
Character skill, preparation, and planning should rule, not only in crafting but in combat. Player skill leads to KC's famous hat dance. Character skill provides inspiring reasons to invest in time and forethought.
When I evaluated whether to upvote or downvote that skill/mini-game proposal I had to ask myself whether I wanted to vote for part of the game to be basically removed from my play but rewarding for others. I'm a selfish guy.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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The problem with "optional system to get a better result" is that, in the kind of competitive crafting market we're trying to set up, that quickly stops being truly optional. You either use the system, even if you hate it, or you're less effective than the people that are using it.
Did you know that you can alter your robots.txt file to nuke all your posts from archive.org? I did not, and it turns out that sucks, because I wanted to link an old article that talks about mini-games in crafting and can't find it on the internets anymore. But I'll attempt to summarize: quite a lot of people that are into crafting are major socializers as well. Crafting in most MMOs is relaxed enough to let you think and socialize while you're doing it. The kind of crafter that was into that HATED the Everquest 2 actiony minigame because it turned a relaxing game system into a tense one that left no time for what they generally liked to do during crafting. And it's possible the kind of person the EQ2 system appealed to still preferred the combat system, so trying to make their crafting more actiony may have not convinced players that didn't normally craft to craft, but it probably drove off a lot of players that normally craft.
But I acknowledge that the request wasn't for an EQ2 mini-game, but a more relaxed mini-game that's more like a puzzle than a combat. I'm all for that kind of thing, but I think the system already does quite a lot of that once you get your skill up and have a wider variety of inputs. The internal feedback on the system is that it might already be a little too fiddly, so hopefully our alpha players will, before we're done, manage to dig deeply enough into it to decide whether there's already enough/too much "puzzle" in getting the most efficient outputs or whether there's room to add in some more layers of puzzle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everquest 2 crafting has a mini-game, and like most MMOs, it's gone Free to Play now. For anyone who's unsure about this style of crafting, it seems like a good point of comparison.
EQ2 crafting has its own set of abilities, separate from other character abilities.
As the process of crafting an item occurs, events happen that threaten to degrade the quality of the item. Alchemical reactions polymerize, weapons in progress develop burrs on their blades, etc.
Whenever one of these events happens, the player can activate a feat to counteract the problem (stir the potion, or sand out the burrs). If the player activates the wrong ability, or fails to activate the right one in time, the item loses some of its potential quality.
During crafting cycles when bad events don't occur, the player can use the same abilities to improve the item in progress, or to speed it toward completion at its current quality level.
PFO might not have the same system of multiple quality levels available in a single crafting event, but this is the kind of thing that people mean when they talk about crafting mini games.
Edit: Oops, ninja-ed! Anyway, this description of the EQ2 minigame might still be helpful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea that some combines may be less than ideal. Maybe melted-down orc swords don't make steel quite as good as starting from ore, because the orcs leave too many impurities in their blades. If you have a bunch of orc blades, though, and not much ore, something may be better than nothing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Stephen, though: the EQ2 crafting mini-game, while appealing to some, leaves no time at all for chat. EQ2 has the most silent crafting areas I've ever encountered in a game; DAOC and SWG used to have lively chatter, Burma-Shave-style advertisements in open chat, and friendships that developed over a hot stove.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In its current state, to me, the crafting system is more than a bit toward baffling.
Okay, I am myself enough to illustrate my utter imbecility before you, good reader.
I can go around and train skills from crafting trainers. I can go out and harvest nodes, but I have no idea what many of the harvested materials might be good for. I looted many question-marked recipes and question-marked items, but there is little to say what I would use goblinoid leavings for. Some things, like slender yew saplings would clearly go to the sawmill. Pure coal is clearly for the forge as I assume copper bits would. But the stuff and the recipes accumulate yet I find no way to learn what it takes to make what. I saw a video Kitsume posted and learn I can interact with a building door to see some of the recipes I could use had I whatever it is that makes them, but in my brief time spent I didn't find a thing to craft. Possibly I needed to train jewelry craft since all potential ore deposits only seem to yield rough tiger eye gemstones.
I didn't expect it to be transparent so early, but I think I can comfortably say that for me, at this point, the only drive I have for crafting is that I have empty slots in need of hopefully beneficial items.
And for what would I use 189 copper coins?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I played around with the crafting a fair amount. At first it was a bit daunting, not having any idea what things were for. After the first few days of Alpha I had a better Idea of what I needed to do on the second weekend and concentrated my characters training more to what I needed, or hoped I needed. In the end, I did manage to craft a Long Sword+2. I never was able to figure out which skill I needed for weak varnish to try and make bows, battle axes, or a spear. Just needed some more time and XP to buy higher skill levels.
Crafting is currently pretty time consuming. It's not like other games where you get the stuff and just suddenly have a new item after pressing a button. It was around 15 hours total time to craft the sword. That's not counting gathering time for the materials needed to do it either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...but during the, what, hour it took to craft the +2 ingot you could run around and do other things?
I think that you're supposed to be able to do that. I tried it once and logged out while it was in queue. The items vanished from queue and the original materials were gone as well. Tried another time with not logging out and just running around. Lost them again. Someone said if you died you lost them, but I don't recall if I died or not. So I did it the painstakingly slow way and sat by the craft facility while the items were made.
When I started the sword and it showed 12 hours to finish I just left myself logged in over night and hopped for the best.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You made a +2 Sword?!??? Awesome!
I did! I promptly left town and found a group of ogres to try it out on. While I was feeling pretty good about things, I wasn't feeling brave enough to try it out on all of them at once. So I used my bow to thin them down a bit. When there was just the lone Ogre Warrior standing there, I pulled out my sword and shield, challenged him, and woke up and a shrine a short time later... But at least my sword was still shiny
Nice work, Vexx! Way to put in the extra effort to test the system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You made a +2 Sword?!??? Awesome!I did! I promptly left town and found a group of ogres to try it out on. While I was feeling pretty good about things, I wasn't feeling brave enough to try it out on all of them at once. So I used my bow to thin them down a bit. When there was just the lone Ogre Warrior standing there, I pulled out my sword and shield, challenged him, and woke up and a shrine a short time later... But at least my sword was still shiny
And this displays the Crafter/Warrior synergy. Crafter makes sword with their mad skills since the Warrior can't, then the Warrior goes and kills stuff with it that the Crafter would die from as the Crafter gathers materials for a new sword. When enough materials are gathered the debt is paid and the cycle starts again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Heh, I tested out PvP too!
Yea....
Crafting is a major 3 step process.
Gathering, Refining, and Crafting.
Currently, there really wasn't enough Exp in the Alpha to do more than what Vexx did. Hopefully we will start out with some crafting materials in our bags next time, as well as say....7,000 experience, and maybe 10 character slots.
I do think that what Karl was suggesting might already be in the game. That little progress bar at the top, well it goes up or down X amount based on what you put into the components slot. I think there is a bit of a puzzle here, so we will see next Alpha sequence.
I plan on exploring PvE, PvP, and Crafting all more in-depth.
I got in a fair bit of little PvP at the demo. Won a headstanding competition with Archangel, a few random fights with other Demoers, and tried at one point to kill Mike.
Damn godmode.
People were doing PvP (and a lot of PvG), just not too much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem with "optional system to get a better result" is that, in the kind of competitive crafting market we're trying to set up, that quickly stops being truly optional. You either use the system, even if you hate it, or you're less effective than the people that are using it.
Did you know that you can alter your robots.txt file to nuke all your posts from archive.org? I did not, and it turns out that sucks, because I wanted to link an old article that talks about mini-games in crafting and can't find it on the internets anymore. But I'll attempt to summarize: quite a lot of people that are into crafting are major socializers as well. Crafting in most MMOs is relaxed enough to let you think and socialize while you're doing it. The kind of crafter that was into that HATED the Everquest 2 actiony minigame because it turned a relaxing game system into a tense one that left no time for what they generally liked to do during crafting. And it's possible the kind of person the EQ2 system appealed to still preferred the combat system, so trying to make their crafting more actiony may have not convinced players that didn't normally craft to craft, but it probably drove off a lot of players that normally craft.
But I acknowledge that the request wasn't for an EQ2 mini-game, but a more relaxed mini-game that's more like a puzzle than a combat. I'm all for that kind of thing, but I think the system already does quite a lot of that once you get your skill up and have a wider variety of inputs. The internal feedback on the system is that it might already be a little too fiddly, so hopefully our alpha players will, before we're done, manage to dig deeply enough into it to decide whether there's already enough/too much "puzzle" in getting the most efficient outputs or whether there's room to add in some more layers of puzzle.
All good points. But I still believe the issue of the actual crafting part, the acts of refining and crafting things, being incredibly boring "click, wait for bar to fill up, click again" snooze-fests in every game ever should be looked at.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All good points. But I still believe the issue of the actual crafting part, the acts of refining and crafting things, being incredibly boring "click, wait...
That is why at least some of us believe that to craft an item or items we will set the crafthall interactable to make our item(s) and walk away to do whatever it is we wish to do in the game. And when the item is finished by the crafting interactable it shows up finished somewhere, possibly in inventory but more likely we have to pick it up somewhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally, I like the fact that crafting is complicated enough so that you have to make decisions that matter. "Do I use this resource vs that resource", for example. I also like the fact that it's not instantaneous. Crafting should be rewarding and time consuming enough to make it truly rewarding for those who wish to focus on it.
@KC you will agree that no players were killed in the demo room?
No, I can't say that. I got killed by an alpha tester for standing on his head while he lazed around. I won't say his name, but his name rhymes with Archangel. Whoops!
Most of the times a demo tester got killed was by other demo testers, though. I think Archy was the biggest exception. :)
I appreciate your concern, Jazzlevraz, but I'm fine. Thanks for asking.
*Shakes Jazzle's hand*
*Inflicts 1d4 Wisdom damage*
Aw, see? That's almost minimum! You're fine!
*Claps Jazzle on back*