First impresions

Hello all!
I faound this game just yesterday and have been playing untill I got to lvl 3 so maybe some of my remarks wont be exact or can even be totally wrong. Anyway I feel that some feedback from a newbie wont do any bad.
I think the game has a great potential and really sets itself apart from the rest of the browser based mmorpgs. It has some really deep skill system that is awesome. The ability to team with other players and hunt together is also cool ( though I havent used it still) It seems that there is also crafting, resource gathering, enchanting....well sincerely I think this is unique.
Anyway here I have a few complains:
1) The interface. It is pretty bad. It is hard to navigate thouh the game menus. Chat messages show on the play area of the screen and if there are many players talking your screen turns into a chat log. Also the training mission message can not be moved nor closed so it covers part of the screen too until you complete the training. The whole layer of buttons and functions is badly done IMHO consuming a lot of space for futures you dont use leavinf very little place for the playing screen and players avatars, etc. Still the game is in early beta i guess this will be solved in the future.
2) Chat system is very basic. I couldnt find a feauture to turn off chat or to block certain players. Maybe you should develop different chat channels..say zone chat, help chat, world chat (shouting) and for this last one a player will need to spend mana or energy to post a message. In this order you prevent spamming of the world channel.
3)The graphic change from the log in screen to the game really stroke me. I would like to see more CG content into the game. Also I think it would be good idea to resize the game itself to bigger resolution.
4) I would like to see a little more free world. Right now the monster levels limit you where you can go so basicly all players go through the same path killing the same monsters while advancing through their skills. It would be cools if you actually could explore the world. This reminds me of other things. Why not put in some zones some NPC giving you quests in place of monsters?Or maybe give the playr the ability o chose weather to fight the monster or continue his way without fighting?
5) Spells. I started as necromancer and from what I see the different spells are just diferrent in the ammount of damage they do. I would like to see spells that for example freeze the opponent...or a spell that can steal life points from the enemy and add them to you HP or why not a spell that can put the beats under your control for a limited ammount of time?
Another idea I had is to make players of different skill start from different location. For example a pladin would start in a castle while a necromancer could start in some little town near anciant graveyard. Also maybe you could divide the classes in two big catgories: light and dark and this way enchance the PvP.
Well...I think this is for now...and thank you for bringing us such a great game

[Archer of Crosis]

1. this problem will be resolved after beta, its been addressed in the forums ad nausem, please read forum.

2. if you right click a persons face you will see a toggle ignore feature, so wrong again.

3. I don't see this happening, it isn't intended to be a game like runescape or ragnarok, fully 3D.

4. the zone limits in this game are there so you dont go wandering off into the redwood forest for example and get your ass handed to you by a mob there, because when you die you lose precious AT.

5. once again i know the game you are talking about, maple story right, this isnt maple story. it has been tested for awhile now and i see no reason why people should start in different places, as they would get their asses handed to them. this is a level/skill progressive game, how far you progress is based on your skill and level. you can't fudge that.

[doug]

lol yeh most of tht will be fixed after beta

and well once u follow the track its actually easier

as well other people have done it so there are guides on forums

so it actually makes it easier tht u all follow the same path

as u can learn quickly from other players

Hello again!
I have played a bit more untill lvl 4 now and I can see the game gets deeper. New items, new zones...it is very addicting
Anyway...

1. this problem will be resolved after beta, its been addressed in the forums ad nausem, please read forum.

As I said in my first post those were my first impresions from the game. The aim of the post was to let know the developer of the game ( since the game is in beta testing and I guess this means that we are let to play the game to test it and then share our view.)of some issues I encountered during the gameplay. I am really happy that more people have felt the same way with the interface becouse this means its not paranoias of mine

2. if you right click a persons face you will see a toggle ignore feature, so wrong again.

Well thank you for sharing this.

I don't see this happening, it isn't intended to be a game like runescape or ragnarok, fully 3D.

Erm...I dont think you got my point...which was that the game graphics are of low quality. They seem handdrawn and maybe if the game resolution was higher it would be cool but eight now it really hard to put up with them. I think a better resolution ( bigger play screen) and some good quality graphics would work fine. Even if they are handdrawn and not CG.

the zone limits in this game are there so you dont go wandering off into the redwood forest for example and get your ass handed to you by a mob there, because when you die you lose precious AT.

Again I think you got me wrong. I understand why there are thos elimits. What I think is there should be most freedom for the players to chose how to explore the world and not limit their way with placing harder lvl monsters on their way.

5. once again i know the game you are talking about, maple story right, this isnt maple story. it has been tested for awhile now and i see no reason why people should start in different places, as they would get their asses handed to them. this is a level/skill progressive game, how far you progress is based on your skill and level. you can't fudge that.

Erm...I have no idea what mapple story is...
I can not think of a single game that has no some kind of conflict, be it dark vs light, good vs bad, truth vs lie ,etc. That is so since you can not have a succecfull game without a conflict in it.
This rule is much more important in mmorpgs. I gave an example of a possible way to create such a conflict in the game so to ecourage players rise their skills and battle with other players.
Right now this is done by offering new zones to the more skilled players. The problem is some day the new zones will end. Having a player vs player conflict will give the answer to this.

lol yeh most of tht will be fixed after beta

and well once u follow the track its actually easier

as well other people have done it so there are guides on forums

so it actually makes it easier tht u all follow the same path

as u can learn quickly from other players

Well exactly this is the problem. When a person plays a mmorpg he doesnt want to be the 1000th to have done something. HE WANTS TO BE THE FIRST, THE BEST, TEH ONE WHO CAN CHANGE THE GAME WORLD If waht a game offers to him is to follow someone else´s path...well...you wont be seeing him arround for too long.

OK before I forget I have encountered some new issues:
1) giving an options for players to chose the colour of thaier messages is bad idea. I hope in the final game all palyer messages will have a clear and easy readeble font and colour
2)There really should be some faster way to travel between towns...or at least between towns you have already visited.

More soon to come...

[Glitchless]

Aside from the request for different graphics most of what you are asking for is in development, especially a far greater variety of gems.

[QUOTE=adrala;2264]Hello again!
OK before I forget I have encountered some new issues:
1) giving an options for players to chose the colour of thaier messages is bad idea. I hope in the final game all palyer messages will have a clear and easy readeble font and colour
2)There really should be some faster way to travel between towns...or at least between towns you have already visited.
QUOTE]

In the actual release there will be a way to disable custom font colors.
The faster way to travel between towns is to level up. Once you've been playing for a short while, the creatures between towns will be gray and you will skip over a good amount of them on your way back and forth, and the ones you do run into will be easier to kill because of your level. Also, you get more adventuring experience as your level increases.

I've never played an mmorpg where I started playing at my home town and felt like I was the first to ever kill a rat in the field at level 1. As far as I know, all these types of games have different zones with different level creatures in them and you fight wherever you can survive and get the most XP. As you level up and get better equipment and items you will find that you have several zones with different level ranges that you will be able to fight in, which I think will give you more of the feeling of exploring than you get when you first start fighting in the docks/traveller's way.

The way you make your character the best and the FIRST to do something in this game is by carefully choosing which skills you want to increase. Of course in the beginning levels there's not much difference between the characters, but you will realize as you level up how carefully you need to choose your skills and how precious your trophies and passive experience gains are. There's a ton of different skills to choose from and you can make your build really unique. Also now with enchanting you will be able to use enchanting stones to change the stats on your armor to further individualize your character. The further you get into the game the more you will realize that the possibilities for your character are vast and there are many ways for your to really make your character a truly custom one.

[doctor-warlord]

well theres also the option of getting all skills up but it will take forever and would probably require you to buy a lot of trophies which of course is fairly easy if anyone wants to make some quick gold

Originally Posted by doctor-warlord

well theres also the option of getting all skills up but it will take forever and would probably require you to buy a lot of trophies which of course is fairly easy if anyone wants to make some quick gold

Even buying trophies, after you get those level 20 skills there's just no way to train every single one you want and keep them up with your level. There are so many other skills I wish I could have right now but I'm already on the verge of being spread too thin! Once your main skills are 100 though THEN it will be time to start training up all the secondary ones, now that will be fun. hehe

Originally Posted by Optic

Content and playability > graphics.

But jeff, dont forget to come back and improve the graphics. Dont let this be like rwk in the sense that graphics are never revisted.

I wouldn't count on new graphics anytime soon, considering how new the game is they were probably recently made and won't be replaced for quite awhile. I, however, don't have any problems with them... like you said, content over graphics, and I am enjoying both so far

Hey! Great replies, especially yours Kieria- I had no idea that when you get higher in lvl you have the ability to go through zones with low lvl monsters without fighting them.
I think that 99% of the players in an average mmorpg are looking into becoming the player with the higher lvl ( in lvl based mmorpg), the highest skilled player ( in skill based mmorpgs), the one who first kills that tough boss, etc. I think its just in human nature to strive for improvement and advancement Oh well lets not get into such pholosophical stuff.
About the graphics. I re-read my last comment and i can see that my comment was a bit harsh. What I meant by saying that the graphics are of low quality is that in some places ( player screen, item icons, battle backgrounds) they are blurry, and make use of kind of greyish tones of the colours. While in other parts, for example the inventory equipment window the items look great or in town screens...
Maybe this is a desired effect to give the game a feel of a fairy tale story?
What I would love too improve is for example adding some motion in the battlle screens- maybe moving clouds in the sky or some wind effect on the grass or trees or why not having the enemies actually move when they attack us. This will really improve the immersion fo the player into the game world.

Glad to be of some help, Adrala.
And I do understand what you mean about wanting to be the first to accomplish those types of things, but realistically, unless you're one of the first 10 or so hardcore players to start playing the game, chances are it's all going to have already been done before you did it! Just the way of the world unfortunately :P
And I'm not sure what you mean by the blurriness, maybe someone else can answer that for you. I'm not sure if it's because of my resolution or my eyesight or what but it all looks crisp and clear on my monitors.... so I don't know if it's something I'm just not noticing or if it depends on any other factors.
I agree it would be cool to have motion in the fight scenes... I know there's plans to add a lot more spell graphics as well as things to show when you have different aura's up as well as when your pet is attacking, so that might help some initially.
Hope you're enjoying the game thus far!

In response to Kiere mentioning there's no way to get enough trophies to keep up with your level.

Yes, it's possible. If you set your stat skill to class enhancement you can farm trophies in one area without levelling.

This can be done at any point in the game if you want to catch up as many skills as you like.

Originally Posted by Somneil

In response to Kiere mentioning there's no way to get enough trophies to keep up with your level.

Yes, it's possible. If you set your stat skill to class enhancement you can farm trophies in one area without levelling.

This can be done at any point in the game if you want to catch up as many skills as you like.

Yes I realize you're able to not level while fighting if you choose not to :P
You'd have to spend so much time training class enhancement and the other 20 stat skills while getting all of your other skills up with trophies... just doesn't seem worth it to me! To get SOME extra skills, I agree it's very beneficial, but I can't imagine doing it enough to keep ALL my skills up to my level... that would take AGES.
The day I see a level 30 character with ALL the skills that would be beneficial to them also at level 30, or a level 50 with all their benefical skills at 50, is the day they have a group of level 100's farming and feeding them trophies :P

Personally, I would go crazy staying the same level and fighting in the same place for weeks and weeks to get them all up. That would make the game a whole lot less fun for me, but more power to ya if you can handle it!
For the average player though, I don't think it's very realistic.

[doctor-warlord]

you have some intersting points there Kiera and i agree that most wont get all there beneficial skills up to there lvl unless all they do is crafting or trophy farming maybe at higher lvls some might do it as then its easier to get good trophies and you will need less of them

Originally Posted by doctor-warlord

you have some intersting points there Kiera and i agree that most wont get all there beneficial skills up to there lvl unless all they do is crafting or trophy farming maybe at higher lvls some might do it as then its easier to get good trophies and you will need less of them

Exactly
And I think it's a very good thing because it'll give you plenty of stuff to do once you hit the current level cap. I don't think anyone will get to level 100 and feel completely satisified with their skills, I think there will be plenty more you want to train up afterwards. And don't forget about all the other higher level skills we haven't even seen yet!

Originally Posted by Kieria

Exactly
And I think it's a very good thing because it'll give you plenty of stuff to do once you hit the current level cap. I don't think anyone will get to level 100 and feel completely satisified with their skills, I think there will be plenty more you want to train up afterwards. And don't forget about all the other higher level skills we haven't even seen yet!

The only think that botheres me is that once the cap is met, training more skills will be all there is to do without a really ingenious intergrated pvp system or something new altogether. Acumen worked for RWK so why not here? a 1v1 tornament and a 3v3 tornament the winning player/team gets to take on jeffs account or something, a kind of kill the GM event or something. I guess im just worried about long term playability for the game, maybe level 100 takes 4 years or something in which case i guess this isnt really an issue

[doctor-warlord]

well there is plenty of time to give jeff suggestions for thing to do after hitting lvl 100 as i doubt that there will anyone that reach it before around at least a year after beta ends

well if leveling doesnt actually slow down then i imagine it is more like 8 months to reach 100 if you are kinda relaxed about it

[doctor-warlord]

lvling does slow down unless you power lvl only stats and dont give damn about the rest

power level stats and do skills every hell level ftw?