Alpha Test Feedback Thread: Closed Alpha 3

Alpha Feedback (Archived)
#161

I didnt get much time to test this go around. You guys have blocked off the “other areas” much better, I was only able to get to a few extra places this test.

I spent a ton of time in the house. I stacked the silverware end on end. Made bottle pyramids, and had a good time throwing things. Physics in the house are slow, and odd. Things fall slow. If you put a bottle on a plate, its nearly impossible to fling the bottle off the plate, it will roll slowly down it. The plate with the candles can be placed upside down.

#162

I really enjoyed the time I spent in game this go around.

Musketeer - Great job! Only issues I found were: orbs seemed a bit more difficult to grab hold of (no big deal though, practice will fix that), Lifewell was a bit too powerful (though it way need to be that powerful for future dungeons). The orb switching from healing to damage and back again required a lot of shaking to switch, also if you hold your orb for a little while before tossing in the air, it will switch just before you let go (No shaking required). So far my favorite class by far.

Warrior - I like the combo system and new placement of the shield. The problems I noticed with this class were: the up stroke for the combo seemed to not hit as reliably as the other swings, I found myself constantly repositioning myself after rushing an opponent (I was either a little too far to hit or right on top of them), horn seemed hit or miss (was rarely getting all of the enemies to turn to me), is provoke an area effect? when attacking mobs that were grouped up, I couldn’t tell if I was hitting one with provoke or all of them.( the enemies were pretty much one on top of another), the only combo I could tell if I succeeded was the cleave since it had an audible and visual cue. The others were hard to tell if I landed them while in combat, I could tell at the practice dummy but not in combat with group members chattering and mobs running around. I’m not a big fan of melee classes but, since it’s my job to test mechanics out, I put some time in on it). Still prefer ranged combat. :slight_smile:

Mage - Since there were some small changes since last test, I put time in on it. The only problem I found was my inability to get polymorph. While attempting the spell, I was getting polymorph 10% of the time and Fireball 60% of the time (some of which registered as “Perfect” Fireballs, the other 30% were fails.) If no changes are made and I get the same result during next test I will attempt to get a video or GIF of it. I understand that the main reason for not getting the spell was completely my fault for not having the skill and not having a proper template to learn off of. However, the fireballs coming up most of the time is the problem I’m reporting not my lack of skill. :slight_smile: The other spells seemed to work for me most of the time with the other exception of arcane ray (again lack of skill and template). Oddly enough I could get arcane explosion but not ray. lol

Ranger - No time put in.

Other issues were: For a right handed person I could not reach my compass with my left hand. I had to stow my weapon then grab it with my right. Still had issues with the teleportation grid while on hills. The menu options would still clip off while in groups. Musketeer orbs were still leaving behind lightning balls in the dungeon.

Thank you for all your hard work in making a great game. The 48 hour testing period was preferable. Gave me time to experience different things without sacrificing sleep or family time.

#163

Brandt in-game.

Had a blast playing with mrBoldMan, stealur, and Logan.

Likes

  • Difficulty

    • The healing stone elementals and dragon thing in the starting area were my favorite mobs.
    • You had to pay attention to what you were doing and work together to CC them.
    • Mobs shouldn’t be tank and spank beyond level one. Keep this up!
    • Complex Encounters with varying abilities.

  • Navigation

    • I love that there isn’t a map. The compass is plenty.
    • Let players create their own maps! (See my Cartography profession suggestion).
    • Having to stop and ask people for directions creates social interactions.

  • Class Specifics

    • Loving Warrior combos. I’d like to see more, chaining together combos. (See suggestions)
    • Warrior was a workout. My arm is sore. I love it. More classes should be like this!
    • Loving the Musketeer orb system changes.
    • Rune Mage: I like the spell difficulty. Rune Mage spell system (like Musketeer orbs?)

Dislikes

  • Quest Interface

    • In-game notepad-esque journal. Let the player write their own notes.
    • It wasn’t quite clear when I finished my first quest.
    • I understand that the quest system is a WIP.

  • Class Specifics

    • Warrior combo patterns shouldn’t occur twice in a row. Up/Up is uncomfortable.
      • Down should be implemented/refined.
      • Up and Down should also accept (x)-Left and (x)-Right as valid.
    • Warrior melee hits wouldn’t register sometimes.
      • Sword charge would place me just out of range and I had to teleport myself.
    • Musketeer is a bit spammy. I never really felt compelled to consider my next option.
    • Musketeer turret doesn’t have any coloration or animation.

  • Controls

    • I was limited to teleport in-combat. I would like to use the trackpad.

  • Interface

    • Damage numbers would overlap.-
    • It was hard to actually see how much damage I was doing.

Wishlist and Encouragement

  • General

    • I love player created experiences. More sandbox, less theme park beyond the tutorial.
    • Player controlled towns/territories. Trade routes, resource interdependency.
    • Player economy, player trade. Purchasing the services of mercs to escort a carvan.
    • Level up by contributing to a task. Escort a caravan across dangerous territory? XP for the merc!

  • Randomized enemy skill kits based on a point assignment system. Visual cues.

    • Ex. Green spider? Probably deals poison damage. Purple? Vulnerability debuff.
    • Ex. Rare, albino wolf? Deals more damage, but might drop better loot.
    • Drawing inspiration from dungeon crawlers (Diablo, Torchlight)
    • You can quickly create encounter variety; even in the over world.

  • Interface

    • I don’t want a hand holding quest journal but let me have something to take notes on.
    • With a quill? With the SteamVR keyboard?
      • I could try to design something in Unity for you! Let me know.
    • A Friends List.
    • Very basic Fellowship implementation. A glorified friends list with player invite options.
      • Should be a simple SQL implementation. Can provide examples on request.

  • Navigation

    • Cartography Profession: Player created maps for personal use.
    • Could be similar to a hand written journal interface. Hand drawn.

  • Class Specifics

    • Warrior combos. Encourage mixing it up.

      • Ex. If I Provoke -> Cleave, Cleave could do 10% more damage?
      • Implementation: Invisible buff (last_action = current_ability)
      • I can relay the idea in code on request. I don’t want to take up space here.

    • Warrior DPS spec.

      • Allow the Warrior to equip a 2her to sacrifice their shield for more damage.
      • Become an offtank that can still provoke but does 10% more damage or something.
      • Could provide an extra combo since they won’t have a stun.
      • This won’t interfere with your Rogue/DW class idea.

    • Musketeer orb synergy.

      • Everything’s usually grouped up so using Gravity doesn’t feel satisfying to me. The stun doesn’t last long enough to make it the focal point of the orb.

    • Musketeer Turret

      • Group members asked if anyone else saw that thing stuck in the sky.
      • It was my turret. It looks like an artifact.
      • Coloring deployed turret based on configuration (Healing, DPS).
        • Glow gold or purpleish.
      • Some small animation to show it’s functioning. Temporary: Slowly spin in place?

    • Rune Mage

      • Tome of Spells. Mages can memorize a limited number of spells.
      • This way, they can also take on healing, DPS, or even tanking roles.
      • Also, prevents Mages from being an unstoppable jack of all trades.
      • Might make spell recognition easier by using a smaller comparison set.

    • Ability Equip System

      • I’ll actually go ahead and say that every class could benefit from this.
      • It allows developers to present different abilities/builds.
      • Players can choose which spells to equip.
      • Min/Maxing may occur, though. Beware.

  • Controls

    • Trackpad locomotion in combat.
    • Dominant hand toggling.

I offered to help out with some Unity journal writing, DB design, and coding examples.
I’m newer to game development and am graduating this December with a degree in CS.
Let me know if you need help! :wink:

#164

FYI All of their orbs are aoe. just follow up with a poison orb and all will be poisoned. or weakened or whatever.

1 Like
#165

Oh you’re right. I guess I was struggling to convey what felt so unsatisfying about it. I don’t think Gravity does enough; enemies are usually already grouped up due to aggro and the stun doesn’t make it last long enough to save someone.

#166

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

I should have the blog post out with my thoughts tomorrow morning.

1 Like
#167

Sorry for jumping in late on the thread, had some family obligations on Saturday. Played a good bit on Friday, remaxed Musketeer and Warrior.

Musketeer: Really enjoyed being able to switch out my orb loadouts. They all seemed pretty effective and fun to use, though as mentioned, lifewell may be a bit too effective in many combat situations. Grabbing orbs was a little trickier but I suspect everyone will get used to it. I did notice I was less likely to misgrab between compass, harvesting tool and turret, so that’s good. Turret mode swapping was cool, though I felt a little goofy shaking it. I did like that it remembered which mode it was switched to, so you didn’t need to keep doing so each time it respawned. Had some issues early on with orbs not respawning, and I saw some others have it happen later, but it sounds like that’s been handled.

Warrior: Dramatically improved, overall usage feels really good. As others have mentioned, I wish the charge had a slight (like 0.25 second) stun and a light (maybe one hit worth) of aggro. Reuse on it could be sped up slightly maybe to help with battlefield control. The horn really didn’t seem to taunt in many situations. I’m not sure if it was a range issue or something else, but something felt off with it. I still feel like I have some issues with managing the shield and my sword attacks so I’m blocking incoming hits and still doing damage effectively, but that could just be a practice thing. I did find myself wishing on a number of occasions on larger mobs (especially the bosses) that my red floating combat text would show up for me at the point of impact instead of above the mob’s head. Knowing if I’m connecting with the rock golem dungeon boss would really help with that fight. I felt like I was able to get some of the combos to work some of the time, but the success effects seemed pretty small and disappeared quickly. It might be nice to have those be a little more obvious, at least to the initiating player (don’t need to show it to others) to communicate success.

General/Other

  • Been running into weird lag spikes. Happened a little bit last playtest and significantly more this time. Verified with others it was happening to them too. To be specific, it would feel like everything in the world would pause for about half a second (my fireball was stop in midair), and then everything would “catch up” and mob positions would be different, my fireball was ahead/impacted, etc. Happened a few times per hour. My connection is solid, not seeing issues with anything else. I didn’t think to look up at my exp bar for latency data, Ill try to do that next time.
  • Runemage Spells. I was able to get a lock on about 2/3rds of the spells, but a few of them were really really tricky. Affliction and Fireworks were the worst offenders for me, though Arcane Explosion and others could occasionally feel off. If it helps, I have video of me tracing the runestone sigil for affliction several dozen times with varying adjustments and having a sub 5% success rate. I know others were able to get it reliably, so it’s possible it will just click for me at some point, but I gotta bring it up. I’m able to get Fireball with the accurate-ding most of the time, so it doesn’t seem like it’s my hardware or physical shakiness or anything. I did notice Ice Lance is still doing that weird thing where it won’t let you initiate another spell after firing it as quickly as it does with other spells. As others have mentioned I did have chunks of my spell casting lines disappear based on things in the background. The first glyph for Resurrection and Teleport seemed to be a little more distinct this time, though it still wasn’t that rare to have the opposite one show up when casting (expecting this to improve with practice). I wish the light spell lasted like 25% longer as right now in going through the dungeon, it will often peter out in mid-fight.
  • NPC Text: I liked that more and more npcs in the world have things to say, though it’s odd they have the exclamation mark but no quest. Not sure if it’s meant to be a general “something is here” indicator, or if it’s just being used a placeholder. I definitely wanted to smack the one order guard who called me a peasant.
  • Crafting! Man, this was really fun, getting to craft for the first time in Orbus. I really really liked seeing the parts show up on the table and getting to assemble the lures. I realize this is early simple prototype for later more complex crafting but this was really cool. My biggest request/feedback would be to let the ingredients stack, both in inventory and in the crafting box. I understand wanting them to show up on the table, and I think that would still work if they stacked the way the herbs do (in order words, if you have a stack of 10 lesser eyes in the crafting box and you pick one up from the table, there is still another eye there until the stack is exhausted). I’m going to post this separately, but I was only able to find 5 of the 6 ingredients mentioned. (No sign of the rotten finger, though I didn’t get to hunt as many different things as I’d like.)
  • Dungeon changes: Not having mobs in walls was really nice, thank you!
  • Spawning in. I did also run into the issue of loading into a floating void and needing to resurrect to graveyard to get into the game.
  • UI: Still seeing issues with parts of the UI being inaccessible/truncated due to being in a group and things getting pushed down.
  • Newbie Zone: I’d like to advocate for having a slightly cleaner area for the newbie mobs. Right now there is a bit of an odd mix of the wererabbits,dragonbugs and forest golem of varying levels, so it’s easy for new players to get confused/overwhelmed/killed.
  • Forest golems: I really wish their self-heal would eventually run out. These mobs are really rough for most classes to solo, even when overleveled due to this mechanic.
    *Lingering Effects: I did notice certain visual effects would linger on the client due to weird timing, such as respawning while a warrior ultimate was in effect and having it stay there forever after returning, etc.

As always, all feedback is provided with the utmost respect to the amount of work you guys are putting in and is meant only to help improve the game. Can’t wait for the next playtest!

-Draven

1 Like
#168

Mourtegoul. It might have been fixed by logging back in, but I didn’t think to try that until later. (I was sleepy.)

#169

welp i messed around with the crafting system and liked it.
i had no idea what i was doing with the hook and lure ingredients but hell i had fun
Cant wait to see what potion crafting is like. hopefully, you guys will make potions throwable thatd be rad

#170

Here’s the new blog post detailing thoughts about the Alpha test, as well as a few new area of requested feedback:

#171