Dear Orbus Devs,
this is my summary from the first impressions on participating in the beta tests for OrbusVR: Reborn. I hope you will find this information useful and might consider some of the suggestions - if they are not on your roadmap already. I also hope, this presentation of feedback is ok for you regarding the structure since I didnt want to open a new thread for every single topic or find existing ones. Maybe this thread can be used for additional summaries and discussion.
For simplicity in the following text I am referencing the current release of Orbus just as “original Orbus” and the beta release of OrbusVR: Reborn just as “Reborn”.
My PC (just for reference in regards of performance):
- CPU: Core i7 5820K @ 6x 3600 Mhz with Hyperthreading (12 Threads)
- RAM: 16 GB DDR4 - 4x4 GB Quadchannel
- GPU: Geforce RTX 2080 ti - 11 GB OC version
- Storage: 2x 256 GB Samsung Evo 850 (Raid 0)
- Board: MSI X99 SLI
- VR: Oculus Rift CV1 + Touch controllers, 3 Sensor 360° roomscale setup
- Beta Client Version: v1.3.4 (10.11.2018 01:00 a.m. gmt+1)
Performance:
- I had the ingame settings on “Ultra”. I didnt see an impact when switching the graphics from low to ultra. (It looks like nothing is happening at all since the GPU stays at the same load for every setting) The textures were always very bad with low resolution/detail. Maybe its a bug or it wasnt implemented in this early stage of the game.
- When I run Reborn for the first time, created my character and then joined in the world, I had suddenly very low fps. I restarted my whole mashine, disabled supersampling and tried again. The issue was gone. Another test later with supersampling 1.5x was successful with stable 90 fps.
- The beta zone in Reborn compared to Highsteppe in original Orbus seems to run smoother and use less ressource on the GPU. There might be a performance gain of around 50% but this is only a rough estimation from the tests I was able to do. I tested with 1.5x supersampling at 90 fps. In Highsteppe in original Orbus I have 0-10% headroom GPU performance. In the beta zone of Reborn, I have around 40-50% headroom. Attention: I was only able to test with “low” settings in both clients since the beta client is unable to deliver high quality textures at the moment. Maybe someone else has better knowhow and tools to benchmark this properly.
Character creation:
- I like the possibility of changing the shape of the body and head very much and I think it is already pretty awesome just like it is at the moment. Good job!
- The choices for eyes, mouth and especially hair styles is just insufficient (might be due to early release and more is about to come anyway). There are not even manly looking blue eyes. It would be nice if you would be able to choose eye shape and eye color seperately. And a thing I miss so often in many RPGs: Please make it possible to have long hair also for male characters. (Atm there is not a single long hair style regardless of gender)
Combat:
- I really miss the telegraph-system! We fought an oger-like creature which used a skill smashing on the gound and doing a lot damage as an aoe. We were not able to determine how big the aoe actually was. The telegraph-system was amazing in my opinion and I already liked it in Wildstar (another mmorpg with telegraph combat system). It was allowing the players to react to hazardous effects fragments of seconds BEFORE they were applied and knowing exactly where it is safe and where it is not. I wouldnt see a reason why this should be changed. Without those players might just lose the overview when they fight multiple enemies at once. In my opinion, the telegraph system should stay and it should even get improved.
- Casting bars on the enemies are an excellent improvement and they were working pretty good already, but they also made us asume, that it might be relevant for some encounters to interrupt those skills. I appreciate it, if thats the case but will we also see some changes on the skillsets of the existing classes then to make CC available?
- The monsters are now not only standing and spamming their default attack but also trying to change their position. That feels great! However, hitting moving targets was and still is a huge pain in Orbus and when monsters are entering a “run-around-in-panic-mode” it is just annoying and not very fun.
- Damage, Exp and Heal counters in battle are unchanged/are still missing. I would like to see numbers more clearly and also counters for my healing spells.
- Bug: Every monster was rated as "impossible"
Bard:
- No one in our guild got the hang on how to properly use the skills of the bard in our first test session. It is very unintuitive and needs propper explenation in the magical book. (I guess thats planned anyway)
Musketeer:
- Lifewell has a way too bright animation for ressurection cooldown indicator. When it is flying around your weapon you have a bright flashing light irritating you the whole time. It was good like it was in the original Orbus.
- Bug: The turret is not changing colors after changing the mode. I would expect it to change colors already in the hand after you switched modes (that would be a nice improvement compared to original Orbus)
Interface:
- The interface (all status bars, icons, menues, onscreen keyboard, dialoges) remained the same “style” as in the original Orbus. Are you going to change this dramatically until release and did just not implement it yet? I find it very sad, that the interface of this game looks so unbelievable bad. How about nice frames for the status bars in a high quality resolution and sweet looking background graphics for menues/dialogues (e.g. wooden style)?
- Scrollbars: They can not be used with the “laserpointer” and actually work pretty bad since putting your finger back often changes the position of the scrollbar and you never end on the exact position you wanted.
- One thing I always missed in Orbus: Buffs/Debuffs should have an indicator on how much time is left for them. Dont know if that is on your roadmap already.
- The quest list in the Magical Book should contain more details about how many objects you have to collect to reach bronce/silver/gold.
- Bug: Buttons/Textboxes/Windowlayout… I guess you know that already. Almost every aspect of the UI is full of bugs atm. Gamebreaking: You are unable to dispose items from your inventory. A character who would have too much equipment in his inventory would be unusable for additional testing since you would always be over encumbered.
Environment:
- The environment in Reborn looked in its design more detailed and less simple. This is a very nice improvement!
- I missed some sort of signs to know where I am going. Additional: It would be nice to have something like the name of the zone displayed somewhere when you change zones/maps.
- You can still walk/look through walls and near walls or hills it is never clearly visible where you can walk and where you cant. This is making teleporting and sliding through the world very annoying when you often get blocked by just nothing. I never liked this in the original Orbus and it would make me extremly happy, when the movement through the new world would be much smoother and more intuitive.
- Bug: When you teleport into your player home, you are unable to leave it and thus making this character unusable for further testing.
Additional features:
- The bird/animal hunt is funny and I like it. There is probably potential to expand this minigame a bit further?
- Bug: The pet race can be exploited since you do not have to fly the whole course to get your time on the scoreboard.
Some short words at the end of this summary: I dont know where it really came from but since the first announcement of reborn, I had the feeling that reborn will not only be a rework of the world with a few new features but a whole new game. While that will for sure be true regarding the playable content of the game, story, playable classes etc, this beta showed to me, it probably wont be true from a technical aspect. Therefore I was somehow disappointed to find the same (sorry) ugly userinterface and edgy movement system. But that was just me expecting something wrong I guess… Or is there maybe much more to change then we can now imagine with this early beta?
Thank you for all the efforts you put in this game and that you let us participate in this evolution!
Kind regards,
Sairai
