We’re going to take down the servers and reboot them one last time to clean out the cobwebs here in about 5 minutes.
It was a great experience, can wait for the release version. I played a lot with .30 version, but my controllers are exhausted and I’m quite tired. Everyone was having a blast!
It seems most people are gone now ,so I’m gona drink water and rest a little.
BTW Riley, the sun moving during the day, and the shadows were a GREAT touch.
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Thanks! Glad you noticed! If you wait long enough it even becomes night… 
Had a couple crashes on the .30 client, downloading .52 now. This is an absolute blast
Server reboot completed.
Whoops, I left the testing duplication thing in. Had to restart again. Sorry about that
Just finished my sneaky little two hour session and I’ve got a few things to say that may or may not have been said before! First off this prototype is absolutely fantastic, huge props to you. Instead of ranting and raving at how much I enjoyed it (I really, really did) I’ll just leave the more ‘negative’ feedback and bugs I encountered in order to help you polish up this gem!
I started on the 0.15 client, followed by the 0.30 client (with voice) and ended on the 0.52 client. I experienced the same bugs/issues on all clients. Crashes were very common, occurring at least once (often twice) every 5 minutes. They seemed to happen randomly while I was just speaking, navigating the menus, being in combat etc.
I noticed that the track-pad method of locomotion became ‘unavailable’ and simply didn’t work after entering combat/using teleport locomotion by mistake. This was corrected either through dieing or a reboot of the client.
Every three of four times I started the game I was greeted without any controllers (bow/arrow, sword/shield, whatever class I was at the time). I could swap my ‘nothings’ to hands however when I opened my backpack I was greeted with a totally blank interface and no way to do anything in-game except stand around, look pretty and say hello to people walking past.
There were other minors troubles such as shooting a mob and not having it aggro until I eventually got close enough for it to start attacking me. Interacting with the blue square portals while using track-pad locomotion completely broke whatever I was doing and just clipped me through the terrain as well.
All in all I found it to be a fantastic experience despite the frequent problems, I understand it’s a stress test and with the amount of people that turned up I sure hope it gave you the stress you wanted! This has been one of my favourite VR experiences in recent months, just having so many other people to chat and interact with was an absolute blast! Keep up the good work my friend.
(Had a quick crash on the server there, some people are fighitng the boss and the logic on it can be buggy…)
Played it for quite many hours and aside from the bugs and crashes, I liked it a lot! I know nothing is final, but one thing I would like to see in the future is a small time gap in between death and respawning to allow you to finish your sentence before getting teleported away. 
Yeah we have a whole death mechanic planned, it won’t just be an instant teleport away or anything.
_emphasized text_So, just got finished play a good 5 hours. Gonna list my opinion on what I saw as good and bad and buggy. Keep in mind this is only my opinion.
TLDR: I liked the spellcasting, different classes, inventory, and some of the discussed ideas. I didn’t like the current balancing or the musketeer’s current role. A few bugs like misread runes, loss of locomotion, and game startup issues.
Good:
Spellcasting Concept - Runemage is easily my favorite class. I love the idea that one must actually study and practice magic to be good at it, rather than just being given a mana bar and some hotkeyed buttons. The idea of how more complicated spells would be formed is also well done. I can’t wait to see a spell book just full of arcane runes and formulas on how to construct spells.
Different Classes for Different Styles - This may just be something that is a result of actually needing to move to play this game, but I enjoy how the different classes aren’t just different in their weapon of choice. They actual take on very distinct requirements to master, which can draw in people to a class they move most comfortable with. Runemages require concentration to draw their runes and need to be fairly academic in their approach to learn what they need for spells. Rangers and musketeers are good for people who want to stay out of the front-line and want to put more emphasis on being accurate and choosing the right ammo and gear for the job. And the warrior is great for people who like to be far more active and in fact have their abilities tied to the motions they perform, rather than just grabbing ammo or drawing runes. Very well done.
Menu System - Just a shoutout to my SAO friends who were scared of not finding the “Logout” button. Then realizing there are no consequences to taking off the current headsets. 
Otherwise, it’s a nice way of organizing things in an original way, excepting SAO.
Costly Teleports - I know it wasn’t implemented in the test, but making it so that teleporting actually costs something to do is something I fully agree with. As an aspiring VR game developer myself, I could understand how having players only ever move to hubs and areas of importance can be annoying when you build nice scenery for them to enjoy and fight through.
Bad:
Balancing - I’ve noticed that there were already a couple posts about this, but Warriors are currently underpowered. Their higher health and armor definitely reflect their role, but their attacks aren’t worth piddly at the moment. Even when I reached level three, I still felt threatened by a level one dog-thing (don’t know what they’re called) unless I had one of the high damage mages or quick-firing moderate damage rangers/musketeers behind me.
Musketeer Heals - The musketeer, while cool with the whole guns and waiting for ammo to put in thing, is a class I don’t think should be the healer. I think either the mage needs a heal rune or maybe include something like a shaman who uses tattoos or potions to go around and cast special, nature-oriented magic. Like healing.
Bugs: quick note: I only ever used the first version of the test that as available before launch, so if these issues were addressed afterwards, my apologies
Misread Runes - While the runemage’d firebolt and frostbolt were fairly stable, I noticed that it wasn’t uncommon when I would try to cast either shield or arcane ray and instead get the other of the two. Or the spell would fail. I would only ever get around 1/3 casts to go the way I thought it would with those two. Which is much better than the ritual teleport. Once I got started on the teleport, there were no issues, but that first rune almost never went right for me. I’d end up with either shield or arcane ray or it would simply do nothing whatsoever. I think I only got it to work correctly twice during my play.
Loss of Motion - Once in a while, I would lose the ability to move around at all. No teleporting or trackpad movement. I cannot think of how to reproduce this as it happened seemingly random.
Loss of Game - Similarly to the loss of motion, I would sometimes end up with a frozen game that forces me to quit out of SteamVR in order to restart.
Loss of Start? - I often find that when I joined the game, I would end up with no hands, no inventory or equipped items, and be at level 0. I could put my hands behind me and use the grip buttons to get them back, but this does not restore any of my gear or give me anything to do but move around and quit the game from the menu.
Stuck Creatures - There a few creatures I encountered out in the field towards the end of the test that were just stuck in place, not doing anything. I couldn’t hit them either.
Sword Throw Exploit - One thing that many people had exploited, which I am also guilty of performing, was that the warrior’s sword throw allowed them to either bypass areas they would normally have to walk around or reach areas they weren’t supposed to be around to begin with. Like under the lake.
Ever-Aggroed Monsters - Once a monster was aggroed, it never left the target alone. I don’t particularly mind a monster gaining its health back if it had to call off pursuit, just so players don’t abuse the retreat, but I also don’t like being guaranteed to die if I accidentally pull something I know was stronger than me. Not to mention the plant boss would keep shooting at players that died and went back to town.
Final Personal Rating: Loved it. Can’t wait for the next session. Hope the bugs get squashed and it just keeps getting better and better.
30 minute warning!
Okay everyone, we’re going to call it a night! Thanks for helping out! And be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you didn’t already and we’ll keep you up to date about future tests and the eventual release of the game.
darn It we almost beat the final boss
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Yeah I think it crashed it again, sorry 
Hopefully next time!
So sad, almost caught a fish for my wife…
Thanks anyway, excellent!!!
Also if anyone downloaded the 0.52 client I’d love to know if it made a difference or not.
Also, more than 800 people participated in the test, and we peaked at around 100 concurrent players. Yay!
2 Likes
It definitively seemed more stable, also you bumped up the “character speed” right?
That was really fun, much more stable for that last hour. The 0.52 build made a big diff for me, the 0.30 build crashed constantly.
Almost beat the boss, I think? I kept taking damage even though I was not near anything that the boss was shooting out. Maybe invisible minions?
Crafting spells by drawing runes is the absolute best, can’t wait to see how that develops in the future.
See y’all next time!