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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / AVWW2 - Beta Feedback by Meh ;)
« on: December 27, 2012, 09:38:54 PM »
So... played a bit.. and I think I will only post this here once ;P I am basically only touching each area.. of course it starts with controls, how could it not.. given that's whats going to be the negative thing anyone will ever bring up about AVWW2 outside of these forums. And yes, these are not going to be suggestions, they are going to be observations and statements based on them. Take them, or throw them in the trash ,p
#The control scheme is.. is gonna go down extremely badly... and I mean it, on a scale.. 1 to 10, where 1 is no impact, and 10 is kinda-end-of-world. This current control scheme implementation for keyboard is Armageddon.. or 11.
I guess I am late to the party with the whole mouse thing. But to me the reason for not putting it in is a mystery. If you can't think of a way to convert 360° circle area around a character into 8 zones on a screen then I can draw you a little picture how to do it. ;P Hint: 360 / 8 is 45 which means a 45° conical aim zone (with softening towards the border in order to accommodate weird aspects) (with a soft linear dead-zone in the center of the character) would allow for mouse aim in 8 directions. This is also how radial menus work.. by the way. So even less reasons why there is no mouse assisted "aim". Obviously, an indicator "which" of the 8 directions we aim at would be kinda required then, Could be a magical beam of light, or simply a faint control indicator line. Without mouse, the game is for me at least control wise a nightmare. It's kinda funny too, in AVWW1 we need to have a good aiming precision because of 360° of aiming freedom. But here where the lack of required accuracy could make for a relaxing mouse aim in just 8 directions you remove it.. I am baffled.
Addendum: And just so it's clear.. if you don't do mouse anyway, putting movement not on WSAD is like one of the seven deadly sins. I had to rebind all keys because I can not move precisely with arrow keys, the problem is, even on WSAD i can't aim diagonally in any way precisely because I can't hit some of the attack keys while holding the diagonal attack modifier (try doing that while evading shots ,p). I can't see how this is going to be any less insane on a gamepad, to be honest.
#Kind of bugs and some confusing stuff
Big Frame drop when countering lots of spells with AOE attack
I jumped accidently into one of these weird slimey balls of hurt.. and instantly died.. ouch ;P Some warning, please? ^^
I am feeling a bit weird shooting light at stones that hurt me when I run against them
What are they even supposed to be?
#Tutorial (minor)
Be less abstruse and much less verbose about what to do. I guess there is also a case here for "less words". The tutorial is very verbose, which drowns out the important parts. Reduce tutorial to proper directional orders. "GO THERE, DO THAT, to achieve PONY" .. basically. Be concise, precise, and demanding. But explain why the heck we are doing something. Like building houses. I have no idea why I would want more resistance fighters for example seeing that I only get 7 actions before what I assume is the end-game, if that's not what happens after the time is over on that castle I am sorry, due to the controls I never got that far. ^^
#Introduction
Yes, the intro is missing for now (beta and all).. but when someone starts a new game, tell them what the goal of the game is ^^
#Motivation
Zeh Item (singular?), they are breaking too fast devaluing the loot, and the life of the character. The impact of losing loot is nay 0 because by the time it may be useful it is already lost anyway. Someone else probably said it already, but suicide runs are the norm in this game. I have no idea what the punishment for death is? But losing item you are losing anyway is not a punishment. So basically, so suicide creep is a rewarding game mechanic. (hey, that's unique, but probably not intended..)
#Art
I like it so far, backgrounds could do with some more details but overall it's a good change. But then again, games were never about graphics... sadly, they are definitely about animations *cough*
#Animations (Mainly a question)
Is that frame rate for player animation sprite gonna stay like this? (I played that Egyptian women character, I hope that's not all the animations are going to be...) I am seeing my character 99.99% of the entire time. This part of the GFX needs to be the most polished, smooth and pretty thing on the screen.... but I have no idea which char is final and which is not... so this can be a moot point.. or not ;p
#Stuff I need to even play the game properly (beyond controls ,p)
You read it here first GAMMA SLIDER Sunlight + this game, does not mix well, not at all. Gamma slider is needed. Especially since the game is kind of.. low contrasty in places ;p
Dat FONT... is in some areas unreadable because of this weird gradient shading going on. Making text shaded is nice idea, sadly, with a black background, and a to-black gradient. I can't read things very well, the intro, and beta"progress" thingy particularly are extremely.. weirdly.. shaded. And blend to the background better than to the foreground (meaning, it is a better background than readable text ,p). It is in some ways linked to the gamma (or brightness) slider missing ;p
Aside that, I have nothing to add or complain. I can tell you though that lack of mouse controls is .. going to hurt this game. Even if there are design reasons for it, pc players reading "no mouse support" will instantly skip your game and worse, talk about it negatively. To them this might easily appear to be a "catering to consoles" action, and this can earn you much heat on the intertubes very quickly. And I see no reason for that.. it seems like a rather silly thing to be hung up over given that 8 directional aim works perfectly reasonable with a mouse too... better than Q and E
rambling mode = OFF
powering down...
#The control scheme is.. is gonna go down extremely badly... and I mean it, on a scale.. 1 to 10, where 1 is no impact, and 10 is kinda-end-of-world. This current control scheme implementation for keyboard is Armageddon.. or 11.
I guess I am late to the party with the whole mouse thing. But to me the reason for not putting it in is a mystery. If you can't think of a way to convert 360° circle area around a character into 8 zones on a screen then I can draw you a little picture how to do it. ;P Hint: 360 / 8 is 45 which means a 45° conical aim zone (with softening towards the border in order to accommodate weird aspects) (with a soft linear dead-zone in the center of the character) would allow for mouse aim in 8 directions. This is also how radial menus work.. by the way. So even less reasons why there is no mouse assisted "aim". Obviously, an indicator "which" of the 8 directions we aim at would be kinda required then, Could be a magical beam of light, or simply a faint control indicator line. Without mouse, the game is for me at least control wise a nightmare. It's kinda funny too, in AVWW1 we need to have a good aiming precision because of 360° of aiming freedom. But here where the lack of required accuracy could make for a relaxing mouse aim in just 8 directions you remove it.. I am baffled.
Addendum: And just so it's clear.. if you don't do mouse anyway, putting movement not on WSAD is like one of the seven deadly sins. I had to rebind all keys because I can not move precisely with arrow keys, the problem is, even on WSAD i can't aim diagonally in any way precisely because I can't hit some of the attack keys while holding the diagonal attack modifier (try doing that while evading shots ,p). I can't see how this is going to be any less insane on a gamepad, to be honest.
#Kind of bugs and some confusing stuff
Big Frame drop when countering lots of spells with AOE attack
I jumped accidently into one of these weird slimey balls of hurt.. and instantly died.. ouch ;P Some warning, please? ^^
I am feeling a bit weird shooting light at stones that hurt me when I run against them
What are they even supposed to be?#Tutorial (minor)
Be less abstruse and much less verbose about what to do. I guess there is also a case here for "less words". The tutorial is very verbose, which drowns out the important parts. Reduce tutorial to proper directional orders. "GO THERE, DO THAT, to achieve PONY" .. basically. Be concise, precise, and demanding. But explain why the heck we are doing something. Like building houses. I have no idea why I would want more resistance fighters for example seeing that I only get 7 actions before what I assume is the end-game, if that's not what happens after the time is over on that castle I am sorry, due to the controls I never got that far. ^^
#Introduction
Yes, the intro is missing for now (beta and all).. but when someone starts a new game, tell them what the goal of the game is ^^
#Motivation
Zeh Item (singular?), they are breaking too fast devaluing the loot, and the life of the character. The impact of losing loot is nay 0 because by the time it may be useful it is already lost anyway. Someone else probably said it already, but suicide runs are the norm in this game. I have no idea what the punishment for death is? But losing item you are losing anyway is not a punishment. So basically, so suicide creep is a rewarding game mechanic. (hey, that's unique, but probably not intended..)
#Art
I like it so far, backgrounds could do with some more details but overall it's a good change. But then again, games were never about graphics... sadly, they are definitely about animations *cough*
#Animations (Mainly a question)
Is that frame rate for player animation sprite gonna stay like this? (I played that Egyptian women character, I hope that's not all the animations are going to be...) I am seeing my character 99.99% of the entire time. This part of the GFX needs to be the most polished, smooth and pretty thing on the screen.... but I have no idea which char is final and which is not... so this can be a moot point.. or not ;p
#Stuff I need to even play the game properly (beyond controls ,p)
You read it here first GAMMA SLIDER Sunlight + this game, does not mix well, not at all. Gamma slider is needed. Especially since the game is kind of.. low contrasty in places ;p
Dat FONT... is in some areas unreadable because of this weird gradient shading going on. Making text shaded is nice idea, sadly, with a black background, and a to-black gradient. I can't read things very well, the intro, and beta"progress" thingy particularly are extremely.. weirdly.. shaded. And blend to the background better than to the foreground (meaning, it is a better background than readable text ,p). It is in some ways linked to the gamma (or brightness) slider missing ;p
Aside that, I have nothing to add or complain. I can tell you though that lack of mouse controls is .. going to hurt this game. Even if there are design reasons for it, pc players reading "no mouse support" will instantly skip your game and worse, talk about it negatively. To them this might easily appear to be a "catering to consoles" action, and this can earn you much heat on the intertubes very quickly. And I see no reason for that.. it seems like a rather silly thing to be hung up over given that 8 directional aim works perfectly reasonable with a mouse too... better than Q and E
rambling mode = OFF
powering down...
anyway, 4000-6000 HP. And you think, weee, nothing is gonna hurt me with that many HP!
