At this point, since I have hardly any time to play, I think I’m over with this beta.
Not like I’ve had a lot of time before, so I just got a couple characters to about level 40. Since I’m guessing bug reporting, balancing, economy and such things are already covered by other people well enough and i won’t be able to cover them effectively even if I keep playing, I’ll instead give feedback about how the game feels for the first 10 or so hours.
As such what I comment on could be seen as low-priority (and it mostly is), but “how the game feels” at the beginning is always important to hook a new player.
I’m a player that prefers exploration and expression over socializing or achieving, so keep that in mind.
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This is a game. That’s great. Most MMOs I’ve played nowadays aren’t actual games but rather skinner boxes, so this being an actual game felt good. All the jumping around, positioning and fast attacking is great. Having to follow basic very intuitive tactics as a low level player when fighting bosses was fun, it felt rewarding and the game assumed my intelligence was above amoeba level. I also love how beautiful everything looks and how there are little secrets to find here and there.
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Going on with the game part, quests. Most MMORPGS nowadays have quest progression, but they aren’t engaging at all, usually they are “kill this monster a few times” or “get this item from this monster so many times”. Slowly. And then rinse and repeat. This game has a nice variety of quest types. I specially enjoyed playing hide and seek with the demon queen (what I didn’t like as much is how resilient enemies are in that zone). I just hope the yield of exp cards is kept though, because if we’re gonna depend on a reduced monster-exp-yield, the boring grinding will begin very early.
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Job leveling is off. At first rank, for every base level you get, you also grow one job level. It takes about 15 base levels to grow 15 job levels, which is kinda intuitive. But for rank 2, it takes ~30 base levels to level the 15 job levels. I don’t know how it goes from rank 3 onwards, but this is very off-putting as suddenly you feel like you have to invest twice as much “time”/“effort” for the same outcome, I had a friend giving up because of this. First rank growth should be slowed down and second rank sped up a bit to make it less steep.
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Character creation is poor. I mean, the canteen place is nice and all, but it feels very odd to have hair colors lmited to specific hairstyles. It makes no sense and leaves me resentful that I can’t go an extra step. Why can’t I be brunette and have short hair? I’m also not a fan of achievement-based extra colors, but I wouldn’t complain if just a few were limited to that. Costumes and hats would be a thing, but “bodily features” being limited to that… Also it would be nice if at least achieved colors were account-shared, I don’t need to prove more than once that I can kill 500 hanamings. Finally, the beginning of the game is very unsettling with everyone looking the same. On the other hand, it’s nice to have an option to insta switch between achieved colors, I guess.
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Back to character creation, the character selection. I really like how it looks and the different lounges (although It’s ironic that banquet hall has no furniture
), but it’d be nice to take it one step further and have unselected characters do various actions, like walking around, sitting on a chair (or the stairs, or the floor), taking a nap or praying to the statue. It’s purely cosmetical but it’d be nice. -
More on account-sharing. Storage. It isn’t account shared but it should. If your characters are going to share a name, might as well share resources and be able to transfer equipment from one to another easily (my archer would have more use for that bow than my swordman). Also, while it’s not really annoying, I don’t understand the point of charging for every single item put in/taken out of storage.
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Portals to other areas should be better marked. When exploring Klaipeda, I kept getting into buildings by accident. That was annoying. But it was worse when exploring the F3 of the mines I was suddenly transported somewhere else with no arrows or portal to see. I open the map to see where the heck I was and got instakilled. That made the resurrect window not appear so I was stuck.
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And on the matter of Klaipeda, I’d move the monster breeder to another pat of the city. It feels very odd that the very first NPC you get to greet in this big city offers a service that is so clearly way out of your league. I checked a couple times that I didn’t take a wrong turn and ended up in a level 100 city or something (also, for testing purposes shouldn’t there be a cheaper pet? If I add up the silver on both of my chars I still don’t have enough for half of the cheapest one). It’s something very very very minor, but NPC relocation should be easy and it’d do a bit of good.
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Can I comment on how much I like MALLET WYVERN?
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But quest bosses might need some touch-up. Mainly the mine bosses. When I went in with my highlander, I had trouble getting close to the golem and the death-like bosses, only to just chip away very little of their healths with each chance. Then I leveled up cartar stroke a few levels just as I saw my swordman skills being worthless (this is an issue), but that took time and it was long after. Then I went in with my pyromancer and the AoE skill murdered them with ease (and I heard it’s the same for cryomancer). But this certainly isn’t my area, so I might have overlooked something.
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Finally, about interface tutorial. It’s nice that they exist at all, but text can be hard to remember (not to mention that tutorial windows sometimes close on their own) so it would be nice if there were optional “trial runs” for the ones you won’t be using all the time, like placing a bonfire, crafting, upgrading or using tabs in the character profile. It’s nor VERY necessary but it would make the game even easier to understand.
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Speaking of achievements, it should also indicate what each achievement consists of. I still don’t know what “stealing a treasure” is or where I can find the pink hair quest.
So to summarize my suggestions that I feel would make the early game more engaging:
- Keep the game dynamic, explosive and fun.
- Keep the questing varied and don’t fall down into grind territory too early.
- Soften the exp requirement curve between rank 1 and rank 2.
- More than one basic hair color for each hairstyle during character creation.
- Unselected characters doing random stuff in the character selection screen.
- Storage should be shared among characters in the same account.
- Entrances to other areas must be better delimited.
- Don’t put the most expensive NPC right in the entrance of the first city.
- Some quest bosses are too hard for some classes but too easy for others?
- Trial runs on top of tutorial text.
- Explanations for achievement requirements.