Hello,
First of all, thanks a lot IMC for the second wave of key distribution.
I really wanted to test the game and now I’m plainly satisfied :3
During these 3 last days of CBT, I managed to test archer up the 3rd circle.
No idea if you’ll have time to read this but I might as well share my thoughts (since it’s partly what CBT is for…)
Controls
I mainly played with a gamepad, and it had a really nice feeling, I tested a bit the keyboard and it seems to work well too. (didn’t test mouse control)
The main problem and I think it’s a major issue, is the first 2 minutes where the player has to understand those controls.
- First I’m using an “AZERTY” keyboard, you can guess how bad the first tutorial ended up for me (if I translate to QWERTY, it’s like if I told you to move with “ZSQD”, hit with “W” and use your skill with “A”)
Although I had no problem finding and editing the control xml, I think a majority of people will get really loss and that could ruin their first impression… - I’m sure some people would prefer moving with zsqd/wsad too.
- In my opinion the best way to play is with the gamepad but the player is not really encouraged to try it.
Suggestion : I really think you should implement a prefered control selection screen at the start of the game, with various options (“azerty” or “qwerty” setup, move with left or right side of keyboard, gamepad choices and setups too)
In the end it could really help smooth the player experience in the first important seconds when the player is taking the game in hands.
Game Experience
Overall I had a really great experience and lot of fun, I really like the graphic, sound and ambiance of the game, felt really perfect to me. I’m also really looking forward to the end game and pvp content.
I won’t talk about balance since I have only seen the tip of the iceberg. But it seems you did a really great job and the class system offers lot of possibilities too.
I’m going to talk more about my concerns and fears for various things I saw…
Various Concerns :
Blue Mobs (xp mob)
Edit: After a bit of debate (About BlueMobs) it seems that what I experienced was more due to the leveling curve than the blue mob…
I’m a bit mitigated on this…
In the end of the CBT I was level 45, and then I decided to try hunting blue mobs on a lv 70 map to test how it could go. I managed to find and kill 2 of these in 30 minutes, I got 3 level then 2 level and ended up at level 50.
I think getting these 5 level out of 2 mobs out of 30min hunting is a bit disproportionated compared to hours of party grinding it should have taken to get the same experience…
I really think you should consider giving more xp to grinding and toning down xp for blue mob. It will most likely result in a similar progression but you will have less chance it will degenerate into a “hunt the blue mob” game.
Leveling/grind/quest
It’s only my personal opinion but I feel like grinding is ok, but it will be far better with more repeatable quests, or more hard to craft recipes.
For example we ended up farming for a horn hat for several hours but it was fun to do so with that goal in mind. We didn’t really mind the time it took us and it felt quite rewarding to craft it.
Monster attack feedbacks
Sometimes there are messy and unreadable feedback on monsters and boss attacks
I don’t know if it’s intended this way, but some monsters and boss are doing attacks, and it seems you just get damaged out of nowhere with no chance of knowing where it’s coming from or what is happening. (I think it was a ghost monster in a lv30 map, we called it the “die” monster with a friend, cause he says die and you die… and a lv 45 boss too)
Either it’s due to lag or lack of feedback but it can be quite frustrating.
Class system explanations
The Class system is nice but it’s a bit hard to get the hand on how it works.
At the start I thought I could level archer C1 then archer C2 then ranger C1, but read that I could not.
Then I thought If I choose ranger C1 I could never again archer C3 but read you could?!
And at the moment I still don’t even know if I can archer C1 then ranger C1 then archer C3 then ranger C3?
I didn’t find a lot of informations in game that could help me. I think it could be a big help if there was a tutorial screen on this (disregard this if it exists already)
Player damage feedback and calculation
I read quite a lot of things on it and there are quite some hidden bonuses and mechanics on the damage calculation (armor type, dmg type, elemental, etc).
But in the end as I was playing and hitting monsters, I didn’t really know what was happening. I think more feedbacks on the damage would be nice, like if you get a bonus or a malus when hitting you should know…
At the moment when hitting monsters sometimes you feel really weak, and sometimes borderline OP… my archer managed to kill a boss in 4 multishot (with most likely armor bonus and vs flying bonus) but sometimes I do almost nothing on some monsters…
Other Various minor quirks
Chat: it doesn’t remember last chat mode if the map change, you have to change the mode to party chat all the time if you’re in a party. It feels also weird to have to press twice enter to close it, often I was wondering why my gamepad was inactive only to discover the chat was still open.
Party default choice: should be in xp sharing, it seems to be the obvious choice nowadays…
Unintuitive map start (sometimes) : you take a road and go right on a map and you end up being on the left side of the map (like you were coming through the right), it results that you end up going back to where you came from… maybe add a small U turn in these cases?
I guess I will stop there since it already ended up in a wall of text @.@
Hope this will get read 
Bonus Screenshot, this map was so beautiful…
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14786416/TOSSCreenshot.jpg