My thoughts after 5 hours with the beta.

[PLivesey]

Firstly, can I just say thanks to the guys at Arcen Games for all the hard work they put in to their games, and also the amount of time they seem to spend talking with the community.  I'm happy to say that I bought AI War near the beginning of its life, and I'm in a position now where I'll buy anything they release (within reason).  This is mostly a warning: the following may be biased    And, obviously, I should state that these are beta impressions that are subject to change as the game does.

The Game: On starting the game, it feels a little complicated.  You get a little message in the top left, but that's it.  It just sort of throws you in, which some will like, and some won't.  Perhaps, at the very off, some sort of highlighting around the "objective" would be good, just to give players some direction.  After they've done that, they'll know which doodads (not sure what you guys are calling them) to use for what in future.

I created some spells (great that you have such options right from the off by the way), and headed on my way.  Ran to a random area on the map, and started running.  I entered EVERY building I came across, and then into EVERY room I could.  I got a lot of potions, but it took a lot of time, especially when you went down a long branch of the tree to find nothing there.  To be quite frank, I wasn't really enjoying the game as much as I thought I would.  Again, perhaps some sort of guidance as to say "Once  you get x amount of potions you can consider not exploring these low level buildings any more" might be enough, because I was exploring them for about 2 hours.

Fortunately, once I went to a level 2 zone and started exploring underground, the game picked up, and now I would probably say this has got me hooked like no other game has done since 2006!  Spent the next 3 hours descending into one underground cave that led deeper and deeper.  Exploring and fighting bosses, and then picking up my much deserved loot afterwards.  The difficulty seems pretty good - I was level 2 fighting level 4 bosses, and it was tough, as it should be.   Those 3 hours flew by, without me really noticing how fast it went - a very good sign!

Music: Fantastic.  Need I say more?

Art Style: A lot of criticism was raised about this in pre-beta screenshots and from the trailers they showed, but I have to say, when I'm playing it, I find the environments to be beautiful, especially the snowy scenes.  Underground is dark and full of mushrooms and acidic water, and the lighting really gives it an atmospheric edge.  Each new 'scene' I've been in has a unique feel and I find myself very impressed, considering I wasn't expecting much.

Some small issues:  When things happen in the log in the top right, if they happen when I'm fighting a boss, I kill the boss, then the EXP message replaces it before I've had a chance to read it.  I had one discussing my town or somesuch, and I never saw it.  There seems to be a 'world event log', but nothing to let me see local messages?

Thanks again guys for what is shaping up to be a very unique sidescrolling game, and cannot wait to see how it evolves over the coming months.

Philip.

[tigersfan]

Thanks for the kind words! We're thrilled you like the game. We all enjoy playing it quite a bit too.

As for your issues. The first with the log we are aware of, we'll get that fixed soon, maybe not the next patch, but soon.

There are automatically some platforms underground. You can stand on them. Are you not seeing them?

[PLivesey]

Thanks for the kind words! We're thrilled you like the game. We all enjoy playing it quite a bit too.

As for your issues. The first with the log we are aware of, we'll get that fixed soon, maybe not the next patch, but soon.

There are automatically some platforms underground. You can stand on them. Are you not seeing them?

Haha, after just loading it up now, the platforms work fine.  I think what has happened is my keyboard (or perhaps a joypad) has been acting as though 'down' was always pressed.  I've played for FIVE HOURS like that, thinking that you couldn't stand on platforms!

I'll remove that from my initial post, thanks.

[Nalgas]

Haha, after just loading it up now, the platforms work fine.  I think what has happened is my keyboard (or perhaps a joypad) has been acting as though 'down' was always pressed.  I've played for FIVE HOURS like that, thinking that you couldn't stand on platforms!

Oh wow, that would be absolutely brutal playing like that, especially underground.  You not only lasted five hours gimped that way, but made it through boss fights two levels higher than you?  I salute you.

[x4000]

Thanks so much for the kind words, indeed!

In terms of the local message log, you can hit ~ to see that.  Though apparently there's presently a bug with the most recent event sometimes being removed instead of the oldest.  Whoops!

[stblr]

Some nitpicking so far:

- The initial 35 tooltips you get from the Advisor Health Stone was pretty daunting to see upfront, and felt like a chore having to slog through them all at once. Even something as simple as splitting these up between the initial settlers would work wonders.

- It would be helpful to have the option of showing hotkeys for the abilities hotbar. I set my spells up for a custom format (mouse 1 through 3, Q, W, R, F, and Z as my abilities) and it was kind of a bear setting up my hotbar the way I wanted and be easily able to associate fingers with spells mentally. It also makes the static-looking number images above each circle on the hotbar kind of silly if I've remapped them all. Even having this in a tooltip would be nice.

- The crafting menu is very cumbersome. I can't see what I can make without drilling down into one of the intitial ingredients. Since I haven't memorized what I can make, this makes the menu an exercise in clicking all of the initial ingredients every single time I want to check my crafting recipes, which got tedious about the second time I went into a crafting menu. I guess the upside is I can see all recipes available to me given my civ level or something, but it feels like a big price to pay. The first sentence of a crafting ingredient tooltip is also very awkward: "You currently have x of this ingredient in your inventory, y of which are already spoken for in this recipe."

- I'm not sure if there just aren't walking animations for a lot of the characters yet, but all the people in my colony are running around non-stop.

- In the Controls menu, the Edit buttons on the right don't seem aligned with the rest of the rows, they seem a few pixels shifted down in comparison.

[x4000]

Regarding the initial 35 tooltips, we didn't really expect folks to read those all at once -- it only asks you to read the first 5.  We figured folks could come back when they want to for the rest.

For the hotkeys for the ability bar, that would be a great mantis suggestion for the tooltips way.

For the crafting menu, the goal is to let you see what you can make with what you have, which is how it is oriented.  In terms of being a tech tree, it's not really designed with that in mind.  We just revamped the crafting menu based on alpha tester feedback, and I think it's actually really solid at this point.  But that doesn't mean we don't need another interface to complement it -- only so much you can stuff into one screen.

On the walking animations, yes there are none and none planned -- we made the choice to go with more NPCs/characters rather than doing extra animations for each one.

The controls menu alignment thing is also a great one for mantis.

Thanks!

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I think Chris, that the game should emphasize the point of the game when you first start out.  Whether this is through some sort of cut scenes or photos with a description of the world, I'm not too sure on.  But something that tells you pretty quickly what to do and your overall goal.  However, maybe you don't want to.  I don't think Terraria does anything to "soften" its player upon entering the game so maybe you don't have to.  Up to you I guess. 

But It seems to drop you right into the game with text-filled stuff boxes and can be rather awkward starting out and confusing.  I would suggest having the nameplates to EVERYTHING be visible until you leave the village at first.  That way I'm not running to each one trying to figure out which is the right work bench to craft spells or potions.  This did cause me some issues early on. 

Once you get a hang of the game (which I did rather quickly compared to most games) its fine.  These are just my 3-hours-later thoughts on the game. 

I WILL say though.  I love it so far.  I have gotten lost in a few of the early on places and it doesn't feel bad.  Its the "Oh, I'm lost?  Maybe I'll find some potions in here..." kind of lost rather than the "DANGIT I got lost again!!!!!! FRAKKIN DEVELOPERS!!!!!" kind of lost feeling.    I hope you get what I meant.  The graphics are great, the music fits astonishingly well for me, I know Pablo is great, but I never expected to fit in like it did.  I do love how it changes based on the setting/room.  Though lack of music in the village is . 

I'll doubtless have more thoughts, but these are some of the things I picked out.  Oh and that tiny fireball spell is....laughingly bad if I might say.  Way too short of range and lackluster DPS compared to a lot of the others.  Or maybe that's the point.  Who knows. 

King

[c4sc4]

Oh and that tiny fireball spell is....laughingly bad if I might say.  Way too short of range and lackluster DPS compared to a lot of the others.  Or maybe that's the point.  Who knows. 

Well, the fire touch spell cost 0 mana so you can use it even if you have no mana. Also, it damages background tiles so it is great for mining resources.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Oh and that tiny fireball spell is....laughingly bad if I might say.  Way too short of range and lackluster DPS compared to a lot of the others.  Or maybe that's the point.  Who knows. 

Well, the fire touch spell cost 0 mana so you can use it even if you have no mana. Also, it damages background tiles so it is great for mining resources.

Ahh, I didn't really read that it had no mana (fail on me).  Thanks

King

[syndicatedragon]

I created some spells (great that you have such options right from the off by the way), and headed on my way.  Ran to a random area on the map, and started running.  I entered EVERY building I came across, and then into EVERY room I could.  I got a lot of potions, but it took a lot of time, especially when you went down a long branch of the tree to find nothing there.  To be quite frank, I wasn't really enjoying the game as much as I thought I would.  Again, perhaps some sort of guidance as to say "Once  you get x amount of potions you can consider not exploring these low level buildings any more" might be enough, because I was exploring them for about 2 hours.

I had a similar experience. The initial exploration was interesting for about 10 minutes; after that, entering another generic-looking room only to find yet another potion (or worse, nothing) while getting blasted by dwarf creatures I could barely see got tedious.

I'm not sure how you could make it better, but you might think about a better way to start the game off for someone totally new to it. Had I not watched all the trailers and been reading the blog, I would have given up pretty quickly. I knew there was more to game, however, so I stuck with it and finally found some interesting places that had bosses, minerals, etc.

Maybe you could have something interesting always spawn nearby to start with, and direct the player there as part of the tutorial? Something to emphasize the fact that there is a lot more to the game than exploring mostly empty office buildings? A sort of set quest to clear out a nearby den of evil or something?

[x4000]

One thing we really had intended to make clear, but apparently forgot to, about the beta: you have to be a bit self-motivated on the start with it at this stage.  A lot of the sort of features to give players short-term goals to easily focus on require more stuff with the macro-game and NPCs than currently exists.  And that should ultimately be the solution to a lot of those early "what do I do" sort of moments.  It's not that we haven't thought about those -- it's that this is early beta, and we didn't feel like delaying for another few weeks or a month to wait for that. 

If we'd done that with every thing we wished for different, there'd have been no beta and we'd just release at 1.0 with a finished game.

So, yeah.  At the moment you're kind of dropped in, it tells you some basics, and you're left to explore either the interesting or uninteresting parts as you find them.  There's not really a way to solve that short of just building out more of the game we have planned, but we had to draw a line somewhere.  You guys would have killed us if we kept delaying again and again, especially for something like that, I think.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

One thing we really had intended to make clear, but apparently forgot to, about the beta: you have to be a bit self-motivated on the start with it at this stage.  A lot of the sort of features to give players short-term goals to easily focus on require more stuff with the macro-game and NPCs than currently exists.  And that should ultimately be the solution to a lot of those early "what do I do" sort of moments.  It's not that we haven't thought about those -- it's that this is early beta, and we didn't feel like delaying for another few weeks or a month to wait for that. 

If we'd done that with every thing we wished for different, there'd have been no beta and we'd just release at 1.0 with a finished game.

So, yeah.  At the moment you're kind of dropped in, it tells you some basics, and you're left to explore either the interesting or uninteresting parts as you find them.  There's not really a way to solve that short of just building out more of the game we have planned, but we had to draw a line somewhere.  You guys would have killed us if we kept delaying again and again, especially for something like that, I think.

Ahh well, we just want to make sure because we love what you guys do so much.  So much we'll bring fire and pitchforks if you don't do exactly what we want.  That is love right?   

King

[x4000]

Oh yeah, no worries.

[Nalgas]

At the moment you're kind of dropped in, it tells you some basics, and you're left to explore either the interesting or uninteresting parts as you find them.

But on that note, be very, very happy that those of us who got our hands on it a few weeks ago harassed them about that side of things as much as we did.  Now it at least does tell you the basics and what you can do/how to do it, even if you're left to yourself to figure out what to do with yourself from there.  It was incredibly polished for what it was (I think I still haven't managed to actually crash the game, even as far back as the first alpha they let people see) and already let you do most of what you can do now, but it just plopped you into the game with no explanation of anything.  No adviser stone, no level-gating of new game mechanics or bosses, no tooltips for 90% of things, and so on.

It still needs more "stuff" put in place to guide you in the right direction and toward the interesting and relevant parts of the very large world, but even in just the past three weeks a huge amount of progress has been made on improving the early experience.  You can actually play the game at this point just based on the information given to you by the game itself, as long as you're a bit self-motivated to explore things (and if you are, there's already a whole lot of stuff out there for you to find).