Newbie Feedback from old UO Vet
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Hey all,
This is my first step ever into Fractured ever so I apologize if some suggestions were already made. My background comes from early UO / heavy PVP Chesapeake shard.
Overall the game is great and I enjoy the play discovery style and lack of hand holding, but there are some initial frustrating mechanics that will easily detour players if not addressed. I can't imagine enjoyable PVP or end-game events when simple mechanics are debilitating to use.
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Forgive the way I say as I am not trying to be mean but instead trying to convey my initial frustration. The spell/skillbar cancellation/queue cancellation of skills makes me want to vomit. The crude-stop of having to cast spells balancing between right clicking and spell casting almost made me rage quit at first. When I first started attacking wolves I didn't understand why half my buttons were/are cancelling each other out. Half my spells still never even cast to be honest when I play even after I've gotten used to it. It makes no sense to me why I have to stop moving to cast a teleport spell or an attack spell. If anything, it should be the other way around, the spell should take priority and potentially stop me in place. At least give me some sort of a "channeling" or meter buffer to understand why half my skills or spells are cancelling out / not working. Simple but highly frustrating mechanic as a mage starting out and feels super clunky/not player friendly. Sometimes I even feel like i need to hold the button down for a few seconds to cast or perform the action. I'm about 8 hours in and still hate it. FYI my latency is between 20-50ms and FPS 90 so I don't think it's a connection or framerate issue, but perhaps it still could be the case?
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If I stand in place attacking and right click its exponentially slower if I move + attack -> move + attack. If I strafe move and right click my attack speed goes up about 80%? Odd mechanic to me. I'm constantly moving left right up or down and rapidly right clicking. Is there a reason for this?
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I still have no dang clue what the lightning bolt is next to my health and mana? Nothing ever explained it. Maybe a tooltip or hoverable help there? The same goes for death "need to go back to town" for full health mechanic. I thought I was poisoned with the bubbly purple bar and had no idea how to cure it. A hoverable tooltip that says "You need to return to town to restore full health" would be helpful as a new player. As far as the lightning bolt after scouring the forums and googling I think I saw the word endurance which is what it might be, but I still don't have a clue has to how it affects me. Maybe it doesn't as a mage-like initial build? No idea, still don't know. I could ask global chat but I don't get why it would have to be that complex.
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Why when I create a campfire do I have to sit down 20 times to restore my full mana bar? Why not just let me sit down once and have faster passive regeneration?
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Please create a setting so I can invert the left and right mouse actions. i.e. move with right click and attack with left. Maybe its just me but most games I've played tend to have right mouse button as associated movement and left click action. Having the option here would be nice.
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Consider a better map indicator of where I am on the map. I find myself taking time to locate myself on the map because my indicator blends in with every other icon. In more dire situations it would be nice to have the map center to my location or be a more visible color.
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Consider raising knowledge point reward for completing / 100% completion of a specific knowledge monster group? Maybe lower overall points but provide a larger prize at the end for completion? Makes more sense than giving me like 10 points for completion.. a little underwhelming :).
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@splitmentality Some Answers:
The Lightning Bolt is Stamina/Endurance/Energy basically. It slowly goes down as you are actively doing things like running, and when activating certain non-magical skills it may go down faster. (like the melee skill Second Wind). When you run out of Endurance, I believe you start to consume food faster and you cannot activate endurance related skills, and you run slower, as if you were encumbered.
Moving while casting: This is a realism thing. Many novels and TTRPGs require you to not be moving, or moving only at a slow walk in order to cast magic, or you lose your focus, so that is likely the goal of the Devs here. As to one spell/ability interrupting another, that is kind of new to this test, so I haven't really experienced it yet to comment.
The strafing thing goes along with the movement feel they want for this game. Maybe not with magic (see previous comment) but with other powers, attacking while moving is kind of the dynamic they are going for.
The campires: First, I applaud the idea of you being able to remain seated at a campfire until you fill your mana and stamina fully, unless interrupted by a mob. That would be better than having to sit down 12 times, however, part of the game, as you'll find, is purposefully adding some slow-down frustrations to add some breadth to the game and make it seem longer.
Campfires part 2: As to the whole losing of part of your health until you make it back to town, that was implemented like 3 or 4 tests ago. Between that and the not fully restoring mana(which was implemented the first time this test) it is a way to prevent laying down a campfire really close to a mob and using it to totally abuse the situation.
Tooltips: Your idea for tooltips on things is overall good, however, that doesn't mean they will get implemented necessarily during Alpha. Tooltips are considered QoL improvements, and although some do get implemented during Alpha, they are not a focus now, but rather the mechanics themselves. During Alpha, a big part of it is seeing what it takes for newb players to figure things out for themselves, so they get a better idea among other things, what tool tips are needed, and which ones are wasted code.
Inverted Mouse button: I don't see how inverting the buttons, especially for right vs left handed players would be a big deal, and this will probably make it into settings in the future I'm guess. Until then, depending on your mouse driver, you can sometimes just invert your buttons in the Device Manager while playing, and switch them back when you exit the game.
The speed of KP acquisition is one of the things they have been sliding up and down from test to test. It isn't something that should really be hotpatched, as each setting level needs to be fully experienced to get good feedback. Having said that, once they get the speed down to where they want it, I do like your idea of making that last tick of Knowledge from a mob be bigger than those who came before it. Even if you just make it double or something. The very first, and the last tick would be the ones I think that would be the most knowledgable times in the game.
As you can see from other people's posts, if you've been looking, in regards to KP progress, that is a hot topic, especially this Alpha as they slowed it down quite a bit from previous tests, mainly because of player feedback of it being too fast (even though it was made faster because it is a short lived test) and there are some mobs that they feel are really becoming tedious to farm for KP because of their general rarity and thus contention to be killed by other groups, and they like give 1-2% per kill, while only respawning like 2-5 every 10 or more minutes.
Overall, good feedback for a new recruit though, hope you enjoy your experience as it evolves.
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@splitmentality said in Newbie Feedback from old UO Vet:
Hey all,
This is my first step ever into Fractured ever so I apologize if some suggestions were already made. My background comes from early UO / heavy PVP Chesapeake shard.
Overall the game is great and I enjoy the play discovery style and lack of hand holding, but there are some initial frustrating mechanics that will easily detour players if not addressed. I can't imagine enjoyable PVP or end-game events when simple mechanics are debilitating to use.
- Forgive the way I say as I am not trying to be mean but instead trying to convey my initial frustration. The spell/skillbar cancellation/queue cancellation of skills makes me want to vomit. The crude-stop of having to cast spells balancing between right clicking and spell casting almost made me rage quit at first. When I first started attacking wolves I didn't understand why half my buttons were/are cancelling each other out. Half my spells still never even cast to be honest when I play even after I've gotten used to it. It makes no sense to me why I have to stop moving to cast a teleport spell or an attack spell. If anything, it should be the other way around, the spell should take priority and potentially stop me in place. At least give me some sort of a "channeling" or meter buffer to understand why half my skills or spells are cancelling out / not working. Simple but highly frustrating mechanic as a mage starting out and feels super clunky/not player friendly. Sometimes I even feel like i need to hold the button down for a few seconds to cast or perform the action. I'm about 8 hours in and still hate it. FYI my latency is between 20-50ms and FPS 90 so I don't think it's a connection or framerate issue, but perhaps it still could be the case?
I do feel the same about the casting. Many times you think you have casted a spell but you didn't. A casting progress bar would be very appreciated to better understand what is going on, especially when you are under effects that slow your casting.
- If I stand in place attacking and right click its exponentially slower if I move + attack -> move + attack. If I strafe move and right click my attack speed goes up about 80%? Odd mechanic to me. I'm constantly moving left right up or down and rapidly right clicking. Is there a reason for this?
This is a serious issue that will have to be addressed. Right now you can interrupt the attack animation by moving. Something must be done to prevent it, like locking you in place during the attack animation or prevent you from initiating another attack until the cooldown of the previous down has ticked down. Or maybe we can make use of it and make it part of the combat system, for example allowing interrupting animations on attacks but eating into your stamina everytime you do.
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I still have no dang clue what the lightning bolt is next to my health and mana? Nothing ever explained it. Maybe a tooltip or hoverable help there? The same goes for death "need to go back to town" for full health mechanic. I thought I was poisoned with the bubbly purple bar and had no idea how to cure it. A hoverable tooltip that says "You need to return to town to restore full health" would be helpful as a new player. As far as the lightning bolt after scouring the forums and googling I think I saw the word endurance which is what it might be, but I still don't have a clue has to how it affects me. Maybe it doesn't as a mage-like initial build? No idea, still don't know. I could ask global chat but I don't get why it would have to be that complex.
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Why when I create a campfire do I have to sit down 20 times to restore my full mana bar? Why not just let me sit down once and have faster passive regeneration?
Agree on this one. A mana regeneration buff while at the fire would be good. I would actually make it so also for health and energy. Instead of a click and fully heal approach, I would like the campfire to provide high regeneration of mana, health and energy while sitting at it. The current one can be abused.
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@GamerSeuss - thanks for all feedback.
"Moving while casting: This is a realism thing. Many novels and TTRPGs require you to not be moving, or moving only at a slow walk in order to cast magic, or you lose your focus, so that is likely the goal of the Devs here. As to one spell/ability interrupting another, that is kind of new to this test, so I haven't really experienced it yet to comment."
- I'm not against not moving, I'm saying I'd prefer the mechanic to cast the spell and stop me in my tracks because sometimes the continuous movement of running takes over. I'm trying to cast and normal button pressing/mashing just ends up cancelling 90% of my actions. My fluid movement constantly interrupts spell casting. There's a solid .5-1.5 seconds or more to cast at times. I just feel as a more mechanic this needs to be thought a little bit more through to not cause aggravation. As the mechanic currently sits I think its way safer to play a melee character. Mages feel frustrating/clunky so far to me.
"purposefully adding some slow-down frustrations to add some breadth to the game"
- To me that's like saying I'm going to add traffic to a highway so that the driver gets more frustrated with semantics trying to get where they are trying to go =). I completely understand skill-based slow-downs or frustrations, i.e. penalties, gameplay based hindrances that make a game more challenging, but this one is entirely / arbitrarily pointless to me. I understand things like not allowing town teleportion, etc as a game mechanic though.
"Tooltips: Your idea for tooltips on things is overall good, however, that doesn't mean they will get implemented necessarily during Alpha. Tooltips are considered QoL improvements, and although some do get implemented during Alpha, they are not a focus now, but rather the mechanics themselves. During Alpha, a big part of it is seeing what it takes for newb players to figure things out for themselves, so they get a better idea among other things, what tool tips are needed, and which ones are wasted code."
- While I completely agree with QoL statement and general "UX" enhancements, if it impacts me critically as a new player or user I think it should be explained somewhere over other tooltips. Both the return to town mechanic and endurance mechanic are completely unexplained. Understanding this is alpha though I get it. I've watched a few YouTubers though completely stop playing the game after <20 mins due to not understanding the core/simple mechanics of the game.
"The strafing thing goes along with the movement feel they want for this game. Maybe not with magic (see previous comment) but with other powers, attacking while moving is kind of the dynamic they are going for."
- Understood, I was more or less asking why my attack rate speed increased 80% by doing so. I do understanding there's dodging mechanics and real-time hit-box type functionality. I'm violently having having to move 1cm, right click, move 1cm right click because my attacks seem to go 80% faster that way.
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I would personally hate a mechanic that stops the player from moving while casting a spell. Staying still should be a user decision, as would cancelling the spell via movement. Just imagine how bad it would be in PvP if you could accidentally hit a skill then be unable to move. Currently to cast a spell and finish it, just make sure you don't press your movement keys while casting? Less options for the user is always worse IMO.
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I've been doing a few tests on the matter and I've been trying to pinpoint the cause of the perceived "unresponsiveness". I think that I've found it. It is caused by the interaction with attack animations.
If you cancel an attack animation with a spell, you will get the animation of the toon getting into casting position and the rune appearing, but the spell doesn't go off. Your client though thinks that it is casting so if you click again that skill, nothing happens. I will try to make a video of this.
