First impressions thread!

[littlejoe21]

I always liked playing games like icewind dale and BG with a single character. Faster leveling less micro management of 6 players. Single play does not appear possible as I can't edit my party as of right now. In older RPGs I was able to do a lot of running enemies around however everything appears to be faster than me in pillars of eternity . Is is pretty much pointless trying to play this game with 1 or 2 characters vs the full 6 party? My personal play style nothing against the game.

Edited August 19, 2014 by littlejoe21

[Umbersona]

My absolute first thing I checked for and first piece of feedback is that female Dwarves NEED to have the option to have beards. As a long time Dwarf player, I feel like the race I know and love has yet to be given the love they need in a game like this. Beards, bro. Give the Dwarves back their pride.

 

Other than that, enjoying the hell out of the Beta.

[bigstrat2003]

Started out on Normal. Soooooooo difficult. I'm in the ogre cave, but there's just too many spiders in my way.

 

Look at it this way... at least you got to the ogre cave!

[khomotso]

Sounds like I'm an outlier, but I have to admit I'm a bit put off by the look and feel of the game.

 

The character models all look pretty pudgy and child-like. Hard to create any character that feels like they would be strong, dark or intimidating. Or even attractive, for that matter.

 

Once in the gameworld the characters lack what I would call physicality. I'm left with a strong feeling of sprites just floating across the screen, not people inhabiting a world. Some of this may be animation and sound which will improve over time, so I won't judge it too hastily, but still.

 

This lack of physicality jumps out at me especially during combat. A real lack of onscreen feedback makes it hard for me to follow what's going on, or if my orders were carried out, and what the effects were.

 

I don't really get the Health/Stamina distinction, but I gather I'm not alone, and will get my head around it eventually.

 

So far, though, I have to say I don't feel like this is a living, breathing world. Very little interaction, relatively little visual representation of activity. I find myself spending more and more time watching the text scroll by, as the best representation of what's happening. I guess that's my first impression: this feels like a text adventure with visuals tacked on. It might be a very good text adventure at that, but that's where the game really seems to be focused.

[Tartantyco]

Combat was chaotic, I think it was perhaps the speed - things just seemed to go too fast for me to keep track of. I would prefer about 1/2 the speed - not the animations mind you, just the time between characters and enemies taking their turns. Speaking of animations, felt a little underwhelmed with the hit animations - attacked lions and there seemed to be no visible reaction from a hit.

 

I noticed substantial differences between enemy types. The giant spiders were very slow, while smaller spiders and beetles were really quick. I think they have to be slowed down though, it took the whole pack of beetles at Dyrford Crossing about 2-3 seconds to completely surround me, meaning tons of the abilities my characters have became useless. It's hard to web enemies that move at a gabillion miles an hour.

 

The game also needs a lot more feedback when it comes to combat. It's very hard to get an idea of what's going on a lot of the time, you're not sure if your party is even attacking sometimes, and it's hard to read a lot of the stuff that goes on. I think one possible solution here would be to decrease hit chance across the board. If stuff just happens less often you get a better idea of what's going on. Decreasing attack speed might also be an answer.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Tartantyco

[InsaneCommander]

Loved character creation. The classes seen a lot more interesting now that I can see their abilities.

 

Don't know about pets yet, but we can name the ranger companion.

Edited August 19, 2014 by InsaneCommander

[kat7ra]

So far, it's amazing, tomorrow I will spend more time, and delve more into it.
Only minus in the first impression department is that I could find no way in-game to speed up scrolling, not a problem the first hour, but it WILL BE after a while,

[PIP-Clownboy]

Those who were scared the game would be "easy"...well... fear not!

 

Not seeing the difficulty really. Aside from being completely under-geared and with no weapons equipped due to the vanish bug. Also the usual shaky RTWP pathfinding issues where my rogue bumps into the warrior, forgets to do what I told it and stands there idle. Characters seems to very easily get stuck if they are bunched. 

Edited August 19, 2014 by PIP-Clownboy

[talharbash]

I can't sit through the beta. One big problem I have is lack of companions and no back story to WTF I'm doing.

 

It may have sounded great on paper to do a beta this way but I feel its really lacking because of all the stuff that is taken out. Hopefully the final game will have all the community feedback you need for the game mechanics.

[BrokenMask]

Characters move oddly fast

 

Also, it'd be nice if you could move camera also with wasd keys <_< I prefer moving camera before clicking and I don't really like moving camera with mouse. So I'm resorting to crossing my arms and using right hand on mouse while at same time having left on arrow keys

[morhilane]

After 1.5 hours of gameplay (with a Chanter...I totally agree that they are overpowered and I was on easy). I did less or a more what was shown in the Gamescom demo (that's what it ended up like, wasn't exactly the plan).

 

Combat

- Combat is too fast in the sense that things move too fast into position and maybe some animation are too fast has well (while some others are probably correct like reloading the arquebuse and crossbow or casting a fireball).

- In combat, entities tend to glue together, which create a weird mass of bodies where you aren't too sure who is killing what has well.

- CC skills/spells might be too powerful when combined with ranged attack (once I discovered the CC spells that is it). Never lost a character and once I discovered the CC spells, barely got hit too.

- Larger fights cause slow down (3+ mobs, so group of humans near where you start and near the drake nest, the pack of wolves too).

 

Windows

- The "get more detail" dialog (aka right click an item) in trade is confusing with the lack of close button and sometimes the existence of an enchant button.

- The inventory system is somewhat confusing at first (pickup item from ground and inventory vs stash).

 

Other comments

- Good ambiance and music

- I love the water

- I love the dialogs

[Namutree]

Combat feedback really needs work. It can be hard to tell when I hit an enemy and how much damage I did.

[BrokenMask]

Wait, so D is double speed?

Whelp, that explains why everything moves super fast <_< Thats the first button I pressed in whole game

 

Since its in my muscle memory that WASD moves camera ^^;

[Freshock]

- Love the combat, so many different ways to fight and the animations are really good in combat - I'm going to have alot of fun with this. 

- The UI is neat, didn't take long before I mastered it. 

- Music and sound are much better than I could imagine, experienced a few bugs with it though but besides that it's really impressive. 

- Talking to people feels really nice, although I'm not a "reader" I find myself reading everything they have to say because it just feels right. 

- Like the character creation as much as I expected. 

- The "floating" casual chats from NPC's should last longer, I'm not always able to read it before it goes away. 

- Would be nice to be able to move the camera around using "WASD" but I guess I could change that in key bindings anyway.

[Namutree]

 

- The UI is neat, didn't take long before I mastered it. 

 

I'm glad some one likes it. I want it to be like BG. I'll get used to it I guess.

[Bryy]

I got a quest and wandered around town for a second, and then I decided to go off into the wilderness, where I was promptly murdered by a pack of lions.

 

I love it.

I decided the best course of action was to gang up on the lions one by one and completely butcher them.

[Ganrich]

The feel of the game is right.  The music, the ambient noise, the graphics, the abilities (and their animations), etc.  It is all what I had hoped for.  As expected there are some technical issues like:  Load times, all the things we were warned of in the beta update, etc.  All in all, this is exactly where the game needs to be for beginning beta IMHO.  The game feels very IE, yet needs to get some polish to grind out those rough edges.  I am going to take more time before any heavy feedback on anything too specific.  I want to really understand any grievances I have, and to be able to convey those issues appropriately. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I don't really like the Paladin's Flames of Devotion. Conceptually I love it, but would prefer a smaller % damage increase for a n amount of time instead of a powerful one shot attack.

[Namutree]

 

I got a quest and wandered around town for a second, and then I decided to go off into the wilderness, where I was promptly murdered by a pack of lions.

 

I love it.

I decided the best course of action was to gang up on the lions one by one and completely butcher them.

 

Bryy, how could you do that to your own kind?

[Arsene Lupin]

Pre-first impression: I am SOOO very glad they cut content from the beta. I was barely able to even dip my toes into the WL2 or DOS betas for fear of being spoiled. Cutting main story and stronghold content from the WL2 beta was absolutely the right move.

[Billy O]

First off the game is beautiful. I'm playing at 2560x1600 and was afraid it may not scale up that well. Not a problem at all. The models look bad in character creator but they look fine t me zoomed out as you will see them 99% of the time.

 

Music is phenomenal. I have been playing D;OS and it is so refreshing to hear some better music.

 

The lore and the world feel cohesive. This is huge for me. Some games I love the mechanics but hate the world or it feels fake. I buy into this world.

 

Combat does feel fast as many have mentioned but I'll give it a week before I declare it too fast. Part of it is the overwhelming nature of playing a level 5 character with no buildup and trying to manage 25+ new spells and abilities.

 

Of all the bugs that have been mentioned the #1 priority must be pathfnding. If that is not perfect by launch combat will be a fraction of it's potential.

 

I love the scouting system.

 

I'm sure I'll delve a lot deeper but so far so good.

[ThreeSon]

• I very much appreciate the various difficulty modes available, particularly the Trial of Iron and Expert Mode options. Those should be nice challenges to undertake in the full game.

I think the races look nice, particularly the Godlike. But the ears of the Orlan look odd... almost like tree branches. Is that what they are intended to resemble?

The text in the various character creation screens could be more readable - for example, bolding or changing the color of the names of class skills in the description box to make them stand out from the rest of the text

• When I click on an NPC to speak to, it appears that my created character (in slot 1) is always the one who "does the talking," meaning that character's attributes are what determines which conversation options are available, even if I have a different party member selected when initiating the conversation. Is that intentional? In the final game, if my created character has low Intellect, can I use another party member's higher Intellect to affect the conversation? I'm not sure what method would be best, but I hope it is made clear when we play (with a tutorial message or something similar).

• The ambient sounds are very nice

• For NPCs that only speak a single line of dialogue (e.g. Villager: "Most who pass through nowadays are refugees or bandits"), I think it would be better not to first require the player character to have to run all the way over to them to hear it, which feels like it makes the pace drag if we're the type of person who likes to click on everyone at least once. If it is possible to simply hear the dialogue with the PCs standing in place, I would prefer that, while still having to approach NPCs that involve full conversations.

Edited August 19, 2014 by ThreeSon

[RagingFlower]

Just fired up the beta for about an hour, and the feel of the game is spot on. I have to say, our boys at Obsidian are mighty brave letting out a chunk of the game this early. I'll avoid any criticism that is blatantly a result of a bug/need of polish, but some things I feel I need to point out. Overall the game is enjoyable.

 

I started up a monk. Because I love monks. Every RPG that has a monk gets bonus points. I also got to make him literally ON FIRE on character creation (Godlike is a pretty awesome race). Since class feedback is what the devs have requested the most, i'll write that up in a separate thread. Overall punching the crap out of things is very satisfying. As for some general things I noticed, here is a small list:

 

1. The art style is splendid. It very much feels like the old-school painted backgrounds, but with modern day bells and whistles. You can see heat waves off of the fire in the inn, the water ripples and you can see the grass blow. In alot of ways it feels familiar but also a step up from the graphics of the previous CRPG titles. Compared to how other recent CRPG releases have handled their art, I prefer Pillars over everything else I've seen.

 

2. Music and audio is a little lacking at the moment, but what's there is in the right direction. It's pretty typical high-fantasy, but it hits all the right notes.

 

3. Combat can be a little cluttered at times when everyone's in close. certain elements of the HUD kind of overlap the action and enemies and party members tend to stack very close to each other. I am hoping in the final product that the UI and player models are more separated from each other, as I fear it can be difficult to tell what is going on currently.

 

4. It was difficult to barter due to an issue where items "stick" onto your cursor. I can't really comment on the barter system as a result. I did notice that shops seem to have limited amounts of gold to buy/sell with. I am a huge fan of that. What if, by some miracle, PoE is the first CRPG to *not* have your player swimming in gold late in the game? I am still waiting for a game to handle economy in a way so that I'm forced to make choices on what to buy/sell.

 

5. The layout of the UI is pretty nice. There's quite a bit of it to manage, but with the current design it doesn't take up too much of the space but also is centered in a way that I could see all my options in front of me at all times. The only thing it is missing is tooltips. I really hope in the final product that if I hover over something, it gives me a brief reminder of what it does.

 

That's all I got right now. The game is looking real good guys. This is the first kickstarter I've backed that has made it this far into development, and it's just really exciting to be able to play it.

 

Keep up the great work!

[LightPhoenix]

• Related to that, selecting one party member (when you currently have the whole party selected) should be easier. The most obvious way is to click on their portrait, but that doesn't actually deselect the other party members (and thus, allow you to do things like use abilities). You have to physically click on the party member you want, which is fine, but a little clunky.

 

If you hit 1-6, you'll select whatever character is in that slot.  With that in mind, I immediately remapped "Select All" to the tilde.

[LightPhoenix]

Played for a couple of hours now - it was longer than I thought, which is always a good sign!

 

My one big GUI nitpick is that highlighting doesn't seem to show enemy loot on the ground and the icons themselves blend in a little too much.  Simple fix, make highlighting highlight loot.

 

My one big mechanical nitpick is that your party dies when your main character dies.  I didn't have a problem with it in some of the fights leading up to the cave, but then my main character (paladin) got knocked out in two or three quick hits and it was game over even though the rest of my party was fine.  This seems like it strongly discourages the player from rolling a melee class for their main character.  I get this is a hold-over from BG, and without story it's hard to say if there's a similar set-up here narratively.  However, mechanically it sucks, especially since your other characters are free to pass out.  I'd prefer this to be a game mode rather than standard.

 

Otherwise, loving it so far.