First impressions thread!

[Valorian]

 

 

2. It seems there is only one type of attack animation for each weapon at the moment, e.g. the dwarf keeps swinging his axe from right to left all the time, the paladin thrusts at the same location with her rapier. I hope they make better animations with more variation. (BG2 and IWD2 had different attack animations for instance)

 

 

 

 

I do hope they'll have time to include more variation.

[BrokenMask]

Almost completed the beta on easy, but since I play on trial of irons... Yeah, screwed up in second wilderness area <_<

 

Kinda funny how only two of three areas connect together and third is completely its own thing

[Kharador]

 

 

 

2. It seems there is only one type of attack animation for each weapon at the moment, e.g. the dwarf keeps swinging his axe from right to left all the time, the paladin thrusts at the same location with her rapier. I hope they make better animations with more variation. (BG2 and IWD2 had different attack animations for instance)

 

 

 

 

I do hope they'll have time to include more variation.

 

 

Yeah completely agree

[Wintersong]

Overall first impression and using some abstraction: I'm playing Baldur's Gate.

 

It's a beta and all that (more noticeable when you forget that Steam installs the game by spanish by deafult... leading to lots of "NCP_Dude" and blanks in important windows/conversations). So I'll ignore the beta thing by, naively?, assuming that Obsidian is going to adress everything that there is to adress (items disapearing when moved from an NPC in my party to my PC, invisible female Orlan heads, floating weapons in the 3D character portrait, female characters being portrayed as male in character creation, items with wrong/placeholder icons...).

 

The game in the videos looked good but wen you play it... I truly feel amazed at how good it looks. So far I have only been in the village and the under dugeon (sloooooow player here) but so far, everything looks good.

 

So do characters. They look great even if they are not super duper next of the next gen. I spent quite a lot of time just checking the different races/classes and their origin areas and it was awesome to have them with different looks and starting gear. I love that. I'm worried about the portraits. Altough I love them, they are very limited, much like BG and company. Human males get 3 (4 if you use the dwarf one). Which is more than other races can say. And some of the portraits don't match anything in the character creator. It's not a big issue by itself but I do certainly like that the portrait and the character have some resemblance. In BG it was about colours but here, with 3D... makes me wish to take a screenshot of the character and use that as portrait (if that functionality is added), even if it will clash with the NPC's portraits (I could take screenshoot of them and do a quick swap).

 

Conversations are good too. So much to read! And while I played it in spanish (before switching to old good english), very well translated. Not sure if it has any real effect that some NPCs of my party run to talk instead of allowing my PC to do it.

 

The UI, bugs/glitches aside, lacks functionalities that would make life more comfortable. Or maybe I missed how to use them. In shops I cannot see the item details (more importantly, weapons) unless I try to buy them or use the ? button. Missing weapon/armor comparisons when hovering the mouse over one of them in my inventory. In general, that kind of stuff.

 

Combat feels good but being a newbie, still need more learning about it. Like... Why does my PC with two lances (default gear) hit so few times? (7 times) Is because of distance to enemy? For dual wielding? Bad luck? Because everybody else has like 20+ hits after killing inn girl and bridge dudes!!! For now, sticking to easy mode and slowy figure stuff out.

 

One of the things that I like more about the combat, specially compared to AD&D, is that fighters DO stuff in battle. Real stuff. No more "Sack of HPs that (awesomely) swings a sword from time to time".

 

I have never been fond of magic (vancian = meh, between other things) but so far, I'm not disliking the magic. Cleric actually seems interesting. If on release I end playing a pure magic user, it would be a first ever (in cRPGs) so I hope that it happens.

 

Really nice touch that I can hover my mouse over the combat attack descriptions and see the data there.

 

Stealth: love the circles.

 

I killed the bridge guys and their boars (lots!!) so funny thing that when I enterd a shop and tried to exist, it seemed like that game frozed in the Loading screen (all black one). I could see that my cursor changed depending on the screen position and I could even open the C, I or ESC menus (lacking background though). Puzzling until I just hit SPACE and discovered that my option to pause the game due to character death was causing it because of 12 "Auto-Paused: Character Death (Boar Companion)".

 

Those custom companions are truly expensive!!! Manged to sell tons of loot to afford a level 4 one (a paladin) but she, while nice and armed with a gun, is quite weak compared to the other NPCs (that arleady supposed to be badly equipped). Still, really nice option. Not sure if I'll use it on release unless there is some glaring hole in the party's tactical composition.

 

In a disordered and uncomplete way, that's my first impression. So far, if we ignore the beta stuff (which should be fixed/solved/improved!), everything is awesome.

 

Best $138 spent ever... so far. Keep the guard up, keep working hard and let's aim for a non-bug-feast release, ok? 

 

 

"I'm a bark string! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark."

[Billy O]

- Ranger pets always have to be last in party? 

 

This was very annoying to me. I have a giant bear, please let him tank for me.

[Namutree]

 

- Ranger pets always have to be last in party? 

 

This was very annoying to me. I have a giant bear, please let him tank for me.

 

I had a giant bear too. I named her Tina.

[The Loyal Nub]

Played for about 90 mins yesterday after the download and I have some initial impressions I'll share. The caveat here is that these are first impressions and based on how I progress with the beta may change.

 

The good: I can already tell that this game will give us hours of quests and choices which is a VERY GOOD THING. The dialogue with npc's in the game is outstanding and I really enjoyed it. The opening character creation menu is stellar. The explanations of things are clear and to the point and there are a lot of choices which I really like. The diversity of types is also very much appreciated and I chose to play as a Moon Godlike, Female Elf, (I am male but I don't play these games to play:me), Paladin. I loved the way my char looked and it's in this set up that the chars look best in the game.

 

The not so good: In game the characters look rather blurred and indistinct against the lusher backdrop. I found the grasslands stood out better than my characters! This became a real problem in combat. It was hard to tell in the fights against stone beetles and spiders if I was actually making any hits with the tiny blurry swords and axes! I could see the beetle flip over and then die so clearly I was doing something right! The best fight was with the Ogre. In that cave background it was a little easier to see the hits being made but still not perfect. I made sure in these fights to pause often so that I could check every characters skills and try them out. There are some great traits or skills each class has (consider this part of the above's "The good"). Problem is the little boxes for them are just a little too small for my tastes. They could be enlarged a bit.

 

I will play a little more throughout the week and my impressions may change as I grow more acclimated to the game however I have a feeling that my objections will probably remain in place. However I think this is going to be a very good game and it will certainly offer a lot of adventure and replay value especially with all of the choices that are offered and I cannot stress enough how important that is to me because in the end what I am really looking for in a game like this is a lot of adventure, choices, and replayability!

[frostphoenyx]

 

 

The not so good: In game the characters look rather blurred and indistinct against the lusher backdrop. I found the grasslands stood out better than my characters! This became a real problem in combat. It was hard to tell in the fights against stone beetles and spiders if I was actually making any hits with the tiny blurry swords and axes! I could see the beetle flip over and then die so clearly I was doing something right! The best fight was with the Ogre. In that cave background it was a little easier to see the hits being made but still not perfect. I made sure in these fights to pause often so that I could check every characters skills and try them out. There are some great traits or skills each class has (consider this part of the above's "The good"). Problem is the little boxes for them are just a little too small for my tastes. They could be enlarged a bit.

 

 

 

I agree. I've been having hard time understanding who was doing what. Sometimes during the fight i couldn't tell if a char was auto-attacking or just doing nothing/having problems with pathfinding. I guess we need more visual feedback.

 

Can we put the party members in auto-cast mode? I'd rather focus on my main character during a fight.

[Rollcage8]

Excellent game, loving the direction and feel.

 

Alot of my early complaints and annoyances were all solved by menu driven disable/enable features.

 

Combat was alot better for me once I disabled the overhead swing timers and health pips - this enabled the game to visually show me what was happening rather then a couple of moving bars do it instead of my characters.

 

However the swing timers were nowhere to be found elsewhere on the UI.

 

I also disliked the stealth circles, they take away from the immersion of the graphics as well (same as the combat tooltips). I would love an option to play stealth similar to the baldur's gate games, where you merely go transparent with a sound effect and if you get to close and reveal then bad luck. If it stays as circles I would probably avoid the whole mechanic due to immersion breaking. Perhaps even recolouring of the circles to not stand out so rediculously would help.

 

+Character creation was awesome.

+Start menus awesome.

+Dialogue awesome. (again disabled the "stat test = 3" dialogue options)

 

Biggest problem with the game was combat sound effects and feedback:

- No critical hits sound effect (or didn't play in beta)

- No special exploding death animations (or heroic decaps)

- No noticable blood on large number hits/crits.

- ALL NPC's died without a whimper, silent murder is the game.

- Normal speed was sometimes too fast, Double speed was sometimes unexpectedly disastrous. Slow was quite often too slow. I'd prefer a 75%/100%/125% rather then 50%/100%/200%. Or even a combat speed of 80% or so would be perfect for me. If i got the numbers wrong then I'm sure the numbers I used described the issue.

- Alot of spells didn't play the effect, or the spell went off but visually the creature didn't seem to care. Fireball - sorta looked like the monster cared, I guess... (Baldur's gate had a fire effect attach to the monsters that were hit, so they ran in obviously singed from the spell)

 

UI elements for speed on the center pause dial were really hard to read.

 

Didn't like the bag management and character sheets at all - but I rarely do, bags were tedious, looting was tedious. I'm no master of UI creation, but again they were confusing and hard to decipher for me personally.

 

[Lorfean]

I only played for a short hour last night, as the beta went live at 1:00 in the morning for me, but here are my first impressions:

 

• I'm very happy with the overall look of the game. The area design is gorgeous and very reminiscent of a high definition version of the IE games (IWD in particular) which is exactly what I was hoping for. I also like the character and creature design -- I very much like the more realistic approach to clothing, armor and weapons -- and the color palettes used feel just *right*. Great job.

• The character system they have created feels appropriately D&D / IE-like but with their own spin given to it. So far I like what I've seen, but I need to delve a bit deeper to get a more solid understanding and to be able to give appropriate feedback. It feels flexible and deep, which is great. From a role-playing perspective I'm also digging how much you can learn about the world by just exploring the various character creation options.

• The interface has some highs and lows, some of which were mentioned as known issues in the mail we got yesterday and others that are already being pointed out by other users here. I will have to analyze the clarity of the UI's feedback and its functionality more closely tonight, but suffice to say that the character sheet and inventory screens feel solid so far (in terms of design) but the journal  and in particular some of the on-screen feedback components seen during combat need work.

• The writing is great so far -- really enjoying the conversations and especially the descriptions of characters' behavior / environment.

• The feel of combat has been pretty good for me so far, but I've really only fought a bunch of lions and some shady dudes outside a dungeon. Knowing about some of the known issues (auto attack, pathfinding, sliding) and knowing they will be addressing them, it felt responsive enough to me and my characters pretty much executed their orders as I gave them. There is definitely more to do / keep track of than in the IE games, but so far I've liked that. Animations might need some work but that's hard to tell until they've fixed some of the known issues. Will evaluate the different aspects / feels more thoroughly tonight.

 

Overall I am happy with what I've seen so far. Knowing beta is beta and the current state of the game is a representation of its potential rather than a reflection of the final product (something some people seem to be forgetting) I am very excited about what Obsidian can achieve with our feedback.

[frostphoenyx]

 

Combat in this beta can be summed up in 6 words: What the hell is happening here? It's way way too fast. It's chaotic, and whatever tactical/planning you have usually goes right out the window because the game does not give you time to carry out any tactics. 

 

I see that many people have observed the same; action speed and combat overall are too fast. I also think it's important to keep it on the slower side.

 

 

I can't say it better.

[sunsegle]

Optimization - Better than I expected

 

Combat - This is what I want though tempo is little fast.

 

But I think there is some flaws.

 

1. Some spell's range is too short. Intellect attribute govern size of Area of Effect, but why there is no attribute for spell's range? (Ex. Dex? Per? or...)

 

2. Need spell feedback. When I cast spell like dazzling lights, I don't know opponent is dazed or not.. until I scroll up combat log.

 

3. No casting voice. I really want it!

 

4. It seems there is no Spell / Ability hotkey.

 

 

 

ps. Sorry for my foolish English.

[TheisEjsing]

 

- Ranger pets always have to be last in party? 

 

This was very annoying to me. I have a giant bear, please let him tank for me.

 

Hey mate, you can get your pet in the front by right clicking on the formation icon in the middle ui on screen. There you can create pretty much any party formation you want. I find it pretty fantastic. My stag has a white box as icon there, so I just drag it to the frontline next to the BB fighter. Hope it helped.

[sunsegle]

Optimization - Better than I expected

 

Combat - This is what I want though tempo is little fast.

 

But I think there is some flaws.

 

1. Some spell's range is too short. Intellect attribute govern size of Area of Effect, but why there is no attribute for spell's range? (Ex. Dex? Per? or...)

 

2. Need spell feedback. When I cast spell like dazzling lights, I don't know opponent is dazed or not.. until I scroll up combat log.

 

3. No casting voice. I really want it!

 

4. It seems there is no Spell / Ability hotkey.

 

 

 

ps. Sorry for my foolish English.

[Ahvz]

Hey mate, you can get your pet in the front by right clicking on the formation icon in the middle ui on screen. There you can create pretty much any party formation you want. I find it pretty fantastic. My stag has a white box as icon there, so I just drag it to the frontline next to the BB fighter. Hope it helped.

 

Brilliantly, thank you! 

[sunsegle]

Optimization - Better than I expected

 

Combat - This is what I want though tempo is little fast.

 

But I think there is some flaws.

 

1. Some spell's range is too short. Intellect attribute govern size of Area of Effect, but why there is no attribute for spell's range? (Ex. Dex? Per? or...)

 

2. Need spell feedback. When I cast spell like dazzling lights, I don't know opponent is dazed or not.. until I scroll up combat log.

 

3. No casting voice. I really want it!

 

4. It seems there is no Spell / Ability hotkey.

 

 

 

ps. Sorry for my foolish English.

[Simon280586]

Quick question: what are the red/green dots that appear above characters in combat?

[Giubba]

My first impression ->

 

• Char creation: attributes are pretty much unintelligible (but i've already wrote about this in the char creation discussion), customization is really limited with few option regarding beards/heads/hari (godlike suffer the most from this point), really a limited number of portrait (fire godlike have 1 portrait...), also aspect customization should be moved before the attributes distribution not after.
• Ingame feel: it really resemble a game made in baldur's gate era (actualy there are icons taken directly from BG/IWD)
• Dialogue: An evolution from BG dialogue system, it does its work admirably.
• Combat: A confusing mess, between bugs (my priest wasn't able to cast nothing,my wizard didn't have any icon in his action bar) and speed i wasn't able to understand what was happening.
• Skills: Few in number and confusing as hell in their upgrading.
   

Edited August 19, 2014 by Giubba

[2Mourty]

The static vegetation does stand out, though. I would love to see the grass and trees sway in the breeze.

 

I agree with this comment,  I would really like to see some grass and trees sway in the breeze.  I would add a touch of artistic "realism".  The scenery is gorgeous however, even in just a little village, can't wait to see the crazy environments you have come up with in the full game.

[sparklecat]

Yes, all nitpicking aside, this really is an incredibly beautiful game.

[Turambar]

Needs more portraits, and of a similar ilk to IWD2's collection!

Edited August 19, 2014 by Turambar

[frostphoenyx]

Quick question: what are the red/green dots that appear above characters in combat?

 

I think that's Stamina, or Health. I always mix those two.

[Bli1942]

Also needs a better way to pick portraits, unless I'm just missing it. Why do we scroll through 30+ portraits one at a time? There is room for a huge grid of them on both sides of the character. I forget what the first ones look like by the time I've gone through

 

This always annoyed me so much in the old games so I'll be embarrassed if there's a way to view them other than one at a time

Edited August 19, 2014 by Bli1942

[solomonk]

• Combat: A confusing mess, between bugs (my priest wasn't able to cast nothing,my wizard didn't have any icon in his action bar) and speed i wasn't able to understand what was happening.

 

Unfortunately I have to agree. Combat is no fun at all. It is either completely unbalanced or buggy - two fighters swinging at each other for half an hour without much progress. 

And pathfinding is not good at the moment.

[mistermannindy]

I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly is going on in combat. I would like it if zooming in was enabled so I could get a closer look and handle thing from there. The auto attacking bug  is also a little annoying.

 

Will there be more zoom levels in the retail version?  Not seeing the combat is my major annoyance thus far.  If I had the option of zooming in 5x what I can right now, that'd be great.  Not asking for the ability to rotate the camera, just an ability to get in closer and control the individual characters and target enemies.  Right now its just an uncontrollable mass of pixels when resolving combat.