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The game isn't ready for release.

RidrithRidrith Member RarePosts: 805
edited September 2015 in Sword Coast Legends

Obvious Sync Issues:

- Players being unable to see another player actually join the game, a blank profile picture even though there's a full group.  This happened to me today.  I couldn't even see him in the game.  We were running with 4 people when I thought we had 2.  It dawned on me quickly once I could hear two other foreign voices in the game speaking.  One guy could see me and the cleric, the other guy couldn't see us but could see the paladin...  My god it was a mess.  We had no idea where each other were on the field of battle.  I was walking around searching and watching as traps were disabled and I thought it was a bug because the guy wasn't typing or talking for the first 10-15 minutes of the adventure.

- Lag.  Serious lag.  Creatures dying over and over again and spamming their roars/groans/horrible noises all at once when it happens.  Generally goes on when a new player joins the game.  Creatures vanish or die on some player's screens and on others are still standing and fighting.

- Massive packet loss.  Disconnects and more.  My ping rises from a flat 30 to almost 600 when I DM.  I range anywhere from 90-150 while playing ARMA III on a full server or while playing any MMO on the market, including Planetside 2.

------------------------------

DM Toolset/DM Issues:

- Half-baked and not nearly enough there to create a truly interesting experience.  It's a great foundation...  For a beta/alpha version of the game but seems totally incomplete for what a lot of players are going to expect.  I think the limited features should probably be brought up somewhere on the forums or at least in the advertising.  It's adequate to create a decent dungeon crawl but limited in what you can do if you're trying to create a more focused story experience.

- Not enough creatures.  Not enough control over their stats or how they work.  This is especially obnoxious if you just want to do a dungeon crawl, you should be able to select fully edited sets.  Some of the creatures are horribly over-tuned.  (The fiery undead mini-boss comes to mind - he's got an AoE that will almost certainly kill any melee attacker in a single hit.  Because of the graphics and the optimal view for the game even knowing when it's going to happen is almost always up in the air.  If you don't have ranged you're just going to have to zerg rush this guy over and over again until he dies.)

- Death penalty is non-existent. Considering how difficult the encounters can be and how some GMs might accidentally or intentionally over-tune fights and get you killed I can't really see how a death penalty would be fair.  That said, there needs to be some sort of balancing factor.  As it stands right now people can die, respawn, charge back into the fight and keep fighting until they win over and over again.

- NPC bugs.  Having friendly NPCs or soldiers, etc in an area keeps them in almost constant combat.  They aggro through walls and will simply run into said walls or doors for all eternity until they can get to the enemy.  The AI and the aggro for these things probably need to be looked at.  It destroys what could potentially be a cool moment when a friend NPC army who is supposed to be standing there to meet you is first seen running headlong into a wall looking like fools.  Targeting and such can be an issue too.

-------------------------------

Other:

- Loot.  Certainly an issue during pugs, you have players face rushing for chests and the loot itself is just...  Well, it's bland.  I feel like the loot system of traditional D&D in a game like this isn't going to cut it.  Killing a boss only to receive a generic white great sword in the chest that is nestled far back in the room isn't interesting or fun.  The magic weapons themselves should probably be looked at as well.  Most things are just passive damage values of a certain element or against a certain type of creature.  Great.  That's very D&D like but it makes for a relatively boring PC game, especially since at this point the only real driving factor to play is to find new loot in order to equip your character.  Let us create items and let us hand them out.  At the very least I think a more ARPG like loot system would be far more interesting and fun.  It gives players a reason to go to these dangerous places.  Give us something unique.

- Just add loot options for GMs already.  Round-robin, free for all, class based, whatever needs to happen so that DMs have some sort of control over how it's distributed.

- I just want to reiterate one more time.  LOOT IS BORING.  I can only kill a boss or find a secret room and get a tube of glue so many times before it stops being exciting.  It's also not interesting to look at.  They should consider adding some truly unique weapons and armor into the game that can only drop from bosses or are at least extremely rare.  Something like legendaries from any other ARPG.

- Class balance is off.  This becomes painfully obvious in the 5-10 level ranges especially for GM games.

- Classes use talent trees.  Most trees consist of 3-5 abilities and the progression is something like...  Magic Missile 1-5.  Not that interesting.

I like to complain about games.

Comments

  • PottedPlant22PottedPlant22 Member RarePosts: 800
    edited September 2015
    Excellent breakdown.  

    At this point the blind support is at a level of being irrational.  The response to the above is basically wait a year and HOPE they fix the issues.  Who cares they are calling it a release game.  Let's pretend they will fix all of this without addressing it 8 days from now.  4 days if you count official early access... I mean 'head start.'
  • MMOreaverMMOreaver Member UncommonPosts: 75
    edited September 2015
    Good post!
    Same what I read here:
    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/22/sword-coast-legends-delay/#comments

    This is a big letdown. A bit like NWN 2 long ago.. needed 2 years to patch it up.
    If they don´t rework the Classes, this will crush.
  • AsleepAsleep Member UncommonPosts: 96
    Thats too bad, cause this is a good idea for a game! I just don't get how devs get this far into games and are just not doing thorough work. I bet all these things are obvious to you and somewhat still unknown by the devs there. I like loot and leveling being normal, like +1s and stuff, cause it makes vorpals or paralyzers so awesome, oh man the glory days of DDO in the beginning with the low level cap, when you got a +1 tome or mithril armor you freaked out! anyways best of luck to those playing this game!
  • MaquiameMaquiame Member UncommonPosts: 1,073
    *blinks at loot being a tube of glue*

    Kinda like when someone gets a lump of coal for Christmas...

    image

    Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!

  • LobotomistLobotomist Member EpicPosts: 5,965
    The worst thing is their silence policy.

    There was a post on the forum before head start ,asking simple question : would we be able to use NPCs in party while playing custom adventures.

    The post grew to over 10000 replys over almost a month, before they bothered to post one word : "yes"


    Right now most of people in head start see the promises were false. And press ? I dont know if they were payed or drugged ? "The best DM roleplaying experience since Neverwinter Nights?!?!" Straight lie

    Dont get me wrong. There is potential here , but not without serious changes and additions.

    So now community would like to see what they plan to change or add, and are asking for Roadmap of development.

    But they dont want to give it.


    So, luckily I preordered on Steam. And can cancel the purchase ...



  • TsumoTsumo Member UncommonPosts: 49
    Bought this yesterday on a impulse buy.

    52 mins later got me a refund. 


    image
  • RhoDawgRhoDawg Member UncommonPosts: 34
    In all fairness the single player campaign is awesome and in my opinion ready for release, though im only about 15 hours in I am enjoying it a lot..
    Yes...multiplayer, needs some work, all most of the head start crew have been saying that all along. So if you are also looking forward to the Single player you should get a good 20+ hours out of it, well worth in for $35
  • WarlyxWarlyx Member EpicPosts: 3,363
    i was waiting until ppl started playing....i avoided a bullet with that one.....the videos looked promising :(
  • YanocchiYanocchi Member UncommonPosts: 677
    The biggest disappointment is the lack of tools and features that allow to build and maintain 24/7 persistent multiplayer worlds.
    Baldur's Gate Online - Video Trailer
    * more info, screenshots and videos here

  • mgilbrtsnmgilbrtsn Member EpicPosts: 3,430
    Myself and a few mates just bought it and are enjoying it.  Yet I can't disagree with all of the comments above. I view it as a simple logon, do a few dungeons, log off kinda thing.  Because of it's inadequacies, I really don't care about the levelling atm.  Just something for us to have a few laughs on.

    I self identify as a monkey.

  • BrenicsBrenics Member RarePosts: 1,939
    I hope they get all the issues worked out, can't believe they released the game in this way. 
    I'm not perfect but I'm always myself!

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    4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.

    http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/

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  • Jonnyp2Jonnyp2 Member UncommonPosts: 243
    I just got the game to play the story in coop and it seems to work fine for that.  Haven't gotten any lag or game breaking bugs that so many people seem to whine about.  it's definitely not a great game, but the campaign has been entertaining enough.




  • BluddwolfBluddwolf Member UncommonPosts: 355
    Brenics said:
    I hope they get all the issues worked out, can't believe they released the game in this way. 
    I have seen games released a hundred times worse than this.  World of Warcraft, Pathfinder Online and Age of Conan all come to mind as being far worse on release.

    It is a bit unclear if you are speaking from experience with the game or you're just echoing what you have heard, from a few.  


    Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....

  • RidrithRidrith Member RarePosts: 805
    edited October 2015
    Now that the game is launched there's still plenty of issues, some are bugs and others are just straight up terrible design choices.  After five plus hours of playing in the campaign with a few friends, the idea that talking to a VENDOR, QUEST NPC, or more or less anybody who's actually got a dialogue box attached to them disrupts every player in the game is just a terrible design choice all around.  One of the more insulting things we've seen is that the best items in the game tend to be found on vendors.  At later levels this also becomes painfully true, you go from the campaign and head into multiplayer and you'll find blues/purples sitting on vendors that are so much better than what you find in the campaign...  It's troubling to say the least. Not very D&D like, especially for 5th edition.  

    Overall the main campaign story is serviceable, nothing truly unique.  It's fun but there are plenty of obnoxious issues to deal with if you play with friends.  The dialogue/vendor interruptions, no loot system to speak of (which isn't bad if you're playing with friends, but good luck trying to grab some sell fodder online in random games, but of course this doesn't really matter because the best items in the game can be purchased from the vendors).

    The developers continued to state that they were 'holding back' content in the DM section as well, as a matter of fact we were told that some things were being held back on a post where somebody was asking about more creatures/placeables.  What did they add for launch?  Nothing.  No new placeables, no new monsters.  Instead they added some new map sections that are straight up lifted from the campaign (which is fine) and on those maps there are buildings you can enter.  Perfectly fine.  The last creatures added: Succubus and an Imp.  Talk about depressing.  The enemy selection is terrible!  Plus there's no dragons!  You can't place "boss" creatures out in the world either, so that means no Balor Shadow, no Beholder, nothing.  It has to be set at the end of a dungeon and that's the only way to fight the creatures.
    I like to complain about games.
  • WizbuizWizbuiz Member UncommonPosts: 215
    Damn, and i was about to setup my pc for this game. Hmm, maybe i should buy Pillars of Eternity instead
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  • BluddwolfBluddwolf Member UncommonPosts: 355
    Once you get the sequence of building a quest down, and get some experience on how to run it as a live DM the game can truly shine.

    Sure we could use a few more DM tools, but there are work-arounds.  It isn't like DMs and players don't need and come up with those in PnP D&D.

    i think some people are forgetting, this is only day 2 post launch.  They have future plans for the game.

    Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....

  • BurntvetBurntvet Member RarePosts: 3,465
    This would be a perfectly acceptable game on the $10 and under rack, for what it is.

    But not at $40 with a bunch of DLC on the way as well.
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  • MMOreaverMMOreaver Member UncommonPosts: 75
    I bought it, played it and it´s crap! No point buying it, maybe in Sale for less than 10$, but it really lacks a good combat system. The story is great, interactivity is nice.. but again, this is 2016 now and advertising D&D and deliver such scam.. sry, no money from me for future products. And just reading Robs-review again.. he nailed it, it lacks - in many departments. No Enhanced Edition can fix structural errors made in development!
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