Feedback

[Vengeance]

I have only recently started to play, so these are my first impressions within the first zone.

Character creation:

I found it a little boring with little choice of anything in terms of (races/stats etc. ) Again I have not had a chance to read up a lot as I just wanted to jump in the game to see what it was like. If there are future plans for these things that's great. I think it would add so much more appeal.

I am hopeful spell caster classes will be implemented as well as a starting choice.

In game music:

I found the music in the game a little boring honestly, thus far. It almost puts you to sleep at times. I would like to see combat music added to up the tempo per say? I also think it would be viable to add in wilderness sounds other than mobs scurrying around. Crickets, locusts sounds etc.

In game monsters: I have only seen a few since I am in the new zone. I am hopeful there is a more robust selection as the game progresses. It would have been nice to encounter undead at night or different species of mobs.

Combat:

Until this last patch I only had one beginning skill to attack, which you have since added another. Thank you! As when I first started it was painfully long to kill a monster as you had to wait on the timer of one skill which was 30s. However, again with the added skill this has greatly improved.

First aid- way to much stam vs return. 15 might be more ideal.

I would like to see more animation when using skills if possible. I see a little but id like to see more especially on regular attacks/auto attacks.

Spell effects. I was kind of bummed when using bard skills as for one they have little effect in terms of regen and spell effect. I would like to see this be a constant spell effect (blossom) around the character as to say when using the shouts. I also recommend if not that the regen effect goes up every few levels. This may already be the case but I only got to level 7 before the wipe. 2 regen does not help much as you get more hps. As I can sit at a camp and get just as much back. Also, I like that the regen plays during combat.

More spell effects and visuals will greatly help in my opinion. Especially if I am a new player, i want it to be like awe, this has me hooked from the visuals, if you know what I mean.

Map:

No indication of where i am on the map as a locater. I find this a bit confusing as I want to explore the world and see the parts I'm missing but cannot tell where i currently am other than memorizing locations or following the wall. The only plus is it reminds me of original EQ which is great. (or in simpler terms maybe have the area faded out with a camp name so i know if its a cave etc,

Crafting:

I started in mining and Weaponsmith as finding a better weapon was hard to find it seems at low lvls no matter what I killed. I was really disappointed you are limited to only one craft and one trade skill. Especially when some of the recipes called for things I could not make. I.E leather straps/ cloth/ wood for shields. Not sure if this changes at higher levels or not. However, I love to craft and if i just had the option to be able to have 2 to 3 starting harvest skills and 1 trade skill that would work as I could get the other pieces of material I need to make a shield etc.

It seemed like I had to gather a whole lot of items just to get to lvl 6 which was a task in its own as it was hard to see the ore/ gems unless i got up closer to look. Maybe make them sizably bigger visual wise?

Skinning was decent and had no issues with it thus far.

As for now that is all I have. I was not able to get very high in lvls as I was taking my time exploring and seeing what I could do that made this game stand out for others. I do like it a lot and will continue to play as I want to see where this game goes.

Again, some of the stuff I have encountered may have or already be in the game i just have yet to get to that point. However, i feel that the first 10 levels of the game have to be very enticing or people will just say its a wash and just like every other game. I think so far it is on a good path but definitely needs more improvements.

For the love of all that is mighty do not release the game to early until you all and the players are satisfied!

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

 

[Rlm962]

Map:

No indication of where i am on the map as a locater. I find this a bit confusing as I want to explore the world and see the parts I'm missing but cannot tell where i currently am other than memorizing locations or following the wall.

I think it's safe to say that most of us players, do Not enjoy the map. I played EQ, as well, but just don't "long for the days of not knowing exactly where I am" when it can easily be fixed. Just like I no longer wish I could ride my bike everywhere (like when I was a kid, without a car). However, it's a Hill upon which they are willing to die. Evidently, not knowing where you are makes you pay more attention to the Topography and thus causes you to "enjoy" the scenery more <shrug>. Not working for me, but thankfully there are a lot of good things about the game, to off-set the stupidity of the 25 year old map system.

 

[Undone]

Hi @Vengeance thanks for taking the time to leave feedback; we greatly appreciate it!

I found it a little boring with little choice of anything in terms of (races/stats etc. ) Again I have not had a chance to read up a lot as I just wanted to jump in the game to see what it was like. If there are future plans for these things that's great. I think it would add so much more appeal.

Humans are the only playable race in Embers Adrift. However, we feel that our humans are flexible enough in body size, shape, and skin tones that you can make a character that appears elvish, or dwarvish, or anywhere in between.

I am hopeful spell caster classes will be implemented as well as a starting choice.

Our game is set in a low fantasy world. Alchemy (our version of magic) is something your character has to learn about as they progress. All characters will have the opportunity to engage in alchemy in some fashion - but none will be a dedicated traditional caster class.

I found the music in the game a little boring honestly, thus far. It almost puts you to sleep at times. I would like to see combat music added to up the tempo per say? I also think it would be viable to add in wilderness sounds other than mobs scurrying around. Crickets, locusts sounds etc.

We recently added a few dynamic tracks that do just that! Each zone has 1 of these tracks thus far that adapts to your gameplay state, but they are weaved in with other non-dynamic tracks.

In game monsters: I have only seen a few since I am in the new zone. I am hopeful there is a more robust selection as the game progresses. It would have been nice to encounter undead at night or different species of mobs.

Our low fantasy world has no undead so don't expect to see skeletons roaming about. But yes, you will see a larger variety of creatures as you travel to different zones. The starting area is behind the large protective wall and acts as our tutorial zone - beyond that things start to get a lot more dangerous and different.

Until this last patch I only had one beginning skill to attack, which you have since added another. Thank you! As when I first started it was painfully long to kill a monster as you had to wait on the timer of one skill which was 30s. However, again with the added skill this has greatly improved.

I think it adds a lot to the early leveling experience without throwing off the balance. Great to hear that it is well received!

I would like to see more animation when using skills if possible. I see a little but id like to see more especially on regular attacks/auto attacks.

Spell effects. I was kind of bummed when using bard skills as for one they have little effect in terms of regen and spell effect. I would like to see this be a constant spell effect (blossom) around the character as to say when using the shouts. I also recommend if not that the regen effect goes up every few levels. This may already be the case but I only got to level 7 before the wipe. 2 regen does not help much as you get more hps. As I can sit at a camp and get just as much back. Also, I like that the regen plays during combat.

More spell effects and visuals will greatly help in my opinion. Especially if I am a new player, i want it to be like awe, this has me hooked from the visuals, if you know what I mean.

Improving animations and adding visual effects is certainly something we need to work on. Everything right now is essentially a place holder as we do not have a dedicated animator nor VFX artist on staff. Due to the small size of our team and limited budget these elements do suffer - we will do what we can to improve them during the polish phase in the run up to launch - but I wouldn't expect them to jump by leaps and bounds until we can grow the team.

Map:

No indication of where i am on the map as a locater. I find this a bit confusing as I want to explore the world and see the parts I'm missing but cannot tell where i currently am other than memorizing locations or following the wall. The only plus is it reminds me of original EQ which is great. (or in simpler terms maybe have the area faded out with a camp name so i know if its a cave etc,

The method in which you uncover parts of the map is currently due for an overhaul. In Redshore Forest (our latest zone) you uncover parts of the map just by traveling to the general region and then individual POIs are added to your map as you visit them. This seems to provide a more organic exploration experience for players so the older maps need to be revamped with this methodology. The whole idea of not having a GPS marker on the map is entirely intentional; our original design called for no maps - but this half way point (styled map that is not 100% geographically accurate) was an experiment that improved the overall experience for most so we decided to roll with it.

Crafting:

I started in mining and Weaponsmith as finding a better weapon was hard to find it seems at low lvls no matter what I killed. I was really disappointed you are limited to only one craft and one trade skill. Especially when some of the recipes called for things I could not make. I.E leather straps/ cloth/ wood for shields. Not sure if this changes at higher levels or not. However, I love to craft and if i just had the option to be able to have 2 to 3 starting harvest skills and 1 trade skill that would work as I could get the other pieces of material I need to make a shield etc.

You can take 2x gathering, 2x crafting, or 1x of both if you like. The idea with some of the crafting recipes is to create crafter interdependence, or at least allow you to level with 1x gathering and 1x crafting.

It seemed like I had to gather a whole lot of items just to get to lvl 6 which was a task in its own as it was hard to see the ore/ gems unless i got up closer to look. Maybe make them sizably bigger visual wise?

We have some work to do on the ore / gems as they end up stuck in the ground a bit far which hides a lot of their visuals.

Again, some of the stuff I have encountered may have or already be in the game i just have yet to get to that point. However, i feel that the first 10 levels of the game have to be very enticing or people will just say its a wash and just like every other game. I think so far it is on a good path but definitely needs more improvements.

The first few levels are critical to player retention and we rely on feedback like this to make sure we're heading in the right direction!

 

[Undone]

I think it's safe to say that most of us players, do Not enjoy the map. I played EQ, as well, but just don't "long for the days of not knowing exactly where I am" when it can easily be fixed. Just like I no longer wish I could ride my bike everywhere (like when I was a kid, without a car). However, it's a Hill upon which they are willing to die. Evidently, not knowing where you are makes you pay more attention to the Topography and thus causes you to "enjoy" the scenery more <shrug>. Not working for me, but thankfully there are a lot of good things about the game, to off-set the stupidity of the 25 year old map system.

Claiming that something can "easily be fixed" is a bit short sighted in my opinion. This is especially true when you consider our extremely limited resources. Implementing a fully dynamic mini-map for a large open world game like ours takes time; something we are in short supply of. The original design of the game has always called for no map at all. What we have now is something we felt benefited the player, adhered to our vision, AND fit within our resource budget.

You mentioned that there are a lot of good things about our game which off-set your opinion on our map system - which is precisely why we are focusing our time and efforts on making those parts of the game as good as they can be. If someone tries our our game and quits solely because they dislike our map system then so be it; that's the hill we will die on.

 

[Vengeance]

Hi @Vengeance thanks for taking the time to leave feedback; we greatly appreciate it!


Humans are the only playable race in Embers Adrift. However, we feel that our humans are flexible enough in body size, shape, and skin tones that you can make a character that appears elvish, or dwarvish, or anywhere in between.


Our game is set in a low fantasy world. Alchemy (our version of magic) is something your character has to learn about as they progress. All characters will have the opportunity to engage in alchemy in some fashion - but none will be a dedicated traditional caster class.


We recently added a few dynamic tracks that do just that! Each zone has 1 of these tracks thus far that adapts to your gameplay state, but they are weaved in with other non-dynamic tracks.


Our low fantasy world has no undead so don't expect to see skeletons roaming about. But yes, you will see a larger variety of creatures as you travel to different zones. The starting area is behind the large protective wall and acts as our tutorial zone - beyond that things start to get a lot more dangerous and different.


I think it adds a lot to the early leveling experience without throwing off the balance. Great to hear that it is well received!


Improving animations and adding visual effects is certainly something we need to work on. Everything right now is essentially a place holder as we do not have a dedicated animator nor VFX artist on staff. Due to the small size of our team and limited budget these elements do suffer - we will do what we can to improve them during the polish phase in the run up to launch - but I wouldn't expect them to jump by leaps and bounds until we can grow the team.


The method in which you uncover parts of the map is currently due for an overhaul. In Redshore Forest (our latest zone) you uncover parts of the map just by traveling to the general region and then individual POIs are added to your map as you visit them. This seems to provide a more organic exploration experience for players so the older maps need to be revamped with this methodology. The whole idea of not having a GPS marker on the map is entirely intentional; our original design called for no maps - but this half way point (styled map that is not 100% geographically accurate) was an experiment that improved the overall experience for most so we decided to roll with it.


You can take 2x gathering, 2x crafting, or 1x of both if you like. The idea with some of the crafting recipes is to create crafter interdependence, or at least allow you to level with 1x gathering and 1x crafting.


We have some work to do on the ore / gems as they end up stuck in the ground a bit far which hides a lot of their visuals.


The first few levels are critical to player retention and we rely on feedback like this to make sure we're heading in the right direction!

Again thanks for the responses. I have not had to much time to dig into the game which I do like. I still need to read the forums later this week and try to catch up. I was also not aware that this is a smaller project and there are certain staffing shortages to develop. I know it takes time to develop and one small change can introduce 10 new issues. So keep up the good work i will see how the game expands past the newbie tutorial wall!

 

[Elloa]

Again thanks for the responses. I have not had to much time to dig into the game which I do like. I still need to read the forums later this week and try to catch up. I was also not aware that this is a smaller project and there are certain staffing shortages to develop. I know it takes time to develop and one small change can introduce 10 new issues. So keep up the good work i will see how the game expands past the newbie tutorial wall!

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