Hey everyone. Wanted to drop in and say that the Waifu and I enjoyed the Worldbreaker event. She's been going through chemotherapy for Leukemia and it was nice to see her get so into a game again.
We both played FFXI back in the day, which was heavily inspired by classic EQ. (When we met we started talking b/c she mentioned playing the game XD). We have been looking for an MMO like this for a while now, and hope that the game keeps improving into something great for launch. I wanted to give some of our initial thoughts about the game. I know a lot of these things are likely still in development, but i'm not familiar with the roadmap/history or anything. I'm not a dev, so i don't know what's within the scope of possiblity or the vision for the game, so I say everything with a grain of salt!
I suppose I'll start off with one of of the two only real annoyances we had, directions. The map is somewhat detailed, but without a compass or marker to dictate where you are/ are heading, it isn't of much use. I understand that the design intends for navigation based on landmarks, which is absolutely fine, and in most places works. However, when fighting things it's easy to get turned around and have to spend a bit of time figuring out where you were heading. Nighttime makes this even worse. Navigating by landmarks isn't possible when you can't see further than a few feet. It's my understanding that development intends on putting in a detailed Skybox to assist with navigation, this will help alleviate the problem!
The other major gripe was the various quirks of mobs. Initially, it took a couple hours to figure out what was within our capability to fight, but the 3 arrow system works pretty well. Perhaps there is a way to quickly tell new players this information with a popup or something later down the line. If it was in the NPC text dump at the start, my apologies for not reading through it XD. The system feels like when you had to /check mobs in FFXI to see if they were easy prey or an even match.
Leashing on mobs is a bit inconsistent from our experience. some higher tier mobs will stop following much sooner than lower tier ones. (talking about humanoids around points of interest mostly). the Bears near the cave don't ever seem to stop following you and link or aggro from miles away XD. These and the Rats that would aggro from far away through the walls of ruins were the only ones that really felt like BS though... Humanoids shouting for help can be a bit much with the range, but i did notice that if you don't attack the Links they tend to lose interest more quickly than the target. then again these are probably meant more for 3+ players, not 2.
Oh and the Bear's Roar move that prevents actions... this needs some sort of diminishing returns or internal cooldown on your character. With how badly they link in that area, you can spend 30+ seconds fully unable to do anything except auto attack. the move works fine in theory with most cooldowns being 10-20+ seconds, but 8seconds of AOE silence over and over is awful.
Targeting is decent, but the lady was mentioning that it was annoying that she had to be looking at me to heal me. she got that rare quarterstaff, so she was attacking from the front with me. when positioned like that the mobs tend to get too close to me, so i have to back up a bit, making them move and it puts me behind her character. this was a lot worse when we were swapping threat. Perhaps a bit of a buffer on the hitboxes of mobs, the player, or something could help make this not feel as wonky.
Archers are a nightmare to fight when solo, in a duo, or a full group. Perhaps the provoke change will make it easier, but the way threat works and them constantly moving to distance you is counterintuitive. They stay at range from the threat target, but to build threat you need to be in range to hit them.
Threat is a bit all over the place. Weapon damage seems to outweigh the fact that tank skills have bonus threat. The Lady picked up that rare quarterstaff and after that point there was nothing i could do to keep threat off of her. eventually i tried the copper mace, which has +5 damage from the front. this allowed me to hold threat for a while longer, but i would still lose it if she healed me more than once. with any other weapon she would pull threat after an auto attack and damage skill. When in a group it just seemed like the tank class with the strongest weapon/highest level was the main tank.
I'm sure there will be methods to get gear implemented into the game beyond just drops from group mobs and crafting, but it was very rough playing for an extended period with starter equipment. heck, neither one of us got a body upgrade the whole time we played.
I was reading that there is some trouble figuring out the balance between dropped gear and crafted gear. I had a SUGGESTION: Maybe there is a way you can incorporate dropped gear into crafting recipes. Either break it down into mats to make the strongest items, or take the base drop and improve upon it with crafting. Perhaps let crafters alter the damage types of a drop or the directional bonuses. I'm not sure if level requirements are much of a thing, but alternating the craft/drop intervals on gear would also keep both types desirable. Or heck, have a quest that requires both dropped and crafted gear and it gives you a stronger piece. I'm not sure what is viable, I'm just spitballing.
My last point is a question about longevity for the game. It seems we have all played old school MMOs that require groups of people to get anything done. While playing through the Worldbreaker i noticed that on the second day the starting area was almost empty. With the number of players currently in the beta and open tests, the majority of players are all clumped into the high end of character level. After the initial launch of the game, when new players slow down, how will the world be for them? the game is clearly designed for 3-6 player groups. It is unfortunate, but I feel like this will be a high barrier to entry for many players. I know this is a niche MMO design, but it leads me to believe that the distribution of players will be at endgame after the initial wave with very few new players making their way there without a group of friends or extensive in game help from the community. I've seen how devastating this can be for an MMO server when New World locked the ability to make new characters on the majority of servers. Even back in FFXI, if there were no parties in the Dunes, you weren't getting that level that night XD. Just some food for thought.
If anyone reads this, thanks for your time, and thanks for trying to develop a game where leveling feels rewarding again. watching the numbers go up gives my brain the happy chemicals. We are looking forward to checking the game out again the next time an open test is up or when the game launches. Money has been tight with the health issues, so we have to hold off on the beta stuff for now. Keep making the game great!