My thoughts, suggestions, and praises of PlaneShift

[DannMann99]

First off let me just say that you have made one amazing game. I must praise you all who have worked so hard to make the game what it is today.

Now, onto what i\'ve encountered from just starting it up after putting it down for quite a number of months.
The first thing i noticed was the rough feel of the controls, but after about 15 minutes i had everything worked out.  The only thing i wish was enabled was looking around with your mouse. Also, an autorun feature would be real nice (i know you have an auto walk feature) but to just be able to press 1 button and be able to run without holding it down, it gets tiresome having to hold down a button to run, and another to move forward.

Next thing i figured out is that you start with nothing, and the npc\'s are hard to find, so you are stuck having to figure everything out, perhaps starting equipment could relieve this. nothing fancy, just a cheapo sword, and maybe a cloth shirt.

I have to say all of the world building is beautiful and it is actually very enjoyable just running around exploring the world, not to mention the lack of lag in that very large zone. which is equally impressive.

I feel that if you guys just use one of your dev\'s to upgrade the playablility of the game, and the feel, to be more welcoming to the new player you will gain an even bigger fanbase, i know personally i was very frustrated in the beginning and was really about to quit until i figured how to change the movement.

My cousin runs a fairly prominent gaming website, (or actually is one of the people that run it) But i dont want to toss him the game just yet, i mean, its more of an acquired taste at this point, if you make it alittle more new player friendly im sure he would love to suggest it to his readers. Its just at this point I dont want to make him endorse something that some newbies would think is too hard, because then they would write off the game as being a Pos, and my cousin would loose some credibility with his websites fans.

These are all just suggestions and i hope you take them with a grain of salt. I dont consider this whining im just looking at it logically. Personally i\'ve already figured out the mechanics of the game and i think its pretty fun. Its just that alot of people are very willing to quit when you start out and its alittle rough to get a handle on how to play.

[mikewsnc]

well you can auto run
and if you fell out of a wormhole and into a new world you would have no idea who sold stuff, youde have to look around. wormhole\'s hummmmmm i want wormholes that walk in forest takes forever lol

[DannMann99]

true, i found this out. the auto run is pretty useful. moving around is kind of confusing, for me atleast maybe because there is just so much terrain to cover, perhaps start players off with a map of that plazaa?
 
a few more rough edges i noticed.

player creation is very difficult, i understand that you want to give indepth history and whatnot, but i feel like it could be simplified a great deal.

[diabolus]

I think there\'s a big need for \'newbie\' friendly features, but i must admit that if you look at the amount of players online and the amount of actual resources to be consumed it doesn\'t gel.

In other words, if they DO put in newbie features and make it  \'easier\' to get into, i.e. a NPC tutor + newbie monsters + starting eq then the newbies who stopped playing [either because they couldn\'t get anywhere/frustration/inability to get resources] will probably still be playing. This inheriently means a 200 max server limit will be \'full\' 99% of the time.

There were quite a few times where i got a \"server is full\" message and that\'s with the game \'as-is\' . Imagine if it was newbie paradise.

So i\'d say the newbie requirements needs to be done eventually, but while the resources/server limits are quite probably the largest bottleneck it\'s probably better to hold off on certain features [even if it\'s easy to implement].

Don\'t know what is better :
(a) Make the \'tech-demo\' highly playably and newbie friendly and overload the server to such an extend that \'hardcore\' players can\'t play nor newbies [due to say lack of space/monsters etc]

(b) Keep it somewhat hard to get into, so that only the \'serious\' players end up remaining. Struggling newbies will drop out quickly and \'release\' resources to an extend, resulting in a slower \'overloading\' of server.

The only thing i wish was enabled was looking around with your mouse.

Hrm, what do you mean? I could swear i was running around in first person view using my mouse..... Maybe you\'ve not enabled it? [TAB maybe?]  (Or am i going nuts now?)

[Darakus]

nah you\'re not nuts half of the things he wants to have are already in-game this makes the thread a quite fun thing to read