Things i would do...

[dirx]

OK, Not sure if this is the right place for this, but as there dosn\'t seem to be a \"FEED BACK\" section, here\'s as good a place as any.

OK, I\'ve only just downloaded and patched and played for a bit, and I found a few things that i would have done before letting people download and play this, but first, why did i download?

Well, I was looking at that Crystal Blue could do...I looks good, and I thought i would be able to use it for my own project, that i\'m currantly working on.

Now, On to things i would have done/Would do.

Insted Making areas, New monsters, Charater Wipes and the like, I would work from the start, and Work on What people do after they launch the game.

The Charater Creation...It\'s rather ...well, Weird, and I couldn\'t make a charater other then the Blue Rock Thing, Working on the female charater Models would be my first to do. as well as making the Charater Creation as smooth and Simple as possiable...\'couse at the moment, It\'s a pain in the neck, With the Pop up thing when you select a diffrent race, and can\'t select another til you\'ve clicked \"OK\". Then there was screen after screen of Information, that seemed to be going no where... Like your perents and such, If that selection had anything to do with the charater, you might want to tell people. The Job selection was also a pain, Having to select it from the Race screen, it wasn\'t a good move.
Another thing with the Charater Creation, You might also want to make the charater Custermizable ASAP, from all the races i saw, Only ONE race could have any part changed, and that was the eye thingy.

Now moving away from the Charater Creation and In to the Controles.
OUCH....Talk about Learning Curve. I play a number of Diffrent MMO\'s, Final fantasy XI, Matrix Online, Ragnarok Online, and Each one had a Diffrent Way of working the controlls, and they were easy to pick up, Not Planeshift how ever, I spent sometime walking around the town until i found out that the ARROW buttons were for movement and when you hold shift, YOU RUN....and For the Love of me, I couldn\'t figure out how to talk to anyone...and before you tell me to \"Read a Guide about the game\" You\'ve got to relise that not everyone EVER reads guides. I picked up on how to Move, and all that in Final Fantasy With in the first 10 mins of playing the game... But Not for this game, about 30mins and I still couldn\'t figure out How to talk to anyone...

Now on to The Areas.
Arcutecute Wise They were good,  Having paths and such wide enough for mass Transit (Mass Transit = Many people heading to the same place at the same time) but, The Lighting in ALOT of the areas where Very Dodgy...Like that forest ish place...I found my charater becoming BLACK even thought the \"SUN\" was hitting him(or her, I have no clue) and some of the areas (The cave area in that well, in that temple) Thats VERY dark, and i could hardly figure out What was going on, becouse of it. The FPS also slowed up with no one around but a Building...but was in the 60s when near a number of NPC and PC\'s.

The Graphics, One of the Few good things about Planeshift The Textures where ok, and made the enviroment rather nice, just there were a few bugs with the Lighting and the Textures and Such.

The User Interface... Very annoying. Most of the screen was taken up by windows, Info, Chat and That side thingy.
the Infowas the most annoying thing i can think of with the user interface, with the HP and Such HAVING to have the rest of the Useless information there. In battle, people only really care about, enemys HP, Your HP, Your MP (Mana) and thats it, but EXP can be put in, but that dosn\'t matter either way.

The battle system, or lack off more like it. For the Amount of time i was playing, I saw two people fighting and was in one fight my self, I was almost dead by the time i moved close enought to attack back.

Other then those things, It\'s ok...But needs ALOT of work, and shouldn\'t be out to the public until you fix a HELL of alot of things (Charater Models Mainly, and the Charater Creation)

It seems to me, that you rushed it out so people could play before it was even near Player ready, and Whil that wouldn\'t play a factor if you were trying to make it player ready whil people were plaing, it seems that your not even doing that, Well, a little, but you seem to be focusing on the wrong Things, Aiming for New content, rather then Fixing whats Broken, That charater Creation system will come back and bite you on the butt...I can get over how bad it is at the moment.

The Proof of this fact, that you are focusing on the Players more then the programe, is what i read on these forums, That you Deleted all guilds that had UNDER 5 members, There is nothing i can say that would juctife that kind of move this early in the game\'s life (If it\'s more then a Year, You should be a shamed) Look at other MMO\'s and take a page out of thier books, Linkshells in Final fantasy XI can have 1 member (The person who made it) for as long as they want, Like wise with Ragnarok ONline, the only MMO that i know that has anything to do with Another charater in Guild Creations is The Matrix online, which Needs two people, and thats to fit in with the Story (and idea) of the game (Creater of the Crew/Guild is the Captain, and it needs a First mate).

So, My feed back is, Work on what you\'ve got, before you work on new things.

And When you have a Problem such as that AWFULL Crater Creation System, I wouldn\'t Be worring about people who have less then 5 members in their Guild, or people who are Expluting a Bug, or Cheating.

Now, I know that you are doing this for free with no profit, and that just makes my point the more clearer, DON\'T DO THINGS HALF ASSED.

And While My Project is still in post-Production, I think we will be better then This...No Offence to that Comment By the way.

[lanser]

While I respect your right to express your opinion, I would like to suggest that you follow your own point and at the very least spellcheck.

Originally posted by dirx
Now, I know that you are doing this for free with no profit, and that just makes my point the more clearer, DON\'T DO THINGS HALF ASSED.

Also this second point means that although I actually agree with some of the points you raised I do not see the point of listening to someone that has to resort to insults, because if you were at all sorry there is  clearly marked EDIT POST button.

[Rolf Blacksmith]

First:

If you don\'t bother reading the manual, it\'s your decision, but do you set a machine into working without looking into the manual to find out how it works? Planeshift is like some machine, but it has more controls, more options and more possible traps than most consumer machines. So, either learn the game the smooth way or the hard way, but don\'t complain that you don\'t get it to work.

Second:

This game is in progress. Sound quite easy, but has an important effect:
How often do some companies develop games and after the release see that there is a wrong balance in numbers, thrength, diffculty or other things. That\'s what alphy and pre-alphy stages are ment for: To give the developers some feedback as to what works, what sould be made better and what doesn\'t work. You can\'t really concentrate on character creation without considering what effects it has on the gameplay. So you have to do it and some parallel way.

Third:

Read the MOTD message on client startup?
It says that characters will be wiped to get rid of old bugs and exploits, and I assume this was also the reason for the last wipe. The time it was done can be discussed on, but you surely don\'t want people complain on bugs that are fixed but still lurk around in one of the characters.

To make things short:
I think the devs do a good job, and instead of complaining, join them and help them do it better.

[dirx]

Also this second point means that although I actually agree with some of the points you raised I do not see the point of listening to someone that has to resort to insults, because if you were at all sorry there is clearly marked EDIT POST button.

But that\'s the thing, i typed that before i posted, I looked over the post, and couldn\'t find any other planeShift in the post...And it was only becouse i typed it ONCE that i said that. I was not Insulting anyone.

I would like to suggest that you follow your own point and at the very least spellcheck.

hey look at that, No Spell Check on the forums...

If there were spelling mistakes, They were typo\'s... And people who make a big deal about spelling mistakes/typo\'s are mostly people who  can\'t think of anything else to say....It\'s a fact of life that people can\'t spell, People may not have been able to learn that skill when in school, there are Adults who can\'t spell alot of words...and it is a lagit Sickness.

If you don\'t bother reading the manual, it\'s your decision, but do you set a machine into working without looking into the manual to find out how it works? Planeshift is like some machine, but it has more controls, more options and more possible traps than most consumer machines. So, either learn the game the smooth way or the hard way, but don\'t complain that you don\'t get it to work.

Planeshift is a GAME, Not a Machine. games have Manuals, But Not everyone reads them, I\'ve played games with people who didn\'t know how to do something when it was plainly in the Manual, but that is the only thing they can\'t do, and most of the time, it\'s something that isn\'t easy.
MMO\'s are not ment to have such a steep learning Curve. take any game, Sometimes the Controlles are totaly diffrent from what your used to, but share some of the same Ideas, and can be learnt by simple Button Bashing...Not with this game.

This game is in progress. Sound quite easy, but has an important effect:
How often do some companies develop games and after the release see that there is a wrong balance in numbers, thrength, diffculty or other things. That\'s what alphy and pre-alphy stages are ment for: To give the developers some feedback as to what works, what sould be made better and what doesn\'t work. You can\'t really concentrate on character creation without considering what effects it has on the gameplay. So you have to do it and some parallel way.

Well, alot of games do that, Final Fantasy XI did that, they relised they made one job to powerful, and changed it.
Alpha stages, are INturnal, with some Extrenal people testing, NOT EVERYONE. This game is Public Avaliable, Meaning that it would be at least in Open Beta, which it clearly isn\'t.  Charater Creation should be one of the first things an MMO should have done. and not left HALF done. Like it currantly, There is what? a total of 6 mabey 8 Models for all their charaters MALE and female? There should be atleast TWO diffrent Models for each race, Unless a race dosn\'t have a gender, in which case, only one would be needed.
Nothing that i saw in the Charater Creation Effects the Gameplay at all. If anything It would Imporve the Game Play, fixing..Or in this case Finishing, the Charater Creation System would do NOTHING to the game rather then allow diffrent Looking PCs Into the game. If you are meaning that It will slow their development of gameplay, To quote what the admin said about the Guild thing \"...it may help them focus on their structure a bit.\"

Read the MOTD message on client startup?

Thats not a question, thats a statment. To make it a question there would be \"have you Read the...\"

It says that characters will be wiped to get rid of old bugs and exploits, and I assume this was also the reason for the last wipe. The time it was done can be discussed on, but you surely don\'t want people complain on bugs that are fixed but still lurk around in one of the characters.

Whil thats all well and good, but wouldn\'t they do that when they make the new patch?
and have YOU read the MOTD (FYI, MOTD, means Message of the Day, It seems that that message has been up for more then a Day, so changing it to MOTM, Message of the Moment, Would be better suited) It says something along the lines of \" charater Bugs, Exploits, and CHEATERS\"

I think the devs do a good job, and instead of complaining, join them and help them do it better.

I have think they have done a great job, I was just saying what I would have done, IE Fixed the Charater Creastion system to make it work. I wasn\'t saying they didn\'t do a good job, just they shouldn\'t have made the game public, just yet.

And i would gladly join them, if they wanted me...And if i could give something to the team. (E-mail me Dev Team if you want me to help BTW, \'couse, I arn\'t Submitting an Application) And Like i said, I\'m also the Project Directer of a project at the moment, that is in Pre-Production. and everything I\'ve said in planeshift will be the things we MAKE sure arn\'t in our game. IE Charater System (Dev Team, You really need to work on that.)

In closing, I was speaking to the Dev team, Not anyone else, But i am glad that you both tryed and stand up for the game you like, I would have done the same if i were in your possion.

Wow, What a long Message ^_^

[Neryam]

Heh, soory I felt lazy today and I just skimmed your long posts.

About the learning curve, don\'t worry an in-game tutorial I think is planned in the future but right now the devs have more important matters at hand.

The movement engine is makeshift right now, it will be improved on later from what I hear.

Character creation (Youre mainly on about the models right?) is because they need more 3-d artists to make the models. THen will need more models, and they have yet to implement more skins and alternate models for the same race-genders.. all that is going to change over time. Don\'T worry, it will change. Remember, this is a project being worked on in spare time, and things aren\'t going to just happen in a snap.

Also, yes, the Server MOTD has been up there for months. I think.. just Message: would be better.

[Leeloo]

Originally posted by dirx

This game is in progress. Sound quite easy, but has an important effect:
How often do some companies develop games and after the release see that there is a wrong balance in numbers, thrength, diffculty or other things. That\'s what alphy and pre-alphy stages are ment for: To give the developers some feedback as to what works, what sould be made better and what doesn\'t work. You can\'t really concentrate on character creation without considering what effects it has on the gameplay. So you have to do it and some parallel way.

Well, alot of games do that, Final Fantasy XI did that, they relised they made one job to powerful, and changed it.
Alpha stages, are INturnal, with some Extrenal people testing, NOT EVERYONE. This game is Public Avaliable, Meaning that it would be at least in Open Beta, which it clearly isn\'t.  Charater Creation should be one of the first things an MMO should have done. and not left HALF done. Like it currantly, There is what? a total of 6 mabey 8 Models for all their charaters MALE and female? There should be atleast TWO diffrent Models for each race, Unless a race dosn\'t have a gender, in which case, only one would be needed.
Nothing that i saw in the Charater Creation Effects the Gameplay at all. If anything It would Imporve the Game Play, fixing..Or in this case Finishing, the Charater Creation System would do NOTHING to the game rather then allow diffrent Looking PCs Into the game. If you are meaning that It will slow their development of gameplay, To quote what the admin said about the Guild thing \"...it may help them focus on their structure a bit.\"

The game is in open Alpha. Beta won\'t happen for a long time. The thing is, Planeshift3D has always been open, from the first line of code. Even an open game needs an alpha stage, there\'s no way any game will get from the first line of code to beta quality without being half finished in between. The only thing the devs can do about this is to continue working on the game until it\'s completely finished.

At first you complain that there is too much focus on adding new content, instead of fixing bugs. But then you complain that half the models are still missing (i.e. the content is not there), without realising that the developers are too busy fixing bugs to bother with adding new content right now.

Your choices in the character creation screen does affect the gameplay, or more precisely, it affects the levels you start with (which I found out after making my character after the wipe. I could have had much higher levels if I had figured that out before).

Oh, and arrow keys and shift for running (+ alt for strafing) has been the default ever since Doom 1 and Wolfenstein 3D. The WASD keys work too, if you prefer them like Doom 3. It\'s not the developers fault that you haven\'t run into it before.

[SuburbanPlankton]

Wow, you guys were so much nicer than I would have been.

Just a few things I would like to clear up.

* When you download the program, it is clearly marked as \"PlaneShift - Tech Demo\".  This should give you some idea that perhaps its not intended to be a fully developed game.

*Your Blue Rock Thing is a Kran.  It is neither male nor female, as Kran are asexual.  This is a point you would have picked up if you had read the player guide.

*Since you seem to be so stuck up about spelling and grammar, I\'ll leave it as homework to find the 17 spelling mistakes in your two posts (not counting what I thought were obvious typos, a number of grammar mistakes, and your frequent (though not consistent) use of the word \"i\" instead of \"I\" ).

[acraig]

Originally posted by dirx .
The Charater Creation...It\'s rather ...well, Weird, and I couldn\'t make a charater other then the Blue Rock Thing, Working on the female charater Models would be my first to do.

Making models that look good and are consistant with the game style is an incredible difficult task.  We know there are some models missing and those will be added in due course.  But in the mean time I think most players can understand this and it\'s important that we get exposure to attact new developers and find bugs.

as well as making the Charater Creation as smooth and Simple as possiable...\'couse at the moment, It\'s a pain in the neck, With the Pop up thing when you select a diffrent race, and can\'t select another til you\'ve clicked \"OK\".

Yes, that is a known issue ( in the bug tracker ) and is being worked on.

Another thing with the Charater Creation, You might also want to make the charater Custermizable ASAP, from all the races i saw, Only ONE race could have any part changed, and that was the eye thingy.

I just added engine stuff to handle part of that now.  It will allow for changing of hair colour, it\'s not everything but it\'s a start.

Now moving away from the Charater Creation and In to the Controles.

All controls are customizable in the options.

The User Interface... Very annoying. Most of the screen was taken up by windows, Info, Chat and That side thingy.
the Infowas the most annoying thing i can think of with the user interface, with the HP and Such HAVING to have the rest of the Useless information there. In battle, people only really care about, enemys HP, Your HP, Your MP (Mana) and thats it, but EXP can be put in, but that dosn\'t matter either way.

Yes, that is a known issue as well. We are trying to make those windows smaller and more tighter.

Other then those things, It\'s ok...But needs ALOT of work, and shouldn\'t be out to the public until you fix a HELL of alot of things (Charater Models Mainly, and the Charater Creation)

How would we figure these problems out without releasing to the public? They are our testers and they do a pretty good job of finding bugs.

It seems to me, that you rushed it out so people could play before it was even near Player ready, and Whil that wouldn\'t play a factor if you were trying to make it player ready whil people were plaing, it seems that your not even doing that, Well, a little, but you seem to be focusing on the wrong Things, Aiming for New content, rather then Fixing whats Broken, That charater Creation system will come back and bite you on the butt...I can get over how bad it is at the moment.

 
This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what the project is about.  This project is about community development.  We release what we have and player comment on it and some even submit patches and the next release is a bit better.  To say that we \'rushed\' it has no meaning.  

Now, I know that you are doing this for free with no profit, and that just makes my point the more clearer, DON\'T DO THINGS HALF ASSED.

Maybe if I didn\'t work a regular 9-5 job and do other stuff PS would be perfect.  As it is now it\'s a hobby and something we do in our spare time for fun.

And While My Project is still in post-Production, I think we will be better then This...No Offence to that Comment By the way.

Let me know when it\'s out and I can do a full review.

[acraig]

And i would gladly join them, if they wanted me...And if i could give something to the team. (E-mail me Dev Team if you want me to help BTW, \'couse, I arn\'t Submitting an Application) And Like i said, I\'m also the Project Directer of a project at the moment, that is in Pre-Production. and everything I\'ve said in planeshift will be the things we MAKE sure arn\'t in our game. IE Charater System (Dev Team, You really need to work on that.)

Your own project going so well that you are willing to jump ship that quickly?  Doesn\'t sound like the type of person we are looking for.

 It\'s very easy to make a claim that \'our game won\'t have these bugs\'....

[ThomPhoenix]

and For the Love of me, I couldn\'t figure out how to talk to anyone...and before you tell me to \"Read a Guide about the game\" You\'ve got to relise that not everyone EVER reads guides. I picked up on how to Move, and all that in Final Fantasy With in the first 10 mins of playing the game... But Not for this game, about 30mins and I still couldn\'t figure out How to talk to anyone...

You said you didn\'t know how to talk to people.
Oh-my-god!! Is it that hard?
I didn\'t even have to look it up, it worked straight away for me.  But here\'s my \"How-to-chat\" guide especially for you!

1 click in the so-called \"chat window\"
2 type a message
3 press \"enter\"
4 people will now see your message!! OMG!!
You want to talk to someone privately?
5 click on the person you want to talk to and then repeat actions 1 to 4.
You are too far away from the person you want to talk to?
6 Type /tell name-of-the-player message and it will work!

Phew people, that was hard wasn\'t it?
Good luck chatting!

And by the way, you\'re cocky you know that?
Do you know how long people have worked on PS?
Do you know how hard it is to make a good MMORPG?
I don\'t think you do, because you say the game your working on is going to be \"so much better\", yeah right...
If your game comes out, I\'ll bet it\'s really bad.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by dirx
hey look at that, No Spell Check on the forums...

For the love of crap, get a spellchecker for your browser...  (or learn to type)
Click here for Mozilla/Firefox, or if you still like gaping security holes click here for IE.

Originally posted by dirx
Alpha stages, are INturnal, with some Extrenal people testing, NOT EVERYONE. This game is Public Avaliable, Meaning that it would be at least in Open Beta, which it clearly isn\'t.

The key difference here, is that the games you\'re thinking of are all for profit.  They\'re going to make money off it when they\'re done, so they have to have it all closed.  PlaneShift is open-source and free; there\'s no reason to have only a handful of people testing when we can have thousands.    This is not a \"publicly available game\", it\'s a \"pre-alpha tech demo\" tested by EVERYONE who wants to.  It\'s what a game looks like before it\'s even released for a beta test.  If you don\'t like our testing system, then leave.

[steuben]

there is one phrase that runs screaming through my mind, \"cocky frosh\"... of course it could also be because it is frosh week the world over, but that is secondary. *misses school ;(*

the other thing is, dirx, you expect to make heads or tails out of a game without having read any of the manuals, guides, forums, etc. before hand?

i can\'t imagine the raw interface is that bad. yeah it is a bit cluttered. just by looking and watching things, and a bit of random clicking, i was able to figure it out. but, then this is my first mmporg so i had no preconceptions about how it _should_ be. *misses crystal hunting*

as for the rest the privledge to complain is roughly proportional for small values, and constant for larger ones to the amount paid for the game.

and for anybody paying attention..

And While My Project is still in post-Production, I think we will be better then This

and later

project at the moment, that is in Pre-Production.

... timetable drift or merely a typo?

[Moogie]

Hilarious... I\'m gonna close this, but keep the link. Great example to show people \"how not to make yourself sound stupid infront of thousands of people\".