Impressions of a Nub

[Sheerlegs]

Firstly, I'd like to say that this isn't an aimless complaint, my intent is to provide information as to why I (as a nub) am unable to bring myself to play PS in it's current state. I understand that PS is under development and that these problems will be addressed eventually, but I am just giving my experience as a new player so that the devs can lump my impressions in with everyone elses and infer what the most immediate problems are.


I only really have two major issues:

Lighting: If I cannot see, I cannot play or test. Maybe the pitch black shadows don't bother people who have been playing for a while, but I honestly cannot play with the lighting in it's current state. I have turned the brightness up, but still cannot see most of the time unless I'm in direct sunlight. I tried to leave the main city, but it's even worse outside in the woods (i.e. the forest is completely black). Maybe this is an issue with my computer, but it seems that other people have similar problems. I have played Planeshift a bit in the past (before the combat system) and all the visual components worked fine then.
Communication: Talking to NPCs is really time consuming and requires a lot of clicking. They speak in large blocks of text and you have to constantly scroll back up the chat to read things they just said. The chat bubbles above their head are a good idea, but they don't stay around long enough to read all of it most of the time (unless you're a speed reader). The chat bubbles also tend to wander outside the screen.
While I really appreciate the system the devs are trying to develop, it's currently very clunky and in need of a lot of work. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most distracting problems at the moment. My suggestion would be to implement more user control in terms of pacing the conversations and the rate of text.

Those are the only two big things that prevent me from playing. Minor glitches and bugs I can handle, but these are show stoppers. They make navigating and communicating a real chore.

On the bright side, I must say that PS has come a long way since I last checked in and the game is showing a lot of promise. My intent of posting is in no way to belittle the work of the devs, on the contrary I applaude their efforts and I look forward to playing Planeshift when these issues are eventually resolved.

-Furthark Sheerlegs

[Feanor]

I'd like to add my voice in a few suggestions about the tutorial.

-NPC chat options are a huge problem, often times when directly answering their questions with a yes or no they would not understand me, nor do they understand even simple deviations from the basic formula. For example on of the characters asked something along the lines of "Can you think of a word starting with "R" that I'm thinking of?" I answered "yes" which makes perfect sense. Yes I can think of a word starting with R. But his reply was that he didn't understand me bla bla bla. This detracts a lot from the roleplay environment and game immersion. Morever I don't think it would have been possible for me to complete the tutorial due to this problem, if it weren't for the tutorial walkthrough you posted. It would help a lot of you did a major expansion of character vocabulary, in particular their ability to understand additional phrases, and vary their responses.

-Movement. I'm new, and maybe I just haven't seen it yet, but in the tutorial nowhere does it mention there being a run command. Given that walking is fairly slow, it would help a lot of there was a run command given to you in the tutorial.

-Small objects. To put it simply, there aren't any. When I first logged in and looked around the game, something was unsettling. Then I realized it. The surrounding area was almost completely empty with the exception of large objects such as trees, buildings, and later on a few crates. Occasionally detail would be drawn onto the skin of larger objects, but practically no small 3D objects existed.

[Shaman]

Npc's don't know what "witty" means.

[Tontow]

The chat window is resizeable, I have mine about 3x bigger than the defalt.

[Millian]

I have turned the brightness up, but still cannot see most of the time unless I'm in direct sunlight. I tried to leave the main city, but it's even worse outside in the woods (i.e. the forest is completely black).

Run the updater
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=32812.0
If you have any problem click it

[driscool]

i agree with you!! i found the chat the most annoying i have ever experienced!!
Although i cant agree with you on the graphics due o the fact that PlaneShift cuts out when i try to load yliakum!
I managed the tutorial but yliakum was a total no-show!!
If thats not a bug i dunno what is!!

[Volund]

Everything you complained about has been said before, I guarantee, I've seen a billion of them.
I know it's confusing when you start out, only advice I can give is that you need a experienced player to give you tips, everyone is more than helpful, that I can guarantee. You can also try IRC chat, instructions for that are detailed on the official website too. To find a experienced player they ussualy have big shiny armor and RP well.

[Bamko]

Issues.. aplenty...

Dark, could be ati issue, but sounds like a driver issue (get the latest from the site of your card mfgr, try that, try a few older ones if that dont work, but so far the newest one from site, not from windows driver search, has worked when thatis the issue).  You really need to eliminate what it is not, to find what it is.  could also be updater.  I have the ATI issue, where things close in wilderness are dark... but far away is ok... actually too bright far away because I turned up brightness to see close.  But livable.

Chat.  As mentioned, can resize window, also can /clear to clean it up BEFORE you talk to them... helps with scrolling for me.  and the main thing.. learn where your chat logs are, and look at them.  You can do it ingame if you are in windowed mode.  I have to do that about once a week.. not often.. but wow, that helps.

Movement.  Both ingame(options?) and on site.. not sure if planeshift.it, or PSwiki, there is info on movement.  I also have put some links at the Yliakum Visitor's bureau (see link in signature).  It is not an official site, but has some how to's like "how not to get lost so much".  It is a start, and easier to drop the link ingame quickly... "goto yliakum.com  click on how to not get lost so much" rather than "go to PS forum, and search for the topic and read all 100 returned responses" or worse.. trying to type out the URL of official link. and hope they dont miss a number when retyping it...

We need more poeple to drop the links to the official threads that explain things, as well as explain it for the new players.  I have been told that some did not even know PS had a forum, until they got directed to it from there.

be sure to check out the About and the Links pages for more info.. I hope that helps.

Finally, most of these complaints are answered in detail in the technical help section of this forum.  of course they may be hard to find, as there are so many posts.. but they are there.

Oh, and for the flamers, this is not to replace this forum, Planeshift.it or the PSwiki, this is to direct people to the right spot of those sites.  Read it, I do not want to recreate any content if I can just link to it.  This is also NOT a guild or anything official, just a site that started by me using it to help people with the OOC stuff so i could get back to the IC stuff quicker. 

[Volund]

I hadn't touched or seen the forum until 2 months after I started playing.
Must be me. 

[driscool]

lol

[Bamko]

Which is why I made the Yliakum Visitor's Bureau... Easier to say "go to www.yliakum.com and look at "how not to get lost so much" than to try to get them to find this forum and search for the right page... though I link to this a lot, and want to link to it more (anyone want to help by responding to those threads with the links?  )

of course, seems like a lot of newbs are noobs.  they dont want to go look, they want you to not play, but just be their constant companion in tells... tell me how this works, tell me how that works.

enough to make one want to show them camp banished sometimes...

I have not done that yet.   YET.... 

No helping some people... good thing about that, they almost always move on after a couple weeks.

One guy said he my site was no help at all.  Um.. My site is new, but we link to this forum and to pswiki when answer is not handy.. Not to say it cant be better(again, you are invited to help with that, no spoilers, and link to offical sites whenever you can) but I get the feeling they want the cheat codes...

For all the people we have who like to help... wouldnt be nice to organize our efforts in some non-guild organization?   

[Mordraugion]

For all the people we have who like to help... wouldnt be nice to organize our efforts in some non-guild organization?   

Umm isn't that exactly what the PS Wiki is for?

 and most of the ps wiki links you use on your site are also on this forum in the guides and tutorials section

[Gravemind]

I only really have two major issues:

Lighting: If I cannot see, I cannot play or test. Maybe the pitch black shadows don't bother people who have been playing for a while, but I honestly cannot play with the lighting in it's current state. I have turned the brightness up, but still cannot see most of the time unless I'm in direct sunlight. I tried to leave the main city, but it's even worse outside in the woods (i.e. the forest is completely black). Maybe this is an issue with my computer, but it seems that other people have similar problems. I have played Planeshift a bit in the past (before the combat system) and all the visual components worked fine then.
Communication: Talking to NPCs is really time consuming and requires a lot of clicking. They speak in large blocks of text and you have to constantly scroll back up the chat to read things they just said. The chat bubbles above their head are a good idea, but they don't stay around long enough to read all of it most of the time (unless you're a speed reader). The chat bubbles also tend to wander outside the screen.
While I really appreciate the system the devs are trying to develop, it's currently very clunky and in need of a lot of work. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most distracting problems at the moment. My suggestion would be to implement more user control in terms of pacing the conversations and the rate of text.

Those are the only two big things that prevent me from playing. Minor glitches and bugs I can handle, but these are show stoppers. They make navigating and communicating a real chore.

On the bright side, I must say that PS has come a long way since I last checked in and the game is showing a lot of promise. My intent of posting is in no way to belittle the work of the devs, on the contrary I applaude their efforts and I look forward to playing Planeshift when these issues are eventually resolved.

-Furthark Sheerlegs

Your lighting problem is a bug. I can see clearly even in the middle of the night without tweaking any gamma options. Look through the bug forums for the solution to your problems. Posting you system specs might help.

Communication: My chat box displays 15 lines of text, and I have it fairly minimized in the lower left corner of the screen. Most things an NPC will say are at most 5 lines, in rare cases 10. Try right clicking on the chat box and selecting 'scale fonts' and that might help.

[Gravemind]

i agree with you!! i found the chat the most annoying i have ever experienced!!
Although i cant agree with you on the graphics due o the fact that PlaneShift cuts out when i try to load yliakum!
I managed the tutorial but yliakum was a total no-show!!
If thats not a bug i dunno what is!!

If it's crashing when you try to load ylikum, it's because you don't have a good enough computer. Try getting some more RAM

[Dwayo]

I have trouble few days ago with old ATI drivers. When I downloaded new everything worked. No more crashes. (except usuals )