First Time After 3 Years

[Aerig]

At least, I think it was about 3 years ago that I last played.

Anyway, I thought I would post my impressions in the hope that they might be useful.

Quests

Well, I was delighted to see so many quests in the game.

These definitely made my first few steps an awful lot easier than they had been previously. No more farming rats in the cellar for a couple of days just to make some cash.

The ingame quest interface seems a bit quirky and it was easy in a few of them to feel that the quest was bugged, though this generally turned out to be my mistake. That said, its much better than having to figure out some obscure line of chat.

A big improvement, though, would be better game kept notes. I dont know how many quests I had in total but it was a lot and trying to remember even at the start that Brado wanted 5 mugs and not 4 or 6 was not really that easy.

As for the quest content, well its pretty good. The quests generally had a nice 'human' touch that came across as being realistic and plausible.

Big thumbs up to the settings team on coming up with better than the usual kill 10 rats on every second quest. Street perfomers needing a PR man (or lizard in my case) and finding out about a lost husband who has somehow ended up in jail. Really nice to see such good material.

As I said though, a better journal would be a big help and it would be much easier to appreciate the quality of the quests if you did not feel so lost in all the objectives. At the moment, its a bit like reading a good book but being distracted every half page or so. The book remains good but full appreciation gets lost in the distractions.

It would be nice to see a few quests that flesh out the underlying setting a little more. Politics, economy, geography could all be filled in a bit by way of passing remarks made by quest givers.

People & Roleplay

I was impressed with the effort that most people seemed to make to rolepplay their characters. I have not met that many yet, but those that I have or have overheard are clearly putting in the effort to making their characters seem real.

The fact that they do that says a lot for the community team and the standard of the players themselves. Seeing such a strong level of commitment made me actually enjoy ropleplaying with them.

Gear

My leather armour lasted fairly well though I was a little nervous at first, before I realised that the quests gave plenty of cash for replacing it with.

No daggers? Ouch and ow! My character comes with roguish skills and I guess that backstab may require a dagger or similar pointy weapon. Even if not, my image of the character includes weilding a dagger not a sword. Inability to get a dagger is my main complaint at the moment.

Sword, I did buy a sword from Harnquist and I immediately noticed two serious problems:

At 0 skill, I did the same damage with the sword as I did with level 6 or 7 Melee. This, to me does not make sense. I killed at the same speed, did the same damage. I dont remember noticing missing much with the sword.

Fair enough, a sword when it hits is going to do a lot of damage, but its going to be slower than limbs. I would definitely expect a proficient fist fighter or martial artist to do more damage faster than a completely inexperienced swordsman.

Maybe the sword was poor quality, I did not think to check, but it was at 40/50 after just a couple of fights which seemed excessive.

Spells

In all honesty, I did not really read the guide on magic but I did get that you need to Purify a glyph before you can use it. I could not work out how to do that.

Admitting that I should really have gone back and read the guide properly, this does raise the thought that ingame help attached to the magic book would be a nice idea.

Monsters

Zero aggro? Some monsters are clearly kinda big and scary and I was a bit disappointed that they made no effort to attack. At the same time I remember how frustrating the death realm was so I am also kinda glad that I have not died yet.

Skills

I think I found trainers for just about every skill but some of them I think maybe I cannot actually use yet?
If I can use them, it would be nice to see a few of the trainers have info on how to get started.

Mining

Would be really nice to have some visual indication of ore veins.

Conclusion

All in all I have quite enjoyed my time so far. The game has clearly progressed in many ways and that has to be a big credit to the various facets of the development and community teams.

[bilbous]

Daggers and axes must be crafted or looted as do most types of swords. You will need to buy one from a player if you are unable to acquire one on your own. Standard quality items like you buy or loot from npcs or mobs are 1/6 of maximum quality, a good crafter can make 300/300 items.

To purify a glyph you have to drag and drop it on the purify glyph icon in the spell window (hot key 'c'), It takes a little while, watch the status tab. After that you must research a spell by putting one or more glyphs into the 4 space grid and then clicking on the research button.

They are having trouble getting the monster aggression to work properly so they leave them tame on the production servers as  they tend to get lost otherwise.

There are some skills that do not have trainers and some skills that have trainers but cannot be used.

Talk to people in the game to get information such as mining locations, a lot of the inconveniences like that are intentional to try to mandate character interaction.

[Earowo]

at the swrto the sword lv 0 being as strong as mellee lv 6-7
that makes perfect snese for two reasons
1. swords are pointy and stab through people, hands dont.
2. damage is critically based on weapon Quality, hands really dont have any quality whatsoever

[Aerig]

Well, Earowo, try learning the martial arts. Even after only one year, I could do a lot more damage with one well directed punch than some frenzied ned (Scottish word for a thug) in the street could with a knife or a stick.

Not because my hands are necessarily more damaging than a knife or a stick, but because I know how to use them.

[Bragan]

But at the same time, having studied unarmed combat for 1 year, you've also become better at handling a knife -- the skills are somewhat transferable, at the very least you'll be more coordinated and know how you're body moves. You'll do better unarmed than an your armed ned, but you might still do more damage with a knife than without. Plus, it seems to me that a skill level of 6 is far from equivalent to a year's experience -- maybe a couple of months at the most.

As far as mobs getting lost, is it possible to have them killed and respawned if they've been triggered, and have been sitting still for say 5 minutes? Lost mobs would be fun to hunt down too. I think mobs around the main roads (Hydlaa to Ojaveda, Gugrontid) should be tame or absent, while the ones around the shortcuts make sense to be aggro. Any monsters on the road to the Bronze Doors should be wild -- it's a dangerous place, after all. Maybe even put the thugs and cutthroats on the road to Ojaveda there.

Somewhat related to Ojaveda being a beginner's spot (maybe not anymore since the spawn points were changed), I see the unlawful element in Ojaveda being more covert -- smuggling, maybe a little extortion, planning the raid (while the actual theft happens elsewhere); I figure that's why Kisatol is around. This is encroaching on Settings, but I think the Ojavedan government or people should be cracking down on overt theft and thuggery. The Enkis seem to be modeled on the nomadic tribes of the Middle East and North Africa, who regarded theft to be a very serious offense. I think I remember hearing of some reason why the rest of Ojaveda is inaccessible, and maybe that's why there isn't much law in Dsar Akkaio right now.

Now that I'm done possibly stepping on toes, a quick note to the Devs and GMs. I think you guys (and gals) are doing a fantastic job with the game. The Planeshift setting is one of most unique I've seen, second to Planeshift. On the coding side, there has been obvious improvement, and I'd like to thank everyone that's been donating their time and effort into making this game what it is, and what it could be.

[LigH]

Welcome back, Aerig ... I slightly remember your nick even.

Many thanks for your detailed report. I hope it will be useful in the right departments...