Biggest gameplay problems (in my opinion)

Gameplay
#1

I wanted to post a list of many small things and ideas, but instead decided to make a smaller list of the most important reasons why I don’t find the game very satisfying right now:

  1. I have no reason to help the characters. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, no emotional attachment. I don’t actually need anything from them: I will not die of hunger, I don’t need a bed, I can’t socialize. I don’t have any very important mission. Therefore I don’t care about people in the game, and I don’t feel like I need to take their quests. It’s like I take quests solely to be less bored. Adding survival mechanics, more dialogues and a solid plot perhaps could help.

  2. Lack of control/response. Sometimes it feels that I’m not in a control of my own body, or that just buttons don’t work. Some examples:
    – Pressing E on characters. Sometimes it works, sometimes you need to wait a few seconds, sometimes they won’t respond at all. Would be better to have some immediate response, maybe NPC should say something like “Yes?” before he finished his animation and the dialogue started - at least you’ll feel that the button works. By the way, what the protagonist is actually doing when you press E?.. does he silently say “hi” or touch the person?..
    – When you pick up a piece of coal, the animation have many frames where the character is almost standing, yet you can’t turn around.
    – Door animation is slow/blocking, in reality I can seamlessly move forward through the door, while pushing it away.
    – Can’t move/see properly during dialogue/inventory/menus/mini-games, yet the game still simulates the world around.
    – I don’t like how camera locks on your opponent in combat. Would prefer normal free movement.

  3. Village generic-ness. Buildings look the same, both exterior and interior. All are clean and seemingly built by a single person in the same year. Same for inhabitants. Hard to find something particular. I just randomly push E on everything I come across, because nothing draws attention, this way I found the girl who gave me the quest about Pavel. But honestly, she looked absolutely generic, as her routine. I don’t know why would the protagonist would actually approach her (if he wouldn’t just run and press E on everything like me - but it’s not what real people usually do). It’s really boring to explore villages, slowly pushing doors to find same objects on the exactly same places over and over again, or to inspect each random inhabitant, because some of them may have dialogues, but it’s hard to say who.

To makes things less grouchy, I really love nature in the game, it’s incredibly beautiful.

3 Likes
#2

I have to agree with pretty much everything except for the free look during combat, it would be nice if I could look around by holding alt like in ArmA but how else would you want to change your attack direction if not by using your mouse? I would also love to add that picking herbs up shouldnt lock you in a 4 second long cutscene, I would preffer if your character just grabbed the herb from first person just reaching it with his hand. Also, when I wanted to find the girl from Pavel’s quest after completing it I kept seeing the same generic looking women in the village and I wasn’t able to find her so I moved on (might be a bug but she didnt show up on my map)

#3

As for problem number 1… The devs are using this tech demo for us to test the game mechanics. They most likely scraped these quests together in a semi-quick manner for us to test. I feel as though they are leaving the true dramatic juicy stuff for the final game. We are technically just dropped into the tech demo with no back story, so yeah there is no true reason to talk to anyone except out of curiosity or to test the game mechanics.

1 Like
#4

Yes I’m sure this will be the case. At the moment there is no emotional attachment, not helped by the placeholder dialogue. With the addition of a back-story at the start of the game I’m sure we will have a feel for the character and the people we meet and we’ll start to care. It was mentioned in one of the vids that they are aiming for some storylines like the Bloody Baron quest in Witcher3 and if they pull off that kind of story telling then it will be great indeed.

Movement wise this does remind me a lot (looks wise too) of Arma, with a slightly clunky feel to control. Its worth using a gamepad for getting about, as you can be more subtle with speed and direction of movement. Combat is another matter though, and something I’m struggling to enjoy, as I cannot get the hang of it at all. It really needs refinement and feel it could put many off the game if not done right.

#5

Agreed on the combat. Can’t seem to get the hang of it yet. A third mouse button for block/parry might help a bit but the combo mechanics are impossible for me. In the tutorial part demonstrating the combos i don’t think I was able to complete one of them correctly.

#6

In this thread people STILL not getting the concept of “tech alpha”.

The only thing even worth responding to from the original post is the occassional sluggishness. Yes, when you click on an NPC, it’s sometimes unresponsive. And other times the NPC turns around to look at you way too slowly, like they’re drugged or sleepwalking.

And opening doors should be quicker too. Also getting on the horse. It’s fine in a demo but in a 50 hours game I suspect these sluggish actions would drive me mad.

4 Likes
#7

Yes, picking up herbs, moving doors and the dialogue reaction are a bit too slow. If you do it many times it’ll get annoying.
What irritates me is that the team wants the player to be immersed and that’s the main reason for the first person camera. But then it switches outside to see him picking stuff up and talking to people all the time. This makes me trying to get in 3rd person all the time - which doesn’t happen in other first person games like Dishonored.
I’d love to have the choice in the menu if you want a 1st or 3rd person approach, but they probably won’t have time for that.

  1. will be solved in the game.
  2. Actually in medieval times there were a lot of small wars between the holds and a village was burnt down every few decades. Therefore they often did not only look like they are built at the same time, but actually were.
    The buildings look similar, but not exactly the same. Well, they didn’t experiment much back then, they were farmers and built like they knew it worked. Realism can be more boring, yes, but it didn’t bother me that much. The buildings surrounding the castle looked a bit different also.
    Beds are still missing inside but I heard that they are planned. The interiors in the trailer also looked better than what we saw in the tech alpha.
    So, just wait for the final game and be sure, if you’re not pleased then, modders will take care of that :wink:
1 Like
#8

Warhorse pls make key bind systém, for easily combat control, thx.

#9

Oh yeah, that’s a bit strange too. I forgot to mention the picking animation. Way, way too slow. I remember in Dragon Age Inquisition it was just a second or so and STILL it became extremelly anoying within the first hour. The ideal picking time is instant - just like in Witcher 3. At least Warhorse wouldn’t have to bother with animations.

#10

“Village generic-ness”?! I don’t know, where are you from, but wherever it is, there are probably museum villages around there presenting the rural culture of your past. Around here, these houses in these “skanzens” not only look alike, but they are not even that old, maybe from the XIX. century, if we are lucky, but many are from the very early XX. century. Bohemia was one of the more advanced regions of the time, but we could probably find areas in Europe at this time, especially in the “classic” medieval ages where houses consisted of ONE room and that’s all. (While we are at it, of course they look new, in the XVIII-XIX. century inhabitants whitewashed their houses at least around here once, but rather twice or thrice per year.)
People slept and held their food and tools in here - that’s about it. People spent most of their time on the fields and around the animals, their relations to the houses are not the same as ours now, so it’s probably worth not expecting some elven architecture here, because I doubt this will get any “better”, and because of the reasons above, if it does, it will actually get worse.

Rest assured though, there will be other locations than villages.

1 Like
© 2015 Warhorse Studios www.warhorsestudios.cz