Some constructive critisism

Gameplay
#1

After playing the beta for a few hours I thought I’d share my opinion of the gameplay so far. Note that this is my opinion and others may experience things differently. With that said, here we go:

Controls, movement, etc.
I can’t really put my finger on what it is but the overall feeling of movement in KCD seems odd. I don’t get a sense of walking or running but more of floating over the surface. In addition head movement seems wrong as well. Especially while on horseback since I can’t turn my head past my shoulder. Movement needs to be more fluid in order or work. Perhaps an option to set a FOV via the settings would improve things here somewhat? I would also like to see support for headtracking such as TrackIR. I also think that adding a 3rd person view would be beneficial. I know, I didn’t want it in the game from the beginning either, but after playing for a while I can really see situations where it would improve the actual gameplay.

Also, what is up with horse stamina? Surely I should be able to ride at full speed for more than 60 seconds?

Dialogue, voice acting, etc.
I have no idea at what completion level the dialogues in the beta are but they are not very immersive at this stage. As an example: Quest is to find Mr X in a camp. I go to the camp and talk to the first stranger I meet:

Me: "Where can I find Mr X?"
Stranger: “He is in the camp!”

There are no addtional options so that is that. He is in the camp. Which I knew before I even got there…When I talk to other NPC’s I can ask for something completely unrelated to finding Mr X or I can have the same stupid answer again. Having dialogue options like that is about as useful as tits on a bull. To add insult to injury I can talk to a kid that looks as if he is in his late teens but he sounds like he is a 100 year old pirate. Aarrrgh. Or vice versa - I speak to a roughneck who sounds like a sissy. The people in KCD also seem to have very bad short-term memory. All these things put together kind of breaks immersion since I don’t feel like being there if you understand what I mean.

Combat
Now, here is something that seems to divide the KCD community. We want it to be realistic and we don’t want button-mashing. I would like the sword combat to be more realistic. Where are the dirty tricks? The pommel blows? Leg kicks? Grappling? As it is now, sword combat is difficult (mostly because of wonky controls) but still not very realistic (I have some real world sword fighting experience, so I actually know what I am talking about here). I really think the whole sword combat mechanics is in need of a overhaul.

World, immersion, etc…
The in-game world looks beautiful and there are bees and ducks. Still the villages seem a bit dead. Where is the buzzing medieval country life? All I see is NPC’s walking around doing stuff that seems a bit pointless. Don’t they go to bed at night? I’ve seen the same woman sitting on the same bench day and night. I’ve seen a guy digging in the ground in pitch dark. And there were no candles burning in the houses. Surely people went indoors at night in medieval Bohemia? Not to make any comparisons between the games, but look at village and city life in The Witcher 3 (minus the dragons of course…). It feels alive and I think KCD needs that overall feel to it. It is not a landscape simulator. Perhaps some tradeoff has to be made between full realism and immersion.

Conclusion
KCD is the most promising game I’ve seen in development for many years, possibly ever. The potential is huge. I have played games since the mid 1980’s and I have reviewed countless of games on a semi-professional level. None of them have had the potential that KCD has or set out to do what KCD could do if made right. In my opinion, key to success here is spelled IMMERSION. Unfortunatly the current beta is lacking somewhat in that department. I don’t feel like I am in medieval Bohemia. I think this can be fixed by making the in-game world feel less dead, the NPC’s seem less stupid and the dialogue less anal (in a Freudian way). Come on Warhorse, you can do it!

Keep up the good work!

16 Likes
NPC Interactions and Immersion - Beta Criticism
#2

Regarding this part:
I just finished combat in arena, where I parried attack, went straight to stab, immediately grappled the guy, kicked him and immediately started hitting him with pommel, followed by three successive strikes :slight_smile: It looked awesome and I really felt like a boss after that exchange :smiley:
So it is in the game, kicks, punches etc. usually occurs when you get too close, enemies clench their swords for a moment and it is decided by kick/punch/pommel strike. Combos with pommels etc. are also in game, but they are currently REALLY hard to pull-off (I have no idea how I managed to do mine combo, when I try on purpose I fail hard)
So it all really is in game, its just hard to do, hard to show and hard to control, which will all smooth out hopefully :slight_smile:

1 Like
#3

But that is scripted isn’t it? You can’t chose to do a leg kick on your own?

#4

When you get into clench part, it depends on what button you press. I have no idea how it works with keyboard, but on my controller its something like - LT = kick, LB = punch, RB = pommel strike… I think you can find this in “help” in main menu of game :slight_smile:

#5

This is something ive noticed from all the videos of alpha/beta i’ve watched. The game seems like a ghost town the majority of the time.

4 Likes
#6

I have to completely agree with you but i might add that in my opinion the main character has no personality. Henry is a premade character and he should incline to some kind of behaviour (like Shepard in ME, or Geralt in the Witcher). It would be fine this way if it was a player made character because you can imagine things but i think this should be a story of guy who is dealing with things in some way. I hope you can understand what i mean with this :slightly_smiling:

2 Likes
#7

Keep in mind Warhorse has more stuff to implement. For exemple, livestock are not in yet. You will surely find pigs and cows wandering in barns and enclosed fields, etc. This will certainly add life to rural towns. I wouldn’t be suprised they will add more people later, but IFAIK, they sadly won’t add children.

1 Like
#8

I forgot to mention one thing in my small essay above. Map size. I think it is way to small for a open world RPG. I know that the playable area is smaller than that of Act I but if the numbers I’ve seen are correct it is 1/4 the size of the full map. 16 km2 is pretty small for a game of this type and that actually worries me quite a lot. In the beta it actually takes longer to sleep for 6-7 hours in-game than travelling from one corner of the map to the other on horseback.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that exploring and finding new areas is a large part of the gaming experience when playing open world RPG’s. Sometimes you really need a break from quest lines and just climb mountains and look for interesting places. In KCD the in-game world seems pretty condensed even if it is realistic.

Some comparisons between popular open world game (note that I am ONLY comparing map size here) map sizes:

Arma 3 (Altis): 270 km2
Arma 2 (Chernarus): 225 km2
The Witcher 3: 139 km2
Skyrim: 39 km2
GTA V: 81 km2

With just 16 km2 (if that number is correct? I got it from several gaming sites that have written about the game…) KCD is tiny in comparison. The gameplay and quests have to be pretty astonishing to compensate for that. I know size isn’t everything and what you find in the playable area is more important. But out of the games I mention above, only the two Arma games feel more barren than KCD. The Witcher 3 is a great example of how to make a in-game world feel vibrant and alive with NPC’s doing their daily businnes, hookers looking for clients, drunks pissing in the alleys, random fights, lovers quarrels, etc, etc, going on in the background. Unless counting chickens is your thing, there is not that much going on in KCD besides the quests.

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#9

no. just no. did you even explore the whole map? the detail level is amazing. all of those games you listed have huge swatchs of desolate terrain, in this game, there’s paths, groves, cravasses, canyons, camps, burned down huts, details everywhere. we don’t need a huge map when you have simply be creative with terrain geometry, elevation, using forests to mask distance, etc, etc, which this game has evidently excelled at.

one thing those games you mentioned have in common? they’re all boring and empty. this game is following red dead redemption’s path in terms of environment design, which is a good thing.

1 Like
#10

Yes, the landscape detail is amazing. I totally agree. But there is NOTHING going on besides the actual quests. NPC’s walk around like zombies apart from the odd farmer or blacksmith. Where is the interaction between the NPC’s? Didn’t they tell dirty jokes in the 1400’s? No sex in the haystacks? Where are the children? Beggars? The village idiot? The NPC’s mostly wander around with no apparent goal.

Go into a house at night. Is there anyone there sleeping? Or having a party? Or eating dinner? No, they keep on walking. And that is what I mean by saying the game seems dead in comparison to The Witcher 3. Or even RDR like you mention.

3 Likes
#11

Small map? My god, no more ginormous maps plz Warhorse! In Witcher 2 I yearned for a bigger, more open world but they went completely over the top in Witcher 3. So far the KCD map seems like a perfect compromise between size and fun.

As for the ghost towns - in reality towns WERE pretty dead during the day since most folks were out in the fields or forests. Look at some villages in rural Eastern Europe, people are still living like that. It’s only in the evening when people got together in pub and such. Plus I’m sure they’ll add some livestock and more people.

1 Like
#12

I’m not saying that I want 100+ km2 of map. I’m saying that a map that you can cross in just a few minutes of in-game time is pretty small… And I’m not sure that adding cows will liven things up the way I mean.

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#13

You’re citing red dead? Really? 80% of that game was fields and desert, how is that an example of what you mean?

From what I’ve seen, the detail isn’t exactly to a level that I’d say 16 km2 feels like a lot. It’s very well made and enjoyable, but it’s still small, there isn’t really a way around that. If they can’t do more, that’s fine, but there’s no need to pretend it isn’t a small map.

1 Like
#14

Not true. Novigrad and Velen (the largest of the witcher 3 maps is only ‘active area’ around 4.3km x 4km. And as far as I can tell, no one has called that one “too small”.

Skellige has approximately the same land area, maybe a little less.

The larger quotes for map size include the non-playable border areas AFAICT.

#15

Would love to camp somewhere. That need big forest which have a small density. Empty areas on map would not affect other areas in their density. The effort would be less than create a high density area (they already have the trees, plants, and textures). The ways remain as short as before (New area would be located at the border of map). We could go hunting,exploring,crafting, hunting bandits, putting our stolen things, our jogging to increase our stamina. This way would be more relastic with more amount or same amount of fun (depends on player) as before. Please more wilderness areas.

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#16

Correct, all these games usually have lot of inaccessible areas, like mountains and seas. KCD has almost none of that

2 Likes
#17

How can you compare map size of game like KCD with military simulator where you fly with planes and helicopters? Of course they have to have big maps. But they lack of any detail. In KCD i believe every meter of ground is hand made or at least a bit tweaked.

GTA V, the same thing - cars, planes, helis. Map need to be bigger. And even with that there are huge empty areas.

2 Likes
#18

Perhaps I play RPG’s differently than the rest of you. But riding up and down the same path or through the same patch of trees over and over again is not my cup of tea. One huge part of the experience for me is to find new areas and that will be quickly done in KCD. Yes, KCD has detail. Graphical detail. We have been over that a few times already. But it lacks immersion and gameplay detail. I didn’t back this to get Cabela Big Game “Medieval edition” or Bee-keeper 2.0. I want immersive gameplay and unfortunatly this is not the case in KCD at this point.

The house interiors of KCD are just as boring as in Arma. The forests looks good but they are not THAT different from Arma from a gameplay perspective. There are very few, if any, random events or encounters. NPC’s don’t react to me riding over them. Chickens don’t react to me riding over them. Dialogues are repetitive at best. I could go on but you guys focus on what I wrote about the map size… There is NOTHING GOING ON in KCD besides the quests that makes the gameplay interesting.

Want more examples of the broken immersion level? Here we go:

I’m in Tamberg looking for a shovel (seems to be a very scarse object in the medieval farmlands of Bohemia. I guess the farmers used turnips to do their digging…). I talk to a guy sitting outside the local pub (or grocery store depending on what NPC I talk to around the table). I ask what he is doing and he starts acting smart by making references to his forge. Now that would be fun if he was at his forge. But now he isn’t and that just makes the entire dialogue path stupid.
And this is how the entire dialgoue moves on. There is no flow or character interaction. There is NO immersion.

One good thing about eating turnips must be that the villagers night vision becomes excellent. I have been into several houses at night with people inside, but they don’t seem to need any light to do their nightly chores. Which, by the way are exactly the same things they do during the day. The NPC scripting needs a serious overhaul if you ask me.

I am not comparing KCD to either Arma, The Witcher or GTA. But I am saying that those games, regardless of genre, have something that KCD lacks: immersion. Don’t get me wrong. I want KCD to be a hardcore, realistic medieval RPG. But at this point it isn’t. Not even close…

4 Likes
#19

This would be nice, you’re right, if they added a thick border of forest around the edge of the entire map it wouldn’t require them to change the game at all, but it would give us a nice area to explore/hunt/camp.

1 Like
#20

Yeah I know what you mean, there needs to be a life going on outside of the main quest in the game.
I think the issue with adding more population to the game currently would be too much CPU utilisation. Until AI is optimised I don’t think it will improve the game by adding even more AI. Sleeping/waiting will actually take as long as in real life :slightly_smiling:

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