15 replies to this topic

[frodofraggins]

I first want to commend QOL for getting the trial server up and running so quickly. Also, the 30 day trial period is quite generous.

I have some basic gameplay constructive criticisms I'd like to make.

1) I'm not sure why general chat is disabled on the trial server. At the moment it's not a major issue as most people should be in the same locale and I believe can chat that way. I personally think it's in QOL's best interest to allow these trial players to be part of a community that will then want to continue on the paying side of things.

2) I think QOL should make a decision fairly soon on whether character transfers will happen before the first 30 days of the trial server. And once that decision is made the trial players should be made aware.

The only downside of the 30 day trial period is that subscribers may feel that these people are getting a free 30 days. It's certainly a reasonable gripe, but I think that the current limits to trade skills and studies are enough of an incentive for players to go to subscription sooner rather than later.

3) This next criticism is my biggest concern. Gameplay is the most important aspect of any MMO. It should feel smooth and fluid.

I have quite a few issues with combat. I have to assume that the issue with some mobs teleporting to you and getting behind you hasn't been fixed? It seems like most mobs magically jump from their location to either right on me or behind. Occasionally I'll actually see them run to me.

Player movement needs some work imo. When going up stairs the camera moves extremely jaggedly. The floaty jumps are very distracting to me. The combat speed seems too slow.

4) I don't crash as much as I did at the end of open beta, but I still crash every hour or so. And for whatever reason the bug reporter always crashes and so my report can never reach QOL. My only guess is that Kaspersky is somehow blocking functionality of the bug reporter? At this point I've given up trying to send a crash report and I'd prefer not to post my personal logs as I'm not sure what's included in the binary section of those logs.

[Swordmage]

1) the general chat restrictions might make more sense if the trial area was on a normal server; however, I have seen it in other games (such as EQ2) as a way to slow down gold spam. Also, it wouldn't be as onerous if the trial was level 1 - 10 or so (thus being 5 or 10 hours of play rather than 30 days).

3) the MOBs warping to you was actually added with the last patch (it might be an over-compensation for the MOBs ignoring combat for a couple of seconds before closing). The warp overshoot is bothersome, but at least once combat starts, we don't get flanked continually the way we did.

Personally I find the combat speed comfortable, but that is one of those personal taste things.

[Tork]

I'm glad you're enjoying your experience so far in Alganon.

This is our first configuration of the Alganon Trial Server System. No doubt as time goes on we will continue to monitor and adjust the Alganon Trial Server System settings.

[Eldaran]

And for the record, we subscribers aren't angry that you are getting 30 days free. We just want you all to come and be a part of our community. Hopefully 30 days of play will get you hooked like the rest of us.

See you in game!

~Eldaran

[Radium]

And for the record, we subscribers aren't angry that you are getting 30 days free. We just want you all to come and be a part of our community. Hopefully 30 days of play will get you hooked like the rest of us.

See you in game!

~Eldaran

/agree

[Chadeaux]

Not jealous at all - In fact I was jumping for joy when I saw the 30 day trial server opened up! Now I can finally drag my bf out of that other game to come try Alganon and play with me again

[Eldaran]

It definitely is a great marketing tool, but still not enough to get my brother to try this game out. He is still calling it WoW Lite.

Hopefully instances and PvP down the road will draw him in.

[bml]

The game has definitely improved since beta, but there are still plenty of issues.

In my first 2-3 hours I encountered:

- video issues changing from windowed mode to full screen that required a restart
- one crash & the crash tool crashed as well
- got stuck in combat twice
- got stuck in the terrain once
- my healing potion timer started going into negative numbers

Other annoyances:

- load screens are too long, coming from another game this really stands out
- ui is a bit sluggish at times, especially clicking with a mouse
- at one point on the tab pane only the general tab was present and not the three mage tabs
- had some odd graphical issues where all my inventory had a pinkish color that looked like some sort of timer countdown
- spell distances were slightly off. i'd target a mob, move close until the ability turned white which should mean it's in range, the try to use the ability and often times nothing would happen. move a little closer and it would work. mobs visually blocked also silently fail.

Another oddity is that I was playing the game on minimum video settings. I switched it to max everything and didn't notice any change in performance. I do play at 1920x1200 and my CPU is on the slow side so I suspect my CPU is the bottleneck as opposed to my graphics card.

[MugHug]

The game has definitely improved since beta, but there are still plenty of issues.

In my first 2-3 hours I encountered:

- video issues changing from windowed mode to full screen that required a restart
- one crash & the crash tool crashed as well
- got stuck in combat twice
- got stuck in the terrain once
- my healing potion timer started going into negative numbers

Other annoyances:

- load screens are too long, coming from another game this really stands out
- ui is a bit sluggish at times, especially clicking with a mouse
- at one point on the tab pane only the general tab was present and not the three mage tabs
- had some odd graphical issues where all my inventory had a pinkish color that looked like some sort of timer countdown
- spell distances were slightly off. i'd target a mob, move close until the ability turned white which should mean it's in range, the try to use the ability and often times nothing would happen. move a little closer and it would work. mobs visually blocked also silently fail.

Another oddity is that I was playing the game on minimum video settings. I switched it to max everything and didn't notice any change in performance. I do play at 1920x1200 and my CPU is on the slow side so I suspect my CPU is the bottleneck as opposed to my graphics card.

I suspect it is not really a CPU issue. I am playing Alganon on a Core 2 Duo E8500 o/c to 3.94Ghz and a HD4890.

While investigating the effect of hardware on Alganon, I ran the CPU at the default speed of 3.16GHz and o/c of 3.94Ghz.

In most other games, I can see a dramatic improvement in FPS, redraws and general responce.

Alganon seem to run the same at both speeds. Therefore I suspect that it could be due to how effective the game engine is and not purely hardware related.

[Eldaran]

Yeah the game runs the same on my Quad Core and my Dual Core. Both have very good video cards and plenty of RAM. I've never seen an improvement in FPS.

[b94fy34t1na2mwd]

Yeah the game runs the same on my Quad Core and my Dual Core. Both have very good video cards and plenty of RAM. I've never seen an improvement in FPS.

I suspect, though I haven't seen a dev comment to confirm this, it's because the client is not multi-threaded. That is, it will never use more than one core/cpu in it's current build.

If you have a dual core, for example, you'll note the CPU utlization never goes above ~50%, as the second core is not being utilized by the client process.

Of course it could be a huge co-incidence, but this is the same behavior I've seen in other single threaded MMO's, so.. /shrug

[Lallante]

Ouch! So my quad core pc plays the same as a dual or single core in Alganon? That's just not right. Not at all >.<

I suspect, though I haven't seen a dev comment to confirm this, it's because the client is not multi-threaded. That is, it will never use more than one core/cpu in it's current build.

If you have a dual core, for example, you'll note the CPU utlization never goes above ~50%, as the second core is not being utilized by the client process.

Of course it could be a huge co-incidence, but this is the same behavior I've seen in other single threaded MMO's, so.. /shrug

[Kelody]

Unfortunately, most games only run on one core. If they use multiple cores, they usually taut it as a major feature. Developers are moving to multiple cores slowly. Many games don't need more than one as they are GPU or memory limited.

[Calmedan]

I suspect, though I haven't seen a dev comment to confirm this, it's because the client is not multi-threaded. That is, it will never use more than one core/cpu in it's current build.

Oh the client is multithreaded alright, the problem is more to do with the workload being carried out on specific threads and how certain threads have priority over important subsystems thereby resulting in the performance bottleneck that a number of us observe when playing the game.

The vast majority of software is multithreaded (unless it's written with VB5 or below), but not many software titles are written to utilise multiple CPUs. I use Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio 2005 and VS 2008 for my day to day development. All three of these IDEs offer adequate resources to allow myself to develop titles that manage threads across multiple cores (I'm a C++ developer, but in my dabbling with C# I've found it's even easier). I still go for the lowest common factor though, I've always got an old Athlon XP 3200 to make sure everything runs smoothly, and can only get better when run on systems with multiple cores or CPUs.

[Eldaran]

QOL should hire Calmedan methinks.

[DustinL]

Its nice to see actual constructive criticism and someone not trying to bash the game. I say bravo. Great post and please lets keep these bug reports coming. Can only make the game better. Every game will start out buggy, that means there is no where to go but up!