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Warning: don't be Runescape


Joris

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Hi,

 

My conclusion: be careful not to overwhelm the (new) player with entire lists of items, skill levels and crafting recipies. In fact I think it already is too much! Instead, change the inferface to hide skills, items, recipies and other mechanics until later in the game or if the player asks for it.

 

I think this is crucial for your game to be a growing succes. And I feel I have to tell you, because your current audience (loyal game testers who embrace every addition to the game) might not see the danger.

 

I started playing PZ in 2014. Back then the game was full of bugs and technical limitations but it was more intuitive than it is now. Recently I got back to this great game (so after 4 years) and these are some of my impressions:

 

- The character screen shows so many (ex-) jobs, perks and tweaks all with corresponding statistics but I mostly don't know what they mean so I skip the min-max-ing stage in fear of unpurposely making a permanent mistake. Let's just start a standard game.

- Opening the skills tab, it shows more than just a crafting skill. In fact crafting is seperated into electricity, metal working, and carpentry. Realistic perhaps, but worrying... and after 2-3 hours of play I'm still at 0xp.

- Browsing through the skills catalogue: 'create smoke bomb'; 'create smoke bomb with timer'; create smoke with proximity'; create bomb#2 with combination #4; etc. etc. while I don't even have the skill level for it. Where do I even start? Do I need this?

- I notice that I can use the sink to fill a pan, but not use the pan to fill in the sink. That means that apparently I've come along many electrical and craftable objects but simply didn't notice how to use them. We're >8 hours later and I haven't seen a single bush to forage. And no, I'm not going to read a wiki or other manual to play a game.

- Wait, did I say foraging? Trapping and fishing? Am I supposed to grind through all these skills in order to survive? Is this Runescape? XD

 

 

Enough complains: please change the interface and hide some mechanics for new players! I just want to invite friends to this game, but with the current first impression they won't be convinced.

 

Thanks!

 

Joris

Edited by Joris
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One thing I really liked was how the inventory originally had NO WORDS! Why do we need translations when we can see it. The game is more complicated because you can do more things which is a positive thing. However the real problem is making a "visual" UI rather than word based.

Edited by Zomboid
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8 hours ago, Zomboid said:

One thing I really liked was how the inventory originally had NO WORDS! Why do we need translations when we can see it. The game is more complicated because you can do more things which is a positive thing. However the real problem is making a "visual" UI rather than word based.

There's only so much unique art one person can put out, yet many objects are very similar to each other.

 

There's only so much space that art can take up. It was wasteful, for example, to have a dozen colors of shirts, all with their own individual frames, corresponding to each animation of the character model. This is an extreme example, but consider there are almost a thousand items in the game as is (not 100% sure on that, I might be including recipes).

 

With an icon based inventory you required an incredible amount of clicking to organize it (or an automated sorting routine, which tend to have mixed results) and couldn't be read at a glance, because there was such a variety of items, some of them very similar to one another, but do not look distinct enough when represented only 32 or 64 pixels. It forces the player to memorize glyphs.

 

Of course the advantage that it just feels right for a game that's claiming to be an RPG. It feels real, forcing you to organize your bag and select items based purely on what you see. 

 

If you want to see a really neat hybrid, probably the first time I ever encountered both a list inventory and a grid-based inventory, take a look at the original KotoR. Thousands of varieties of swords with unique stats, probably rng, with only suitable differences between each icon. Then all the parts and everything needed to build them, and all the similar equipment. Basically you kind of just ignore the paper doll after a few hours playing, along with the grid based inventory, because it was such a pain in the ass. 

 

 

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On 6.04.2018 at 3:47 PM, Joris said:

- Browsing through the skills catalogue: 'create smoke bomb'; 'create smoke bomb with timer'; create smoke with proximity'; create bomb#2 with combination #4; etc. etc. while I don't even have the skill level for it. Where do I even start? Do I need this?

 

Cannot agree more. I have more than 1000 hours in game on and off Steam and I stopped following new recipes years ago. Crafting list is just too tedious to use.

Edited by Geras
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