First Impressions of a Casual Player

[Meren]

Hello!

I’ve just (re)started an account and thought I’d give my general impressions in case that they’re any use to a dev, or that where I get stuck someone can point me in the right direction!

I played on dial up when it first came out which proved unworkable. Somewhere in Europe my chars still exist apparently and maybe one day I’ll see them again. Now I’m playing with a very good friend and trying to get my other half to trial it too. I have a small dragon and a small human ( cleric, headed healer-wards).

Starting out

- the 14 day trial is great

Great Things
- the friendly community. Not met one rude person yet. It’s great!
- the idea of world events that are player controlled
- players making bridges, opening up new areas etc. What a really great idea, talk about being able to influence the world
- the crafting!
- The customer support – both forum and Virtrium. Helpful and effective so far. One of the long term make or break elements of a game for me ( thanks Velea and Eurantea )
- Good grief, the site indicates that there is active intervention in encouraging RP if people consistently refuse ! This is a Good Thing
- The game makes you work for rewards. I like it that the quest text doesn’t always tell you where things are. In one way it’s annoying but in another way … it’s so much more rewarding when you do find them critters

Big Things to Fix ( when possible )
- payment – Paypal is unbelievably annoying. Due to moving country I got in a real mess with their limited ability to change address. Fortunately my other half managed to get his account working again. Virtrium are working on an easier payment system – good thing!
- Graphics – old. Sorry. Some bits are truly fabulous (the more ‘realistic’ colouring than WoW; lolloping baby dragons! ) but a lot of it is old. This is major and difficult thing to work on but well, as a first impression its not great.
- Lag.
- The chat interface. I want to be able to set it up so that I can see all incoming chats on one tab. I would like a tab with all chats and a tab with all channels on The number of times I’ve missed sends is really really annoying ( as well as rude to the other player ) . Plus any group says somehow seem to get lost in the combat messages. Now this might be me not getting to grips with how to set things up – but it would really help if the system was made easier to set up like this.


Suggestions – mostly for user friendliness
- postboxes so a newbie can transfer that nice mace that dropped for her dragon to her other char. Or a vault option where you can transfer an item or two and money to another char. Something that doesn’t depend on finding some kind and honest stranger around
- give an escape option for chat. So if you end up running from Lieutenant Vahk while chatting and accidently hit enter you don’t end up with a line of ddddd in your chat box that you have to backspace to get rid of, just hitting escape will get rid of them
- have an exhaustive list of game commands somewhere. Or does it exist and I just haven’t found it?
- When moving icons around on the quickbars, make them click and draggable
- the tutorial – quite good but for heavens sake when you’ve gone through it once, you want to be able to switch it off and not have those maddening blue boxes turn up even if you’ve said you don’t want them
- I’ve been told to ask you to make half giants enter the vault in New Trismus * grin* ( and any other building, especially with quest NPCs! )
- keep it so blessedly, wonderfully gold seller free

Summary

A flawed but very likeable game. A little more user friendliness would help, especially for newbies


These are just things that that struck me. Maybe they’ve all been said before but hey So far, I could imagine myself ( if rl permits me ) spending ages just exploring, playing and enjoying the world. My highest char and 11/ 8 and there are 89/92 levels to go * happy *

See you on Order!

[tramsan]

- The chat interface. I want to be able to set it up so that I can see all incoming chats on one tab. I would like a tab with all chats and a tab with all channels on The number of times I’ve missed sends is really really annoying ( as well as rude to the other player ) . Plus any group says somehow seem to get lost in the combat messages. Now this might be me not getting to grips with how to set things up – but it would really help if the system was made easier to set up like this.

This is completely doable with HZ's interface. HZ is the most customizable UI I've seen in an MMO to date. (apart from WoW's modding - but that's different) Only bad thing is that with this flexibility comes some complexity. Muck around a bit with the chat settings, you'll get it set up how you want it sooner or later.

[Oakleif]

Try looking at the chat guide on horizons.gamersinfo.net to see how to set up the chat the way you want.

[RuneDragoon]

Hello!
- Graphics – old. Sorry. Some bits are truly fabulous (the more ‘realistic’ colouring than WoW; lolloping baby dragons! ) but a lot of it is old. This is major and difficult thing to work on but well, as a first impression its not great.
- Lag.

These two go hand in hand I'm afraid. You are right about the graphics being antiquated. However, we must remember horizons came out well before wow, so horizons itself is also a well-aged game. So the graphics may not be impressive now, but back in its day, they were fantastic.

Now, on the lag, you notice there is lots of textures, yes? Unfortunately because of this high customization of characters and with all the related textures involved, the poor game has a hard time keeping up with it and works itself into a choking lag. Low resolution models load up to try to remedy the problem until you actually can get the real stuff but it does not help much. I will agree however that there is one kind of lag I dislike: Monster lag. Waiting for them to load can be a pain in the rear, because you could wait for them to spawn and there are none even remotely close. I can understand the function of the system to ease the server's pain but with so few people... its a little irritating.

[CallakDW]

I will agree however that there is one kind of lag I dislike: Monster lag. Waiting for them to load can be a pain in the rear, because you could wait for them to spawn and there are none even remotely close. I can understand the function of the system to ease the server's pain but with so few people... its a little irritating.

This didn't allways happen. There was a time when the spawning of monsters was like that of WoW, but they made the world bigger, and with it came a change in the way mob resources were allocated to only spawn when plyers are presant. This is one change that in my opinion was a sevear downgrade in performance of the game. I would have preferred to stick with the smaller world.

[Meren]

Thanks for the feedback, particularly the link to the chat guide, much appreciated.

I'm aware that some of what I've pointed out is kind of like trying to sort out twelve tangled balls of wool when you're wearing mittens, especially graphics / lag, and I'd noticed the wonderful textures too. It may well not be fixable, especially when perhaps money is tight for the foreseeable. It was just my subjective impressions in the hope that maybe it could be useful to someone.

Abut the lag - I accept what you say Runedragoon, but it does tend to give a bad impression to a first timer I'm afraid. I like HZ, but I also think it could easily put others off.

Anyway I remembered HZ with affection for the sheer designer love in the game, nice to see its still there and that the game seems just plain more adult than wow in many ways. Again, a subjective impression

[Vahrokh]

A lot of what you say is what made WoW so good to become first MMO.

Some of the things you say (ie chat) are doable already in Horizons too, others (graphics revamp) are apparently scheduled (see the announcement forum).

And about Paypal, I just changed my address (I moved too) and credit card and all it took was 5 minutes...

[Meren]

Vahrokh, I changed country. My cc statement is now sent to where I live in mainland europe, but I could not alter the paypal account's address to outside the UK - there simply wasn't the option ( unless I missed it, but I don't think so ). Because they insist the Paypal account addy is the same as the cc statement addy, I was stuffed.

[Smaug]

I think CntL/delete will erase full line of chat. And Space/uparrow (after you hit enter to get on chat line) will bring up a box can select previous messages to edit/resend.

Do wish their was a way to do cut and paste though.

There is a command to list all commands (at least as many as you can see) its /listcommands or maybe /commandlist or is it just /commands ?

What ever it is just gives name of command not what it does or parameters to use with. There is a way to get a little more info think is /help "commandname" or something like that.

[Meren]

ooh thanks Smaug


It's great that people have told me these links and tips and the horizons.gamersinfo.net site is really helpful too. It would just be helpful if they was easier to find * looks over at the devs * if one day you have time to implement a few changes. Heaven knows HZ is not WoW and should never, ever, ever become it, but there's nowt wrong with borrowing one or two good ideas.

[Fidri]

I think CntL/delete will erase full line of chat. And Space/uparrow (after you hit enter to get on chat line) will bring up a box can select previous messages to edit/resend.

Do wish their was a way to do cut and paste though.

There is a command to list all commands (at least as many as you can see) its /listcommands or maybe /commandlist or is it just /commands ?

What ever it is just gives name of command not what it does or parameters to use with. There is a way to get a little more info think is /help "commandname" or something like that.

Actually, to delete a full line while in chatting (blinking cursor), it's Shift + Delete.

And for a full list of all commands, it's just /help without any arguments. But I think the list is too long to be displayed in a chat window (yes after scrolling), so another thing you could do is take a look at the *horizons_dir*\Resources\Commands_Player.def file. It's somewhat cryptic, but you'll manage

Oh and Meren, tell your Half Giant friend to have a look at his key bindings. His/her race can duck, the ability is just not assigned to a hotkey by default if I recall correctly.

Hope that helped, enjoy your stay in Istaria!

[Vahrokh]

Vahrokh, I changed country. My cc statement is now sent to where I live in mainland europe, but I could not alter the paypal account's address to outside the UK - there simply wasn't the option ( unless I missed it, but I don't think so ). Because they insist the Paypal account addy is the same as the cc statement addy, I was stuffed.

Well, all I have done was to click on "add new address", made it the default, and then I added "new CC card" and was set.

[LaughingOtter]

...mob resources were allocated to only spawn when plyers are presant. This is one change that in my opinion was a sevear downgrade in performance of the game. I would have preferred to stick with the smaller world.

Well, the smaller world wasn't really an option. Servers had to merge, players needed plots, plots had to go somewhere. It was pretty much either add landmass or make everything from Augh to The Wedge tract housing.

The new spawn system has its good points, mainly in that server-side resources aren't consumed maintaining a spawn population that isn't being used by anyone. I'll admit that it makes the world a bit empty, but that becomes less and less of an issue as the population increases. More players means it's more likely that someone will be in a given area and have gotten things spawning already.

[RuneDragoon]

Back on the mob spawning procedure: Perhaps they could change it so that when a player is in a certain area outside the area (perimeter), the server could get ready to load it for the event the player is heading into monster area, rather than loading after a bit of someone being there in the area? Dunno.

[Tryagain]

- the idea of world events that are player controlled
- players making bridges, opening up new areas etc. What a really great idea, talk about being able to influence the world

Vitrium needs to work on this. Right now there is none of this in game and hasen't been for quite sometime. Not since way before Tulga folded. Would be nice to see them get back to basics.