New Player First Impression Feedback

[Sophisticus]

- Very empty game world
I'm sure MO2 has heard this as a criticism many times, but I don't think it can be said often enough. I know that a lot of space needs to be free for the territory control system, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse for the fact that even the point of interest locations I found are completely empty.

- Unfinished stuff?
I noticed that in Haven, though I'm not sure if I was just blind. But there were some locked chests that I just couldn't find a key for, or levers that you could interact with but didn't trigger anything, or locked doors. I spent 5 hours in the castle in Heaven looking for a solution. Is there a solution for the chests, doors or levers?

- Stiff animations
The animations of the body movements look very stiff. They took the saying "it´s like Skyrim but as an MMO" a bit too seriously.

- Cities and game world feels very lifeless
The cities will hopefully be different with the Epic Games release when Citizen Behavior is added.
The game world, however, needs more. Some random NPC merchants for example that walk around the World and sell you stuff or giant world bosses that randomly attack a town or player base. Something like that.

- A lot of buggy and glitchy NPC's
By my estimate, 20% of the Animals I saw were very buggy. They were spinning back and forth like crazy, stacked inside each other, or not responding to my attacks. Some hover far up in the air. Some Guards are clipping in walls or fight against the air. Happened less often, but too often. The same goes for some other NPC's.
But the most annoying thing is that the aggro of all badites that do not belong to a badite camp do not reset. I have very often now run away from them for several kilometers. Every few meters they stop for a moment, put their weapons away and then I immediately get aggro from them again and they continue to run after me. I once managed to drag 3 Badites behind me from Vedda to Maduli.

- Missing sound effects
For an immersive game like MO2, good sound effects of the environment are indispensable. Unfortunately, for some things the sound is completely missing, such as waterfalls or the wind. Also the sound effects come very delayed, such as during rain.

- Too few systems that bring players together
As a player-driven sandbox MMORPG, I hope that in the future there will be more systems or objects in the game world that bring players together or into conflict.
As a good example I see Albion Online, which has managed very well to create a dynamic between players through simple objects, such as rare monsters, resources or treasures, that led either to alliances or conflicts beyond guild structures.

- Too few tools to interact with other players or the game world
Similar to the previous point, it is essential for a good sandbox game to have many tools to interact with other players and the game world, which is more than just combat and trade.

- Bad Performance
I really don't have a bad PC. With my RX 6700 XT, Ryzen 5 5600 and 32GB RAM, I can play any current game at 1080p and highest graphics settings with at least 60 FPS. With MO2, 60 FPS is the maximum I can have. And on top of that, I have strong FPS drops to 20 FPS for no obvious reason.

- No existing Lore of the game world
MO2 may be a player-driven MMO, but it's also an RPG and a good RPG has a lore that is passively and subtly conveyed through the environment. That's what the game lacks. Any books that talk about ancient gods or NPC's at dungeon entrances telling you what this place used to be, or inscriptions on the walls. I'm not talking about Storytelling like dull quests, or any cutscenes. The players make the stories, but the game world makes the lore. Or how the Lore works in this Game? But if you also want to have the lore payler-driven, then give the players the tools to create it. For example, giving players the ability to create blank books or signs to write on, or tombstones to inscribe, or chests to fill and leave in the game world for other players. So that the game world after 1 year is not overcrowded with signs, tombstones or chests, these items could have a cooldown of a few days or weeks befor they disappear. For the preservation of books you could use the library, which the players can hand in there.

- Too few weapons variation
It doesn't always have to be weapons that do direct damage. There are many different tools, such as bolas or nets, to throw opponents briefly to the ground or root them. Maybe some kind of Tools that supports a certain combat style, like Archery. This is just an example and not a real suggestion.

- Some visual issus
Please add 3D planets. I know this is a small thing, but it really doesn't look good for a game from the end of 2021 and does not make a good impression.
The light of the sunrise dont have a smooth transition. Its just pop up. very immersion breaking.

Last but not least, the most important thing: there are no DRAGONS!!!

Technically, MO2 is far from "full release" status. It is realistically in an Alpha 2 stage. At least as I understand it.

 

[Rahz]

I agree with almost everything you said but you have to remind yourself that this is not at all a finished game. And yes there are a lot of only half-realized systems.
The Criminal system is just not implemented into anything.
Overall the "vision" is good but it needs a lot of polishing.
Becoming a criminal will just make guards attack you, although Im pretty sure that's not how it should be. You have a tab in game where you can see how respected you are in different "empires" that do not reallyexist in-game. If i could make a suggestion, it would be copying the one thing that Gloria Victis ( also a half baked experience) does right. And that is bringing people together to fight for a common cause, in this case building and protecting a Empire.
I'd say let guilds join f.e. the sarducaan empire and fight against the khurite or tindremic empire. This would mean people doing jobs for the khurites won't be treated with respect in tindremic provinces and would not have the ability to give you a murder-count for killing them. All your sales on the market should benefit the guilds of your empire( taxes exist but the money just disappears right now) and only members of your empire should be able to buy your goods.(rest will be attacked )
Make GK something like a bandit capital (for people who fucked with every empire ) where the best ressources are located but the chance of being raided by the actual empires should always be a threat since its a retreat for outcasts, psychopaths and mass-murderers (talking about RP not judging anyone for murdering me ) With a system like that you'd automatically have new players join a fight to protect the empire they decided to do jobs for. Also killing people from other factions/empires should give you standing with your own faction, lowering your standing with the faction of the guy you killed while mining.
Riding around for parcels is just really boring imo...and i really think it should just be ditched for superior PvP focused sytems.
Just imagine going in game as a newbie, without listening to discord drama and getting to instantly riding out to fight in actual wars between true empires. Its the one thing Gloria Victis does right and the one thing that would make this game A LOT more fun for everyone.

 

[Doom and Gloom]

Yep, the world is super empty. And they have actually been adding quite a bit of things, imagine how empty it was 1,5 years ago when I first tried it..

It is too big, it hasn't been designed well, the topology is fucked you will get stuck in so many places, random ravines everywhere. Structures which look like they might do something but are just uninteractable background stuff.

You go explore in MO2 and you will find about as much as you would if you went explore the real world, but with worse graphics and arbitrary rules. Plus everything that moves is gonna kill you just for no reason (with amazing AI next-gen lol).

The cities have looked always so damn dead, without players there is nothing. Static vendors and empty rooms and halls. Fancy doors and towers which are completely inaccessible in most cases. Even if you can go in usually there is nothing.

They lack the most basic customization options for about everything in the game, many skills still don't work or their implementation has been halted to the far future. I truly wonder if ppl will finally realize how bland the experience is now when they got the magical "TC" and can't be looking forward to it anymore.

And they want to add more empty continents and dead cities for players to not go to too.

I think the vision actually is not good like many people say here. The vision is the issue, it is stuck in a world where everyone liked Ultima online or something. Outdated mechanics design, outdated class design, outdated world design, no clue about what is a fun experience vs tedious grind. No idea how to balance risk vs reward or make pvp even a little bit balanced.

Game has 3 incompatible weapon styles: melee, magic, and bows. Magic and bows need mounted, and all magic except ele I guess are super awkward to use and aim, with shit range. Magic uses rng to try to desperately balance it against melee so that it doesn't work if you get caught up. Bows run over magic due to that. Main issues is that 4-directional combat is supposed to be core with parries, yet 2 out of 3 of the main mechanics don't use it at all.

Also using magic is super expensive, no way to even test how things work without 100s of hours of commitment of buying and reading books, only to find out the experience is lackluster af. And buying expensive rare reagents to be able to even cast the spells is just awful design, maybe it was fun sometimes, but it is not fun to be a mage in the jungle etc. when you know the closest vendors are hours away on horse. If you die once you just can't use magic anymore there. Weapons can be crafted in more places, ppls homes for example which can be anywhere. Magic reagents nowhere at least before TC, and the vendors only sell basic shit anyways.

Also information about anything is difficult to find, and is gatekept. Yet some datamining etc. ppl have determined some nonsense formulas used for stats change, alchemy etc. which makes no sense that the game doesn't provide any info about stuff. Even weapons don't read all of their statistics, weakspot chance is a mystery to new players. The game just gives you a random world and is like, go ask the ppl who spent years decoding it what to do, I ain't telling you shit. Convienient way to give the responsibility of learning how mechanics in your game work to the players instead of the devs.

All dungeons are impossible for solos to even try to venture in, even if you use melee. Bows and magic basically stop working once not on mount in PvE, which is quite a design there.. (cause no parry) Yeah.

If you truly are a new player just saying do not waste your time with this game, I wasted 370 hours to finally realize the game is just super bad, the devs are not great at what they are doing, the improvements are slow and always bring more new issues. The game is like 5 years away of being feature-complete of all the features that are currently in the game, talk about all the shit they plan to add, like VR mode and ships and 5 continents.

It is a delusional dream.

They can do networking somewhat, but game designwise it is such a mess and it won't get better. They actively have lied about their features and promoted the game as ready etc. This game costs more than 30€ and is gonna charge 15€ a month soon. It is not a cheap game, there are many a lot more complete MMOs which are completely f2p or at least f2try. Albion is awesome, it has good design team who understands what they are doing, and communicates it rather well too. Henrik's weekly nothingburger streams are an old joke.

Only thing MO2 has is that it does not have in game shop and likely never will, you gotta grind for stuff in the game, OR just real money trade with ppl who did the grind with bots, hacks, or other exploits which have been super rampant. There is no way to stop ppl buying power in games unless you disable trading, and even then ppl can sell accounts. To make everyone's experience grindy and miserable to somehow try to prevent that doesn't make your game fun to play.

 

[Sophisticus]

I agree with almost everything you said but you have to remind yourself that this is not at all a finished game. And yes there are a lot of only half-realized systems.
The Criminal system is just not implemented into anything.
Overall the "vision" is good but it needs a lot of polishing.
Becoming a criminal will just make guards attack you, although Im pretty sure that's not how it should be. You have a tab in game where you can see how respected you are in different "empires" that do not reallyexist in-game.

I know that MO2 is not a finished game. I wrote this feedback to focus on the things that a new player sees. I love the vision of the game and want the game to grow and improve and for growth you need new players.

There are theoretically many potential players who might be interested in MO2 (for example all the full loot pvp survival Players from games like Ark, Rust or MMO Players from Albion), but first impressions are unfortunately one of the most important things. MMORPG's are often seen as a big time investment and if the first impression isn't a good one, for the reasons I mentioned, then people are quickly gone.

The problem with a lot of games like MO2 is that they don't fully flesh out the basic stuff, but release one unfinished system after another. I just hope that MO2 won't be such a game.

As for that, I'm at least a little worried since I heard that Starvault, which is a small indie studio, is already working on a new MMORPG. That doesn't give me much hope that they will fully concentrate on MO2, even though there is still so much missing.

 

[Sophisticus]

........

There is a lot I can agree with. I have no idea about some of the other things you're talking about, since I don't know the game mechanics yet, but 2 things I can't agree with.

I don't think "vision" is the problem here, depending on how you define vision. As I understand Starvault's vision for MO2, it is to be an "immersive survival PvX sandbox MMORPG" and in an extreme form. I think that they are exactly on this path of vision, but they neglected things from the beginning were that generally make a good game in the first place. The fact that systems are unfinished, that the world is lifeless, that the animations are clunky or that the fucking moon is in 2D has nothing to do with the vision, they just didn't care as much. After all, as a small development studio, you have to be all the more careful about how you use your resources.

Also, as a new player, I like that the game doesn't explain anything to you, but you have to figure things out yourself or you have to communicate with other players to get information. Knowledge is finally something of value here. But what I can't say is that the game gives you little hints on how to get the information, so that you find it out step by step. That would be part of a good game design for me that stay with the vision of the game.