First off, I know that I'm probably about to repeat what people have already said, but it does bear repeating. These guys need feedback if they're gonna make CR2.0 a success.
Secondly, I've only played briefly with the CR and only with KungFu/Karate so I haven't got a totally rounded view.
Thirdly, this is just my personal opinion. But as Tesco say, Every Little Helps.
With those caveats in mind ...
Abilities need to be defined
I'm well aware that everything is subject to change, which is fine. However it does seem that a lot of abilities are still in very unfinished states. I'd have thought that MA at least would have balanced abilities among themselves.
However that appears not to be the case, with certain moves doing outrageous damage. If that's a bug in the system then fair enough, but if its due purely to the values defined within them, then that's a bit disappointing.
Considering how long this system has been talked about, I got the feeling that most if not all abilities would have newly coded damage values balanced with one another, to SOME degree.
Attributes, influences, initiative...
I'm not a stupid person, but I feel slightly overwhelmed with the level of things that can be changed now. I'll admit to being pretty confused as to what various attributes do. Whilst this will appeal to micro-manager types, I'm concerned that there is SO much that you will be forced to micro-manage in order to get a halfway decent build.
I always had a problem with things being too heavily influenced with clothing, but was quite happy with the way things were defined in the abilities themselves.
Now it seems to have been strung out into more component parts, with base definitions in the abilities that are then manipulated by attributes and clothing.
Whilst I'm sure some clever person will come up with a new Calculator application for these things, it looks a lot more complicated and seems to indicate that a Level 50 is going to have to sit down for about half an hour just to work out what the basic aspects of his/her RSI will be after a respec.
I also hope that the effects of attributes aren't so specialised or necessary to place into one area for one good build that it effectively neuters an RSI's effectiveness when doing something else.
Combat itself
First of all, the faster combat, newer animations and so forth are excellent. From the duels I had (which were many) I was impressed how fluid it seemed.
Unfortunately it also lost me. I was duelling to have fun but I know that I'd get frustrated with an NPC that's programmed to know what it's doing.
-- Combat Rolls. I don't care quite so much about what my base roll is compared to my overall roll. What I care about is the end product. WHAT exactly am I hitting my opponent with.
-- Displaying Data. This needs to be worked on. In the old system in actual fact, displaying the rolls wasn't so important because everything was broken down into clearly defined rounds. You won or you lost, and the animation of icons showed that. However now, when it's more important that we know (with the removal of Zero Sum), it's all been taken away!!
I play at 1600*1200 with Tiny font in my chat. I do it this way because before I've always only had to glance at it. Now I'm going to have to up the font, make it more intrusive (far more intrusive in fact that the old combat HUD) to see what's going on. What with combat being faster paced, people around you shooting at you and using abilities, it's nigh-on impossible to see what's going on.
Basically, I want the old HUD back. Make it smaller, that's fine. Remove the icons, that's fine. Just give me a HUD that's in my field of vision (i.e. where the action and hotbar is) where I can see definitively if I win, lose, or draw the round.
People on 800*600 have to be even more disadvantaged. From screenshots I've seen, they barely have room to extend the chat box further than the default before they run out of room!!
--Animations. That leads me quite nicely onto this. When we heard about CR2.0 I don't think I was alone in envisaging awesome animations where somebody catches my triple front kick and throws me onto the floor, and so on.
But instead, whilst the backend combat ideals have been beefed up and made more complex and lifelike, the animation side of things has not.
I realise that it's probably a huge amount of work to create a block animation for every attack, a hit-hit animation for every attack, etc., but quite frankly without it ... it doesn't look right.
If my opponent and I hit each other with a punch, we should be seen to hit each other. This whole thing with initiative just doesn't make sense. It's an easy way out of not going the whole hog.
If a guy punches me in a bar, I am NOT going to do damage to him (unless he's particularly poor at hitting somebody). If we hit each other, then we'll both do damage.
It should be the same in game.
If I hit a guy yet he has the "Initiative" and hits me too, then only his animation will display yet damage will be done to both parties. This is simply confusing and unrealistic.
--Special Attacks. This is another area which hasn't been explained and/or executed properly IMO. In the old system, you queued attacks each round. That should happen still, just faster. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with that, it was just too slow.
How do I know when one round ends and the next begins? What happens if I activate a special too soon or too late?
It blinks in the bar and not much else happens. My suggestion:
I activate MisDirect Punch in the middle of a round. It requires no state from my opponent.
The hotbar blinks to show it is activated.
The next round, I do this special move.
It hits, and does damage. In this case it stops blinking.
OR
It misses, and stays active for the next round. It can be deactivated with another click of the button and stops blinking.
I activate Ki-Charged Foot Sweep. it requires my target to be Staggered.
The hotbar blinks to show it is activated.
If my move in the round causes Stagger, then it is activated immediately the next round and behaves the same way as above with MisDirect Punch.
However if I do NOT cause Stagger, then it stays waiting until I cause it, and then activates immediately.
^That might be the way it is supposed to work of course. But I don't know, because it seemed totally random to me.
Hotbar.
I have to admit, the late adoption of the dual hotbar makes me curious and also nervous.
Curious to see how developers and testers played the game with one hotbar and *didn't* think they could do with more room, and nervous for the future of CR2.0/the game because the entire community cried out for it instantly, and yet CR2.0 has been in development for a long time and apparently nobody there thought of it first.
It's great, more space is always good. I wish the attacks were still bound to WASD but I guess I'll get used to it in time.
However, now that more buffs are active rather than passive, I feel like we're stuck right back where we were.
You increased hotbar space by a factor of two, but it almost seems like you've increased the number of things to go in the hotbar by a factor of two.
As buffs are now active (Hyper-dodge, hyper-dance, hyper-tie-your-shoelaces) where only one or two were before and the rest were bound into passive abilities, we now have more to activate. I haven't played with them yet, so I don't know - but if you've put them on a timer then it validates my point. If I have to stop every 30 seconds to hit about 8 different buttons to reapply my buffs it's going to get very old very quickly.
And if they're a one-switch, constantly-active thing, why don't they just apply themselves as soon as you "install" them in your memory?
I've been typing this on and off for ages and I think I'm about run out of things so far (and its time for lunch
) so any comments are welcome, and I'll be back if I can think of anything else.
Secondly, I've only played briefly with the CR and only with KungFu/Karate so I haven't got a totally rounded view.
Thirdly, this is just my personal opinion. But as Tesco say, Every Little Helps.
With those caveats in mind ...
Abilities need to be defined
I'm well aware that everything is subject to change, which is fine. However it does seem that a lot of abilities are still in very unfinished states. I'd have thought that MA at least would have balanced abilities among themselves.
However that appears not to be the case, with certain moves doing outrageous damage. If that's a bug in the system then fair enough, but if its due purely to the values defined within them, then that's a bit disappointing.
Considering how long this system has been talked about, I got the feeling that most if not all abilities would have newly coded damage values balanced with one another, to SOME degree.
Attributes, influences, initiative...
I'm not a stupid person, but I feel slightly overwhelmed with the level of things that can be changed now. I'll admit to being pretty confused as to what various attributes do. Whilst this will appeal to micro-manager types, I'm concerned that there is SO much that you will be forced to micro-manage in order to get a halfway decent build.
I always had a problem with things being too heavily influenced with clothing, but was quite happy with the way things were defined in the abilities themselves.
Now it seems to have been strung out into more component parts, with base definitions in the abilities that are then manipulated by attributes and clothing.
Whilst I'm sure some clever person will come up with a new Calculator application for these things, it looks a lot more complicated and seems to indicate that a Level 50 is going to have to sit down for about half an hour just to work out what the basic aspects of his/her RSI will be after a respec.
I also hope that the effects of attributes aren't so specialised or necessary to place into one area for one good build that it effectively neuters an RSI's effectiveness when doing something else.
Combat itself
First of all, the faster combat, newer animations and so forth are excellent. From the duels I had (which were many) I was impressed how fluid it seemed.
Unfortunately it also lost me. I was duelling to have fun but I know that I'd get frustrated with an NPC that's programmed to know what it's doing.
-- Combat Rolls. I don't care quite so much about what my base roll is compared to my overall roll. What I care about is the end product. WHAT exactly am I hitting my opponent with.
-- Displaying Data. This needs to be worked on. In the old system in actual fact, displaying the rolls wasn't so important because everything was broken down into clearly defined rounds. You won or you lost, and the animation of icons showed that. However now, when it's more important that we know (with the removal of Zero Sum), it's all been taken away!!
I play at 1600*1200 with Tiny font in my chat. I do it this way because before I've always only had to glance at it. Now I'm going to have to up the font, make it more intrusive (far more intrusive in fact that the old combat HUD) to see what's going on. What with combat being faster paced, people around you shooting at you and using abilities, it's nigh-on impossible to see what's going on.
Basically, I want the old HUD back. Make it smaller, that's fine. Remove the icons, that's fine. Just give me a HUD that's in my field of vision (i.e. where the action and hotbar is) where I can see definitively if I win, lose, or draw the round.
People on 800*600 have to be even more disadvantaged. From screenshots I've seen, they barely have room to extend the chat box further than the default before they run out of room!!
--Animations. That leads me quite nicely onto this. When we heard about CR2.0 I don't think I was alone in envisaging awesome animations where somebody catches my triple front kick and throws me onto the floor, and so on.
But instead, whilst the backend combat ideals have been beefed up and made more complex and lifelike, the animation side of things has not.
I realise that it's probably a huge amount of work to create a block animation for every attack, a hit-hit animation for every attack, etc., but quite frankly without it ... it doesn't look right.
If my opponent and I hit each other with a punch, we should be seen to hit each other. This whole thing with initiative just doesn't make sense. It's an easy way out of not going the whole hog.
If a guy punches me in a bar, I am NOT going to do damage to him (unless he's particularly poor at hitting somebody). If we hit each other, then we'll both do damage.
It should be the same in game.
If I hit a guy yet he has the "Initiative" and hits me too, then only his animation will display yet damage will be done to both parties. This is simply confusing and unrealistic.
--Special Attacks. This is another area which hasn't been explained and/or executed properly IMO. In the old system, you queued attacks each round. That should happen still, just faster. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with that, it was just too slow.
How do I know when one round ends and the next begins? What happens if I activate a special too soon or too late?
It blinks in the bar and not much else happens. My suggestion:
I activate MisDirect Punch in the middle of a round. It requires no state from my opponent.
The hotbar blinks to show it is activated.
The next round, I do this special move.
It hits, and does damage. In this case it stops blinking.
OR
It misses, and stays active for the next round. It can be deactivated with another click of the button and stops blinking.
I activate Ki-Charged Foot Sweep. it requires my target to be Staggered.
The hotbar blinks to show it is activated.
If my move in the round causes Stagger, then it is activated immediately the next round and behaves the same way as above with MisDirect Punch.
However if I do NOT cause Stagger, then it stays waiting until I cause it, and then activates immediately.
^That might be the way it is supposed to work of course. But I don't know, because it seemed totally random to me.
Hotbar.
I have to admit, the late adoption of the dual hotbar makes me curious and also nervous.
Curious to see how developers and testers played the game with one hotbar and *didn't* think they could do with more room, and nervous for the future of CR2.0/the game because the entire community cried out for it instantly, and yet CR2.0 has been in development for a long time and apparently nobody there thought of it first.
It's great, more space is always good. I wish the attacks were still bound to WASD but I guess I'll get used to it in time.
However, now that more buffs are active rather than passive, I feel like we're stuck right back where we were.
You increased hotbar space by a factor of two, but it almost seems like you've increased the number of things to go in the hotbar by a factor of two.
As buffs are now active (Hyper-dodge, hyper-dance, hyper-tie-your-shoelaces) where only one or two were before and the rest were bound into passive abilities, we now have more to activate. I haven't played with them yet, so I don't know - but if you've put them on a timer then it validates my point. If I have to stop every 30 seconds to hit about 8 different buttons to reapply my buffs it's going to get very old very quickly.
And if they're a one-switch, constantly-active thing, why don't they just apply themselves as soon as you "install" them in your memory?
I've been typing this on and off for ages and I think I'm about run out of things so far (and its time for lunch
) so any comments are welcome, and I'll be back if I can think of anything else.
