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#Post#: 6063--------------------------------------------------
Skasian
By: Aeroblyctos Date: December 7, 2011, 3:52 am
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1: Poor
2: Fair
3: Average
4: Good
5: Excellent
[quote]Question 1: Story - What do you think about the story? Is
it too confusing? Too simple? What is the best and the worst
part in the story. Why?[/quote]
TCO presents a storyline which is unpredictable in a good way.
However it is hard to judge the story purely because they story
is incomplete and with plot twists and what-not, what we know of
it is currently open-ended. I think the story has a great
background and a lot of potential. In terms of how it's written,
I'd say it could be done much better. Not your fault in
particular, but not everyone can write a best-selling
novel/movie. ;)
The best part is the mystery behind what is going on. Bit of
suspense mixed in as well.
Worst part is fradz's lines totally ruining the story for me.
See the next question.
3.5/5
[quote]Question 2: Characters - What do you think about
characters? Are they boring? Are they interesting? Who is your
favorite character? What character you didn't liked.
Why?[/quote]
There's a good mix of characters in there but by far Fradz comes
off a way too immature and does not fit in at all, especially to
the image of a dragon slayer. For the reader, it's hard to
believe that someone with the mental capacity of a 5 year old
and acts like it could contribute so much to the war and be
regarded as a dragon slayer. It's ok for a character to be
different, but he was just way too over the top.
Galeoth has some good lines written into the dialogue and
impressed me at times and would have to be one of the better
characters with a believable story and few flaws. The
bone-dragon boss in Chp. 6. has a section of dialogue which
impressed me greatly (I cannot recall exactly what) but it was
by far the best written work in this game, so kudos to whoever
wrote that boss.
Fradz's is definitely the weakest link here by far and is the
reason for the low score.
2/5
[quote]Question 3: Game play - What do you think about the game
play. Is it boring? Is the campaign too repetitive? Is there too
much killing? What is the best side of game play and what is the
worst. Why?[/quote]
The gameplay is quite fun especially the first and second times
through. The first time because everything is new, the second
time because you are able to get in some good items and fight
the harder bosses. Subsequent play-throughs however tend to get
a bit tedious and repetitive. Perhaps reducing the required
play-throughs to experience the game would be a good change.
(Currently it would be around 5 times at NORMAL difficulty -
mainly cause of gold).
In a campaign called based on Dragon Slayers and a game engine
called Warcraft, it's very hard to steer away from 'Too much
killing'. Therefore I wouldn't worry about that.
Unique bosses and making awesome items is the highlight here.
The worst would be all the bugs, especially running into one
that makes the game crash or unplayable for whatever reason.
Otherwise finding out 5 chapters in that you forgot to pick up 1
item back in an earlier chapter needed for an item is very
frustrating as well.
Apart from that the bugs let down the gameplay.
3.5/5
[quote]Question 4: Bosses - What do you think about the bosses
at the campaign? Too hard? Too easy? Please tell me what is your
favorite boss and what is the worst boss? Why?[/quote]
Bosses are great and nice, although they tend to get a bit
similar after a few chapters. Difficulty-wise, there is a
significant jump in difficulty between bosses from chapter 5 to
6, in that chapter 6 is suddenly extremely hard compared to all
the previous chapters.
Worst boss are the ones that are buggy. Best one want probably
doom lord as it wasn't a boring arena and the run at the end was
a good idea. Try and avoid being too repetitive in design.
4/5
[quote]Question 5: Music/sound - What do you think about the
musics at the campaign? Are they bad? Are they good? What is the
best and the worst music at the campaign?[/quote]
Best music was final-fantasy cause the series is awesome
(obvious bias here!). Worst part of the music is where you are
doing something or walking along the border of 2 areas and the
music is switching every second and sounds retarded (not sure
you can fix that though).
Aside from that, if you could get voice actors that's an instant
6/5 :D
4.5/5
[quote]Question 6: Diffculty - What is your opinion about the
difficulty. Is it too hard? Too easy? Which parts of the
campaigns were not balanced, what are they, and why?[/quote]
As stated previously, the transition into chapter 6 presented
the most difficult task. Otherwise the game itself isn't too
hard.
As there is no separate section for Puzzles/Minigames I'm going
to mention this here. The puzzles in general are too difficult
ONLY because they lack any form of instruction! A simple message
that will repeat itself upon reentry to the puzzle or even
adding it into OPTIONAL QUESTS would do wonders. As an example,
the level puzzle on the first stage you need to add to 8. But
there either was no message describing this puzzle or I easily
missed it as text only appears once. Without this hint the
puzzle is impossible. Instances like this force the players into
the position where they get frustrated and want to quit. A
player shouldn't have to search through the forums just to be
able to play this game, IMO that is poor game design.
[spoiler]Solution:
Put the puzzle in a separate 'region'. Add a trigger - that upon
entry, display informative text to the player. (repeatable, so
upon re-entry the text would display again should they miss it).
[/spoiler]
[br]
As for balance it has been mentioned time and time again that
the gold is an issue. Put simple there is a lack of gold in the
game. This needs to be improved however you wish, but the
overall gold in each play-through needs to be increased.
3/5
[quote]Question 7: Cinematics - What do you think about the
cinematics? Too long? Too much? Too boring? Tell what is the
worst and the best cinematic and why.[/quote]
As said time and time again, the text speed needs to speed up by
at least 30%. I hope you are not using WC3's default auto-timer
as it is quite slow. Cinematics are ok, nothing special. Some
are a bit boring due to the dialogue and the numerous spelling
and grammatical mistakes.
Animations are a bit........... unusual. Such as Fradz dancing
around with his swords flailing for no apparent reason.
2.5/5
[quote]Question 8: Atmosphere - What do you think about the
atmosphere of the campaign? Too funny? Too sad? Tell what
increases and decreases the atmosphere? Why?[/quote]
My opinion is it's too lame. Attempts to be funny are
unfortunately met with an eerie silence in my head.
The other gripe I have, is that the story itself is a 'serious'
atmosphere I find, while the characters and dialogue are
targeting a 'funny' atmosphere. There's a huge contradiction
between the two and unfortunately in this campaign, they mix
badly.
An upside is the 'epic' atmosphere is nice. (Castles :)).
3/5
[quote]Question 9: Abilities/Spells - What do you think about
characters' spells? Are they balanced? Does they have good
enough effects?[/quote]
Some spells are clearly more overpowered in this genre then
others. An example would be Fradz's Teleport Strike ultimate
skill. Since the game is based heavily on boss fights, it is so
easy to just use that spell and hit a boss 12 times doing a
stupidly large amount of damage to it. Run around in circles,
wait for the cooldown and do it again since you're invunerable
during the duration of the slashes. This methods makes it almost
impossible to lose boss fights.
AOE spells on the other hand are for this reason underpowered
when compared against single-target spells. Since regular creeps
or even mass spawned creeps from bosses don't pose any real
threat in this game, AOE does not really have a large impact as
it could. Most of the boss fights your AOE is really only
hitting 1 thing (the boss) and it's a waste. (If you've played
DotA or similar games you'd understand very well the reasoning
I'm getting to here).
The concept of combat kings carrying through the levels and the
large array of skills do save this category so I'll give it:
4/5
[quote]Question 10: Items - Are the items interesting? Are they
unique? Are there too much items? What should be changed?
[/quote]
Too many items is not a bad thing. It at the very least, gives
the player a choice of how he/she wants to build their
characters. There is definitely uniqueness in some of the items.
This is probably the sole category which saves this game from
failing like many other SRPG's. It is also the reason why I
still play it as I want to try all the items.
Although it is bothersome how some items are bugged and don't
work :(
5/5
[quote]All things considered, how would you describe your
playing experience at the campaign?[/quote]
Summary:
[list]
[li]Story: 3.5/5[/li]
[li]Characters: 2/5[/li]
[li]Gameplay: 3.5/5[/li]
[li]Bosses: 4/5[/li]
[li]Music/Sounds: 4.5[/li]
[li]Difficulty: 3/5[/li]
[li]Cinematics: 2.5/5[/li]
[li]Atmosphere: 3/5[/li]
[li]Abilities/Spells: 4/5[/li]
[li]Items: 5/5[/li]
[/list]
Overall: 3/5
Overall, I enjoyed playing TCO and the main reason why I've
stayed around is that I see a lot of potential with this
campaign. Whether or not Aero is able to execute it, we'll have
to wait to see.
[quote]Would you recommend this campaign to your
friends?[/quote]
STRONG NO. I have a reputation to uphold and the WORST thing you
can do when recommending a game/product (or anything else in
real life) to a friend is that product turning out to be a dud.
In this case there are 2 major reasons why I would NOT suggest
this game:
[list type=decimal]
[li]The game is far too buggy to be enjoyed by someone who only
wants to play it and not wait around until it is fully complete.
Too many bugs = no fun. Selling something that is
unfinished/buggy is a horrible idea and thus I will not be
recommending this game at the moment. HOWEVER should these bugs
be addressed I would have no hesitation to refer my friends to
play this awesome game as it is by far one of the better SRPG's
made for WC3. :)[/li]
[li]The game is suited for a NICHE audience. Firstly, there is a
learning curve to this game and it is steeper then most other
games. As an example my girlfriend wanted to play this but it's
far too complex and she wouldn't bother to learn it. I can
totally understand this point of view and there is little you
can do to fix this as it is the genre of the game thus only
suited towards certain players. The second point of this
category is the game is focused around 'Give-up' and playing the
same story through again and again. A random figure like 90%
wouldn't be too far off to say that most players will not play
the same storyline through again unless something else in the
game is really attractive. It would only be worth referring
players that are interested in playing the same thing over and
over again and these players are few and far. This is the same
reason as why since the mid 1990's, the gaming industry has been
moving away from indepth storylines and great single player
campaigns and into multiplayer games as people change everytime,
whereas something preprogrammed will always be the same (take
Team Fortress 2 for example, it doesn't even have a single
player campaign/story element to it).[/li]
[/list]
#Post#: 6064--------------------------------------------------
Re: Skasian
By: Aeroblyctos Date: December 7, 2011, 4:23 am
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Hello Skasian! I asked from you to copy your answers to a new
topic but you didn't so then I did the job. You made a great
effort writing all down so I'm gonna reply. You can comment back
and others as well if they have something to say here.
Let's see...
First I've to say that I personally love in stories characters
that are crazy and funny but also mysterious. Fradz is
personally one of my favorite characters but I agree sometimes
if not all the time he's dialogues goes over the top. Some
people love this character some not. However I have to say that
eventually Fradz's story is very deep just like Phodom's and in
the end you'll understand that this character is not a simple
'funny character'.
And yes, I'm not the best written here but I'm learning.
About the bone dragon dialogue, there will be a lot more dragon
dialogues further you go in the campaign. I'll promise you that
further you'll play the campaign more will be revealed about the
story. The story is deep, but I want to reveal all that later in
the game. Of course some interludes will show more but those I
haven't started yet.
My aim is that first time player just completes the campaign and
optional bosses he can. Second time he's already able to beat
all the bosses in the campaign(maybe not the hardest ones in the
end). Third and so on are for some people who still try to suck
the rest of the story and tries to find the secrets he has not
found before. I think in the second time player should be able
to defeat all possible bosses, but perhaps not every single
item. Have I succeed?
Making cinematics is the funniest thing to do. I always
especially focus on cinematics it's sad to hear that I have
failed with 2 / 5 points. All those cameras and all that I try
to do best as possible. I see that you criticize cinematic speed
too slow and weird animations. Well I could make the cinematics
faster... That's however need a lot of work so if I'm gonna do
that I'll do it before releasing the full version not now. I try
not to focus on other chapters because I want to finish the
campaign and this would take a lot of time and testing.
About grammar mistakes I have one 'translator' helping me.
Before I had many... Actually I'm searching a new translator at
the moment because Killa is busy.
About bosses I agree I haven't done much bosses where they
actually run. I should do more...
About puzzles, I get it.
About boss fights you said about that Teleport Strike. What
bosses doesn't follow you?
Okay I understand that AoE thing and I'll now make all single
and aoe spells same damage(equally strong).
How can I make this game more beginner friendly? That even your
girlfriend would try?
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