What went wrong?
There are a few things, many depend on your definition of bug, some are more of a usability issue.
I’ve done beta testing before so hopefully you find this constructive.
There is a graphical bug with the limit FPS option in the graphical subsystem.
Duplicating the issue, In the first area with a rogue, if the limit FPS option is enabled, it has a scrunched section of the screen that is a horizontal line that moves as you move on my hardware similar to how the old interlaced TV screens had with scanning. It appears to be a line about 0.5-1 inch in width (measured vertically) scrunching the textures that travels down the screen into a horizontal line that moves with repaints from top to bottom as the engine repaints. The issue isn’t present for me when the limit FPS is de-selected (its selected by default).
Second, for a new person to the game, the items that are crafting items, its not clear or apparent that they are crafting items or that there is a separate area to store them. You end up having inventory issues instead of enjoying the game, a popup tutorial explaining or running through how the base system works would be useful.
A more sane default to putting into inventory would be to have craft items automatically moved to the craft material storage area with a popup notification saying so, and adjusting the button description to make it clear there is a craft material storage. (making these features self-discoverable). If you want to limit access to the craft bag while out farming you can do that and have that triggered by a hook upon entering a town or something like that. Depends on what you want.
Third issue, If you end up needing to respec your passives because of a mistake you made (being new) its very annoying to fix your build.
Specifically, the issue arises because you cannot unspend points if you have points invested that have a requirement that would no longer be met.
You can’t invest in points from the same screen as unspending those points. This creates a very frustrating dynamic of going back and forth between two similar but different screens to work ensure the minimal requirements are met at all times. Its very brittle, frustrating, and unnecessary. It would be better to consolidate or eliminate one of those screens and then allow an apply option once you have the skills the way you want or require a hotkey to be pressed for confirmations.
Note: The skill specializations and passive nodes as they currently work together are clunky when looking at this fresh. You have two similar (same) areas and as a new person you can’t easily make decisions because you keep mixing up the details. I’m sure this will go away as I learn the details, new people won’t have that benefit potentially making their experience harder once you hit a roadblock. There doesn’t seem to be a simple way to compare changes made in passives/skill specializations before you actually make them and try it out.
No in-game feedback/bug system
—maybe I’m not finding it?, seems like a huge low hanging fruit for on-demand pulling of needed client-side info; lots of tooling that can be developed to offload this type of time-consuming work to lower expertise allowing much more productive use of your expert level developers; its the equivalent of a ticket system for sysadmins. When set it up properly greatly decreases maintenance costs and improves productivity.
You are likely missing out on a big portion of constructive feedback because the issues were minor but non-net-zero in terms of overall gameplay experience, and the time needed for players to report it was too high. For example the screen scrunching I saw isn’t visible in any screenshots or video I recorded but it is onscreen. I’ll see about actually recording it with an external device later its one of those things that is hard to communicate.
It is useful to have facilities that can collect, aggregate, and pull information as needed so it can be acknowledged and divided with a more effective division of labor.
Minor:
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New characters should have a popup to prevent tutorial popups (keep interface clean)
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There should be a prompt to specialize for each skill. There is for the first time, you can specialize the first skill, and then the popup screen which is identical to clicking the second skill auto-specializes whatever you clicked; this isn’t expected behavior for someone coming to this new, and its error prone which detracts from the game.
Move character skill doesn’t work/is interrupted when highlighting any item (annoying).
Main Menu has Leave Game and Exit to Desktop. Its not visibly clear that Leave Game is actually Log Out to Character Selection.
Double clicking the character name at the character selection screen doesn’t log you in.
The hotkeys for options and menus are hard to discover. The 3 bar icon is so small it blends into the interface. The minimap in the upper right corner is clunky, lots of places do it and you can’t change it, I don’t use it. Its a real pleasure when you can move it accordingly. Many people find the smaller minimap at the bottom right or upper left corner is much more effective because that is where they are normally looking. Looking up and to the right to orient yourself is at odds with how many people orient, and that dissonance can flavor experience.
I’m only on day two of play so far, so hopefully this report helps you.