Feedback/critisism

[ExTiNcT_SaNitY]

[disclaimer] I understand this is an "alpha version" and should be conciderd accordingly in the critisism, that there are many unfinished aspects of the game. Please forgive my relentless and unforgiving critisism, but the goal isn't to rub your face in the dirt, but help you make this game better.

- most buildings but the angora looks like slum buildings. Grey dull sides and peeling off mortar.

- icons are a mess, most does not give a clear idea of what it represents. Ie stavlos (corral) should have it's icon with a big sheep head right in your face, with a fence section behind it.

- agora are 2nd to the barracks, bot illogical to chronology and plain logic.

- war buildings are messed in between civilian buildings, seems better seperated.

- queing up, some weird limitation 1 que/sec, nor any shift click.

- rally point only sends villagers to designated area, but does not auto harvest.

- harvesting live animals?

- stone and mireal isn't excatly very clear, it's very suble graphics, bit like AoE 1 where people had trouble identify stone and specially gold.

- super? Elite, veteran or anything else than super, it does not relate to any known (serious) title of infantry (sounds very silly).

- terrain looks good, but have streched textures here and there, which makes it looks washed out and blurry, bad.

- abies trees got an umbrella, looks weird.

[Dargaret]

I agree with pretty much all of that, but again, I didn't feel it was necessary to point out any of it because... it's the alpha... and tonnes of features are yet to be implemented.

e.g. harvesting live animals? that's not a bug. that's not a glitch. that's not an error. it's just a feature not implemented yet and hence its not necessary to bring that up.

Same goes for pretty much all of that. Though, I definitely agree that the stone and minerals aren't that easily visible, except on the mini map.

[ExTiNcT_SaNitY]

I agree with pretty much all of that, but again, I didn't feel it was necessary to point out any of it because... it's the alpha... and tonnes of features are yet to be implemented.

e.g. harvesting live animals? that's not a bug. that's not a glitch. that's not an error. it's just a feature not implemented yet and hence its not necessary to bring that up.

Over the years I'v played loads of RTS games, and seen very odd things on release, even more sad either it took very long to patch or never got patched, so better safe than sorry

- fence shouldn't show up as huge white dots on minimap, in any recent RTS it's usually your selected units.

Edited August 21, 2010 by ExTiNcT_SaNitY

[Mythos_Ruler]

- queing up, some weird limitation 1 que/sec, nor any shift click.

Pretty sure shift-click when queuing works. Perhaps it is not as responsive as you need it to be (maybe you are clicking too fast and it just needs to be optimized), but the feature is in and works for me.

*Both when doing the Training queue and when queuing orders (like build this house, then go chop wood).

Edited August 21, 2010 by Mythos_Ruler

[ExTiNcT_SaNitY]

Pretty sure shift-click when queuing works. Perhaps it is not as responsive as you need it to be (maybe you are clicking too fast and it just needs to be optimized), but the feature is in and works for me.

*Both when doing the Training queue and when queuing orders (like build this house, then go chop wood).

You are right,with shift training que it just takes very long for me, like 5 sec, before the training icon comes, and I didn't notice the small number of trained units.

Imo the numbers should be a bit bigger.

[Ykkrosh]

The idea is you can hold shift and click a number of times, to queue larger batches. The batch only gets completed (and added to the training queue) when you release the shift key.

(I don't like that idea, but it's problematic to increase batches once they're already added into the queue (because we want time/cost discounts for larger batches), which is why we do this delayed-addition thing, and I'm not really sure what the best solution is.)

[ExTiNcT_SaNitY]

The idea is you can hold shift and click a number of times, to queue larger batches. The batch only gets completed (and added to the training queue) when you release the shift key.

(I don't like that idea, but it's problematic to increase batches once they're already added into the queue (because we want time/cost discounts for larger batches), which is why we do this delayed-addition thing, and I'm not really sure what the best solution is.)

In AoE III, there was an almost similar feature, just no batch discount, but it was instant response time.

[Mythos_Ruler]

With our way you can train 10, 15, 20, or more at a time.

[ExTiNcT_SaNitY]

With our way you can train 10, 15, 20, or more at a time.

I belive the numbers in this matter are very subjective, and is besides the mainpoint that one should immediately see the effect of ones action, else "there's play in the steering". It's easy to assume that all high rated players would wish instant response, there are no logical reason not to. Edited August 21, 2010 by ExTiNcT_SaNitY

[Jeru]

- icons are a mess, most does not give a clear idea of what it represents. Ie stavlos (corral) should have it's icon with a big sheep head right in your face, with a fence section behind it.

- agora are 2nd to the barracks, bot illogical to chronology and plain logic.

- war buildings are messed in between civilian buildings, seems better seperated.

- stone and mireal isn't excatly very clear, it's very suble graphics, bit like AoE 1 where people had trouble identify stone and specially gold.

I agree with these to some extent, more attention needs to be given to the GUI's usability. Corral & other icons are being revised and you will see new ones in the next release. The building button order should be in order of importance or frequency of use, maybe the player should be able to customize that with drag-and-drop. And yeah, I have to rely on the cursor to distinguish metal from stone.