Author Topic: Skasian  (Read 585 times)

Aeroblyctos

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Skasian
« on: December 07, 2011, 03:52:52 am »
1: Poor
2: Fair
3: Average
4: Good
5: Excellent


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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?

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

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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?

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

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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?

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

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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?

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

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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?

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

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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?

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 (hover to show)



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

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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.

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

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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?

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

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Question 9: Abilities/Spells - What do you think about characters' spells? Are they balanced? Does they have good enough effects?

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

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Question 10: Items - Are the items interesting? Are they unique? Are there too much items? What should be changed?

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

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All things considered, how would you describe your playing experience at the campaign?

Summary:
  • Story: 3.5/5
  • Characters: 2/5
  • Gameplay: 3.5/5
  • Bosses: 4/5
  • Music/Sounds: 4.5
  • Difficulty: 3/5
  • Cinematics: 2.5/5
  • Atmosphere: 3/5
  • Abilities/Spells: 4/5
  • Items: 5/5

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.

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Would you recommend this campaign to your friends?

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:
  • 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.    :)
  • 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).

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Aeroblyctos

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Re: Skasian
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2011, 04:23:23 am »
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?
« Last Edit: December 07, 2011, 04:31:11 am by Aeroblyctos »