Good day!
I played the December demo with my good friend, @Mercy, who I've discussed my thoughts with, and we've come together to make a big feedback post together.
We'd like to both congratulate the developer team on the release of the first big demo with major features, as well as a big thanks for making it a reality! We both thoroughly enjoyed it, and we're looking forward to the rest of the demos before the full game releases.
With that being said, we'd like to voice our opinions on the demo as a whole.
I originally didn't plan on staying up, but @Mercy convinced me, and I'm very happy I stayed awake. It was a once in a lifetime experience to see the launch of the first proper demo, and all the little quirks that came with it.
Adventuring around two people, progressing, getting lost, and just experiencing the game as a whole was so much fun! We're both very thankful for everyone behind this demo! We're very much looking forward to any future demos, and what they will have in store. And it seems the general community's opinion is the same.
Until next time, everyone!
I played the December demo with my good friend, @Mercy, who I've discussed my thoughts with, and we've come together to make a big feedback post together.
We'd like to both congratulate the developer team on the release of the first big demo with major features, as well as a big thanks for making it a reality! We both thoroughly enjoyed it, and we're looking forward to the rest of the demos before the full game releases.
With that being said, we'd like to voice our opinions on the demo as a whole.
The good
- Both of us found the general atmosphere in the demo to be amazing! The dimming of the overworld light as it turned to night, and the lights shining through the windows of the buildings was simply fantastic.
- The music while in the town also helped to set the mood well. The jolly tune acompanying us as we went on our quest throughout the town made the adventure fun and exciting! We're looking forward to hear more in the future.
- A major point we both enjoyed, was the originality. The Delifrost town with the theme of Delibirds was great! This also includes custom overworld sprites, such as the pool table in the tavern, and the Christmas light wrapped fences outside. It looked fantastic, and really made us look forward to the Guild Housing feature hinted at in the current roadmap. Seeing what we can customize our hideout with to truly make it stand out, is something we're both very excited about! This also includes the Delibird footprints, which actively updated along with your quest progress. That was a very cool feature, which we hope to see utilized more in the future.
- Mini games! Being able to take a break from the adventure and have a go at Whack-A-Diglett, the Roulette, etc, was an amazing addition! We can't wait to see how these get expanded and how they turn out in the future.
- The item-based HM system! Having something besides Pokemon working overtime to cut down trees and move boulders for you, was a very welcome addition. It's not something that adds a lot to the overall immersion or experience, but it's pretty unique for a Pokemon game to do it this way, and it fits more in line with other common MMO titles.
- The last great point we wanted to talk about, was the crafting system. It wasn't anything super in depth or crazy, but simply walking around and gathering the materials needed to build (or repair) the Axe for the lumberjack, was a lot of fun! And we can't wait to see how this system is expanded in the future. Something we would love so see, is a little animation every time an ore is hit(?), or a small cooldown indicator, showing when it's possible to hit it again. Having a visual indicator on the respawn time for a new ore would also go a long way!
- The UI was generally very good for this stage. The quest update/completion pop-ups nicely indicated what was happening and clearly showed when you had completed or progressed in a given quest. The quest log beautifully outlined quests and included a search feature. My personal favorite was the PokeGear feature; it showed everything you would ever need and laid it out in a nice and easy way. I would love to see a more significant change between question update and question completion pop-ups, to better indicate when you're finished with a quest, as opposed to just updating it. Additionally, being able to move UI elements around would be great, so they can be positioned however the player likes, and better see multiple things at the same time. UI scaling is already in the roadmap, and I'm very much looking forward to it, as some things were practically impossible to read on my screen, due to being so tiny.
The bad
- All the various bugs found throughout the demo. Infinitely sliding; being able to move in between dialog boxes; getting stuck in repeated dialog boxes; etc. The infinite sliding seemed to happen when the server was overloaded and about to crash, and thus wasn't game breaking. The other bugs wasn't game breaking by any means either, but things like the repeated dialog boxes was especially annoying. This isn't a bug report, and I'm sure the developers are well away of these things, and are working on fixing everything. So let's move on.
- As per @Mercy's request; less ice puzzles, or at least heavily toned down, such as more compact areas, or more "boulders" being on screen at the same time. It's not fun having to potentially reset the entire puzzle, because "checking" upwards was the wrong move. "Less ice puzzles for my sanity ;-;". Personally, I didn't mind them that much, but would like to see more boulders on-screen to better be able to plan out where to go.
- Better highlighted NPCs from active quests. This wasn't really a problem in the demo, since almost every NPC either gave or completed a quest. However, I can see this be a problem in the full game release. Having quest related NPCs highlighted in some way, so they don't drown out in the sea of other NPCs, would be a very welcome addition. This could be done with a colored outline, or label above them.
- More feedback in the Whack-A-Diglett mini game, and other mini games as a whole. Timer; "play again" feature; more visual when successfully hitting a Diglett; etc. Basically identical to @Shadow IX's feedback on this part.
- More optimized(?) Ice Fishing mini game. Thankfully, two of the spots the Delibirds could emerge from was to the sides, so player characters couldn't really block them, but the top spot was always blocked when a lot of players were present. A possible fix would be to render important sprites on the top layer. I'm not sure how feasable that is, though, with the game's back-end. Secondly, I also had a lot of trouble getting my interactions with the Delibirds to register. I could sometimes press the interact button numerous times before the Delibird disappeared back into the hole, seemingly without it registering at all. Better registering of stuff like this would be great. I spent a good 5 minutes or so there the first time, without getting a single dialog box to appear, that indicated I tried to catch a Delibird, despite numerous interaction button presses.
The ugly
- The server... Realistically, this was only a demo, and it was impossible to precisely know how many people would end up trying to login during the initial launch. But seeing the server without as many "severe" problems for the next demo and any future demos would be incredible. The server only seemed to run 100% smoothly a few days in, once there was very few people logged in at the same time. But I must give some major props to everyone working on it, as the server was always up and running almost immediately after going down. That's not something you see every day!
Overall thoughts
We both had a ton of fun! I stayed up till 3 AM to witness the launch, and ended up playing for around an hour, until my body gave in and I had to sleep.I originally didn't plan on staying up, but @Mercy convinced me, and I'm very happy I stayed awake. It was a once in a lifetime experience to see the launch of the first proper demo, and all the little quirks that came with it.
Adventuring around two people, progressing, getting lost, and just experiencing the game as a whole was so much fun! We're both very thankful for everyone behind this demo! We're very much looking forward to any future demos, and what they will have in store. And it seems the general community's opinion is the same.
Until next time, everyone!
First screenshot I took during the demo. Just 31 minutes after release.
Chilling at the Delifrost Town fountain with @Alycia (sorry for the ping, hope you don't mind)
Chilling at the Delifrost Town fountain with @Alycia (sorry for the ping, hope you don't mind)
