Elysian Shadows

aamesxdavid wrote:(unfortunately, Citizen Dildo is often caught by a filter)

So David Aames was indeed created last night. Played for about 3 hours, but I was just too tired at 1 am to continue. Some random thoughts:

-The battle system is neat. I like that it's this middle ground between turn-based and action-based. I still think I would slightly prefer a menu (a la FFXI) than the action bar, but macros will likely suffice once I get those going.

-I'm slightly concerned about questing, more specifically the fact that it's timed. Timed gameplay is an unforgivable sin to me in most cases. I just don't see the point, and it makes things harder in a very arbitrary sense (sure, you can do this, but can you do it fast enough?). In the few quests I've done, I was given more than enough time, even with having no idea what's going on half the time, but I'm still concerned with the idea. Maybe not all quests are timed? I'm also not sure why I have to accept a quest in town, and then go out to a camp in the field to activate it - it seems an unnecessary extra step is present.

-This may be different in the full game, but where are the shops? There's a guild for all the professions, but I only found one shop that sold weapons, but they were all the starting weapons, so it was nothing I didn't already have, and none that sold armor.

-God damn is this game gorgeous.

-The teleportation feature is confusing as hell. I ran to the edge of town at one point, when an icon showed up, asking if I wanted to teleport to the "Wards", and choose a ward to go to. I selected one, was teleported into an empty room with no working doors, and no icon asking me to teleport out. I had to use "Teleport" from the main menu, and go back to the starting area of town. I don't get it. Even if these rooms begin to come to some use, why teleport to them? Why do I get a notification icon to go to them, but have to guess my way out? I suppose this is what the beta feedback is for.

Overall though, it was really awesome, and I can't wait to play some more.

Yeah, I'm with you on the menu. There have been numerous updates including macros that have made me more accepting of the idea of the action bar but we'll see how things are at launch.

I'm definitely not happy about the questing at this point. Not only because of the timers and the confusing way of accepting them. But, also because of the general bugginess. A lot of this is beta related but sometimes your client will crash mid-quest or for some odd reason your character will be unable to attack and you'll need to reload the client to fix it. The problem here is not the betabugs, but rather the fact that once the quest has been accepted and started and it is terminated in any way (including the game crashing) it appears that you can not re-start the quest at all. This might be because of a timer as I know levequests can only be initiated every so often but i still feel that this needs improvement. Beta notes suggested that improvements were being made on the way that quests were acquired so I am hoping they get on this real soon.

Yeah, markets don't seem to exist yet. I was able to find an area that appeared to be shops but it kept telling me that I needed some item or attunement to use them. I forget exactly what this was.

Truly gorgeous. Out of curiosity, what are the hardware specs of the system that you are running it on and how was the performance in-game? What graphical settings did you use?

Believe it or not, teleporting has gotten 10x better in the past few weeks. Before it was even more confusing and there was also an annoying 30 second countdown any time you wanted to teleport or return. Thank god they removed this. And I'm sure more improvements will be made.



Definitely have a look at the beta forums for any confusion. I received a lot of help there from just general gameplay to bugs I was receiving.

Wow, yeah if you fail to complete a quest, you should be able to redo it, no question. I can't imagine why this wouldn't be the case.

Glad I'm not just retarded on the markets. I'm a total gear whore, so I'm really itching to get different-looking armor, even if it's not necessarily better. Then again, I would also like to play a greater variety of classes/professions, since leveling my gladiator like crazy won't do me any good come next month.

I have a 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, Geforce GTX 460. Not the most amazing setup, but I got an 1822 on the benchmark, and as long as there aren't 100 people on my screen, it's really smooth. The full map chugs for the first few seconds, but I would guess there's some optimization that can happen there. This is with most of the settings cranked at 1920x1080.

aamesxdavid wrote:Wow, yeah if you fail to complete a quest, you should be able to redo it, no question. I can't imagine why this wouldn't be the case.

Glad I'm not just retarded on the markets. I'm a total gear whore, so I'm really itching to get different-looking armor, even if it's not necessarily better. Then again, I would also like to play a greater variety of classes/professions, since leveling my gladiator like crazy won't do me any good come next month.

I have a 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, Geforce GTX 460. Not the most amazing setup, but I got an 1822 on the benchmark, and as long as there aren't 100 people on my screen, it's really smooth. The full map chugs for the first few seconds, but I would guess there's some optimization that can happen there. This is with most of the settings cranked at 1920x1080.

Cool. My rig is very similar except for the fact that your graphics card far outweighs mine. I will definitely be upgrading before launch, probably to a gtx270/280. Although I'm not entirely sure yet, will wait to see what the best deal is at the time.

hurstshifter wrote:Cool. My rig is very similar except for the fact that your graphics card far outweighs mine. I will definitely be upgrading before launch, probably to a gtx270/280. Although I'm not entirely sure yet, will wait to see what the best deal is at the time.

I highly recommend the 400 series. I got mine at Best Buy for under $200, and the difference (from my 8600) is insane. I could barely run the benchmark before, but now it's really smooth.

aamesxdavid wrote:

hurstshifter wrote:Cool. My rig is very similar except for the fact that your graphics card far outweighs mine. I will definitely be upgrading before launch, probably to a gtx270/280. Although I'm not entirely sure yet, will wait to see what the best deal is at the time.

I highly recommend the 400 series. I got mine at Best Buy for under $200, and the difference (from my 8600) is insane. I could barely run the benchmark before, but now it's really smooth.

Coincidentally my current card IS the 8600 (gts to be exact). So I will take your word for it. Browsing for a deal right now.

hurstshifter wrote:

aamesxdavid wrote:Coincidentally my current card IS the 8600 (gts to be exact). So I will take your word for it. Browsing for a deal right now.

Ha, awesome. I looked around online for days, and ended up just going to the Cambridgeside Galleria. The Best Buy there has a surprisingly nice selection for reasonable prices.

aamesxdavid wrote:

hurstshifter wrote:

aamesxdavid wrote:Coincidentally my current card IS the 8600 (gts to be exact). So I will take your word for it. Browsing for a deal right now.

Ha, awesome. I looked around online for days, and ended up just going to the Cambridgeside Galleria. The Best Buy there has a surprisingly nice selection for reasonable prices.

After gluing myself to reviews and articles for several hours I ended up purchasing a GTX 460 1gb off of newegg (they had the best price I could find, gotta love the Egg). Can't wait to get the card in and fire her up.

hurstshifter wrote:After gluing myself to reviews and articles for several hours I ended up purchasing a GTX 460 1gb off of newegg (they had the best price I could find, gotta love the Egg). Can't wait to get the card in and fire her up.

Nice, you will not regret the purchase. It was quite a smooth install for me, Windows downloaded the drivers for it before I could even get the driver disc in.

Other random notes:

-Assigning your own stat points = win. Not enough RPGs (much less MMOs) do this.

-Not having to change areas to go out of town is pretty neat. Makes me wonder how the full world will work.

I ran it on my integrate graphics chip plagued comp. (2.6 ghz dual cores, 6 gigs of ram)
It crashed.

rolland wrote:I ran it on my integrate graphics chip plagued comp. (2.6 ghz dual cores, 6 gigs of ram)
It crashed.

Who the hell has 6 gigs of RAM and integrated graphics??

dandymcgee wrote:

rolland wrote:I ran it on my integrate graphics chip plagued comp. (2.6 ghz dual cores, 6 gigs of ram)
It crashed.

Who the hell has 6 gigs of RAM and integrated graphics??

lol I just got it recently. Haven't gotten around to getting a real gfx card yet.

dandymcgee wrote:

rolland wrote:I ran it on my integrate graphics chip plagued comp. (2.6 ghz dual cores, 6 gigs of ram)
It crashed.

Who the hell has 6 gigs of RAM and integrated graphics??

lol

Just ran the benchmark not too bad at all.