Gameplay Feedback Thread

[mcrowebird]

Started the beta today. Have so far played 3 games:
- Game 1 was with 2 other players who both eventually dropped then the game got stuck on a dice roll and had to quit
- Game 2 was with 1 other player with the goal to complete 1 quest, and we managed to finish that game (and I won )
- Game 3 I am currently playing (on turn 10 in a 3 quest game). So far so good.

Now for the game itself:
- It looks great! The UI is nice and I find the quests engaging.
- Sound fits nicely
- I like the design and the game itself, collecting proof and dealing with the challenges cards will throw at you and the randomness of the dice.

Issues:
- Playing an opponent really has no effect on me what so ever, I can for the most part completely ignore what they are doing, which makes opponent turns boring -- I really don't care what they are doing, and I just want to get back to my turn.
- Although the UI looks nice and for the most part works really well there are still some issues, I really have no idea where the war track marker is at.
- As other people have mentioned, I want to look at my stuff during my opponents turn (with the option to also look at their stuff)... Not sure if in the future though you are supposed to know what your opponent has.

The tutorial while gave me a quick overview left a bit out about the game and what will happen / why. Naturally playing a few games really helps with the learning curve.

 

[Keiyan]

Hi,

Fourth game in progress, so I might as well give my feedback about this game.

Mechanism are interesting to play, however, this game falls in the same trap as Wow : the boardgame (from FFG) : this is not a multi player game, but several single player games running in parallel. In Wow, they tried to add a little interactivity by allowing people to battle each other, but this was an unwise course of action, since you were sure to loose one of your precious actions whereas the other player had only a chance to loose his.

So my point is you have to rework the game so that player have a need either to oppose each other or to cooperate.

Another point : I can't figure the game backstory. Granted, this is a race for VP, but what's the point ? Why are we racing ? From the witcher background, we are supposed to be in the same side, so I figured at start we were to cooperate to fight some menace, but no. I suppose we run for fame (represented by VP) ?

Regarding the UI now :
* No way to review your cards during opponent turns : I loose 30 seconds to 1 minute at the start of each turn reviewing my options. Since my opponents have to wait during this time, I class this as a major flaw in the UI
* No way to review the (revealed) monsters already present in a region. I cannot tell if I'm able to kill them or not
* But this is mitigated by the way that I can one shot every monster after 4 or 5 turns in the game. By focusing on development and upgrade (brew/command/sing...), I'm able to utterly destroy the most powerfull of monsters, or at least successfully defend against them.
* I'm not able to tell if the character are on par, but my feeling is that Gerald is more powerfull than other. Triss is hard to play, with her special adding only one to one card !
* I can't figure the special power of empty towns (the heart one make heal more efficient, I assume, but the others ?)

Keiyan, boardgamer

 

[capitancardoza]

Hi all,
I just played it a little bit, I feel confortable with the game mechanics and the online mode =)
I think that's a good start! I'll play more to see if I'll encounter some tech issues or something worth correction/improvement..
Thanks CDPro-Guys!

 

[Roundlay.504]

Just wondered why Dandelion's hat is transparent

 

[Synapsisdos]

In my opinion public games should be 3 quests long by default (without a possibility to change it) and only private games could be 1, 3 or 5 quests long.
Those 1 quest long games are really just rushing for main quest completion (even without bothering with subquest) = no fun at all.

That is a good idea. An idea I had was you can set the game length to you want before you search, this could also be for number of players(both these would be optional). It just seems odd choosing the game length when the game has started.

This isn't really an option at the moment though as the small player base would cause match making take that much longer.

 

[Pralev.969]

Agreed. Matchmaking based on game length preference would be much better than my original suggestion.

Current implementation also acts quite weirdly. For example I participated in a game with 3 additional players; me and two players chose their characters and 3 quests, the 4th one (with the lowest roll) chose the remaining character and 1 quest, the game started and it was 1 quest. Like... what the...?

 

[skeletonbow]

Feature suggestion: An on-screen timer that shows how long since the game started would be nice.

 

[skeletonbow]

You can CTRL+Left click on the Play button on launcher to open the settings. Not intuitive, an ingame option would be better.

Forums related:
<snip>

• SingleSignOn for thewitcher.com and cdprojektred.com
• Allow large enough image file sizes, for screenshots made from TWAG (optional: shrink them automatically by forum software if size is a concern).

Yeah, the resolution change is ok for beta and probably hidden on purpose for certain reasons now but I suppose it goes without saying that it would not be user friendly for a polished final release so I suspect they will have in-game menu options for configuring video/audio like all other games have later on in the development cycle.

I've been attaching 2560x1600 images to the forums no problem unless the forum software is auto-resizing my images or something, never really checked. Some forums do that online but I never really understand why because ... holy buy bigger hard disks it's 2014 Batman. ) 4k and 8k displays are just around the corner...

 

[skeletonbow]

You probably meant an ingame-implementation, but for the time being this works quite well:
That's obviously still missing any sound/music options, but it's better than nothing.

It's twofold, one is just having the ability to do it at all even with some hack/workaround/temporary measure, which works for now with what we have. The feature request is intended to request a modern style options menu with user friendly access to these options in a way someone's grandma could intuitively discover them without hitting Google or joining web forums though.

 

[secundus81]

Enjoyed my second game this afternoon and have updated my thoughts below.

Getting a Game
Waiting in the lobby isn't fun

Tutorial
I liked the art, the concepts, the organization, and even the length of the tutorial. I feel it explains the game well. Naturally a person doesn't remember it all, but it prepares you to recognize what you will see. Only playing brings true familiarity. I disagree with the plethora of complaints above.

Wait During Other Player Turns
In the thread above, I read that work is being done to make other players turns more visible. That's good, but the computer version should really be simultaneous move. Waiting between turns is brutal. I understand that as the game currently plays, the resolution phase of my turn may place obstacles that affect the next player's turn. I feel the game will lose little or nothing by combining that placement at once after all 4 players are done.

Sense of Adventure - Narrative Material
I'd like to see more "adventure" accompanying the core symbol collection. Right now, it's purely mechanical. But these symbols represent leads toward proof. Similarly, when I exchange (automatically) the leads for proof I experience a straightforward accounting task that lacks a sense of story - what proof did I just acquire?

Narration for Leads: For each main quest, consider adding a list of brief (1 sentence) descriptions that are appropriately triggered when you pick up a magnifying glass token (lead). For example, the quest where the Prince's son is a monster. A description for a red lead (as these seem to be combat-related) might say "Outside of a manor where the prince's son is staying, you find blood smears on a tree near the well." A purple lead might read "At the tavern, a drunken priest claims the prince's son confessed to murder, but then refuses to talk when sober."

Narration for Proof: Likewise, when leads convert to proof, this should trigger a description. For example, accompanying the Red proof "You follow a bloody trail from a body in the forest, keeping careful distance behind the snuffles and snarls of a monster. When you emerge from the forest, you see only the prince's son walking slowly away." Perhaps these story blurbs need to offer more definitive proof - but the point of the description is to both show you that you HAVE proof and describe what it is.

Mechanics of adding Lead/Proof Narration: For the computer-game version, adding triggered text is undoubtedly trivial. For the physical/board-game it neednt' be hard. The back side of each quest card could be used to hold the lead and proof descriptions (perhaps the quest cards will need to be a bit bigger). But the approach I would prefer would be to build a "paragraph book" to accompany the game. This would give far greater scope for storytelling. Done well there would be multiple stories behind each quest (for replay) and even "red herring" paragraphs to entertain players who like to read through the paragraph book. See the classic PC Game "Wasteland," the classic Victory Games wargame "Ambush!" Taking it to "Tales of the Arabian Nights" level might be a bit too much.

Players who don't care about story could skip these steps entirely.

The Investigation cards provide a bit of this color - but only along the lead theme line (red, blue, purple) and not specific to the individual quests.

Player Interaction
Players interact in a couple of ways - they can observe each other's progress (and adjust their plans accordingly), they occasionally get to decide where to place monsters or foul fate cards (laying them in the path of their opponents). I'm satisfied with this level of interaction. Some call it multi-player solitaire, and it's close. The suggestion of pasting a battle mechanic (players in same spaces fight) seems wrong. These characters are allies, friends, and sometimes lovers. It's a race, not a mortal duel.

Narrative - Defining What's At Stake
Why is this race important? In other words, what does Triss gain by "beating" Geralt when she resolves her 1-5 quests (mysteries) first? Right now, the main quests resemble an average day/week/month in the life of a Witcher character. This is very cool and it's fun to game this day/week/life of the character. But the quests themselves don't seem to be of any special import to explain why there's a race.

Thanks again for the opportunity to participate in the Beta. I enjoyed everything I saw about the game and will play many more beta games to provide feedback.

 

[bln]

Geralt is WAY overpowered. See for yourself (we did play normally, as you can see, the two other characters are rather close to each other):



Another game (I was playing Triss and I did my best at winning, while the other player was more or less taking his time):

 

[vinaysshenoy]

Initial thoughts -

Positives - Gameplay is nice, beautiful art and sound, quest cards are also nice.

Negatives -
1. Needs more player interaction. Right now, I'm just waiting for the other person's turn to end. Even when we both went to the same location, we weren't able to do anything together even though we wanted to(We went in without reading the tutorial, which brings me to my next point).

2. The tutorial is too long. The game mechanics need to be introduced through gameplay and not through a bunch of text.

Will post a lot more later.

 

[Lexor]

In my opinion public games should be 3 quests long by default (without a possibility to change it) and only private games could be 1, 3 or 5 quests long.

I do not agree with that.

I do not have any friends with access to beta so I need to play public games. I preferred my first games to stay at 1 quest because I wasn't quite good at the game. And when you are not good and everyone else can see you in the far end in terms of amount of gathered VP then where would be the fun of play in that?

So: indeed, 1q-game is too quick but it should be able to select it on public because of novice gamers. Later they will go anyway for 3q-games.

Also, it is worth to note, 3q-games could be sometimes too long for casual gamers - when there are 4 players then 3q-game can last 2h+. On the other hand I can agree that switching down to 1q-game can to too quick. The option is to allow players to choose any number on quest if they want to - like 2 (for casual players) or 7 (for "maniacs") - not just 1, 3 or 5.

 

[pra7eek]

Improvements Possible:

No direct player interaction, my friend and I can't seem to directly interact with each other. Can any mechanics be added for this?

 

[Lexor]

Geralt is WAY overpowered. See for yourself (we did play normally, as you can see, the two other characters are rather close to each other)

Have all of you got the same level of in-game experience? I can see Geralt as "easier to manage" character (and we have a lot of novice/casual players in game at the moment so this kind of advantage is very visible), but I am not so sure as of yet if he is indeed overpowered.

edit: Just by looking at your screenshot I can see that the other players (in comparison to you) have not optimized their "quests beating curves" that can be sign of lower experience - how come you have almost no leads/coins, and they have "nice" amounts of them? Leads are spread between all types when quests need like two types of them at most I think, coins.. why have they gathered such amounts if them? Gathering amounts bigger than needed it's like a lose of turns/actions in game when you are playing with experienced opponents.

 

[Synisill]

Hello! I have found two bugs so far:
1. In the quest "At your command" the first sidequest requires TWO (2) purple clues when the quest card is minimized (in the center of the lower bar) and THREE (3) purple clues when one view's the quest card in magnification. When paying the clues, actually 3 are removed. Please correct this inconsistency.
2. As it happened to another player, i did not gather the exact origin of the damage, but: on his turn he received 2 wounds and contributed them to his "spare" fields. In the same turn, all his wounds were transformed into poison wounds. The bug was as follows: when the dwarf received his 2 wounds, the other 3 players saw that he received 6 wounds! We all wondered why he did not have to distribute 6, but 2.

 

[Synisill]

I would like suggest an improvement to your game in general. Played it today for the very first time. 2 matches with 4 players each. What i found most annoying was that you have to sit around and wait while the other players are having their turns. It was very boring!
It would keep me far more interested, if the cards the others draw, were actually shown to ALL players. They can read what's happening at the moment and are kept busy,even if they can't move themselves. They could at least see which monster is battled right now, while the active player throws his rolls.

 

[Lexor]

2. As it happened to another player, i did not gather the exact origin of the damage, but: on his turn he received 2 wounds and contributed them to his "spare" fields. In the same turn, all his wounds were transformed into poison wounds. The bug was as follows: when the dwarf received his 2 wounds, the other 3 players saw that he received 6 wounds! We all wondered why he did not have to distribute 6, but 2.

I do not quite understand what happened here, but do you take into account that dwarf has two additional places to put a wound token into in comparison to other characters?

Theory: 6 wounds could be like 4 + 2, 4 wounds = 2 mortal wounds (poisoned heart) can be placed on additional places then only 2 hearts need to be distributed.

 

[pra7eek]

Positives:
1. Beautiful map
2. Rich and Complex mechanics

 

[vinaysshenoy]

I just finished a quick game, and I have to say, I'm really loving it once I've got a hand of the mechanics. My friend and I will be playing it a lot more often.

Quick suggestion - Add some multiplayer interactivity.

1. Let inactive players jump in to help current players if they are fighting a tough battle AND they are close enough. As a rewards, the player who was helped could give up some of his resources to the helper player.
2. Conversely, let inactive players sabotage the current players' quests in return for losing some resources?

Both these gameplay elements have been inspired from an RPG card game called Munchkin.