The game now is much more smooth, and that was a pleasant surprise, I wasn't sure I'd be able to play this time. That said I only felt like playing for around 20 minutes and then left, I didn't kill any experience wielding monsters so I've got no experience in combat, for example. I'll leave here my impressions on those 20 minutes of play and update as new game sessions happen.
1 - My screen is 1366 x 768 pixels, the background image is nice but doesn't look that good at this resolution, it's as if I over-zoomed a small image. Also, when the cilient first opens up it isn't maximized, when I maximize I can see that the background image stretches horizontally, the panel where the image sits is probably set to "fill window" or some such. In my opinion it'd be better to keep the same aspect ratio, even if it keeps parts of the image out of sight. (Better yet but harder to do: set a limit to how much can go missing and only after that start stretching)
2 - Try to login, 'invalid login information', am taken back to main menu. It'd be better to keep me on the same login screen (with the credentials cleared out), I might've mistyped a letter in the password, I don't want to keep being redirected to the main menu and having to click the login button again when I already took steps to be at the login screen. Also, login screen could have a button on the left side saying 'Create', just like the one on Account screen.
3 - I successfully log in, a screen pops up called 'Patcher' and a progress bar at 0%, I leave the game patching and open my browser to check some sites. Twenty minutes later I come back hoping it has already finished, it hasn't started yet, I need to click that small-lettered button saying 'Start' to actually start. I had assumed it said cancel, my bad. I go back to doing something else whilst it finishes. 20 minutes later I come back, Patcher screen is at 100% but still up, small button now says Patch, I click it and only then Phobos patches. What would be better: no need to click either start or patch, do it automatically. Even better: I don't want to log in, only to have the client patch, which means I'll have to log in once again afterwards; just do everything automatically in the background as soon as the client opens up. If I log in and it hasn't finished yet, show me the progress bar with current progress. Title it 'Patching...' and I'll be pleasantly surprised it is already at 80% and finished in 1 second.
4 - Game opens up, nice! There's a square centered on my screen, it fills all the space vertically but horizontally there are two darker columns to each side. Since the actual world screen is quite small I try to move some of the stuff to the sides in order to increase It but I can't fill those darker columns with anything. I'd also like to move my backpack screen to the middle of its column (reducing the distance my mouse takes to loot) but it floats upwards just like other games of the genre. Abilities bar doesn't fill all the horizontal space it could, that makes sense since generally people only have up to F12 on their keyboards but it could look better, also it seems we can use the abilities by clicking on them so having extra slots would mean: 1- more abilities to choose from and use within a single click, even if we couldn't use the keyboard on some of them; 2- we could change the hotkeys for those abilities, so even those to the right of F12 could still be useable by keyboard, with Shift+F1, etc; 3- less empty space; and 4- looks better.
5 - I've always heard about how Phobos is all about the RPG, there's a guy on the screen, name Nicolas. I try to chat with him, bad luck, he won't say anything. Oh, it's cause he actually said bye after 2 seconds without interaction. Try again, say hi again, well, he still isn't saying anything (other than spamming bye or saying that I should visit the 'Page or Apprentice Guilds'). Weird, guy is Guardian of he Temple, a monk to boost, I assume he has years of experience and would have a whole lot to talk about it, nope. Maybe I'm not strong enough for him, or I haven't used the right words to pick his interest, whatever the reason is I would hope his Order, whether he even has such a thing, would pick someone more hospitable to receive me.
6 - Alright, monk guy has nothing to say about Flame of Eternal Fire or some such, time to start exploring. Path takes me straight to market, waterfall looks weird cut in half but ok. Huge ass white trunk fallen on a bench by the road, might be some large animal's skull, oh it's actually a newspaper, it speaks about new people popping up. It mentions floating bushes and dimenional portals but gives no details on those perplexing events, I guess that's common place around here, except that they seem to think it's remarkable. Well, details. The title reads "The Emposian Times", which leads me to wonder about literacy rates in the Empire (or is it a Kingdom? whatever it is, nobody seems interested in talking about it). Literacy rates seem high, as there are a bunch of newspapers in sight just thrown around, maybe not hand written then, or they have trained slaves to write and keep costs low, nobody wants to talk about it. I start to wonder whether some Guthenberg has already been born and created those marvelous devices, maybe he or she works alongside the Emposian Times, might be its founder or just a third-party contractor, selling the devices to any interested (and wealthy) parties, might be a competitor funded the inventor in order to get a leg up on printing numbers. Might be the invention hasn't even happened yet and there's an inventor out there, in desperate need of an apprentice, the Emposian Times as well, might be looking for interesting reports from afar or young underlings to run errands. I also wonder how a newspaper probably printed at the capital manages to sell at a small village on the outskirts of the Kingdom(?), I'd think people would get all the news there and then spread it through gossip, might be that travel ins't that common, or they have special courier services which brings those newspapers everywhere even before the news become commonplace, or the papers just might be cheap enough and the population well off enough that people don't matter paying. I'll have to look into these matters once I reach the capital, for now, nobody wants to talk about it.
7 - The only thing everyone wants to talk about are those god-damned guilds. If I wanted to go to the damn guilds I'd have done so already. They're rich and powerful enough to get merchants in the middle of a small village to send their clients off to the Guildhalls, i get that, but I don't want to see it just yet, sorry Nicolas, sorry Stephen, sorry Gregoria, sorry Peter, sorry Tom, sorry Sandra, sorry rich Guilders, I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. I'm also sure you'll have plenty of time for me later since everyone is still working at midnight. I guess that's why newspapers are so cheap and the small village has metal lamp posts and a sewer system, and a huge bank with half a dozen undescript workers to boost: everyone works 24 hours shifts. At least I'm moving into an affluent kingdom, nothing of the rabble rabble.
Miscelaneous stuff:
8 - When an npc has a speech so long that it takes two utterances or more to say it all, just put it out all at once as a single uterance on the chat screen, even if there's a need to only show a few smaller excerpts on the world screen, that way when I am reading on the chat (since world screen letters look so small) when the new utterance appears I don't need to look up to where the message I was reading has been moved to, I can read it all at once, as if it were spoken all at once, which it were.
9 - The sewer entrance looks like a shield so a little message on the bottom of the screen telling me I can't move them into my bag would be nice (like the one saying 'this door is locked'). Same thing for trying to use beds or open chests, if I can't do something there's no warning so I don't know whether my connection has failed or I just can't do it.
10 - When I speak a yellow message shows up on the world screen saying Name: Text, that name is yellow and almost perfectly covers my (un)usually green one, that confused the hell out of me on whether I was about to get red or not when I first noticed it.
11 - On Trade screen, containers show weight but no info on what they are for, tools show what they are for but no weight, it'd be nice to know their weight before I buy them, even if I have no idea how much I can carry.
12 - When it's dark I can't make out the red outline on a monster I am attacking, my char knows exaclt which monster it is, where it is, and attacks it when on range, I also know where it is and can select to attack or follow or stop as I wish, so it doesn't make sense that this would be intended because "you can't see in the dark", the problem only arises when there are at least two of the same creatures on screen, then I can't differentiate which one I am attacking, even though my char can. [Update: when I wrote this my combat experience was limited to the sheeps north of Tom (within Timari itself), it takes in consideration the darkness level at surface night. When underground I can't see anything and that's good]
13 - When trading, it's bothersome to use two different actions to see an item's stats and check its price, usually I'll want to know both informations so one command to see both = neat. Ideally I'd also want to compare itens with each other so being able to check that info on the trade screen itself would be nice. Maybe make it so you can select an item with the left click (instead of the right click as it currently is) and then browse through the catalog with arrow keys (instead of considering the arrow keys as walking, when you can't even see the game world), and by selecting something the little black screen pops up telling you both its stats and price (on a different color, or with some spacing to make it clear).
14 - I have no idea what half of those chats are for. Main, ok. But do we really need both Console and Info? And what Report is for? My first idea was bugs but it says to use the Forums, so maybe bots. I'd like to have Main extending all the way to the right so there's only 1 chat instead of two and then make the world screen bigger. I could switch between channels with Tab, which I currently can only do partially (it tabs the left channels but not the right ones).
15 - Trade screen is really inconvenient for selling my items to npcs. I need to open all my bags to see what I currently have for sale, then drag it to trade screen to be told the price, and click no, if it's too low, or click yes 10 times if I have 10 to sell and they aren't stackable. Also, if the trading screen is open, I right-click an item of mine then drag it to the screen, my char starts walking. If I am at a certain distance then the npc will say goodbye and trading screen will disappear.
16 - Somehow I got the typing focus to be in the right side channel which was Info at the time, when sending messages there a message shows on the Info channel: unknown error. A more descriptive message and not being able to do what I am supposed not to be able to do would both be nice.
17 - Shift key doesn't work to select text, maybe make it so that if I'm typing and press Shift then it's shift on the text not on world screen. Even better: Shift works on both: if I'm typing it will select when used alongside arrow keys or Home and End buttons, if I click somewhere it's considered Shift+Click. Shift should also be usable on Login screen credentials and every other user-editable text field.
18 - My character has been bugging me for being hungry for quite a while now but he's still alive and I have no idea what it means. Nobody wants to talk about that.
19 - When clicking somewhere I can't walk to, it'd be nice if I could look at it instead of doing nothing. Sometimes I have my left hand busy and can only act through the mouse but there's no context menu either.
20 - Looking at blackboards I am way too often met with wooden beams.
21 - When going up or down stairs I kind of freeze for a while, I know another game started using this same system so that you couldn't eavesdrop on memory about what was laying in other floors. Maybe have it so the content is sent to the client before changing floors but have it encripted and once moving floors send the (random) key, I bet decripting what is already in memory would be faster than sending the whole data over the net. Maybe even set it so the client checks upon login which is faster at that particular moment and then use the faster system until logout. That said, it freezes even when I'm on third floor of the Snowy Owl Inn and going down, to floors which are already visible to me and thus are already on memory.
Also, when going up or down, or logging in, nearby monsters start attacking even before I manage to see them. It might be argued that this is the intended effect since I should be paying attention before going down unknown holes; but that occurs even when logging and I have no Idea whether it takes 10 seconds or a whole minute for world screen to pop up, depending on how busy the servers are. And if I were disconnected for some reason and left to come back a week later then I might not even remember where I am at. Giving us at least half a second between monster spot and monster attack would be nice.
22 - Why does everyone has a surname if nobody has any family, no grand Houses. The only exception so far are the oakhammers but they don't seem to talk about each other. Also, the inn has a single bed, which might be the only bed in the entire village.
23 - Going up and down ladders/stairs with the mouse!! You can on some, not on others.
24 - When going down the 'stair' tile (the stone stepped stair) the char sprite moves atop the stair hole, floats a little then the floor below pops on-screen. When going down the 'fence' tile (name given to the wooden climbable ladder, maybe both fences and the ladder share the same sprite but I'd change the name nonetheless) the char sprite turns around to face it, does nothing for a little, then the floor below pops on-screen. Maybe make it so going down a stair hole always has the same effect (the one given by the actual stair where the char moves into the hole). Going down on a stair that has no stair hole (tile named 'mountain wall') looks like going down on a fence, which I don't mind but would prefer to be the same as the rest.
25 - Give things for npcs to say, Tom knows a lot about the region but won't tell me anything about it. Don't make me go to the Guildhalls before I can start actually seeing content. if I've already spoken to a dozen npcs and they were all unresponsive, I don't want to go through that whole ordeal once again (and even if I do, I may quit if the first npc I talk to for the second time is unresponsive, because now I believe both (a) npcs have nothing to say, and (b) npcs have nothing to say even after I do what they want me to).
26 - Mountain corners are too damn square. Also, Tibia has this system where in order to go up a mountain you need to find a stair, you could try at least on a hill somewhere as a test, to have a ramp all around a hill so you don't need a stair to go up, you just walk onto the ramp. Sure, have the cliffs here and there, rocks you need to go around, but the stairs on mountains thing is kind of unrealistic. It works, though.
Another thing you could play with: diagonal corners, like wall sections which ocupies half a tile, from top left to bottom right, for example.
27 - Those poor chickens on the chicken hen by the market square look dehydrated. I actually have no idea whether chicken need water but they are devoid of it. I like the seed through. [I'm not actually asking you to put some water there, I'm just typing what I feel like]
28. - When looking at something, the message box could show up faster, I don't how you implemented it. Maybe the text data is coming from the server to avoid snooping. Maybe you're just iterating through a huge list, or keeping the data on hard disk and retrieving it to memory only after the look. Since the data is small I would keep the info for all visible objects on memory and definitely not hold it in some data structure that needs to be iterated through such as linked lists but as a vector/matrix/hash table or something else that allows direct access of items given an id. But maybe the slowness is due to the transparency.
29 - Also, some blackboards have too much text an disappear too fast. Put the text on the Console/Info channel and change the box so that its time onscreen depends on text amount: smaller ones like 'street lamp' can keep current time, larger ones staay a little longer.
30 - Loved the red book cover, but a library needs a librarian like an oven needs a loaf of bread (ok, I forgot what the saying is).
31 - I looked, but have been unable to find, any semblance of mayor, or townhall, Citylord, or council hall, or any such form of community governance, maybe its the villagers themselves who gather on monthly meetings to disscuss matters of import, or maybe its an anarchich society without time for such worries. In any case nobody wants to talk about it.
32 - Please give us a choice to have items stack (group) automatically.
33 - Chest at the Page Guild tells me I need a key to open it, chest at the Inn says nothing but refuses to open anyway, which makes me assume it's an unopenable chest.
34 - Ok, I was following a rabbit on the market square when the rabbit left the city by the southwest and a rat started attacking me, I pressed esc to stop following the rabbit and a screen popped up, as I was quite in a hurry I didn't read it and clicked yes thinking it was some unexpectedly convoluted way to stop an action. Then it logs me out and I can't log back in as it gives me the error 'unvalid login information' before closing the login page and making me open it again (even though the info itself is fine). On a previous moment I've also been kicked with the information 'server is offline' when the server was only unreachable. You need to improve these error messages to say what is actually going on. And make letters bigger because small lettering isn't conductive to reading.
Well, since I'm on a roll here let me do some on the forum
35 - Edit and Quote are on the top of a post, even though you might want to click them after reading, at the bottom. Profile and PM are at the bottom. PM, ok, but profile is usually only seen after the user has already checked a profile's available information, which is at the top left (Username, Avatar, Register date, etc.). Which in a long post means reading from top to bottom, going up to check the info then going back down to check profile. But even that is a nitpick, what really bothers me is Edit and Quote. Also these bottoms look great but are quite small.
36 - When writing or editing a post, if it took you some time it'll log you out (ok) but after logging in it'll take you to the index page and not to the page you were before. Ideally it'd take you to the page you wanted to go to, with the modifications you wanted to make.
you could add a rare one though to use in poisons). And now that I think about it, I'd like the ability to make apple pies and pumpkin juice, maybe have a few recipe books, and one about a famed cook who could make a soup so good its smell would raise the dead back to life and wargs would befriend him just to try a spoonful, it's said wars were fought and heroes were killed for the privilege of trying his most fabled creation, the... anyway, closing the list:
