PjhN wrote: Anyone managing to play this at all yet?
My b/f's in the beta and not impressed so far; horrendous lag in every respect, the camera is extremely annoying, you seem to have to select a target three times in order to attack it and again pretty much continuous after that.
It's kinda pretty, but it plays like an early alpha build, not a beta.
Ok, I finally got into the game late last night and I'm sure Yezar (who was with me on vent at the time) could tell you how frustrated I was getting.
What you said is absolutely correct, the lag makes it border-line unplayable. It's not rubber banding your character will run smoothly it's just a shame that everything and everyone he runs past simply isn't there. You need to stop and give it a minute or two to allow all the nearby NPC's to eventually show up.
It makes the world seem empty unless you stop every 50 feet.
The camera really is a joke. It fails to follow your character which is what I'm used to and seems to have no option to allow such a thing. You have to physically turn the camera with your mouse if you want to keep the camera behind your character. Very annoying for a good old fashioned gamer like me who uses his mouse to click the abilitys.
What else did you comment on? Oh yes the stupid "target lock" system. To be honest they had this in the first Online Final Fantasy and I hated it then and I just kind of assumed it wouldn't find its way into another game but no it's here. Basically to do any sort of combat you have to first click on the monster then click on it again to go into "attack mode" (at which point your camera will kind of zoom in) and then you will be able to attack it. But this isn't a smooth experience it feels very slow and well single player-ish.
Add to this the fact that there seems to be very little in the way of a tutorial or any real instructions on what you're meant to do. I died last night and I logged off still dead because I didn't know how to release. There's no death text (short of "You can't use that ability. You're KO'd") and no instructions.
All this lends itself to the fact that it feels very much like a old game. The camera feels out of date, the lack of instruction or even general idea of where or what you should be doing feels out of date. Think there's a nice little quest log on your UI? not that I could see had to load up the journal by hand not that that's much help if you don't know the area. Quest Indicators on the NPC's? No chance.
Trying to navigate the map? I can't figure out how to move the damn thing around.
I know it's only beta, but come on it's OPEN BETA the game is released at the end of the month. This isn't a good enough new user experience. Not for the western market and not for me.
The servers are down now but once there up I will try again. These are after all first impressions and things may improve. I hope they improve.