A Legally Blind Player's Blind Review -{ Part 2 }-

[ Continued from Part 1 ]






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4. Narrative and Worldbuilding
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The Good

The overall narrative is decent and has a good idea. I do want to finish the story once it begins, and I do want to know more about the characters and world. It makes me curious.


The Bad

No matter which class I play, there seems to be no real motivation for the character to enter the story. Supposing I choose the Warrior, the following occurs:

— We learn the character is a “foundling,” taken in and raised by the Ezomytes. Foundling? Found by whom, and why? Where? How?

— The character is about to be hanged, but no clear reason for the hanging is stated. This is especially problematic for the Witch: the offscreen speaker says her coven threw her out, but that logically has nothing to do with why she is being hanged.

— The character somehow escapes, clambers over the rampart, and leaps into the river. This part is awesome, I won’t deny.

— The character wakes up on the riverbank.

— A dying old man says something about Clearfell and a strange disease and dead people not being dead. But why should I as the player character care about Clearfell, a village I’ve never heard of at this point? Why do I care about this old man whom I’ve never met and have no relationship with, especially if I am trying so desperately to get away from people who tried to hang me? Wouldn’t my first reaction upon waking be to try and keep running away rather than going back?

Try to remember that there are objective standards in storytelling, and certain structural beats have to be met for a work to be effective. Two key requirements are that (A) the reader must in some way be able to relate to the character in a realistic way, and (b) there must be some dramatic tension which can be leveraged for plot.

I want to meander here for a minute, because there’s an old game which accomplishes all of the above in a compelling way within the first five to ten minutes of play. At the beginning of Chrono Trigger, the main character wakes up, goes downstairs, and talks to his mom. Mom says his friend invited him to the fair to see her new invention, so he should check it out. Upon walking into the fair, the main character bumps into a girl, causing her to drop her necklace. After helping her up and retrieving the necklace, the girl says she feels out of place and asks the boy if she can walk around with him for awhile. The player has a choice . . . but seriously, who is going to say no? So the main character shows her around the fair, plays some carnival games with her, buys her snacks, and then takes her to see his friend’s invention. Something goes wrong with the invention, and the innocent girl is sucked into a wormhole and transported through time. Crap.

The main character is instantly relatable because we all know what it’s like to be woken up by a parent after oversleeping. We all . . . well, some of us . . . know what it’s like when a carnival or fair comes to town. And because the game takes just a few moments to build a relationship between the main character and the girl, there is justified dramatic tension when the girl gets sucked into the wormhole. Because the player had direct involvement in taking her around the fair, essentially being her escort or companion, there is a sense of responsibility – a moral obligation – to follow her through the wormhole and try to bring her back.

Your game has a bit of a challenge in that, given your desired opening, you have to manufacture this in about two minutes rather than five to ten. But it is possible with minor revisions. It will, however, mean small rewrites and getting voice actors back in the box for about an hour.

— First, like with the Ranger, have the speaker accuse the character of an actual crime.

— Have the character verbally assert innocence. It cannot be assumed: players must necessarily hear this. This will create sympathy, since we all know what it’s like to be wrongfully accused of something. This will also create tension because the character is about to die over something they claim they didn’t do. This makes us root for the character when they escape and leap into the river, and strongly resonates with Renly’s later quip about being another survivor of the count’s “justice.”

— When the character wakes, have the old man insinuate that he pulled them from the river, and that he’s glad to see they are alive. Given your story, this works on two levels. Then transition into the story as you have it. Maybe revise the text to indicate the old man was traveling with the Miller (rather than “I wanted to go after him”) when they were attacked. Doing so would better raise the question of where the Miller is.

— After the zombie attack, have the old man plead for the characters to warn the village about the dead. It’s important for players to see the direct request to warn the village because it conveys clear senses of purpose and obligation. Your current text, “Reach Clearfell, find the Miller” is problematic and pointless: problematic in that we don't even know if the Miller is still alive at this point; and pointless because, if the Miller is already at Clearfell warning them about the dead, then there’s no reason for the player character to do it. It would also help to actually show text like, “please do this for me.” Having that text will reinforce the sense of obligation. After all, how can we refuse a simple request from someone who just saved us from drowning?

Currently your story up to the Bloated Miller boss fight reads like, “find the Miller . . . okay, I found the Miller.” Making my suggested revisions in some form, though, would create more initial investment in the character and world. It would also make the first boss encounter more meaningful and narratively fluid because a direct request to warn the village would transform into saving the village, sort of like when Luke’s mission to get the plans to the rebels transforms into helping the rebels fight.

Once you’ve successfully hooked players with a clear narrative purpose and the initial excellent gameplay, all you need to do is keep the ball rolling. Hopefully, as future Acts are released, we will see more development of Oriana and the Beast as characters.


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5. Visuals and Performance
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The Good

First, thank you for allowing DirectX 11 processing. My system is almost as old as I am, and I may not have been able to play the game otherwise since it stresses my GPU. Even with DX11, however, the visuals themselves are crisp and clear. The art of each major area so far effectively conveys stage themes and creates a palpable mood, especially in conjunction with the music. One area which stands out in particular is the Titan’s Grotto, where the backdrop displays fallen/dead titans that I can imagine coming to life. (And then one does! Wonderful visual payoff.)

Some things, however, could use improvement. And just to remind you, this is coming from someone who’s blind and only sees bits and pieces at a time. My experience may not resonate with other players, especially those with more experience at these games.

The Bad

Loading times, even when I initially ran on DX12, are a bit sketchy right now; but that could easily be explained by the status of a new game, and by so many players accessing your servers at once.

There do not seem to be many ground effects in this game to warn players beforehand that something big is about to happen, and this holds true for monsters as well as bosses. Further, some of the telegraphing happens too quickly to really be noticeable, or too quickly to allow adequate processing.
Examples of both these ideas have already been outlined above, so I can perhaps focus on some more common issues here. I would only reiterate my request, if you do want one-shot player killers, that the really big moves be obvious and give copious time for players to both process and react.

Moving on, there are serious visual issues with some of the elemental ground effects in this game. Poison, for example, seems to blend in with the ground no matter what zone it’s in. And in the Xylucian fight, ground effects for all three elements are so faint that I have trouble keeping track of where they are. Fire and ice, for example, seem to fade away but still persist as damage dealers. Even if they are made accessibility features, can there please be some sort of visual aid to help point out where not to stand or what to move out of? Some games which do this effectively include Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online. Those games somehow manage to include ground effects while maintaining immersion and preserving their intended art. I am hopeful you can do the same. Some suggestions might be to make the ground effects themselves more visually apparent, like making the poison and fire and ice appear more boldly. Another approach might be to have pulsing ground effects like the games mentioned above.

One other visual accessibility feature might include limiting spell effects from other players because they can become problematic in major boss fights. In the Jamanra fight, there is already too much going on to effectively track, and having fifty minions from a Witch along with the various balls and bolts and beams and rings of lightning and fire and ice from a Sorceress is just overkill on the eyes. Even for people with normal vision. There is such a thing as information overload: people can see so much going on that they can’t process all of it effectively. There must, therefore, be a way to limit the way other players’ spells appear on our screens. One such solution would be to make them nearly transparent, so we could see they are still there and occurring, and yet maintain our focus on the boss.


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6. User Experience (UX)
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The Warrior

One thing that irks me about many RPGs is that they fall prey to the fallacy that warriors must be slow. They also often fall prey to a closely related fallacy that two-handed weapons must also be slow. Sadly, your game makes this same mistake in both regards.

Before we go any further, please know my knowledge here is not based only on books and YouTube. Once upon a time, I used to be in a live-steel Renaissance Reenactment group. We basically got paid to put on fight shows around the Midwest. My job was to train for stage combat in the off season, which is far more physical than you might think, and then act as a “squire” for “knights” during shows. I’ve personally used many of the weapons players commonly see in video games, though admittedly for acting purposes and not real combat.

Anyway . . . Let’s start with the latter comment about two-handed weapons. If you go to YouTube and use the search string, “how fast is a greatsword,” you will see a short by @blumineck which contrasts the perception of two-handed weapons in gaming with how they really are. In his own words: there really isn’t a lot of point in a weapon that takes thirty seconds to reset after each strike. Even though they look big and nasty, greatswords, maces, and hammers are much lighter than people expect. This is because they are made to be swung quickly and efficiently. A flanged mace – like the many we see in POE2 – only actually weighs around two to three pounds. I can tell you personally, having fought against a person proficient (by show standards) with one, it’s damn fast. Even a normal, battle-ready two-handed flanged mace only weighs around six pounds in total. There is, therefore, absolutely no reason maces should be so slow and cumbersome in the game. Especially if the character wielding the maces is as strong as his character art makes him appear, and if he really is competent with the weapons. Try to remember that the game supposedly depicts a warrior character as being in his prime. The animation speeds for mace skills should be much quicker than they are.

Movement speed should also be faster than it is right now. Having done unscripted stage combat, I can tell you from experience that even sword-and-board wielders wearing a couple pieces of plate need to move and adapt quickly. If you YouTube “medieval MMA,” you will see a five-minute fight between Kukurkhoev and Andreev. They are not slow. And the shield, you will see, is not just for defense. It’s brutal, swift, and precise. Try to remember that Achilles, arguably the greatest warrior in Western literature, was not called the slow-footed. That title is more appropriate for the current warrior build. (I’m sorry, but it’s true.)

Using mace skills right now seems like an onerous chore because of how they have to be timed and managed. Even if I click the button to make a skill cast in place, Rolling Slam and Molten Blast still move me substantially forward. My gameplay, therefore, always sees me backing away from enemies – especially enemy groups – before attacking because I have to gauge space just right. This exacerbates boss fights with area effects I need to stay out of because, no matter how I try to gauge distance, it seems like my moves carry me straight into the fire. And then, of course, I wait and wait for the slow activation speed. Using Rolling Slam, not to mention Sunder (ugh), is like that DMV scene from Zootopia. I as the player am Judy Hopps, while my mace skills are Flash Slothmore. The boss is of course Nick Wilde.

Rolling Slam should not roll. There should just be two stationary slams. The initial slam should be a circular AOE in front of the player, and the secondary slam should be a slightly larger circular area in front of the player. Activation and animation should be slightly faster.

The Shockwave Totem is largely ineffective. Damage should be every second, or every two seconds. Not every three. And if it’s going to taunt, please have it actually taunt. My quality of life as a blind player would be so much improved if the totem worked like it was supposed to.

Earthquake is not effective for several reasons. The affected area is too small, the -20% to movement speed is negligible, and the duration is too short. There’s literally no reason for me to use this skill, so I never do. The affected area should be much larger so that the warrior can actually control the battlefield. For such a short duration, initial movement speed penalty on enemies should be -75% or -80%. This would make slowing enemies down effective and meaningful. However, copying from other POE2 classes, there should be diminishing returns on this for successive use on the same enemies. If used a second time on the same enemies, the movement penalty should only be -50% or -60%. A third use on the same enemies should be largely ineffective.

Boneshatter should have slightly increased animation speed for both one-handed and two-handed attacks, but it seems nice otherwise. This skill is highly effective on its own. Please do not nerf this too badly.

Infernal Cry is really nice, so nice that it should be buffed and made into one of the ascendancies. It could be a staple and symbolic feature of the warrior class, and better allow warriors to use any weapon styles by having effective buffing and debuffing synergies. There is a lot of potential for this skill, especially in group play and with potential minions.

Shield Charge is very nice and effective, but could use a slightly faster activation and movement speed. Despite what the skill video shows in-game, the skill feels a bit sluggish in combat.

Perfect Strike seems to deal too little damage for how it’s supposed to be used, and given that it can be so easily interrupted. Please increase the initial damage by 15-20%, and the DOT by 20-25%. This spell should be a more efficient boss-killer if used properly. Please do not reduce the perfect strike window of opportunity. If anything, it could stand to be 250ms wider.

Molten Blast should be a level one spell so that warriors have equal access to ranged combat early in the game. This would put them on level with other classes. It also needs to be buffed substantially so that it’s effective and competitive. If I fling molten lava at enemies, I should see them burn. The activation and animation speeds need to be slightly faster. And please do not have my character move forward when casting the spell. Please remove that from the animation.

Resonating Shield is a nice idea, but deals way too little damage to be effective. I never use it because nothing about the skill makes me want to use it.

Leap Slam . . . the video for this spell is misleading because I never see that level of effect when I use it in-game. It doesn’t seem to stagger enemies at all or for very long, and it certainly doesn’t deal one-shot damage like the video shows. While this skill is on my bar for mobility, I rarely use it because it feels very underpowered. Overall, this skill is pretty ineffective unless the right support gems are used. I argue, though, that that should not be the case. A skill should be desirable in itself, and support gems should merely augment what is already present.

Shield Wall I see no use for this skill because my first targets are almost always the ranged monsters, and I use Shield Charge to close distance on them.
Sunder’s activation and animation speeds are a little too slow, which is why I rarely use it.

Overall, the Warrior/mace skill line is unappealing and not as fun as it could be. Even though I have a lot of fun playing the game itself, I always find myself pining for other classes. This is not a class I would want to go into Cruel Mode with, and I cannot wait to finish the game with this class so that I can try out another. I promised I would beat Act 3 with it before going to another class, though, so I must do it.


Grinding and Farming

We all know a game of this kind will have a grind aspect. The thing about really great games, though, is that they are good at hiding it. That is to say, they are good at including various mini-tasks to not only help players along, but cloak repetitive elements behind a thin veil of narrative purpose. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, perhaps Ubisoft’s magnum opus, offers radiant quests in the form of randomized “jobs” to help players better embrace level and gear grinds. Bandits might suddenly inhabit a section of the world, or else some dangerous animals, that the player needs to put down. Or maybe a random villager suddenly lost something that needs to be gotten, or some random villager needs to be saved. The list goes on.

It would be really nice if POE2 offered players these kinds of radiant quests for two main reasons.

One: The current build seems to feature a dearth of side quests. If I remember correctly, there are only a couple side quests in Acts 1 and 2, and Act 3 seems only to feature the side quest to find the shaman’s son. For such a massive game, there seems to be a lot of untapped opportunity.

Two: NPCs in the current build seem largely unused and unimportant aside from being vendors. Once I get Renly’s tools, he seems to fall out of the story. (And if he is actively seeking other survivors, why aren’t we helping him do so? Surely there are some people lost in the Grelwood we could find and direct back to camp? Surely some wolves are now a problem and we need to put them down?)

The bottom line is this: if you want players to explore and discover new and cool things, or if you want players to fave more fun farming and grinding, then you should give them things to do in the world itself. My thinking is that each radiant quest could offer a small amount of shards or other kind of useful currency (as outlined above), while at the same time giving deeper characterization for both the world and the NPCs. Just thinking . . . you could even have different NPCs give different difficulties of radiant quests, or different flavors of radiant quests. Part of the running gag for random loot merchants could be that players have to go out and find lost shipment crates in the surrounding zones for them. Or since Una sells magic items, maybe she needs players to collect quest items specifically from blue or yellow monsters.


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7. Bugs and Technical Issues
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I am not a professional bug hunter by any means, but I did notice some things which might need attention.

The boss fight in Titan’s Grotto features a stage that crumbles. The problem is that my character glitches above and below the stage when I try to skirt the edge. My character also glitches above and beneath the boss itself when I run up to the arm and hit it.

In stages that feature openable doors, my character can glitch over the wall for a moment just by approaching the door. Sometimes when this happens, I have gone through into the next room before the door opens.

In the Venom Crypt in Act 3, debris I run into randomly flies around the zone and even bounces up to hit the camera. Given that it moves so erratically, it doesn’t seem intentional.

If my inventory is full and I want to hold an extra piece of gear, I can try to change out the gear piece and then quickly exit the menu. The hand/pointer will default to the lower right side of the screen still holding the item, and I will maintain control of my character in all regards. Essentially, it becomes kind of like carrying a container around the wasteland in Fallout 4 for extra bag space.


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8. Summary and Recommendations
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Overall, this is potentially a wonderful game, and I look for this to be a strong competitor for Game of the Year. The atmosphere, soundtrack, and art together create a compelling world I want to visit again and again. Most of the gameplay is smooth, meaningful, and fair, featuring very few gotcha moments and very few boss mechanics which can’t be overcome after a few tries.

This is not to say there isn’t room for improvement, especially regarding the warrior class and accessibility features for people with disabilities. Some key areas for improvement include the following:

— The Warrior class as a whole needs reconceptualizing. The entire class is too slow and the ascendancy, unlike other classes, pigeonholes players into maces. Several mace skills are underpowered, misplaced in the tree, or useless. This class simply is not compelling to play when compared with other classes.

— Pulsing or glowing ground effects should be added as an accessibility feature to better help players (especially those with impairments and disabilities) know what is coming and when to GTFO. Or, if that is not fitting with the spirit of the game, developers should find better and consistent ways of visually and aurally telegraphing big damage-dealers from monsters and bosses.

— Spell effects that are difficult to see because they blend in with ground colors (such as poison, fire, and ice) should have bolder animations to help distinguish them from safe environments.

— There should be an in-game auction house so that trading items is not unnecessarily convoluted and does not break immersion.

— If items are to be bought and sold using the various orbs found in the game, then those orbs must necessarily have increased drop rates.

— All white gear should be salvageable for Artificer’s shards and quality shards so that the crafting system can be better utilized.

— Players should have an option for cooperative looting when in a party.

My final request is perhaps the simplest and yet most important: Please listen to your player base. Weigh and judge their concerns and implement their desired changes as appropriate. Don’t merely say you are listening – show them in the product itself. Right now the industry is primed for a company that does such, especially since AAA companies like Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Zenimax, and Ubisoft have long since turned blind eyes and deaf ears to what players want from their games. CD Projekt Red and Hello Games have not, though, and are now hailed as exemplars. With this game, GGG could very well find itself ranked among the best in the industry. But they will need to have a good relationship with their player base to make that happen.

You have earned a fan in me, and I look forward to the rest of our early release material!

sounds fake and cope

Nope, not fake. Actually a middle-aged blind teacher who likes games. Go figure, huh?

despite being someone who actively says that character background story isnt too important in arpgs, i really appreciate how in depth OP goes on talking about the story.

op, you're right about all that you mentioned about things being being disjointed. as well as the player motivations etc.

heres my take on how to get to town.

GGG should STEAL from D4.

D4's begins in a very organic way. the player, for whatever reason is stuck in a snow storm and needs shelter, which leads them to a village.

POE2, could do something similar but instead make it so the dying man gives the player a quest to deliver something in a nearby town. promising a reward. the player at this point logically has nothing else to do and lacks a place to stay/hide etc, no harm going.

this could then embark them onto the story and the game keeps pushing forward.

as for character backstory.

i actually am a fan of keeping the players backstory a mystery so that players can use their imagination to fill in the blanks.

in diablo likes i like the idea that i am playing ME. rather than some unknown character. this is MY story.

this is my journey, my hardships. this is my fantasy. a very good example of this is dungeon siege 1. we're just a farmer who could have been a retired general or even hero.

instead of half assing 6 different background stories that most players dont seem to care enough for, put all the effort into making us care into the NPCs.

look at una, its a shame we dont get to hear her sing in game but damn shes interesting.

balbala is a tragic tale of repentance. whatever she did before, she now helps people to ascend.

doryani is so interesting and i want to know more about him.

i want to know more about the NPCs than my character's backstories.

Wow, this is just a lot of words to say almost nothing. Makes me sad to see stuff like this. Reflection of the education system I guess.