First impressions thread

So far I'm likeing my first time playing this game, The tutorial was neet, getting me right into the action with mighty characters, and in the end, we find out that I was playing with someone elses team. (I know how Gary's brother feels, I hate it when others play my file on a game).

During these battles I noticed my first complain with the battle screen: the camera was locked in place. I tried to scroll to the top of the board to get a better look at my pieces that are cut off at the top of the screen, and I coulden't. I would apreciate it if I could scrool around the board in the future.

So then off to choose my character, I started with a Dwarf Warrior named Garnet Oakstone. I would have liked to have customized him a bit more, but I understand if thats for later in the beta.

So I took Garnet though the first LV 1 battle, and won. It dose feel good to start with the most basic cards and still come out on top.

Then I went though the second mission, but right as I am about to win, my internet cuts out. so I reset the browser menu, log back in, I go to the mission again, and it tells me to collect my loot. (my last move was a winning one) So I do. but when I returned to the map, Gary is telling my to finnish the Kobolds, witch I did. So I try to do so again, only now theres this timer telling me that I have to wait untill the cooldown wares off to battle again.

In short, I'm stuck now untill I can finish that mission again! Is this cooldown a way to prevent farming in this game? I really dislike that aspect of these games.

So now I'm gonna try the Skip Tutorial button and see if that helps.

 

Im liking it right now. Very impressive. Even the little sound effects give it some more character (little wizardess going "uuhhhh" when smacked by a pike is funny). Although i didnt find the starting battle caused me to have to restart since i looted the weapon and didnt drag and drop

 

well well first impressions....
one: gary is great(so is pizza^^)
two: the game plays pretty strategic and is fairly challenging...i really like that
three: the game reacts kinda slow and round cleanup(drawing, discarding/ai discard) takes far too long
i guess the last one will be resolved with time and optimisation
and i have not played much so far(only level 3-4) and i kinda whish for more party customization/ more sidegrades....but thats most likely cause i am still far too early in the game for most of that to appear
PS: i love the table...its so cool to scroll around and look at the edges of the table...even if its pointless cause there is nothing...it is just cool that it is there =)

 

So far I'm loving Card Hunter, logged in immediately after getting the beta invite and did almost all of the starting missions. I'm really liking how the game is presented, you guys really nailed the looks and feel of an old school rpg. The combat is strategic and from what I've played so far the learning curve seems to be doing just fine. Another thing I like is that the interface isn't in your face at all times, allowing you to continue looking at the detail put into the board, cards, and characters.
As for criticisms, the only things I've came across so far is that sometimes after I've completed a mission, I forget to drag the treasure from the chest into my inventory and its left behind when I continue, which could be fixed by a reminder prompt (or me not being forgetful). Another being that I'd like to be able to use my mouse wheel to scroll through vendor windows. All in all, I'm really impressed so far and I'm looking forward to more!

 

My first impression is through the 1-3 level content.

The very first thing I thought right after logging in (when Gary says hello and the background music kicks in) was where are the options so I can turn down the volume. Thankfully it was only 2 or 3 clicks to the tutorial map where there is access to the options menu.

After completing the tutorial I ctrl-clicked the sword and could not find it on any of the item inventory slots. This left Gary asking me to drag it over to the warriors hand. In the end I refreshed the browser and played the tutorial again.

Atmosphere
It does feel like a board game. Having a Gary guide you along fits very well. The music has a bit of that old console rpg vibe to it. The ambient sounds at the various locations on the overhead map are done well.

The board surface is pretty much perfect. The cardboard stand miniatures also bring home the entire atmosphere. The limited us of animations works. If there were more animations it may begin to break the board game feel.

The adventures shown as booklets, the table top, soda, snacks... you've nailed the atmosphere well.

Gameplay
Gameplay is straight forward and intuitive. There are some cards that play from the hand a bit differently than others.

For example, if you left click a card that requires you to choose a target the card slides up a bit. Left clicking the card pushes it back down. Movement cards do not function in this manner. If you click a movement card the card is pulled from your hand and you have to select a square to move.

I understand that clicking an attack card when only one enemy in range speeds up the game play. I also realize that mousing over the show where a move card will move or where a cone attack will it.

However, my initial reaction is that consistency in how the card leaves your hand could be better. I'll get used to it, but having all the cards stay in "slid up" format until you confirm the move on the board would be nice. They are cards, I want to fiddle with them before I make my final decision by clicking on the board. Maybe have a quick play toggle in the gameplay options.

Interface
There are a few things about the interface that I think could be made a little more clear.

When Gary says something the text banner often doesn't stand out enough. If his text is treated as a prompt requiring a player to press a button the entire component needs to "pop" on screen much more than in its current state. Give it more drop shadow to set it apart from the background, give it a soft glow, have the banner ends blow in the breeze a bit... it needs to be a tad more obvious.

There are a number of times where a location or slot is flashing. My first impulse is to click on the flashing icon (boom head shot). But Gary's text is treated as a prompt and you have to click his prompt button before you can interact with the flashing icon.

Experience
Loving the game so far. Where has this genre been for the last 20 years? So great to see this game a reality. I have a similar DnD style pet project I work on from time to time also built in actionscript. (although it uses top down tokens). I love the cardboard miniatures in card hunter.

Hope this project is a huge success for Blue Manchu. I'd love to see co-op, DM mode, and an adventure construction kit.

[EDIT]

Performance
I played through the 1-3 adventures. By the time I was on the last level 3 adventure it was taking 20 seconds to deal out cards. Since this game is built in actionscript it wouldn't surprise me if there are memory leaks. Closing the tab and reloading the site did fix the issue.

 

Even quicker fix: press F1 three times (opens and closes console). That will also clear the memory and make things fast again.

 

I kind of like it but kind of hate how the adventures take time to reset. Instead of putting a timer on them why don't ya just limit how much experience you get like if your a certain level you dont get experience from that adventure any more but you can still get the loot.

 

First impression from the limited time I had to play last night:

Graphics and sound were spot-on and there was no slowdown in the limited animations and UI selections. I see you went for the now standard MMO tutorial bait-and-switch where you are given a more advanced character at the start to show off advanced concepts before starting over at level 1. That's good. I was worried I wasn't going to start from scratch after all.

I like having the option to choose the race of the classes I recruit - gives my team that much more flavor. As for the combat itself, I didn't see anything that stood out as problematic - except maybe when I needed to know the health of my characters. I confused the cards remaining counter for the character's health before I bothered to mouse over it. After looking around, I finally saw the number at the base of the figures and everything is good now.

That's it for now and I hope to give even more feedback on what is looking to be an amazing game.

 

Ok so with the march intake there should be an extra hundred of us around and I couldn't find an old thread to throw this into.

First impressions are great, extremely intuitive, flows very nicely indeed. Deck building is a dream, the art style is absolutely magical in motion and the weapons come thick and fast.

I did notice a couple of tiny gripes, although they are probably just me so opinions welcome.
1:The game never explicitly tells you of the existence of a discard step or how many cards you can have left in hand, it's fairly obvious after the first time sure, but that first time was crushing.
2:Some cards can't be cancelled once selected. I've only noticed it happening to moves but if I hit the wrong mouse button, or the cat jumps on my bloody desk again and I end up left clicking a move card I'm stuck with it.
3:I have a bit of trouble telling what is blocking terrain, it's only a bit but especially on the cavern levels I keep screwing up lines of site because the entire board is flat, maybe if the board had elevation changes the same height as character bases I could see it better.
4:It can take a while to figure out that the hand is sorted in order of newest card on the left, so a prompt the first time it's relevant maybe telling you which card is oldest would help, once you now it's obvious as hell.
5:What causes adventures to refresh?

Oh, just in case, there was a missing single letter word in the battle description for one of the battles in the Troglodyte caverns, can't remember which, pretty sure it was pre-battle not post though

 

Also Hi. And thanks to Destructo for the hard work with the contest.

 

You probably looked in the wrong sub forum here is the link or if you pm Destructo I'm sure he will be a good guy and move your post for you. http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/threads/first-impressions-thread.333/

but for now


2: Some cards trigger on movement both beneficial and negative that's why you aren't allowed to take back a started move action.
3: Right clicking any square will tell you for sure even if the art is confusing or in rare cases wrong right click as far as i have seen can't be wrong.
5: Its a specific time i heard 00:00 gmt last time it was talked about.

 

Welcome aboard!

The original thread is stickied over here. Dunno if MegaDestructo will want to move your thread into the same forum. (Huh, look at that: Wozarg got there first.)

Some replies:

1. Good point. May I recommend suggesting a tutorial text over here? I've tried to come up with a few myself.
2. Here's the word from Jon:

3. Blocking terrain has a thick black border. Personally I think it could be "thicker," i.e., more prominent. Also, try right-clicking on stuff for more info.
4. It's the funniest thing. You know that tutorial text thread? The first bit anyone suggested was text for this issue. I get the impression that this is important to us players.
5. It's a little iffy, but at one point it was synched to a certain time of day. I've lost track.

 

Thanks guys. I couldn't find a PM button, so I started a convo with Destructo as the only recipient. Am I blind or is that how it's done?

 

As far as i know that is how its done and after trying it i really like it a lot more

 

THE MERGENING HAS HAPPENED. ALL SHALL BEAR WITNESS TO MY FORUM MODERATING POWERS.

 

We shall also witness that our noble moderator has discovered the "font size" tag. Truly, we are in the presence of greatness, and blessed are we to be moderated by one such as Megadestructo.

Three cheers!

 

Feed back after 1 day of play.

I have watched all the videos several times and read most of the forum before playing so I do not have 'first' impressions about UI, atmosphere and gameplay. Love them all.

The one thing I noticed though is a huge spike in difficulty. I cruised through all the level 1 to 3 adventures, they were challenging, I had to replay the odd battle but all in all very satisfying.
BUT, I hit the wall with my level 4,3,3 guys when there was only level 4 and 5 adventures left. I managed fine until the stage where you encounter the Slime and the stage where you encounter that Flickering Flame for the first times, respectively. Those encounters really felt impossible with the guys (no dwarves) and drops I had. I am aware that I can replay the level 2-3 encounters again when they unlock to get my guys to level 4-4-4... but still.

In the encounter with the slime I could somewhat contain and kill most of the lizardmen by the time the slime crossed the map and engaged, but the badly battered party could offer very little resistance.

In the encounter with the flame thing and the victory circle. The AI smartly camps the victory circle with the flame and four imps. As soon as I get LOS, let alone approach the circle all my guys get hit very hard and end the round with 2-3 flame dots. Dislodging the five mobs from there, let alone killing them seem theoretically impossible with the current party.

Things that otherwise left me puzzeled (not necessarily bugs, just me being clueless)
- The Flickerting Flame mentioned above kept playing move cards, without moving or even changing its facing. It was standing in the middle of a victory cirle.
- On some other maps prior to that there was a yellow circle on the ground but standing in it with one of my characters (and no one else) did not seem to award VPs. Neither did the mobs particularly try to camp it. Sorry I am crap at names, but it was the map with the Trog Shaman.
- When a character is at the edge of the map he can actually chose to target a cone in the direction entirely outside the map, that looked strange.

Anyway great game, it does live up to my big expectation buildup