First impressions thread

My first impression of the game was that I loved it, although with as long as I've been anticipating it excitement as some effect on that. There were a few things I found annoying, for instance armor cards are extremely overpowered at low levels. I almost lost a battle 3v1 with close to full health on all of my guys because he had 2 armor 2 cards with a chance of 4+, because all of my attacks I was drawing dealt 2 to 4 damage, most of them 2 or 3, with just a single armor card succeeding he took negligible damage, and with a 75 percent chance of success (2 coin flips needing only 1 win), I lost 2 of my characters just dealing the last 4 damage. Other than that and the few bugs I encountered, I did enjoy it quite a bit, the tutorial was amusing, so it didn't bother me at all despite that I felt I already knew how to play. I'm a huge fan of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the game, and it does it well, it really does feel like your playing a lighthearted game with friends, even though playing single player. I wish the mage had more of a range, as a reach of 2 feels very insignificant, though I would assume the reaches get farther as they level more. All in all, a great game that just still needs a little finishing touches, as I would expect from a beta.

 

I've enjoyed the game so far. I'm interested and excited, although finding it a little easy. A couple of specific comments, in the order encountered:
1. The initial log-in is weird--I assume that's just because of the beta set-up, but entering the access name and password so you can then create an account is weird.

2. When you first pick a character, you're told to pick a fighter, but the characters for the priests and wizards are present, too. This feels weird. It feels much weirder when you return to get a wizard (per tutorial instructions) and you have to scroll through the priests to get to the wizards.

3. Looting: Looting is a core part of the game, and currently not feeling as fun as it could.
a. Opening chests to find one lame item (barrel of herring) is frustrating--I'd rather that when there's only a single item, you just find the item, with the open chest reserved for multiple items.
b. Also, more variety in loot would be better--when I first killed an armored pig, I got a barrel of herring. Why not get the side of bacon, which has the same sell value anyways? I was a little annoyed to get barrel after barrel of herring--same value items with different labels would make this more satisfying.
c. You get vendor trash and buy an upgraded weapon before you get a real item drop (or at least I did--don't know how randomized this is. To me, getting cool items that you can use is more fun than getting money and buying them at the shop. Of course, both are important. But I might make the first good treasure a woodsman's axe, instead of a gem. Make the gem the second big treasure, and introduce the shop a little later to get the excitement early on.

4. More variety in monsters early on would be nice. "Oh, gee, another kobold fight." If these were mixed up with some giant rats, or goblins, or spiders, or whatever, it would be nice.

5. Perhaps the adventures should be longer? They feel a little choppy at 2 fights per adventure.

6. Difficulty: The game has felt really easy up through the end of the tutorial--almost boringly so. I've won every fight on my first try, without necessarily playing particularly well. Only one fight had a significant risk of a PC dropping (I'm not sure what the defeat condition is--if it's any PCs dropping, then I came close to losing the big final battle--if its all PCs dropping, then even the fight where one PC almost fell was still a sure thing victory). I'll see how things change as new adventures open up (and the option to pick adventures, including higher level adventures, is great). I might consider making the tutorial a little tougher (or perhaps having a choice to take a tougher path?)

7. Adventures resetting: this seems like a good mechanic, and I'm fine waiting for adventures to reset (especially because early on, I'm not really interested in replaying adventures), but it would be nice to have some indication of how long it will take for them to reset.

 

I was actually planning on adding that the fights get significantly harder (and thus more interesting, and more rewarding of good play) shortly after the tutorial ends. The troglodytes challenged me some, and the final fight in the wizard's tower beat me on my first try. So that's great. But I think the tutorial might last half an hour or so, and that's a little long with all of the fights being routine.

As for the bug, I'm happy to help with whatever more info I can.

 

Very enjoyable so far. Got a little bit difficult fairly quickly (damn reach weapons) but that just made me rethink my approach and the second time was the charm. I also had the bug in the tavern, it wanted me to make a wizard but allowed me to make and add clerics, but then not move on. Liking it so far and can see how it's going to really be interesting with multiplayer.

 

Actually, I'm concerned that after being too easy in the tutorial, it rapidly gets very hard. I just failed my 3rd or 4th adventure in a row. Sure, some of those are quests, but the level 4 (is that the right nomenclature?) adventures are really, really tough. Both the prison break and the goblin adventure schooled me. In both cases, I lost twice in the 3rd battle, and then wiped in the final battle.

I'm feeling a little bewildered right now--I don't know how I should be equipping my party, and my only thought for how to advance is to grind some of the early adventures to level up a little (and get some better loot), which isn't thrilling me. I'm still having fun, but I'm struggling a little.

 

YOU CALLED IT CARDHUNTERIA!

I love you forever.

More details to follow.

 

I wondered if that would make it to launch, but its a nice light (and appropriately DM-snarky) intro, IMO.

Overall, the tutorial has delivered. The pen-and-paper theme is well done and I think the video game meets tabletop feeling is expressed well.

There's a few unnecessary clicks you have to make (like opening the chest, then looting) but overall the UI has been fluid and intuitive.

My Mac likes the option to use spacebar instead of right clicking.

 

Okay, yay, I've played! That's essential to the first impression: getting to play. I imagine that the barrier I faced will be relieved by some mechanic in the future. (I'm being silly.)

All the "smoothness" I spied in preliminary videos is just as smooth in the real thing: animations, card sorting, even scrolling the window when you run into some situation where you want/need to. Like when you're between battles in a module, and the camera pans from the plot text down to your loot/mule screen: you can just drag the view back to the module, because it's "all on the same gaming table."

The gameplay seems just as smooth. I'm glad that there's an animation speed slider, because I personally think that most events are understandable at first glance, but I could imagine the need to get a closer look. I was caught once by the auto-targeting thing, where I thought I had a healing target lined up but accidentally self-healed (on a character with maximum health); I'm also glad that this can be turned off. Again, in most cases, it behaved as I understood it would.

The experience was jarred a few places where there were cosmetic bugs, but I'll be mentioning those elsewhere. Do "cosmetic bugs" belong with "regular bugs" in the bug forum, or not? I'm thinking of making a single thread for a bunch of them, since they're not as important.

 

I also got to try my hand at the game, and am loving it so far. The two things I want to note as being absolutely fantastic, things that will keep me coming back (aside from my inate dedication to the game), are the smoothness, and Gary. Both of those aspects of the game are simply gold, and as far as I've played into the game those two things shine so bright it's hard to see anything else. Well done BM, well done. I can't wait to get my hands on more.

 

I seem to have some slow down when a new round is starting, where everyone draws cards, maybe its because i have youtube running or something.

I really enjoy getting loot at the end of each battle rather than dungeon !

 

My first impression is: wonderful!
The first quest is easy and I think very useful for new players (new even to a card game) to understand the basic game's dynamics.
The graphic is clear and clean.
Gain a loot at every battle is an enjoyable thrill.
The story seems interesting so far.
More insight later.

 

Please let more of us play!