The Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo And Stupid Gameplay Mechanics

[Something Amyss]

Another thing I'm wondering is why it's on Steam, since EA is publishing. Thought they were all pissy with Valve.

Or is EA not publishing? If that's the case, why am I promted to sign into an EA account to play?

Silly gamer, you actually thought EA would have a single stance?

(Yeah, EA is Publishing, evidently)

 

[Wolfram23]

I got the PC version of the demo. Did anyone else have to deal with DISGUSTING loading times? My computer runs the game at 60fps, and yet I had to wait a good two minutes for the character creation screen to load.

No, but it is on a Corsair Force Series GT 120gb SSD.

You might need to do some hard drive maintenance. If you have a lot of movies/docs/pics/clutter all stored in a single drive, you're going to hugely lose performance as HDDs are fastest at the beginning portions. Using Partitions to divide a HDD and then put all your media on the slow part, while reserving the fast part for programs, makes a pretty big difference.

Also, defrag

 

[ZeroMachine]

I got the PC version of the demo. Did anyone else have to deal with DISGUSTING loading times? My computer runs the game at 60fps, and yet I had to wait a good two minutes for the character creation screen to load.

No, but it is on a Corsair Force Series GT 120gb SSD.

You might need to do some hard drive maintenance. If you have a lot of movies/docs/pics/clutter all stored in a single drive, you're going to hugely lose performance as HDDs are fastest at the beginning portions. Using Partitions to divide a HDD and then put all your media on the slow part, while reserving the fast part for programs, makes a pretty big difference.

Also, defrag

It is pretty full at this point (1.5 terabytes spread over 4 drives and the C: drive is about full) but I don't have that problems with far more complex games (Skyrim, Crysis, Battlefield 3). Maybe it installed incorrectly.

But yeah, a defrag sounds like a pleasant idea.

 

[Smooth Operator]

This is quite hilarious because I played several hour of the demo and I didn't even realize it until halfway into the thread.
It's just so middle of the road and forgettable I'm surprised anyone made a topic on it, I wouldn't agree it's particularly bad just particularly average, they have absolutely nothing note worth and with it nothing that could convince me to give them money.

I really don't understand how people decide to develop things like this, if you got nothing new to show us then why are you wasting your time and consequently ours.

 

[Deathmageddon]

I stole stuff and had no problem with psychic guards... maybe it's a glitch or something. My main problems with the demo were that the camera sucks a big load (unless it's a shooter, 3rd person games NEED to zoom out during combat!), and the dodge roll didn't always take me in the direction I was pointing. The alchemy wasn't explained at all, either, I found a bunch of ingredients but I still have no idea what I was supposed to do with them.

I don't think the game is worth throwing down $65. Then again like, no game is actually worth that much money.

Either you haven't played anything good, or you're a pirate, which makes you half responsible for SOPA/PIPA, which will implode the internet if they pass. So thanks for that.

**** pirates.

 

[Aris Khandr]

Another thing I'm wondering is why it's on Steam, since EA is publishing. Thought they were all pissy with Valve.

Or is EA not publishing? If that's the case, why am I promted to sign into an EA account to play?

EA isn't "pissy" with Valve. Valve is demanding that EA sell the DLC for their games through the Steam store if they sell it. EA, naturally, doesn't want to give Valve a slice of that particular pie as well. So Valve told them to take a hike. I guarantee that EA would have no problem selling on Steam. As the issue seems to be DLC related, I theorize that Amalur won't have any. Or, at least, doesn't have any planned at this time.

 

[Irridium]

Another thing I'm wondering is why it's on Steam, since EA is publishing. Thought they were all pissy with Valve.

Or is EA not publishing? If that's the case, why am I promted to sign into an EA account to play?

EA isn't "pissy" with Valve. Valve is demanding that EA sell the DLC for their games through the Steam store if they sell it. EA, naturally, doesn't want to give Valve a slice of that particular pie as well. So Valve told them to take a hike. I guarantee that EA would have no problem selling on Steam. As the issue seems to be DLC related, I theorize that Amalur won't have any. Or, at least, doesn't have any planned at this time.

So EA doesn't take kindly to Valve's Terms of Service?

There's something poetic about that.

Also, from what I gathered, EA can still sell DLC however they want, wherever they want. So long as they were also on Steam. It would have simply given EA another market to sell DLC from. Hell, Bethesda still sells the Fallout 3 DLC through GFWL, as well as Steam. I don't see why EA can't sell their DLC through Steam, as well as their websites.

EA doesn't seem to have a problem selling crap-tons of DLC through Steam, as well as other stores. Not sure why they can't do the same with rest of their games.

 

[Arkley]

The first one is a blatant copy of Fable. When you have your weapons out in front of the non-enemy NPCs, a little skull will appear on the up button on the D-pad. It has a red circle and slash through it. If you press and hold it for a second and then let up, it turns off the function that prevents the player form killing the friendly NPCs. The reason I think this mechanic is stupid is that there is no reason for it other than if the player is feeling murderous and just wants to kill all friendly NPCs. Though the problem with this is that every NPC, accept main story NPCs, can be killed, even the quest givers. So if you go on a homicidal rampage and decide to kill the equivalent of the game's town sheriff that just gave you a quest, you will lose that quest and never be able to complete it. That problem gets worse coming up.

Hiya, I'm going to respond to each of your criticisms one at a time. Some I agree with, some I don't, but I'm starting with this one because it's by far the silliest. But on that note, I want to add a disclaimer before I begin; I'm aware that sometimes, written criticism, particularly when directed at a person, can sound belittling or condescending. I want to make it clear that this is not the case, and I am not insulting you.

Anyway, to begin with above quote:

How on Earth can you perceive the above situation to be a bad thing? I can understand being unhappy with restrictions on killing NPCs, as it can feel as though it restricts your freedom. I can understand being unhappy with no restrictions on killing NPCs, as it can lead to accidental deaths of quest-givers. But how can you criticize the game for simultaneously offering you the chance to kill NPCs if you so choose, while presenting you with the option to prevent yourself from doing so accidentally? It isn't a bad thing at all, it's a good thing.

You can't seriously be complaining that there are consequences for killing NPCs after turning off the feature that prevents you from killing NPCs, can you?

Now for a big nail in this game's coffin. It is blatantly obvious to see as we have been told, that the lead designer from Oblivion, Ken Rolston, was a part of the development of this game. First off, when I was a half hour into the game, I finally noticed that there was a number/number next to my weapons and armor. The blasted game has item wear. Most light items have a 20/20, and the heavy items have a 30/30. The game demo lasted about two hours and in that time most of my items had worn down at least by 2 to 3 points. As far as I'm concerned there is no need for this mechanic in gaming, it is my top list of stupid mechanics. While in combat, I should only be worried about beating the enemy and having fun doing it, not worrying if my staff, daggers and armor will outlast my battle with the latest big enemy. Or that when I find that my weapon needs repairing badly and I don't have any more repair items and I am possibly a half our of gameplay away form getting to a place that sells repair items.

In this criticism, you've made a mistake that virtually all user-reviewers and even some professional reviewers make regularly; you've criticised an aspect of the game without giving any details of - or even knowing yourself - how this aspect works into the greater gameplay. Degrading equipment often has a purpose for existing, and this often links into the way the game's crafting system works, the kind of and frequency of loot drops, among other things. It also gives a greater purpose to otherwise useless loot.

For example, in Skyrim, if you find an Ebony Breastplate while being in possession of a Daedric Breastplate, that Ebony plate is just useless weight until you sell it. In KoA:R, the Ebony plate could be a useful backup for when your Daedric is too damaged, or it could be dismantled for parts to repair your other equipment or build new equipment.

Item degradation also has the bonus of making loot more exciting - and necessary - to discover. After all, that shiny broadsword might not last forever.

You should not immediately condemn the inclusion of a mechanic simply because you haven't liked its implementation in other games, particularly if you have no idea how its implementation functions in relation to the rest of the game's mechanics.

This is a moronic mechanic and makes the game less enjoyable. I come across and item and say, neat that is the ingredient I've been looking for; I walk up to it and pick it and it says there is none there, then I "RAGE!!!". Why of why instead of putting over 50 pick-able items in one small area and only around 20% yielding and item, why not just put 10 or 15 pick-able items in the area, and just let the player pick them up like he should be able to. Oh, and items don't disappear when you pick them, they stupidly shrink back in on themselves like a turtle. This tells me that the items probably respawn in time, but still the whole thing is just messed up and not enjoyable. It would be like, if in real life, I go outside and pick a dandelion and then it just vanishes from my hand, or if I got to pick it and on it's own, it shrivels and retreats into the ground away from my grasp. Just plain stupid, not fun, and not needed.

It is not a "moronic mechanic", it is a perfectly functional and reasonable one. The reason you don't get reagents from plants sometimes is that your alchemy skill isn't high enough to harvest them from that particular plant with a high rate of success. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to implement; it makes valuable reagents rare and restricts their availability to amateur alchemists.

It's also perfectly reasonable that an amateur alchemist wouldn't be able to harvest reagents from any plant he likes without the necessary expertise. If I told you, a person wholly untrained in the field of Botany, to go out and gather the pollen and intact ovules of a Koki'o flower, you would (in addition to having no idea what one of those looks like) have no idea what I was asking for or how to harvest them without damaging them. Keep in mind that the fateless one does not have access to Google.

Basically, this stops you running around and grabbing a bunch of freely available reagents and selling them instead of leveling alchemy. If you level alchemy, then they'll be useful to you, and can thus justify a higher sale price and rarity, and so, once you have the expertise, the game lets you gather them.

So, I proceed to pick the lock and I successfully do it and take the contents, but as soon as I exit the item menu after taking everything. Guard turns and says (snipped)

As for all of this, I agree about the psychic guards, it's a bit dumb. They could probably justify the first guard finding you by saying he heard you pick the lock or, upon finding the lock picked & container robbed, used his stunning intellect to deduce that neither the shopkeeper nor he himself had picked the lock and thus it must have been you. But every guard everywhere immediately knowing is stupid.

As for your problem with the bandits, it's because you levelled up along with the foes around you, but you didn't increase your stealth skill. I had the same issue at first; early in the game I could stealth-gank foes only a few feet away from each other, but as I got further into the demo they started spotting me from further and further away. When I played through the second time I made sure to keep the stealth related skill levelled, and I managed to continue to stealth kill without much cause for concern.

All in all, the game does have its flaws. But among the flaws you report with the game are:

1. Something that is actually a good thing

2. A mechanic that can and does work quite well depending on the circumstances (circumstances that you are unaware of), and is subjective at the best of times

3. A mechanic that is a completely reasonable and indeed, well thought out feature

4. An actual flaw

5. That one cannot expect to perform reliable stealth kills if they do not level their stealth skill.

In closing, I appreciate that the game may not have been what you were hoping for, but you really ought to avoid knee-jerk reactions like these when posting complaints on a forum. There's always going to be someone who understands the way games work a little better than you do, and they'll always be happy to point out why your points are flawed.

 

[Swyftstar]

I had two problems myself.
The first was the combat. I actually liked it, I liked it so much that I eschewed any other part of the game and just went looking for stuff to try combos on. You know, stuff like, use the shadow attack to stun for a sec, hit with the big sword, pause and hit again for the knockup, charge the dagger dash attack, get five hits with that and finish off with a lightning bolt. I was so obsessed with looking for things to try out new combos on that I was annoyed by that fact that there was an rpg present wasting my time.
The second is goes hand in hadn with the first, making the first all the more annoying. I don't think I want to be in another open world rpg for a while yet. I have spent so many hundreds of hours in Skyrim, I'd like some narrative based, lead by the nose games for a while.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Well, I really hadn't intended to write a review, it just evolved into a partial one because I thought it would help with the kind of discussion I was looking for, which I think is turning out rather well so far.

Though I really feel that if I became a game reviewer, I would be the type of reviewer that would review with preferences in mind and in the end give my recommendation on those preferences, in that if have similar preferences, the game may or may not be for you, if you don't agree with my preferences, again depending on how I rate the game, the game may or may not for you.

I tend to find reviewers like that more helpful, because if a reviewer is trying to be to meet all types of players on a middle ground when trying to do the review, I feel that the reviewer is lost in it all and I have a hard time determining if a reviewer likes a game and then I get confused when in the end it seems like the review score doesn't reflect what I thought the reviewer was saying.

Eh, I actually thought it was really good.

I really wasn't saying the game was bad. It's okay, I might still get it. The only reason my Cons section was so much larger, is that I was in rage mode against those mechanics. The psychic guard/townsfolk thing I found to be a broken mechanic, while the the item wear and alchemy reagent things to be mechanics that really add nothing important or needed to game play and also just waste time and possible space that could be used for other things that actually add to the game experience.

you said this game was like a small rip off from fable ... when i first played the demo my first thoughts were ... this is the sequel of how fable should have been ... fable 1 was good, fable 2 & 3 were pretty bad & didn't fit into the feel of the first game, but this one does, so im considering this the "how fable 2 should have been"

Well, I only meant that that one little turn off NPC safety mode was a rip-off of Fable. Heck, it use exact same button "Up D-Pad" as Fable, and I believe even the same symbol, a little skull, as Fable did. I just find it to be something that really isn't needed and really shouldn't be in games, because it can mess things up for people if they some how accidentally press it.

I mean, it ends up that you can actually kill the quest givers, something I think should never be possibly unless it is an integrated story choice in the game. My reasoning is that I don't want to accidentally kill someone and then find out they were and important part of a future quest.

I believe the Mercantile skill is the one that allows you to buy/sell goods for less/more gold. It also allows you to sell stolen goods to any merchant rather than just fences at higher levels, which is quite handy I guess, unless fences are rather commonplace.

I knew that. What I was getting at is that besides that usually, when one becomes better at alchemy, the potions that are made with better boosts and power ups, usually fetch hire prices in general. I was just meaning that I would rather have more perks that give more power-ups to my potions than a couple point spots that help out with an arbitrary pick success on alchemy ingredients.

 

[Arcobalen]

I quite enjoyed the demo. My main problem was the bow, it was rather terrible. Also, what was so bad about Oblivion? Was my favorite game for a while. Although, I've really only seen two stances on Oblivion, you either hate it or love it.

 

[Fishyash]

I am downloading the demo right now. I saw it and was finding it interesting. Kind of like a "how fable 2/3 should have been" kind of feeling. The videos haven't ceased to impress me so far, but I will definately need to see how the game holds up.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

EA is only publisher in this game, they don't own 38 studios like they own bioware. I imagine 38 studios aren't retarded enough to ditch steam simply because ea wants to. You can also opt-out from signing to ea account, you don't get those bonus items in that case. But who really cares?

Actually as I stated in my original post, those extra Mass Effect 3 items tacked onto the demo as an incentive was the only reason I played the demo. Heck, I wouldn't have even known the game existed/was going to launched soon, if I hadn't watched a Mass Effect 3 report about it that a friend showed me.

Even if I had seen the game demo without incentives in random passing on the XBLA, I would never have tried it and or even given it a second look.

Even with the problems I had with the demo, I still might get the game. So in that respect, the ME3 incentives will most likely snare them some extra sales of their game.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I quite enjoyed the demo. My main problem was the bow, it was rather terrible. Also, what was so bad about Oblivion? Was my favorite game for a while. Although, I've really only seen two stances on Oblivion, you either hate it or love it.

Yes the bow was bad.

Well, I would have liked Oblivion more if it had been like Skyrim, in that when making Skyrim, Bethesda removed those game mechanics that I mentioned as problems that Ken Rolston brought over from Oblivion to Kingdoms of Amalur. The psychic guards, item wear, and failure chances when picking alchemy reagents instead of just letting me pick them up and getting them because they are there.

 

[Lionsfan1986]

I'm just playing to get the weapons and armor for Mass Effect 3. I have no intention of buying this game.

 

[Roganzar]

I liked the demo on PC, haven't tried it on PS3 yet, psychic guards/townsfolk aside, my only problem was the whole silent protagonist thing. I answer the people's questions and stand there staring dumbfounded as they blather away at me. I kinda thought that we had gotten away from silent protagonists unless the whole game was that way.
Well maybe not, Skyrim and all, but it felt kinda wrong that my character had no voice. Especially with some of the lines to the Fateweaver guy you meet early on just begging for a halfway decent voice actor to make snarky comments about his sobriety.

I'll probably get it in a few months after a little price drop or through Gamefly. Yes I abuse those hard working publishers so.

 

[Lunar Templar]

To the designers: When I pick flower, I better damn well get a flower. Because it just isn't right that an incredibly bad-ass mage that is destroying enemies with great magic powers, can't just grab a flower.

Oh, sure, you can grab a flower. But magic in most systems is far more specific than "bring me a flower". You need the pistil intact, the stamen unbent, the petals preserved just so. Failing isn't "you didn't get the flower". It means that the flower you picked was useless in the magical process, because you are an uneducated lummox, ham-handedly pawing at the bloom like a 6th grader getting to second base for the first time. Professor Snape would assign you a two foot report on the proper way to collect ingredients, and likely offer a disparaging remark about your prior education as well. Amalur just tells you you failed.

actually, that kinda annoyed me to, but since i WAS play a 'ham-handed-sharp-end-goes-in-the-other-guy-Drow-warrior' it didn't bother me to much.

only thing that really bugged me was the length of said demo, it was fun, and i liked where it was going

 

[Zaik]

I don't remember repairing weapons in Oblivion.

Maybe you're thinking of Morrowind?

 

[Terramax]

Some of the 'cons' you list are more personal preferences, than flaws.

The entire thing was based on his preferences.

He said they were 'flaws'. That's not saying you personally didn't like something. It's stating that there is something wrong with the game.