New player observations

[huwie]

Hi everyone

I'm very new to DoF, having just bought it today. I've had a couple of quick sessions and I'd like to make some observations based on an hour or so of play.

Firstly, although I'm about to highlight some serious issues that I feel need to be investigated immediately, I think there's a great game underneath which has incredible promise. I desperately want to see DoF achieve its potential!

That being said, here are my issues:

1. Connectivity. This is my biggest bugbear right now. My internet connection is currently quite unstable. During a time when I thought it was up, I tried playing DoF in online kingdom mode. I later realised that almost everything I did was after my connection died. I had expected the game to kick me out as soon as the connection dropped, but it didn't. As a consequence everything I thought I had achieved was lost. This is a serious issue! Obviously I don't mind being kicked out if my connection dies, but I don't like thinking all is fine when it isn't. I have had to restart because of this bug!
2. Units. Pathfinding is quite odd, and it's easy not to issue a move/attack command with right-click because my mouse moved slightly, with the result that the game interprets my command as moving the camera instead of moving a unit. Additionally, my units seem to split themselves into two or more groups for some reason, leaving my soldiers scattered across the map.
3. Graphics. There's something odd about the way the game looks. It's as if it's set to the wrong resolution, although apparently the game displays at my desktop resolution...?
4. Enemy unit info. If I click an enemy unit to see their info, I only get info on the specific soldier I click on. I want info on the whole unit.

There's more which I'll report later, but these are the main issues I have. If I'm doing something wrong I'd be delighted to be put right. Otherwise I think these issues are severe and am curious as to other players' experiences in these areas. Thanks for reading.

[Dreamwalker]

Hey, welcome to Dof.

Yeah, we've all had trouble with these kind of things (though that connection thing sounds new, and so is thing with enemy info). An update for pathfinding is coming, and graphics will probably get better at some point.

By the way, the resolution thing could be an issue; my resolution is 1024 by 768, and some of the icons and buttons get stuck behind each other (which can end up being a big problem, took a whole lot of bug reports to find that it was the resolution that caused it).

Anyway, hope you enjoy the game!

[Silkjc]

Originally Posted by huwie

1. Connectivity. This is my biggest bugbear right now. My internet connection is currently quite unstable. During a time when I thought it was up, I tried playing DoF in online kingdom mode. I later realised that almost everything I did was after my connection died. I had expected the game to kick me out as soon as the connection dropped, but it didn't. As a consequence everything I thought I had achieved was lost. This is a serious issue! Obviously I don't mind being kicked out if my connection dies, but I don't like thinking all is fine when it isn't. I have had to restart because of this bug!
   

1. I am on wireless broadband and this drives me INSANE, the game is nearly unplayable because of it. Also, when it does detect a drop out it closes the game to desktop, taking ages to reload, relogin, reload, get to vil, to find you're 2hrs behind.
   

   Originally Posted by huwie

   Graphics. There's something odd about the way the game looks. It's as if it's set to the wrong resolution, although apparently the game displays at my desktop resolution...?

I think this is a problem for me as well, all the textures look blocky. It may be to do with the resolution of my monitor, its super widescreen. This makes the graphics look much poorer than they actually are, and i've noticed you get used to it but it is a real shocker for new players. Perhaps the vets/devs don't notice this as much as they've been looking at it a long time.

One other problem that I think is very simple to fix is unit selection. Clicking on a unit in a control group should select that unit on screen so you can command it individually. That way we can easily remove wounded units from combat.

[Dreamwalker]

One other problem that I think is very simple to fix is unit selection. Clicking on a unit in a control group should select that unit on screen so you can command it individually. That way we can easily remove wounded units from combat.

Yeah, this is annoying. For some reason, selecting units by their icons doesn't always work right. Hopefully, it's an easy thing to fix.

[knightl]

as for pathfinding it pretty much has scrap pathfinding which does cause lagg but pathfinding is expected to come out very soon

[huwie]

Originally Posted by knightl

as for pathfinding it pretty much has scrap pathfinding which does cause lagg but pathfinding is expected to come out very soon

I hope it's a good improvement because at the moment pathfinding is awful.

I figured out why I wasn't getting info on whole enemy units. I was facing enemies that were attacking my town as part of quests. These guys don't seem to be organised into units in the first place.

I'm slowly getting to grips with the game now.

[aramsm]

Originally Posted by knightl

as for pathfinding it pretty much has scrap pathfinding which does cause lagg but pathfinding is expected to come out very soon

Oh so that was the reason for my fps drop when a select too many troops (?).

I have to agree about the graphics. Graphics are good in general, but the textures and some models could be better and looks like it doesnt fit for the high quality enviroment looking. Some times I found some dificult to distinguish my units because their uniform are too much similar.

But like you Im enjoying this game and Im ansious for the patches and see it getting better. I did some coop sieges and was fun and the community, although small, is very friendly and receptive.