Hope you're all well and resting up after this past weekend, whether you were defending yourselves from the 9 hour main mod night hunt onslaught, or having a great time with close friends at home.
Given this past event was the FINAL Beta, and a high level one at that, we would love to hear your feedback. In fact, that was the entire purpose of the event!
1. What did you enjoy the most? 2. What did you feel fell flat for you? 3. Did you have any concerns that were not addressed, whether safety, content, etc (please direct message me for any private or sensitive concerns) 4. Did you have any practical issues with the site, gameplay, directions, etc 5. What gameplay mechanical or plot content was confusing or needs better clarification? 6. What did you take away from the game? Why would you or would you not recommend it to others? We will also plan to do a recap livestream as well to discuss any feedback we received and outline our gameplan for launch in April 29th-May1st (tentatively planned for Camp Lackawanna again). I will note up front we are planning to have the proper Inn building for that event so even if it is still cold we don't have a repeat of power and heating issues. Thanks again to all who came!
You are not required to follow this outline- its more there for people who prefer such a format.
OK FEEDBACK TIME!
*INHALES*
Starting from a personal standpoint; Your ability to somehow make each player feel special is impeccable. I truly hope everyone can see how much effort you’ve put in to build Alterra as a truly character driven atmosphere rather than us showing up and paying for a show. Whether you’re some random vampire lord with his post-orgy covenant keen on feasting tonight, a werewolf with some serious creative fighting prowess, or whatever plot-important character you host, the energy and passion you put throughout every moment of the day leaves memories at all corners. Player NPCs feel the freedom to join in with their own creativity in building the atmosphere we can all enjoy. We all did great at leveling the true balance of life or death during the thrill of a HUNT! On to the rules feedback; I’m so happy to finally play a book that happily accepts roleplay over rule-play. (Of course, depending on the situation. I don’t want to mention that lightly as if players can bend rules on everything. Rather, combat RP is naturally enhanced with this sort of thing for a better experience, for example.)
I’m no rules-smith, but I felt the end-game world I got to experience was adequate and still challenging. For example, it took a lot to perform a single artifact awakening ritual. I mean, someone had to have gotten an artifact in the first place which will be hard, alongside two ritualists, a full character sheet that was primarily gatherer spending almost all their time finding the right goods, a few others lending goods that we needed, and RP equipment to put it all into full effect! Way of the Marksmen should take some further consideration. It doesn’t seem rewarding enough for the amount of OOG effort put into it alongside the continual maintenance cost of damaged arrows. If I understood this correctly, full Unerring and major skills/glyphs encompassing bows with an artifact equipped brought a total of 7 damage/arrow with an auto-hit time buff (steady shot/quick quiver if standing still) and some situational skills that simply can’t be used anywhere but in an open area. I understand that is a honest trade-off because the goal is not to build everyone into some Legolas god levels of archers, however the damage and utility just seems far far too low at any level when both meleeing and magic characters are hauling ass with twice as much damage, 5 times as fast, and have defense skills naturally built into their ways/paths leaving their glyph slots open to lots of flavor. Expeditious Retreat is a nice defense skill, but any melee character can catch that 10 paces well before you can reasonably knock an arrow. Perhaps I need to personally play that to understand it to its full extent. I understand if I’m entirely in the wrong here.
I personally plan to continue being a full blown Inscriptionist. I’m going to have to figure out how to balance that and have some sort of gather-ability or kill-ability to gain some materials without having to make deals constantly. It takes a shit ton of exp for Inscriptionist stuff and I totally understand why. I actually appreciate that as a barrier to entry given how important it is to the world of Alterra. That is not a complaint at all. TIME FOR MORE GLYPHS IS ALL!
The end-game challenge was surely there. Players felt needed. Exhausted. Hope was wavering at every minute Saturday night to the point where some characters were simply ready to accept death if they couldn’t hide good enough. Yet, at the end of it all, we came out pretty damn satisfied and accomplished.
*EXHALES*