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Release feedback


palu

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Some feedback after having gotten through the demo part and a bit further:

As usual only negative feedback is present, but the fact that there's a point in providing it should be considered as a good point in itself.

- When you're to depart for the mainland, it's not intuitively obvious that you should just plot a path there and the boat icons will bring you over (rather than looking for a highlighted harbor, which would be the intuitive choice).

- In the demo part you're recruiting generals, but there is no info that this screen later will allow you to recruit party members. Once you're given the task to go to the mainland the game ought to prompt you to recruit additional party members. There it ought to inform you that not only do you need enough recruits to fill out your party, but also that there are missions that only allow exactly one companion to participate (which was a nasty surprise, requiring a return to an earlier save), and that you also need to account for party members being sent on missions, manning camp buildings, and recovering from wounds. Some advice regarding the bringing over of generals as party members wouldn't go amiss either (probably a bad idea to have them in the party when legion battles are expected). It's also going to be messy to try to return the generals brought into the party, as there's no handy specialization summary to see who was good at what.

- You're told that you need to conquer resources, but you're left to discover that this consumes slaves (probably by an inexplicable failure to be able to conquer the second or third one). It would be useful if you're informed of that as a part of a continued tutorial beyond the demo's reach. There seems to be a repeatable mission with a timeout to buy slaves, and there seems to be one for hunting. I'd suggest a legion mission description that lists the types of missions a legion may engage in and touch on what they do.

- It's a bit annoying that the game doesn't "remember" the highlight settings for the world map, so you have to enable it every time.

- I haven't found any good way to see the status of the legion. You can get a morale indication from one of the characters, and you can find the man power by looking at recruiting more. What I think I'm looking for is something similar to the top display during legion battles, i.e. man power, injuries, missing, morale, and experience (I may well miss some info) all in one place (and preferably available without actually having to be at the camp).

- If there's a way to increase the morale of the legion apart from making choices in battle I haven't found it.

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Can't find how to update the post: Returning generals isn't much of a problem, as the data is available on the companions' panels.

Annoying issue: I want to keep one hand free on the secondary weapon set as that seems to be how you're able to revive downed companions. However, every time the secondary weapon is updated, the selected weapon abilities are scrambled. It would be useful to be able to pin abilities so they remain selected as long as they're available.

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Next issue: There is no indication of when repeatable missions will become available again (or I've failed to see it), This is particularly annoying with the hunting mission in the first province captured (haven't caught any other province with that site yet), as the icon reappears long before the mission does, causing you to have to check back repeatedly. The lookout towers also return to the display well before their "mission" does.

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Next: The description of the function of the bath seems to be very bad. Its description indicates it's used to address really low officer morale, but as far as I've seen it is THE method to improve legion morale outside of the actual battles.

And: I don't understand Experience. In the demo part the legion gained experience, but it then degraded to zero and didn't budge for many battles. It then increased after some battle (probably the conquest of the 7:th province), but as I haven't found how to see it outside of battles and some missions I don't know if it's degrading again. Obviously, I don't know how to improve it, although I guess it might eventually do so when the recruitment facility is upgraded (although that's pure speculation).

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Bug: I kicked out the enemies occupying a regional camp, and more or less immediately after I received info about an impending attack on another region, so I sent the legion there (the legion moves faster than the party, so it was a faster way to meet anyway). Once there I talked to the military assistant and received the quest to pacify a Mountain Village. I exited the camp, and looked for the quest marker, but none was visible, even when scouring the region at maximum resolution. I then checked the quest log, but no side quest was present.

I saved, quit, and restarted the game, to no avail. I then returned to the save I've made immediately upon the victory, and went to the camp while it was in the region (and didn't get any message about any attack on the way), went though the same conversation, and now see I do have  the side quest mission, as well as a marker on the map. There's probably something that bugs out if the meeting doesn't take place in the "correct" region.

Another (very minor) oddity in the first case is that I tried to replenish the troops, and found there were -3 men to be recruited, presumably because I'd shown mercy after the victory, and when questioned about the military strength the commander said something about being almost at full strength and just needing a few more men... In the second meeting neither oddity showed up, possibly because it took a little longer to rendezvous with the camp.

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I really like the game so far, however there are 2 key things I find annoying that can hopefully be addressed:

- Inventory management is very tedious. It needs more filters for things like weapon or armor type and rarity, like how the upgrade menu can filter by character. It also needs to have a sort option that uses some measure of quality (max damage/level/armor etc) for quickly eliminating junk items much worse than what you already have.

- It takes an unnecessarily long time for your whole party to climb a ladder just to access a chest.

 

As mentioned above there are definitely some aspects to the legion/strategy layer that are not obvious after finishing the tutorial and could be communicated better.

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Next set of issues (prior to the patch that's currently downloading from GOG):

- Failed to order my party to enter the end game city of the Asia campaign (Chalkedon). Clicking on it just showed a pane as for locations the legion can be sent to, minus the legion part at the bottom. I was able to enter by ordering travel to a point at the other side and then click on the location while on top of it.

- Selection of party members for missions: When you enter a mission you have to select the party members to send based on rules that are not communicated beforehand (in most cases the selection is mostly free, in some you're forced to select exactly one companion and fill the squad out with non companion party members, while the final Asia campaign mission introduced a new 10 character setup split into two groups). In the final Asia campaign mission you're not given any advance information about the nature of the mission. What I would like to see is the ability to review and adjust the equipment of all party members, in particular the accessories so they can be adjusted and redistributed according to what the tasks seem to be (for the last Asia campaign mission, which I haven't yet started, it seems the infiltrator party would benefit from access to fire, for instance. Since it's a multi fight mission reasonable distribution of bandages seems to be needed as well, in addition to water to put out fires lit on participants, with these resources distributed in a reasonable manner between the two groups).

I'd suggest an additional key above the "CONFIRM" one on the follower selection screen e.g. "REVIEW EQUIPMENT" that would bring you to the regular equipment screen, and you'd be returned to the follower selection screen when exiting from the equipment selection one.

- I've been caught several times having selected a target for the legion but forgotten to actually issue the order. Despite that, unpausing starts the time without anything happening with the legion (unsurprisingly). At the same time, I've had repeated cases of hitting space to unpause after some kind of interrupt failing to do anything, so I have to click the button to continue. I'm not quite sure what to do about the first case, but the second definitely seems to be a bug.

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Next issue:

In the attack on Chalkedon you eventually have a battle with both groups. It gets confusing because the members of both groups are the same color, but treated as members of two different groups. I've got two suggestions:

A. The easiest (presumably), but least desirable: Color the members of the groups differently, e.g. yellow for the second group.

B. Treat them as a split group during the setup phase, with different colors and different starting zones, where deployment is only allowed within the zone matching the members' color. Once preparation is over, treat them as a single group with the standard "friendly" color. This would allow you to rearrange the members of the second group during the setup phase, rather than as members of a green "allies" group.

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Next issue:

- I've figured out when you can't resume travel by pressing space (reported earlier): It happens when an event interrupts the travel. At a guess, the key input gets directed to the pane popping up, and isn't returned when the pane is withdrawn.

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The links are valid and work (I assume) from this URL (https://rome-drops.muxy.io/) but you cannot enter them in-game and get those codes to verify. In Options > Twitch > Link Account to Twitch the "Timeout" is perpetual and never stops timing out across multiple days trying this. These drops are time sensitive so if they do not work now then the Drops will be lost and I know of a few people perturbed about missing out on this time crucial Drop. The screenshot speaks for itself. So far drops are worthless for us as the completion does not happen in-game. Now what to do?

Also, to capture that "timeout" is extremely difficult as it lasts on the screen for only 1.5 seconds before it goes back to showing a place to just enter a code again. Could you guys increase the delay a bit to screen capture any errors in the future?

See screenshots...

Thanks!

2022-01-26 06_17_51-Rome Drops Campaign and 11 more pages - Personal - Microsoft Edge.png

2022-01-25 18_43_29-Expeditions_ Rome.png

Edited by BukaTV
typo
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Additional issues:

- Weird locking of saves: For some reason some saves can neither be overwritten nor deleted because the confirmation button is greyed out. This results in more saves that I'd like (and many games have an atrocious save handling that causes severe lag when the number of saves reaches the hundreds).

- The attack chance feedback is rather misleading. Julia misses most "100%" shots with the dual archery attack. Even if the reduced hit chance due to the attack type isn't factored in, it still doesn't add up, so there's something else the game doesn't tell me. The game adjusts damage estimates based on armor and should do the corresponding adjustments for hit chances. It would be good if you were informed that attacks would be parried due to stances and shields, for instance.

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Another one:

Can't say I'm thrilled over the game pulling a fast one again with the siege of Ajiwila (or whatever the name was). The previous siege had 10 character slots, so naturally I thought my standard 12 would be enough (with two on background duty in the camp). Reload from an earlier save (easy, as the move wasn't completely unexpected, and so was prepared for, but still a bad design).

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Further on the same siege:

- You place the 6 troops in the main force, and then you're presented with the objective of burning bridges, which are nowhere in sight, which is really confusing. My guess is that you're just supposed to keep alive until the SECOND group burns the bridges.

- The strange battle map shown during placement seems to indicate some weird attack by a group of 4 from the south that somehow should split and go towards the main gate and also further on. Apparently, this force is the catapult protection force, not the bridge building one...

- The archer ability Assist unexpectedly cost two activations rather than one when the movement of one enemy triggered attacks of opportunity from two companions. That seems like a bug.

- Feedback for the next game: You missed an opportunity to indicate the passage of time over the time in Rome by having Deianeira's speech change from halting to fluid and correct, but still with an accent (which ideally should be a little lighter).

- And what I think is another weird bug: After winning the battle over Namones, one party member was reported as being injured, and I had him tended to and then sent to the healer tent. However, in the battle to secure the next province, I had to send one companion and 5 party members, as usual, and in that battle they still had the poison or burn damages and skull symbol left over from the conquest battle. Immediately after winning the province securing battle (before leaving the map) I again checked for injuries, and again none showed up under Triage. There's probably something wrong with the logic that carries over injuries between siege battle segments that somehow remains even though the siege battle is over (the companions have fought off one set of bandits since, and none of them had any lingering injuries). I'm not sure which battle the injured party members were in during the siege. It wasn't the bridge destruction one, as that contained companions only, but it might have been the siege engine defense one (the downed party member who needed treatment was in the main force).

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Further issues:

- After setting up the African legion, it remains stuck at 1000 injured and 1000 lost even after the time taken to conquer two additional provinces with the main legion (and beat back the attacks following the conquests, as well as capturing all sites within those provinces). That definitely seems like a bug. The morale is inching upwards, however, as the bath dude chats them up, and an event that gave 150 experience to that legion hasn't had it melted away as it did in the Asia campaign initially.

- It's weird that you can modify armor, melee weapons (including shields) and amulets, but not bows.

- Minor bug with the Legion 17 quest: If you follow the advice to talk to Sextus and follow up on that with the next quest step the wild goose quest remains and when performed requests that you talk to Sextus again, which has no effect, neither clearing that quest step, nor providing any dialog. Since the main lead remains it's probably just a minor oddity.

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Next one:

- There's a very badly designed pacification mission in Egypt where you're supposed to destroy arrows in a quarry. It's badly designed because you're told to pick up torches from bonfires, of which there are two, at opposite ends of the map. Once you've placed your characters and start the fight, however, you find that the one behind you is placed on forbidden terrain that's outside the arbitrarily delineated battle area and the ladders up to the next level are likewise inaccessible. This means that all planning immediately goes out the window because of misleading placement phase information and you have to start from scratch. The bonfire behind you shouldn't even be highlighted, as it can never be interacted with (as you can't interact with them outside of turn based combat), while ladders inaccessible during combat should be suppressed from highlighting during combat so as not to fool you into believing they could be used.

In all, that map seems to be designed by someone who decided that screwing over the player was fun and a good idea. In addition to the design errors above, there are also invisible caltrops along one of the two remaining paths (I zoomed in fully, and still failed to see the caltrops), and two "civilians" blocking off the other (they can be killed, which has to be done unless you can rely solely on missiles, as enemies block their escape path from the other direction, unless you decide to smash barriers instead).

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And now for a hanging bug:

The African legion defended against an Egyptian attack, and had some 700 people left when it was time to chose the strategy for phase 4. I chose to cut them down (800-400 people, nominally), the loot bar filled up and I ended up at the victory screen, without the normal chase and elimination of enemies display. On the loot screen I see Stratagems used for only the first 3 phases, with phase 4 blank, no loot displayed, and the "continue" button doing nothing, as if I haven't collected the loot that isn't displayed. I see no other way to continue than to restart (fortunately there isn't too much progress lost).

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Dismantling load screen tips are misleading. They imply unique items can only be reconstructed. It took me a fair while to realize that the unique piece can also (and usually better) be used to upgrade something else. Also, it's not obvious why some items can enhanced this way and some not (I think the criterion is that they have to be at a sufficient quality, whatever the cutoff for that is).

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The legion battle display is lying when it claims that you've crushed the enemy with a check mark  on the troop bar, as it often happens that they merely retreat when you've used catapults to lower their morale. The true criterion is probably the actual man power, although I'm not sure if they actually scatter when below 1200 men, but have a battle field power above 1200.

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Bug: I'd sent my main legion to conquer sector 10 in Africa when a popup said enemies were on the move. Once the popup had been dealt with, however, the two legions continued to move while the time bar above stood still. My party had reached its destination (random location near my attack target) approximately when the popup happened. After a short scrambling I managed to pause things with the pause button (not keyboard of course, as per earlier bug report). Since my attack army had moved quite far, I decided to follow through with the attack and then move to the sector the enemy targeted, but when reaching the target my legion just stood there, and highlighting the target showed 4 minutes left to the attack, which didn't change as time was advanced.

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What's the point of clogging up the list of recruitable centurions with hopelessly under leveled characters that you kicked out because they were under leveled? I filled 3 out of the 4 slots of the African legion with low level characters because that was all I had available initially. After upgrading the recruitment ability I was able to fill 4 slots that cover all 4 abilities, but only 3 of the specializations, so I keep re-rolling the cast in the hope of eventually actually get a principes with the catapult ability (to replace the second sagittarius that currently provides the ability, but not the specialization).
What's even the thought behind not being able to get rid of under performers by e.g. disabling the locking star?

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It happened again. The game locks me in on the victory screen. I defended against attackers, reduced their number to a bit over 400, and chose to hunt them down (800-400), and saw their numbers being 0 before I was taken to the victory screen. Again, the phase IV stratagem was missing, but this time I had two lots of plunder. However, claiming those I'm still unable to leave the victory screen, as "continue" just clicks and does nothing.

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When the main character is nursing injuries at a camp, you can't scroll the world map, which means that you can't order your forces to do things that are outside of your very limited (even at maximum zoom out) fixed view. I assume it's possible to enter the camp, withdraw the main character from the hospital, go out to the world map, and then give orders, but that's a rather large chore for relatively minor tasks (collecting food, medicine, money, slaves). It doesn't make any sense to apply this restriction, so it ought to be removed (or, possibly more likely, the bug fixed).

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