Hey guys,
I'm a new tester, just played my first match a few minutes ago (and lost horribly to a werewolf AI hero.)
A couple of totally non-gameplay related thoughts off the bat. I work in UX (usability/user experience) development for large-scale web apps for a living, so much of my feedback is probably coming from that angle, at least initially.
1. Is there any way to disable the music? I don't mind it, particularly, but I wanted to play my own music in the b/g and there doesn't seem to be any way to turn off the built-in audio.
2. Can the screen size be maximized in some way? I'm running at 1920x1280 and the cards are pretty small (looks like it's playing in a strange non-standard rez... maybe 760x620) on my 24" monitor, I have to keep zooming on pretty much everything to see what's going on.
3. Is the web client the only client available so far? I have an iPad and would love to be able to test that version as well.
4. Is there an ETA on when PvP will be included in the game?
As far as gameplay goes, a few initial thoughts. I realize I haven't given it much of a chance yet, but first impressions are usually worth noting, as they tend to be make-or-break when it comes to new user adoption.
1. The zooming and un-zooming is pretty distracting between phases. I've been playing a lot of M:TG Duels of the Planeswalkers lately on my X360 and I kind of preferred being able to see the whole playing field at all times, and have active cards / abilities / actions / sacrifice phase type stuff zoom up above the main playing field, instead of having to toggle between camera views.
2. I'm hoping there will be some kind of tutorial for launch. It took me a second to figure out how the sacrifice phase worked. The lack of direct resources is definitely interesting and I can see it making for some interesting deck-building in the future.
3. I got my ass handed to me by the AI the first go-around. I didn't realize I had a heal ability on my hero, or in fact that I could actually do anything with the hero card itself. I guess the current phase is also a bit difficult to see since it's only visible in one camera mode.
4. More of a subjective thing, but I found the frequent card animations (the semi-transparent flaming effect in particular) a little on the distracting side, and they could be toned down a little... maybe it's just me, just seems like overkill.
5. A really nice-to-have option would be to be able to cycle between cards in your hand (or on the playfield) using the keyboard arrow keys. It would make navigating the playfield much quicker on a desktop machine. I guess I'm used to playing MTG DoTP and it's something that I really use a ton (using the d-pad or thumbsticks to switch between cards), instead of having to click each one individually to pop it up. This goes hand-in-hand with the low resolution and the zooming issues -- it would probably alleviate the problems I mentioned above a little.
6. Are the player decks always locked-in? I've played about 7 matches in a row and I've always had the same deck/hero, Zhanna Mist.
I'll post some more actual gameplay related comments when I've had a chance to play a few games in a row (and actually win one, eventually.)
(Note: I should probably mention that I tested the game on IE8 / Windows 7.)
As a completely non-game related issue, I seem to not receive any email notifications off of this forum. I had two PMs and neither notified me, although I'm pretty sure I have it setup to send email notifications and I checked my spam folder, nothin' there. Might be a mail server config issue?
Looking forward to seeing how this game evolves — it looks very promising!
Update: Won my first match on the 2nd try. Definitely fun once you figure out some basic tactics against the AI. Can't wait to try this against live players.
Cheers,
-halfhand
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