[Beta 1Z] My impression

You must buy Spells from the Study screen (the one with the book anyway). To get those Spell Points recruit heroes with robes (that appear to be "wizards") and you can also pick an advantage so your Sovereign generates Spell points too. Researching some Magic tech and then building the proper magic research buildings is the standard way though. When you get enough points for the spell you want, you buy it.

The targets of quests are marked as yellow icons. Except when it's "Go to your city" type. Currently they are quite basic but to start testing they seem good enough.

Women in the army for release... in theory yes, that's why we have the faction trait of "Egalitarian". But as many traits (faction/Sovereign), right now is just a placeholder (just try creating a female Sovereign).

Welcome to the endless plains of bugs and pain called Beta!

Thanks, that helps. I know this is just a beta, and as I said, I have pre-ordered the Limited Edition, Collector's Edition or whatever they decide to call it. It should come with a manual that tells me a lot more, and I do hope they include a tutorial in the game. Maybe in the campaign, for instance.

Yellow icons for quests? That makes sense, as I found a yellow tent. But why do I have to search for it? We only have small maps now, but imagine if we have a huge map and a quest location placed randomly. There should be an arrow or something pointing towards it to make it a lot easier to find. Personally, I think the problem should be getting there, not finding it.

Women in the army shouldn't be so hard, in theory. What if you simply add more chest options? And speaking of that, what about different height and body types? What's the point in 10.000 soldiers if they all look exactly the same? (with different hair and skin color, though.)

About the yellow icons, I suppose that the quests appear in a "short" range of where you are. But in any case you are right about the need of a pointer to it.

Women models... Well, currently female Sovereigns are "underpowered" because Starock is focusing first in the male model. Once they have finished, the female  model will get their attention. For female soliders there is nothing yet because they depend of a trait that currently doesn't work and that only some will pick. So right now it doesn't make much sense to spend any time and resources in them while they have other tasks with higher priority (bug fixing, UI...).

It has been commented about being able to alter height and such but not when or at to which point. Too early to get those things implemented.

Hm...I don't really understand this. What do you expected? You can design your units via equipping them with whatever you want. You wanted to give them more arms and legs...or what?

Haha yeah...we can do that via modding!

Additional notes: We've talked about this already, but humanoids must be able to dual wield weapons...as for other races/creatures...they should be able to fight with as many weapons, as many arms they've got.

Actually that's exactly what I had in mind. Or to be precise, that would be ridiculous. Still, we are supposed to create our own army, right? Right now we can create uniforms for our male soldiers, and that's about it. Why can't we create our own weapons? The soldiers can ride on horses, right? So why not let us modify the horses? Horse color, saddle color/type, bridle color/type etc. We can tame beasts, so why not let us alter them too? There are tons of stuff you can modify. You can even change the color of your houses, but why stop there? Why not create the actual houses too?

Sinner Dude welcome to the beta.  

One question that might not have been addressed yet in this thread, but you mentioned that it looked horrible.  I hope you realize that the cloth map we are playing on is the simplest view of the game and that we don't have the full 3d engine until beta 3.  You should find some screenshots on the front page or in the dev journals section.   Personally, I don't think we'll be saying this looks horrible once the game is released.

As to unit customization, I expect a lot more will come with time.   If you haven't been in a stardock beta before, the early betas are very rough.   Stardock does this so that we can give feedback as soon as possible and they can change things without having to alter major game assets that are already in place.   At this point it is still relatively "easy" to change game mechanics because of this.  It becomes progressively harder/riskier as the game gets closer to gold.  

That said, you've given good feedback and I'm sure the devs will take it into account.   Make sure you post any bugs you find or crashes in the beta feedback section.

Thanks!

As far as I know you'll eventually be able to do that in the final product.

There is one thing you have to be aware of, the current beta is not a beta in the normal sense of the word, ie. an almost finished game which is just tested for stability.

Lot's of game assets haven't been added yet, there is no balance to speak of, important game mechanics aren't even implemented yet and quite importantly, the graphics engine hasn't been activated for us yet.

So currently it's mostly an engine demo to test. The content is added to continuosly and no indicator of what you'll get in the final product.

It seems your use to the big studio's "near release betas". Where the game is mostly polished and very close to release. Well bad news is if your were expecting a fully built game that you could "play" then yep your likely to be disappointed.

I'm a recent Programming graduate and one thing my Professors constantly mentioned was that different development studios have different definitions of beta and when something goes from being Alpha to Beta. They did seem rather consistent on the fact that once something goes to Beta it is mostly done and there are no sweeping changes or major feature additions.

I say this because by that definition this game seems to be more in Alpha still even though they are calling it Beta. I have no probablem with it being an Alpha test but for those only farmiliar with the sort of sneak peak Beta test larger companies do it can be a bit jarring to come here and see the game so far from finish. I too am new to the beta only because I recently found out about the game. And from what I've been able to tell it seems a few things are up in the air still.

I mean the tactical combat system isn't even slated to be put in until Summer after the 3D engine is added. The combat right now is a crude place holder which is easy to exploit due to the last unit always taking damage first. So just put high ATK units in a stack first then the cheap cannon fodder peasants in last.

Anyway as for customization those are all art objects and stats. It's easy to add dozens if not hundreds of more items down the road either by them or by modders. The options are limited because there is no need to put them all in right now this is just testing if the system works and how things run.

That is understandable Boogie...but what about dual wielding for humanoids? That won't be in the vanilla game at all?

Too early to tell.  

Would a Shield and Sword combo be considered Dual wielding?

P.S. If we can't get extra arms, can we get extra eyes? I want my guys to eyes in the back of their heads. LOL

Aite. I hope that it will make it into the final game. It makes sense afterall, not to mention that it opens up additional tactical options.

We have hard ppoints in the models for duel weilding...it's really a matter of animation (need another set of animations for attacking and defending with 2 weapons). So yes, we'd like to, and it's in the playbooks

Yeah, I guessed that might be the case.

Heard about a game called Spore? Nah, just kidding. If I may, I would suggest you at least keep full unit customization in the back of your head for a future expansion, perhaps. It doesn't have to be too advanced, either. Maybe let us select a few heads, torsos and lower bodies, perhaps. Take a human, add a cow's head and you got a minotaur. Take a human, replace the lower body with a horse's lower body, and you got a centaur. But anyway, that's just a dream I have.

And yes, I know this isn't exactly a normal game. But the only time I've been in betas are Star Trek Online and APB: All Points Bulletin. the STO beta was pretty cool and had everything the released game had. There was a few cosmetic changes later, but that's about it. Funnily, the servers couldn't handle the flow of people when they released and crashed all the time, so after two weeks after release, I had been able to play an hour or two in total. Pre-release, I played fifteen hours in two days.  (think that's a lot? I once clocked in 36 hours game-time in Lord of the Rings Online in two days... and yeah, that was insane.)

And APB... it needed 4GB of RAM just to install, and I only have 2GB. That's enough for everything I play, including Aion. Just not APB, for some weird reason.

So yeah, I know this is an early engine. I wasn't saying it looks horrible as a negative comment on the full game, only on the current state. I can still play it, but I don't think I would play the released game much if it looked like this. Then again maybe I would. It's brilliant already.