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Risen 2 BETA
Seems it started these days, if anyone has a spare key or doesnt want to play it, i would gladly accept it , cheers :)
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I would also gladly accept a spare a spare key for the Risen Beta, and, IMO, anyone who has one should give it to me before porcozaur. ;)
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Why not just wait and enjoy the game as it was meant to be played ;)
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seems the game is meh?
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index…uys-nda.69586/ anyway i got my key, ill post some impressions tomorrow :D |
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*Edit* I read through the entire thread. While he wasn't pleased with certain aspects, the OP makes it a point to say that he doesn't think it's even a true Beta. Quote:
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its just a sneek peak not a beta test. |
So it's a buggy demo instead?
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What I think he meant is that people shouldn't put too much stock in it.
In other words, don't look at it like a demo or think it's representive of the full game. |
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If you want a Beta Key, you could get one from the IGN Prime (just sign up for the free trial period).
IGN Prime I know that it says its for US & Canada only, but they don't check your actual address, so its fine. Heck i'm from Europe and I got a key (its a steam key). |
Thanks for all the replies. I hope that the 'true' beta is what we come to expect from PB (minus bugs of course).
Thanks lilmagi for the heads up on the beta key from IGN. |
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I feel sorry for anyone who expected a "true" beta. Real, true beta testing should be, no, MUST be done by professional testers. This type of public beta that they are doing with Risen 2 is at the most good for "load" testing, i.e. you throw the game at a wide variety of system configurations and see how it works out.
But any real bug squashing etc. should definitely be done by professional QA. I never expected this "beta" to be more than an early access demo and that's pretty much what it turned out to be. All I ever wanted from that CE code was to be able to play the next PB game before its release and they fulfilled that promise. I certainly didn't want to help them with serious QA unless they'd pay me for it ;) . What is a little lame, however, is that Deep Silver did not provide any kind of tool for bug submission nor a (closed) beta forum. It is pretty frustrating that you can not share any findings at all until the "beta" is over. They are going to send out beta feedback forms after March 2 when the beta has officially concluded but that's it and it's not much to say the least… What they provided here as the "beta" definitely does qualify as a demo. A pretty extensive demo even. If you explore everywhere then you get to squeeze approximately five or six hours out of the two areas that are included in this demo (the starting city of Caldera and parts of the first island, Takarigua). As for bugs: Quite a lot of people on the WoR forums have reported issues with launching the beta. The issue seems to be that the R2 Beta does not automatically update DirectX, PhysX and the Microsoft Visual C++ redist stuff. Most people were able to start the beta after manually updating/installing these drivers/APIs. Other than that it is a misrepresentation of the truth if anyone is claiming that the beta is seriously buggy. There are bugs, of course, but that is to be expected from a non-final version, right? I haven't experienced anything serious in the bug department in the six hours I played. Mostly just minor glitches. Regarding the game's performance (Deep Silver tolerates posts talking about the game's performance on the WoR forums so this is not conflicting with the silly NDA): My system is an Intel i5-2500K@4.2GHz, 8GB RAM and a Gainward GTX 570 running at 800/2000MHz). The game is installed on a Crucial 256GB SSD. The performance needs to be viewed in two categories. Category one would be outside of the jungle and category two inside the jungle. With all settings maxed out at a resolution of 1920*1200 and VSync enabled I'm getting approximately 50-60fps outside of the jungle and 25 - 40fps inside of the jungle. The shadows are the real performance killer. Reducing shadows from ultra to max will yield an immediate +10fps gain. The game looks really nice when maxed out so I'm not sure what that Codexer is smoking when claiming that it doesn't look better than Risen 1. However, when compared to a DirectX 11 graphical feast like Battlefield 3, well, Risen 2 can't compete on that level and you can't help but think that the performance should probably be a little better for how the game looks. Let's hope there will be a little more room for optimizations. As far as the rest of the criticism of the Codexer is concerned, the guy is way too negative, of course. Some of the criticism is justified but you need to apply a Codexian hyperbole filter to refine the truth. Quote:
Trying hard not to break the (IMHO silly) NDA so sparse on details but: Some initial disappointment is almost unavoidable. For example for the first time in a PB game we start in a very tiny area (a small, confined part of Caldera) instead of having pretty much the entire game world lying at our feet. The beginning is nearly 100% linear. Secondly, the beginning of the story is cringe-worthy and full of logical fails. But then… once Caldera was left behind and once the game opened up a little on Takarigua, the game grew on me and the good old, unique PB style began to shine through. Also, the new character development system looks very promising and at the end of the beta I was definitely longing for more. |
ive played it today for about 7 hours, the game definitely has PB written all over :). The big minus is the combat, which is extremely bad, something like it was in g3; other than that, the inventory has been modified and its more consolish/retarded like the amalur one. Also the music isnt too impressive, not to mention it isnt very gothiclike. And finally the so-much-apraised-by-PB anumations are much improved from risen but still mediocre at best.
Other things i didnt liked: the camera has an immense lag which is very annoying; also no dodge and no swim, finishing moves with slowmotion like in fallout, fast travel like in TES |
Got in via IGN Prime. The camera is a nightmare and the characters all twitch and gyrate constantly while talking. The camera makes the controls really awkward and the game is kinda the worst. I'm really disappointed. I liked Risen 1 a LOT and this is a huge step backwards.
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:lol:
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Hmm, the music is important if your going on a very long journey (in an open world rpg) as it reflect the mood of the surroundings and adds another dimension to the story and 'feel' of the characters and places. The music in Gothic 3 and Divinity 2 was a joy to listen to throughout your adventures and in going through different landscapes. So it is a bit dissapointing to hear that Risen 2 music is 'OK', but probably this goes along with the fast travel feature.
We will have to wait and see about the combat; the combat in Gothic 3 starts as a click fest but it improves alot as you gain better skills (e.g. large weapon and dual wield skills). Is it true what was said about not being able to kill NPCs? I would be surprised if this is the case since Risen 2 prides itself with 'choices and consequences' as in PB previous outputs. |
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Also, if you know past PB games then you will know what to expect here. There are often multiple ways to solve a quest but other than that it's always been "choices and consequences light" in PB's previous games so I wouldn't expect a drastic change in that department in Risen 2. To answer the question, it is true that NPCs can not be killed in this beta at least. You can knock NPCs down and when they get back up they are instantly back at 100% health. Then when you knock them down a second time it takes a lot longer until they get back up and they begin to carry a "pissed off" tag above their head. They also announced a while back that some important quest NPCs can not be killed (or maybe knocked down and thus "pissed off") at all. Maybe they wanted to avoid that you can clear the world of nearly all living beings this time around as you could do in their previous games. Or maybe it's just like that in the starter areas and you will be able to slaughter NPCs later on in the game. We'll have to wait and see about that… |
Many thanks Moriendor for your detailed reply.:thumbsup:
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Can't say I particularly like what I am hearing. And we have not even touched QTEs and some really absurd looking and immersion breaking minigames I've seen in some videos…
Also very disappointed to hear about the music. It was a huge part of the games atmosphere for all their past output (and atmosphere in turn was a huge part of why I love their games). I was hoping the talented Seelbach would emulate the style in Risen 1 and add a piraty twist to it… I'll still probably preorder the game (when amazon.uk makes it available). The literally hundred of hours of enjoyment I got (and will get in the future) out of PBs games, buys them that much at least. But this is sounding like it is shaping to be my least favorite PB game so far and I am starting to wonder if sending a message to them (i.e by buying the game in a Steam summer sale instead) is in order … :-/ |
I'm really concerned about some of the negative feedback regarding the combat…I thought Risen's combat mechanics were fantastic, staying grounded enough to be immersive/believable while maintaining a near-perfect balance between player skill and character skill. Very few action-based RPGs get those two parts simultaneously right - it usually seem to lean too heavily in one direction or the other - and I would hate to see Risen 2 take a step back in this area.
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Yeah, I can only assume that Risen's combat did not work very well with a controller so once again PB is "fixing" something that is not broken (as they did between G2->G3).
This is starting to sound like the Witcher 2 somewhat, where a very good game will be marred by really dubious design decisions and gimmicks, in a largely misguided attempt to make the game more accessible/fun to the casual crowd. At least I am hoping Moriendor and porcozaur are spot on and despite the glitches this is a PB game at heart (and thus a very good game). The character system comments in particular give me a bit of hope… |
Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, but in my own opinion, The Witcher 2 was a vast improvement over TW1 in most areas. I can definitely agree that there were some minor head-scratchers in a few of the design choices, but taken as a whole, I personally feel that it was the better game out of the two, with better gameplay and an equally engrossing storyline with an ambitious choice and consequence model.
But back on topic, I wish PB would have kept the core combat mechanics the same but with more complexity and nuances to improve the system and fit the new setting/theme. |
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A question for the Beta players: was the really distracting popin of items/foliage seen in some videos already fixed in the "Beta" ? |
Ok, I just spent the last 5-6 hours playing the Beta. I'm not sure if there's much I can talk about that hasn't already been discussed (due to the NDA), but I'd like to give my opinion on some of the things that have been mentioned.
First of all, let me set your minds at ease regarding the music. It's good. Not Gothic good, but close enough. If I didn't know otherwise, I would have thought it was Kai Rosenkranz again. It fits the setting perfectly (imo) in the same way Kai's tracks did in Risen. Regarding the camera: I was extremely pissed off for the first hour or so. I was accustomed to the locked viewpoint of the "chase cam" used in all of PB's previous games. That said, it's not *that* bad, and I didn't encounter any of the lag that I've seen others complain about. In fact, I found the default sensitivity setting to be much too twitchy on my system, but it was fine once I reduced the mouse speed. I hope PB includes an option to lock the camera behind the player in the final version, but I can live with it the way it is. I played @1920x1200 with everything maxed except shadows. With those setting it ran smooth enough on my GeForce GTX 470. I wasn't blown away by the visuals, but the graphics have never been the most important thing to me in PB's games. I consider them only a minor upgrade over Risen, but that's fine with me. Quote:
Due to not having developed deeply into any skill trees, I'm not really sure how to judge the combat. It definitely feels a lot more "hacky slashy" than Gothic 1&2 or Risen, but hopefully that changes once you start to develop more skills. I will say this: combat against non-human opponents in the Beta was nothing more than spamming clicks for me. It wasn't as bad as Gothic 3, but it didn't seem much better either. I didn't acquire a firearm or voodoo in the Beta, so I can't comment on either of those aspects. The Beta allowed me to choose from Easy, Normal, or Hard difficulty levels. I went with Hard, and I'm happy to announce that I had my ass handed to me on multiple occasions. I had to exploit my companion to win a lot of battles. Which leads me to mention that my companion did not take damage in the Beta. I pray that's not the case in the final release, but something tells me it won't be. (I have to be careful here because I'm not sure exactly how specific I'm allowed to be on these aspects) I didn't encounter anything that I'd consider a "glitch". Although I was a bit annoyed that the Beta simply kicked me back to the main menu if I went past certain boundaries, and there was no type of warning. Walking into deep water resulted in me being teleported back to land, but I don't expect that to happen in the release version. Anyways… it's definitely a Day 1 purchase for me. Despite a few things I found annoying, the PB magic is still there. Quote:
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Thanks for the feedback JDR, it does serve to put my mind somewhat at ease…
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Hmm sounds like KaiRo leaving PB has left its mark on the music. Music has always been one of the strengths of Gothic/Risen.
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I played the game on hard and tried to save up as many learning points (LP) as possible since I wanted to delay the decision which path to choose for as long as possible. The game allowed me to reach something like level 18 with a minimal investment in LP. And that's just completely wrong. You know there is a major problem with the combat system and the balancing if it allows you to pull off that kind of stuff. I have actually never been much of a fan of the combat in PB games. It was always way too simple (all you needed in the Gothics was the left/right melee combo… that makes a whooping two keys to pwn everything in the games from start to finish), too exploitable (favored by poor AI and poor pathfinding), poorly animated, too random (thanks to no real target lock) and just plain unsatisfying in many regards. Nope. Combat (or more precisely melee combat at least) is a definite nuisance in PB games to me. Magic and ranged was OK for the most part but melee always sucked IMHO… I enjoy PB games because of the living, breathing world, the atmosphere, the exploration, the immersion, the different quest solutions, the factional differences, the humor, the rewarding progress in character development and lots of other things but certainly not the (melee) combat. |
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I wonder if its all the changes in the way they handle the camera now… Quote:
"The combat in the Gothics/Risen (Well Gothic2 and its refinement/streamlining in Risen) is probably the only ARPG combat I actually like and one of the few cases that doesn't devolve in a clickity click mess. It is also the only one that comes in mind, where investing skill points actually changes the way the controls/attack speed/animations handles giving you a more immediate feeling of progression and changing dramatically the way you play and which enemies you can defeat (and with some good planning equipment and player skill you can defeat the tough ones way ahead of time if you are so inclined)…" Is it simple and relatively easy once you get to know the basics? Well Ok, I always thought so and I never understood all the people griping about its difficulty but that is far from saying that it is bad or unsatisfying. I would go as far to say that archery was in fact pretty average and unsatisfying initially although they improved it a lot in Gothic 3 but they broke it again balance wise this time in Risen iirc. Magic was pretty good starting with G1 with the charging times for spells providing an extra dimension but it was never particularly stellar gameplay wise really… Do you have any particular ARPG combat scheme that you prefer instead or think is better? |
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If they add a way to lock the camera, that'll fix this mess. I can handle the ridiculous twitching and gyrating during every line of dialog, but the too-sensitive and horrible camera I cannot handle.
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However, the combat is generally quite interesting and complex because you need to figure out which combo of the couple dozens of buttons (= abilities) that you have at your disposal works best. I wish more single player 3rd person ARPGs would borrow a page (yes, just a page, not the whole thing ;) ) from that book. The combat in PB games could be infinitely more interesting with a few tweaks and additions: - You can block NPCs (not monsters) for all eternity in Risen. Why? It would be much more interesting and challenging if blocking would be depending on e.g. an endurance bar/pool that would drain every time you (or your block actually) got hit by the enemy. - It would have been cool if enemies in PB games would have had more special moves like stun (not stun-locking… that is/was unfair ;) ), knockdown, root, snare, paralyze etc. - Coupled with good AI that would e.g. root or snare you if you tried to use the popular kiting tactics it would make for a much more challenging experience than just getting hit hard. - Why are you most of the time only attacked by one enemy while the other watches and waits in line? Group combat could need tons of improvement in recent PB offerings. - What's with the total exploitability? For example, check YouTube for vids of people defeating the Black Troll in Gothic 2 NotR as a level zero newbie character. That's just wrong. Something like that should just not be possible. Period. You know, I think as far as combat against humanoid NPCs was concerned, they were on the right track with Risen. Defense on the right mouse button and offense on the left was a simple but effective mechanic. It could have used a lot more tweaking though. It was decent but far from stellar. - Combat against monsters was almost as retarded as in Gothic 3 in my opinion. There was still stun-locking (wolves and boars that killed you super fast with a series of unblockable hits) and the AI was very poor like when you evaded by side-stepping and the beasts kept facing the wrong way for a couple more seconds. It was severely lacking a more dynamic feel. Sometimes it felt to me like when combat initiated that the world around you froze and combat was happening inside of a bubble within the gaming environment. It's difficult to describe… it always felt detached to me in a way. Before this starts sounding like an epic rant: I'm generally quite "satisfied" with the combat system in PB's games -think a C grade- but I really wish that they would make use of the vast room for improvements. It could be so much more fun with more diversity, better hit detection and better AI. Well, maybe in Risen 3… ;) |
I have no exposure at all to mmos, sounds interesting but tbh I am not sure I would enjoy very complex combat too much. It would shift the focus from the other stuff we were discussing above… Then again maybe not, I would need to play it to form an opinion really.
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I would also add that they need to allow blocking (only with a shield) some wild animal attacks, it would make things more interesting and it is not really unrealistic in most cases imo (as long as it is ineffective/you get knocked down when large animals charge i.e ). Quote:
I generally agree with most of the points you raised(*) There is without a doubt space for improvement here especially in removing exploits and they were on the right track from G2 to Risen(the unfortunate interlude of G3 combat aside). Very disappointing if they have taken a step back instead(again)… (* I must say that I like that you can sidestep the charges of certain animals like boars or rhinos i.e and they can take a moment to recover. Seems both realistic and makes things more interesting. Those recovery times probably need to be tightened though and probably halved for more nimble animals i.e wolves) |
The combat in Gothic 1&2 and Risen is very good compared to most game in this sub-genre. Of course there are things that could be better, but you can say that about any game.
Exploits? I don't know if I've ever played a game that didn't have them in one form or another. Quote:
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Anyone with a lower end rig had any success so far? I'm a bit worried I may have to upgrade to play this one as from what I have heard it is quite demanding relative to it's graphics level.
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Any idea if the draw distance etc can be tweaked via ini files as in the first game?
And mentioned here? http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8388 |
The link to get a key for the beta appears to say "All Keys Gone" when I check it. I'm not sure if this is because I'm not logged in to an IGN Prime account or if they are legitimately out of keys.
The latest previews have me a bit more interested than I was a few days ago. Game Banshee's preview was quite well done. |
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