Hello! I'm Kamina, long term Amia player who decided to try out CD after a good few years of people telling me to give it a go and with Amia being down for a bit, thought today was that day!
I'd like to preface with I'm incredibly impressed with all the custom content I have seen and the area dev work is top-tier.
I know new player's experiences are valuable so I thought I'd chip in with what I found from my first impressions!
Before I made my character
- A lot of information was relatively accessible, I didn't find any issue with finding things such as class changes, subraces and even dug to see how your subrace request system worked.
- You do a lot of things here that I commend you for, I very much like that the team is aware of the devaluation of gold mechanically and thus ask the suspension of disbelief that it is as worthless as dungeon grinding will make it, as well as the dismissal of "dangerous" enemies that some PCs may have fought similar in the past and thus would dismiss the power of them.
- My only critique was a lack of "new player" guide, in the sense of a compendium of what threads to read through in a kind of priority order. Being no stranger to the FR setting CD is based on, I was mainly checking etiquette rules, however a less experienced player on RP PW servers may be intimidated to read every single topic. I will touch on this again shortly!
Logging on
- The lobby area was a bit of a visual jump than I was expecting, but it's an OOC area so I can't really say much negative about that haha. The "path" your character walks very nicely directs you to each maintenance NPC nicely and I didn't miss anything crucial because of this.
- I found the initial lore very intimidating to read. I know it's going to be hard to provide a precursor of knowledge for such an expansive setting, but I found myself getting lost in the dialogue boxes as opposed to getting lost in the lore. I'm not sure if this is something you guys might want to optimise!
- Subrace activation was simple, not much to add here.
- My character only had 10 INT, so can't comment on additional races either!
- Starter shop was nice, and I enjoyed that my character could be "dressed" before entering the server, which is a feature I have yet to see on an RP server.
- I'm not sure how I enjoyed the tailoring dolls, I found it very cumbersome to modify my armour. I ended up just opting on recolouring my cloak to match my generic chainmail, but this may just be I'm used to other crafting systems.
In Arabel
- If there was one thing you can take away from this thread, is I was blown away by the aesthetics of Arabel. It really made me feel like I was in the cityscape of the metropolis of Cormyr. It's nice to see the central hub and "dumping" point of newbies have PCs around it.
- I went for an exploration around the city and found many nooks and crannies no doubt has been used for RP over the years. It was a fun experience peeking in to the temples, inns and shops around the city.
- I then made a very vital mistake, I started travelling north. Now I have enough of a brain to know the moment I was leaving the city it was a bad idea, but I really enjoyed the dev work that went in to these areas. It felt like I was really leaving civilisation and heading towards the wilderness. After a couple of outposts I found myself ambushed by 3 gnolls. After a somewhat good effort of fleeing, I was unfortunately cut down and died.
- If I'm being honest, perhaps I didn't talk to a vital NPC or explore as thoroughly as I should have, but I didn't see much of a hint as where to head towards for the "starting area" of beginning to level.
- After some passive RPing in the square I eventually, upon discussing it with a few of your players in a discord chat, decided to write up my experiences.
I think in terms of the new player experience there's a lot to take in, but on that same note you know you're going to be either getting someone who didn't read anything and will be caught out very quickly, or someone who's read everything and will no doubt be a valuable member of your community. I feel you guys really have put in a lot of passionate dev-side for this and as a random point I really enjoyed the christmas-like decorations. I think I'll pop my head around at a later date and maybe give the server a bit more of an invested shot, but my original attendance was more of a morbid curiousity. But to tl;dr, I've been very surprised and and inspired by a lot of this server for the brief couple of hours of playtime. I honestly can't comment much on the RP as he RP I encountered was primarily emoted, but it's something I don't feel like I'd have much right on critiquing in my short time playing.
I'd like to preface with I'm incredibly impressed with all the custom content I have seen and the area dev work is top-tier.
I know new player's experiences are valuable so I thought I'd chip in with what I found from my first impressions!
Before I made my character
- A lot of information was relatively accessible, I didn't find any issue with finding things such as class changes, subraces and even dug to see how your subrace request system worked.
- You do a lot of things here that I commend you for, I very much like that the team is aware of the devaluation of gold mechanically and thus ask the suspension of disbelief that it is as worthless as dungeon grinding will make it, as well as the dismissal of "dangerous" enemies that some PCs may have fought similar in the past and thus would dismiss the power of them.
- My only critique was a lack of "new player" guide, in the sense of a compendium of what threads to read through in a kind of priority order. Being no stranger to the FR setting CD is based on, I was mainly checking etiquette rules, however a less experienced player on RP PW servers may be intimidated to read every single topic. I will touch on this again shortly!
Logging on
- The lobby area was a bit of a visual jump than I was expecting, but it's an OOC area so I can't really say much negative about that haha. The "path" your character walks very nicely directs you to each maintenance NPC nicely and I didn't miss anything crucial because of this.
- I found the initial lore very intimidating to read. I know it's going to be hard to provide a precursor of knowledge for such an expansive setting, but I found myself getting lost in the dialogue boxes as opposed to getting lost in the lore. I'm not sure if this is something you guys might want to optimise!
- Subrace activation was simple, not much to add here.
- My character only had 10 INT, so can't comment on additional races either!
- Starter shop was nice, and I enjoyed that my character could be "dressed" before entering the server, which is a feature I have yet to see on an RP server.
- I'm not sure how I enjoyed the tailoring dolls, I found it very cumbersome to modify my armour. I ended up just opting on recolouring my cloak to match my generic chainmail, but this may just be I'm used to other crafting systems.
In Arabel
- If there was one thing you can take away from this thread, is I was blown away by the aesthetics of Arabel. It really made me feel like I was in the cityscape of the metropolis of Cormyr. It's nice to see the central hub and "dumping" point of newbies have PCs around it.
- I went for an exploration around the city and found many nooks and crannies no doubt has been used for RP over the years. It was a fun experience peeking in to the temples, inns and shops around the city.
- I then made a very vital mistake, I started travelling north. Now I have enough of a brain to know the moment I was leaving the city it was a bad idea, but I really enjoyed the dev work that went in to these areas. It felt like I was really leaving civilisation and heading towards the wilderness. After a couple of outposts I found myself ambushed by 3 gnolls. After a somewhat good effort of fleeing, I was unfortunately cut down and died.
- If I'm being honest, perhaps I didn't talk to a vital NPC or explore as thoroughly as I should have, but I didn't see much of a hint as where to head towards for the "starting area" of beginning to level.
- After some passive RPing in the square I eventually, upon discussing it with a few of your players in a discord chat, decided to write up my experiences.
I think in terms of the new player experience there's a lot to take in, but on that same note you know you're going to be either getting someone who didn't read anything and will be caught out very quickly, or someone who's read everything and will no doubt be a valuable member of your community. I feel you guys really have put in a lot of passionate dev-side for this and as a random point I really enjoyed the christmas-like decorations. I think I'll pop my head around at a later date and maybe give the server a bit more of an invested shot, but my original attendance was more of a morbid curiousity. But to tl;dr, I've been very surprised and and inspired by a lot of this server for the brief couple of hours of playtime. I honestly can't comment much on the RP as he RP I encountered was primarily emoted, but it's something I don't feel like I'd have much right on critiquing in my short time playing.