I raised some more or less randomly assembled points about the game, and was told to offer fixes for them. Ignoring my expectation problems, all my considerations are about beginning to play the game (newby friendliness), especially as that's when a game is sold. In essence, a game can be very abusive towards its powergamers before they decide to quit, while the first 15 minutes of an MMORPG can decide about a net loss user vs. someone who stays for a some money spending. So in essence, I'd like to make the game less niche, and more nice.
Setup & Introduction
The game needs an installer, or another way to detect if there's no Java available. For the time being, a warning on the download page about Java would be nice.
The tutorial does a decent job, but is then let down by GUI woes. I'd add a hint about how you usually need to update your Proficiencies by clicking on them, before a skill can be learned, toggled when there's no way to learn new stuff without increasing proficiencies.
Mouseover hints for where they're lacking wouldn't hurt either (eg. the customizable task bar, studying window).
Graphics & Setting
I complained about the Graphics looking like a weird mix of two style directions. Mostly that can only be fixed by giving money to a good graphics artist, which I am not, and the makers of the game probably can't afford. But still, there's simple measures that can improve gameplay as well as graphics.
A single measure to fix that would be to either reduce the leaves on the ground in size considerably, or make the trees grow leaves that match the leaves on the ground better.
Personally, I'd try to go more into a cartoonish representation, by adding black outlines to every object, as well as the avatar. Possibly also add some heavier outlines to the GUI icons, but that's not necessarily mandatory. Additionally such outlines would allow the animals and plants to be less iconic (texture-less snails and conks), because they would become much more obvious. But then, maybe pixel hunting is an intended part of the gameplay?
Another direction could be to remove the cartoony avatars, and use slightly more realistically proportioned ones. At the same time the game could become more realistic in colour and objects. This would probably need a complete rework of almost all 3d Objects (maybe not the houses and furniture), and a considerably abstraction of visual style. The gameplay does however indicate a more cartoonish look, so I wouldn't suggest this.
On the technical side, The engine could maybe allow for blending of textures, to reduce the repetitiveness of the ground, and use a semi-random blend of two or more layers for each type of ground cover. This could be a pure representative client side thing. So it would not necessarily need to be stored on the server. On a similar note, it'd be nice if different vegetation textures also would blend into each other in some way.
I would also suggest to replace the borders at cliffs and geography edges with some sort of blend over, or alternatively reduce the width of the green grass borders.
Said all that, I'm not really someone who decides about a game based on graphics, and the game isn't targeted at those people anyway. If changes can't be made easily, money and time can probably be spent more productively elsewhere.
Bunnies and Slugs
The current resources and critter are decidedly weird. Ignoring realism concerns about the scarcity of grass and leaves, I think the game could use more menacing critters. I'd suggest these replacements, based on a mixture of more realism, appropriate danger and not wanting to eat factor:
snails could become grasshoppers
grasshoppers could become ferrets
bunnies could become foxes
I had no real interaction with snakes, deers, bears and beavers, but I guess I'd keep them as is, with maybe the beavers becoming something more dangerous. Finally, I'd add turkeys. There's puritans, they need turkeys!
GUI
There's several buttons on the main interface that are not obviously buttons:
I'd like some check-marks or other tried and trusted convention for toggled buttons. Additionally, It'd be nice if stuff that is a button would not look like buttons and vice-versa. I am not sure about the phlegm button; it's weird to begin with, and also extremely huge... Maybe leave it as is, but make the button that appears more obviously look like other buttons with a yellow rectangle outline instead of it's current random form with no outline ( it's also seetrough which is weird).
Even worse, there's 5 types of toggles in the task grid, and alto there's some distinguishing going on, it's incomplete, and inconsistent (dog-ears vs. wooden frame vs books):
(Note: not all possible menus shown, if they're just repeats of other submenus)
Obviously it's not really possible to have 5 clearly different looking button types, but maybe toggles in "Adventure" could be moved to "Movement", so that all toggles are in one category?
All "Further navigation" buttons should have the same background colour and type (I'd suggest the books from the first "screen", using the same colour as the back button (which also should look like all other nav-buttons)).
Finally, all buttons that are toggles or multiple-choice need some form of check-mark respectively grouping: This is basic GUI stuff, check-marks and option buttons need a distinctive look.
I'm not sure about how to distinguish the "cursor state change" buttons, but if they're all in categories that have no other buttons (beside nav-buttons) then that'd probably be fine?
A big annoyance in the task grid is that when building and crafting, the grid resets once an item has been chosen, especially when chain-cooking. Maybe there could be a button that shows currently build able and craft able items, taking into consideration the current inventory as well as opened containers. An additional option could show stuff that can be crafted if one or two further resource items are collected. Something like this (or preferably without any submenu, just one button and then all the things one can craft):
My greatest problem was the way learning worked, from a GUI standpoint:
So that's some suggestions and things of which I think they work weirdly.
