Adjustments to the gameplay and the user experience

Wicked Feedback
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Hey Moon Studio team :waving_hand:

First, I want to tell you that I really enjoy playing and I am looking forward to playing with my friends when multiplayer and the game itself are ready!

I wanted to provide feedback on two categories: gameplay and user experience.

On the Gameplay:

  • I find that there are too many chests, especially those containing excellent loot. Although I love the fact that the map is “resetting/reviving“, the loot is kind of the same, and it’s easy to think of it as kind of farming. I would downgrade the loot when looting a second time, a third time, and so on.
  • Related to the previous point, I find that the map is resting a bit too quickly. However, I love the fact that mobs are harder to beat after the “respawn”.
  • I found the first big boss (in front of the town) to be really too easy to beat. I should have switched to hard mode from the beginning, but I want to say that I was touched by it two or three times, and I wasn’t dead. The reason is maybe that I was overpowered because I always explore everything before continuing (like in the Souls games). I would make it more straightforward that someone who has completed 360 hours of Elden Ring should play in hard mode.
  • When I first came to the town, I found that the Challenges, and especially Challenges Man, are a bit distracting from the main quest. I was a bit lost, probably due to the too many quests that I could start. I would suggest “enabling” Challenge Man after at least one more main quest.
  • It took me a long time to understand where I had to go to do the next main quest (the attack in the West), and that’s probably due to the previous issue. I would suggest reducing the number of quests and possibilities.
  • The first epic weapon dropped by the beast in front of the town is really too slow to be played at any time. I find it cool to use, but it’s not even doing a lot of damage. I thoguht the goal of this weapon was to extract runes from it but it’s not possible to do so on epic ones. So, I find this weapon a bit… useless. I would suggest a bit of balancing here, either increasing the damage or speeding up the animation.

On the User Experience:

  • When comparing loot in the inventory (by pressing the joystick), I found that I was unequipping items by pressing A instead of equipping the one I just looted. The reason is that the cursor is pointing to the targeted object to compare to, and no longer the object I pressed the joystick on. I would suggest changing A to equip the item in place of the equipped one and pressing B to abort.
  • When managing runes in the Runes shop, I was confused by the interface and specifically the fact that in the “remove rune“ interface where you see your weapon and all the “attacks/runes“ the buttons for each “attack“ is displayed to help but I saw myself press this one and destroy a “rune/attack” instead of detroying the weapon to extract the rune. I may be to blame here, as I should have read the message, but both messages (destroy weapon or destroy rune) are really looking similar. I would suggest removing the gamepad button indicator near the “attacks/runes” section, as the description is already quite clear to me.

Thank you for this fantastic game again. I love the animation, the story, the equipment preparation, the UI and UX, the HUD, the mobs (I am looking forward to discovering the other mobs), the fact that I will be able to play with my friends, and the hidden secrets.

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Not to poo poo anything, just saying…

Wut? I don’t know what you consider “excellent loot” but most of the time the stuff I see from chests is just meh.

Why? This is primarily a single player game. You aren’t ‘competing’ to get ‘better loot first’ compared to something like an online game or PvP based game where that would matter.

Also, consider not everyone plays the same. Bob may play 1 hour every day of the week, while Sid may only play twice and plays 3.5 hours per session. Do they not deserve similar rewards? They are both playing the same total hours in a week.

Off the top of my head areas don’t respawn for like 30 minutes. That’s not exactly fast. The casual player will only play about 1 hour per session.

That likely depends on your experience. I don’t play souls types in general. (Really only done the 2 SW: Fallen Order games, Remnant games, and that’s about it.) I think the first time I played in Early Access it took me about 6 hours to figure out the timing and patterns to beat that first boss. Sure, now that I’m used to the game I can get past him within the first 30-45 minutes, but I think it really depends on your experience level on if you find that first boss tough or not.

But that’s a good thing. That’s how I beat him that first time since I wasn’t used to souls likes. I just backed up, explored more, got more levels, came back, and then he was easier.

A lot of the main quest steps are task related, which will take your character time to get through. But you want to have it in your list so you know eventually where to go when you are ready.

Mmmm… If you don’t know where to go or what to do you have a pretty limited number of places you can go, so eventually you’ll run into it.

Exploration and figuring out the city, the people, etc. is part of the game. There are a LOT of places to go, sure, but that’s a good thing. If the player gets stuck going one direction, you can turn around and try a different direction. You aren’t forced to go one specific way and stuck if you can’t pass it.

You may not have built into the correct stat, or over leveled it and it needed to be upgraded.

Slow really depends on your playstyle. There are some who have put out build guides who love slower weapons.

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