Basic suggestions for Game Mechanics

Wicked Feedback
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IDEAS/QoL:
#0 I hate that I can’t animation cancel mid action!
There, I said it. I’m sure the devs are going to look into this but I had to point that out.
I’m a Guts(Berserk) kinda guy, big swords, big damage. But If you timed your attack a millisecond sooner or later and you had the audacity to charge up your attack… you are fucked. You are locked in that bad decision and you will grow to hate this aspect of the game. Take Bloodborne, Sekiro & God of War(all of them) for example, you can chain attacks and still disengage if you feel your ass is about to get reamed offscreen at the last nanosecond. There’s this snappy feeling of being in control at all times. It makes you wanna actually rip the enemy apart. I’ve platinumed BloodBorne, Sekiro & both recent God of War Games by actually engaging with the combat because of the amount of control I had over my actions, I actively sought out mobs just so I could 360° chain combo my way through them and shredded them with glee. But in this game I’m always kiting the enemies; bating one of them at a time; picking them off one by one. Mobs of three are the sweatiest moments, especially when there’s two ranged enemies and a brute of some sort. Making the whole process tedious. Thank goodness we can respec now because by the end I simply copied a godtier bleed build off YouTube and it rendered the game trivial in the process. I’m not saying mages or ranged players should be nerfed, I’m just pleading for animation cancel please & thank you.

#1 Since our homes are essentially amazon warehouses aka stashtabs with extra steps. Can we get an icon/emblem/badge option to put over them. I literally bump ugly every time I get in my house. It’d be cool to just have floating icons over them that we selected for each of them. Different colors and it’d be awesome.

#2 streamlined the level up process for our gears & weapons please.

#3 streamlined the meals aka estus flask with extra steps. Too many with similar flavors of buffs. I’m not saying reducing the amount; just vary them up a bit. I literally only use the ones that buff my weapons and boosts my stamina, poise def, extra health.

#4 more affixes please. Everyone is using lifesteal on everything. I’m not saying nerf it, just give us other competitive options. Right now lifesteal is a no-brainer.

#5 the negative affixes on purple(plagued) gears are all rendered pointless since we always combo them with unrepairable/indestructible anyway. Again, I’m not saying nerf this, just give us other compelling options.

#6 all affixes are ranged between “fuuuuuck no to duhhh obviously”. In my opinion, if there’s a game we can benefit from being “inspired” by is Last Epoch. I mean we can slam items with each other and make better items. I say, instead of just letting us destroy items, allow us to pluck out the affixes and have a pool of them to choose from. Right now, we are literally spamming embers to reroll til we get the unrepairable/indestructible combo on every peace of gear.

#7 plague iquor(boss item drop that opens up our various gear slots) is a great idea but it is rendered useless passed the point where we are maxed out and all slots are open. Sure we can donate them to Captain Randolph(daily/weakly reward guy) but what if we could use it to upgrade our gear beyond its maximum potential like making legendary or something cooler than just stockpiling them for nothing at all.

#8 the town folks, they literally just stand there. Repeating the same two or three lines of NPC drivels. Iono, give them life or something, all the homes are for me to turn into amazon warehouses, where do they live? Do they have kids? Do they shit? Is everyone a beggar & guardsmen? There’s one artist and maybe four animals walking around. The vendors just stand there alll day waiting on us to interact with them. They’re literally glorified menu options with extra steps. The kid at the smith’s is always just standing there. How is he an apprentice and I never see him do shit. The town is full of guards but nothing ever happens in town to warrant them. What if we get invaded every now and then. Turning the main town into a tower defense zone for a bit to switch things up a bit. I mean yeah we level the town but by but but that too is rendered useless past the point where it’s all done. What if we keep leveling it up, adding more homes, more people not schools, churches for the city, bringing people from all over since everyone else is getting tanked out in the plagued zones anyway. We could literally turn Sacrament(the main town) into a haven for the refugees suffering from all the bullshit we are killing out there. Giving the place a sense of life and purpose beyond it being a glorified menu option with extra steps. There is so much wasted potential with this main hub. It’s both bustling and static at the same time. No kids running around, no schools no life. There’s this game The Ascent it’s an isometric sci-fi game yeah but that game is dense. Shit feels lived in. Drunks causing trouble, gangs, redlight districts and so on. The place is beautiful, dense and full of life. Get “inspired” by them why don’t ya.

#9 the cooking system is great but what if we could combine dishes for longer lasting buffs. Instead of a few minutes we can get one whole hour or so of buffs. Similar to the xp boost one, you die we lose the effect. Cuz as it stands we are literally juggling a bunch of dishes for buffs that last a few seconds at a time.

#10 the blade oil is literally the only best option. Everything else is shit. The stamina ones are cool since we can stack em with our rune effects and meal effects too. But the bombs do not scale in the endgame. The plague, fire, ice buffs are cool earlier on but fails at endgame pushing since physical damage is the true king(don’t nerf it please, just buff the others). The effects don’t last long and mid battle when shit is hot & heavy, shuffling through them to get to the best one is awful. Iono, buff all of them, make them a compelling option otherwise I just burn them at the fire pit to rack up the endgame level plague zone.

PS: it would be cool to link my steam account to show that I’m a 200+ hours in and not just some bitter under 2hour player.

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some good and valid points here.

the house storage thing: carpets are coming, so u can mark chests with that, see here: Breach Patch 1 Sneak Preview

and as for potions and oils: i made this post way back when… because i feel the same. potions are useless, and the cool potion guy u free from the cave after a spore induced trip just never gets any love: Improve Markos the potion seller - combined - one thread "to rule them all"

imagine the possibilities, alchemist classes that throw flasks, crazy bomb guys burning everything down. etc..

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Animation cancel is one thing PoE2 got right from the start. I’ve decided to skip using heavy weapons for that same reason, it’s too limiting and the damage output doesn’t outweigh any of the downsides. Faster weapons even of mid weight make up for all the reduced damage with speed and more control.

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They should allow you to trade Plague Ichor for Pestilence materials.

Say, 1 ichor gets you 2 husks, 1 marrow, and 1 sinew.

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An alchemist class would soo good. My thing is that NRFTW has this one big problem: we all want it to be so many different things but as it stands, the devs are cooking up a very specific dish here. For there to be classes we’d need hotkeys; like in every other isometric ARPGs(D4 etc). I genuinely don’t think that’s what the devs wanted. I’m certain they wanna stay away from cooldowns and balances. This is a pure melee game. Sure I’ve seen some broken builds for mages, faith and bow users but they’re only “broken” because they’re not engaging with the melee combat. Again, Claymores and the likes are borderline useless when you see what some people are coming up with when they’re not actually fighting the enemies with swords at all. Too many ingredients in the pot not enough space for each flavor to shine without the rest getting nerfed.

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I loved the idea at first. I mean that, I’m a melee purist in most other games. Sekiro, Bloodborne, Warframe, Ghost of Tsushima etc .. but in those games; engaging with the melee mechanics are delicious. You’re spoiled for choice. Everything works. From big dick staffs, claymores, rapiers to daggers. Here, mages, faith, bow is king. They just breeze through crucible, 1 or 2shots the Echo Knight and every pestilence bosses. No suffering through the lack of control you lack with swords. This game has a similar problem another game had, Ashen. Remember Ashen? Yeah most didn’t even play it and those that did never looked back either. It was a great idea of a game but it didn’t even have swords in it. Just maces, clubs and other variants of a blunt object. The game was so dull and hard as a consequence of that that they gave us an AI companion to help out. The game itself wasn’t hard but the melee mechanics were garbage so it died out and faded into oblivion.

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My guy you are so on the money here. Exactly! Cuz as it stands I’m bankrolling on them atm and I don’t know what else to do with them. You are so right, it’d be cool if we could trade them for more plague items like the torn sinew stuff they added. It’d just be cool for it to have a function beyond just “oh great, another one”.. hell, it’d be even cooler if it extended our stashtabs too. Both on our character and in our warehouses. Otherwise we’re just filling the spaces with stashes every inches of the houses since they’re so limited in spaces to begin with.

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I played my first campaign with swords/axes and heavy shields. When I started doing my mage run after it felt disgusting how easier it was by comparison. The melee drawbacks don’t have enough benefits against the strength and skills of the mage weapons. Hell, some one handed mage weapons like the key one have better movesets than a lot of the strength ones.

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I’m currently playing my first playthrough (level 22) with Claymore and having a blast. Honestly, I don’t really struggle with the animation commitment as much. Maybe it’s because I’m using cold infusion with heavy weight so I’m freezing enemies or knocking them down with the push attack a lot so they cannot really run away from my charged attacks.

Not interested in OP builds that trivializes the difficulty. I don’t see point in spoiling my own fun. But each to their own.

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I disagree on adding animation cancelling but I think heavy weapons need to do more damage with normal and charged attacks.

When it comes to affixes I feel like there are less than before since I’m always getting bonus after a backstab, and bonus based on durability. I rerolled a blue tier weapon probably close to 10 times and it would just cycle between those two, or a boost to weight or durability.

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The endgame will fuck you eventually, you’re still campaigning. The modifiers and debuffs will make your cold infusion worthless. The enemies are stronger + have inherent strength over your current gears. For example, you’ll reach the point where when you cast a rune attack the entire focus bar gets depleted. Or damage on health decreases your stamina/focus. Or the enemy has a 15% attack speed on you. You woulda spent the entire campaign accustomed to their attack patterns and speed then bang you’re getting ganked by 3-4 mobs that will chain-kill you.

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Yeah animation canceling is the bread & butter of every ARPGs. From the 3rd person types to the isometric ones too. Every other one of them has it. Also, the reason your affixes are looped between backstab and something else is because of the game’s inherent grouping system for the affixes. For example you can’t have two attack mods on or two defense etc. that’s why the red(negative is for). Notice how we are all rolling with Indestructible/unrepairable. Everyone else are running “based on durability” affixes. Once your gear can’t be repaired but also can’t be destroyed then you exalt them to their highest possible percentage then you are essentially running an optimal build. One that makes use of all the beneficial effects of each other. It’s a limited loop system that I think they wanted to avoid the Diablo 4 shenanigans. In Diablo 4 before they patched it out completely, most of the affixes were conditional. Hence the memes “damage on Tuesday”. This game too has written themselves into a corner as a result. Unless they nerf or they add more affixes, and remove the the grouping system; we will all be running the unrepairable/indestructible combo.

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Honestly, that sounds really disappointing to me. I’m not a fan of “difficulty” modifiers that breaks your character or invalidates your build defining choices. How is preventing me from casting runes suppose to be fun? It’s only going to reduce build diversity and limit viable builds to those using health instead of focus to cast runes.

I also disagree with the animation cancelling. Having multiple attacks with different animation commitment gives more depth to the combat system. Having said that, it would be nice to have more options to react when you misread the situation, e.g. dodging during the charge animation would do the backstep etc.

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As I understand it, the devs are frantically trying to figure out what to do about it. But you are right, difficulty mods are crappy in this game. It makes basically every boss encounter a chore if you are running with a melee build and dependent on rune attacks. Again, as for the animation cancellation, go play Sekiro, Ghost of Tsushima, the two recent God of War games or Elden Ring. You’ll feel it immediately how much control you get over any enemy encounters. You’ll be happy to run in to packs of mobs because you can disengage at any point, reengage and dominate your foes. Rip them apart, shred them and look for another pack of mobs immediately. In No Rest for the Wicked; you see a pack of mobs of 3+ and you running a melee build and there’s 11 different difficulty modifiers against you; you’ll sigh a breath of dread every time. Before engaging with them you’ll be buffing yourself with six different potions, meals and damage surge from your runes for every basic encounter. Using runes will deplete your focus bar, getting hit will reduce you stamina and blocking poise will leave you staggered after a few hits. You’ll dread every encounter all because you can’t cancel your attacks. In those other games(especially Devil May Cry) you’ll enjoy mobs in the highest difficulty tier, in this game you’ll either kite them or use a broken range build to mow them down. Engaging with the melee mechanics are a disadvantage in this game. It’s like playing Call of Duty and using the tomahawk to oneshot everyone instead of using your guns that would’ve taken you 3+ hits to down your opponents.

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specially since foes can “track” you up till their attack lands, I foresee this being a big problem when I get to endgame… lots of “you miss once you are toast” instances XD

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Bruh exactly! That bit still frustrates me and perhaps everyone too. The fact that even if we perfect dodge an attack, if the enemy hasn’t landed their attack; they’d spin around and still hit us. Like bruh c’mon!
Especially that huge bear boss and the twin bats! Dodge all you want, at the last of your stamina pool’s limit, they’ll hit you anyway.

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fighting one on one, is manageable, but multiple foes at once, you always get hit at least once, do you know that bounty for the beach, 2 big guys? there are always 2 crossbow fockers there, I hate that fight… have to always kite the suckers around… so cheesy in so many ways, reminds me of stinky doritos… LOL
(and is not about being hard or easy, is just not fun)

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That’s what I was preaching about this whole time! Exactly! It’s not about easy or hard, it’s just not fun nor engaging. In the recent God of War games I relished in the mobs. I never had to kite the enemies, I rolled up on on them and slayed them all with glee. Why? Well it’s because the combat was engaging and rewarding. They had ranged enemies too and that didn’t matter for I was in full control of my character’s moveset. But here, yeah 1-on-1 is “manageable” but add a couple of ranged enemies and it’s just ugh!!! I was never a shield guy in any of the Souls games. Lightweight and quick; especially in Bloodborne & Sekiro. But here, if you’re going to engage in melee combat a shield is almost a must. Lest you wanna big-sword it then at that point you are a certified masochist n god help you.

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The ranged enemies accompanying bounties won’t feel as a bad if they just remove the stagger/poise damage off ranged attacks.

Either that, or they need to make ranged attacks have a lot less reliability and have longer wind up/travel time.

It is pretty annoying to be stunlocked/chain staggered by machine gun turrets that spam a backwards dash that’s the length of two full light dodge rolls all while you’re blowing all your stamina sprinting to them and dodging projectiles only to be out of stamina to burst them down.

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:joy: my guy YASSSS! Even if we were to play devil’s advocate and assume that the ideal strat was to get the range outta the way first, it’s still bad cuz we’d still be outta stamina dealing with them. Plus ranged enemies are usually accompanied by brutes and they never let up their attacks so we’d still be dodging them plus those witches that teleport away from our attacks.. your suggestion is superb. Slow moving arrows/fireballs or falloff curve, inaccuracies. I remember when Diablo 4 came out, they had these crossbows that would 1shot everyone from across the screen and it was a nightmare getting to 100 in hardcore mode. No matter how well you played, there was always the crossbow enemies to deal with. The devs nerfed them by having their first shot miss then a slow recalibration then slow winding up.