Breach Patch 1 Sneak Preview

Wicked General
183

Single whisper per region for fast travel makes sense to me. Or just some more shortcuts to unlock, potentially. Some areas just take a little too long to run to and from, IMO (Sacrament to Marin, for example - especially if the blights have respawned).

What happens to the gem when it’s extracted? Is it a money cost + the gem is destroyed, but the slot is re-opened? Or money + the gem is recovered (meaning if you re-socket it, it would re-roll the values)?

Basic ranged attacks using stamina again is a nice change, thank you for adding it. Do enemies already react more aggressively to being attacked at range and close the gap? If they do, that seems like an ok way to mitigate players just slowly poking enemies to death from range.

184

Maxed plague will get you plenty of direct level 16 drops in areas where it caps at level 30 (so currently Meadows and Marin). Other than that you can upgrade gear to 16 at the ichor guy.

185

Summary of some arguments against and for:

-Many people is against unlimited fast travel in the entire gameplay: they say it isn’t necessary, good shortcuts and small maps, contribute to the story and characters development, enjoyment of traveling across the map, LIVE system of NRFTW, to avoid a mindless and fast paced style of others ARPGs, new players will have no incentive to explore the map shortcuts and old players would feel the shortcuts as a joke, it’s part of the gameplay experience.
-LIVE system isn’t fully implemented yet as intended, so we don’t know how it could feel in the full game. Atm if fast unlimited travel gets implemented it could be reverted to the original system after 1.0 and that would backlash against devs.

-People that support fast travel say they shouldn’t be forced into a differentt “play-style”, so if other people don’t want to do it they just should avoid that even if implemented.
-But there is a contra-argument: “Gamers love to optimize, and will always pick the most efficient solution, even if that solution removes fun. Its up to game designers to prevent this from happening”. So walking is part of the gameplay, closer to stranding games. But for other people walking isn’t fun after a while.

-Some people agree to allow fast travel but in late-game: it gets boring to traverse the map, the value of the map gets lost after playing it for a long time, there are no more incentives like story or characters, the gameplay gets repetitive and walking distances makes it worst, it adds overall frustration because respawn points and walking times. BUT some say it couldn’t be necessary if the map really changes and different things happen on each exploration. Some say it could be grinded and should be expensive (Plague Ichor, destructible runes, etc). Also it could inflict some sort of punishment (less exp, gold, etc.).

-A general consensus gravitates towards better respawn points and fast travel but ONLY inside the main cities, and NO unlimited fast travel during early-game. So the majority of people supporting fast travel don’t want it to be implemented on early-game.

A middle point, limited fast travel:
-Fast travel but limited, only certain whispers by location, some sort of restrictions, cooldown between teleports outside of Sacrament, only allow between main cities or villages, only one main whisper per zone, temporal whisper points by crafting or runes.

1 Like
186

Super hyped for the patch! Every idea looks solid

187

Games with a Difficulty choice are BUILT with that in mind. Every mode is meant to cater (And yes, games CATER TO YOU the Player, they are more important than any ‘vision’ the director has, because without players wanting to play it, the Designer doesn’t have anything) to you and hopefully your preferred play-style.

No offense and I’m being honest and sincere here, but this is purely a ‘You’ problem. Pick a difficulty that suits you and ignore the rest. That’s how a game with Difficulty Sliders are meant to be played.

188

So worried about the unlimited fast travel. I hope we hear something soon walking it back. This wasn’t the issue to cave on

2 Likes
189

If Mahler’s plan goes through, I think it will be an option for when they implement the ‘Make your own worlds’ thing. I think, or maybe, I HOPE it’ll be an option to turn on and off.

I am just speculating, though.

190

memory leak crash fix when?

191

We need a “test dummy that can display damage values,” when exploring our builds, we hope there is a dummy that allows us to test, rather than looking for an enemy to test!!!

2 Likes
192

So true, I have actually tried attacking all the dummies in the town when I first saw them, and was surprised that they are placed there only for the story.

We need a “furniture recipe” for a training dummy to place in our houses.

193

Bro this sounds like a discussion board response that u use chatgpt for. bruhhhhh

194

and how do you imagine the implementation? Should each weapon have a unique move set?
How to combine them? Or create a bunch more animations for each 1H weapon combination?

That’s why if you want to use a weapon in two hands, you have a weapon for two hands at once.

195

I’m pretty OK with how it is at the moment. I like the concept of main hand and offhand, where main had is your attacking weapon and offhand you can use the Runes from it.

196

I am strongly opposed to the introduction of fast travel, even temporarily, because those who are complaining now will just complain even more if this feature is later removed. Lazier players would simply see it as a downgrade to the quality of life. Instead, I would suggest taking advantage of the realm modifiers to leave this choice in the hands of each individual player, based on their own preferences and needs. Personally, considering the care you’ve put into the level design so far, I believe that unlimited fast travel is a mechanic that shouldn’t have a place in this game. It would end up neutralizing all the effort made to create a beautiful level design full of shortcuts and secondary paths, which help make exploration more enjoyable and rewarding.

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197

To summarize, your argument is that:
“Shortcuts gameplay is fun initially, but once you farmed endgame for many hours it became tedious and so a fast access option is necessary for grinding.”

Its a good point.
I do agree with the necessity of “fast access” solution to areas during endgame grinding.
However, the solution doesn’t have to be whispers.

Let me explain:
Currently, shortcuts aren’t good enough. If the target is in Shallows for example, you will still need to walk all the way from Sacrament.
Shortcuts aren’t convenient enough, so whispers become necessary.

But, what is shortcuts were good enough?
Take the cable car that go from Lowland Meadows straight to Shallows for example, Its basically an area teleport. What I want is a lot more of these types of shortcuts. The function is similar to whispers, but it appeals more to me because you have to memorize them like studying train routes. Thus making fast travel an acquired knowledge rather than free function.

I’m not entirely against fast travel, there could be a middle ground.
For example, free teleport is only possible with “Special Gates”.
Since there’s a car from Lowland Meadows to Shallows, there won’t be a teleport gate in Shallows, but there’s one in Lowland, so if you want to go to Shallows, take the teleport to Lowland then ride the car to Shallows.

Ideally, There would be only 4 gates spread in 4 directions, and a web of shortcuts good enough to make access to every location convenient.

198

Besides the fact that I do not like forced time-consuming stuff in games, whatever it is, from old unskippable cutscenes to moderns gatcha pointless farming, real time events, in-game timers and so on. But it’s just me and I know it’s personal.

“it’s just 2 minutes” someone say.
It is, but multiply it for all trips back and forth (so 4 minutes already?) during a session and multiply it again for every session. It’s like 20 mins on every hour spend just walking, or in my case just dash spamming.

Your solution might sound cool but it will make traversal even longer.
It will feel like being in a lift waiting to reach the desired floor, after many times I would prefer to just teleport there.

One can say that forcing players to walk all the way, even with shortcuts, is time consuming and does not add anything to the actual gameplay.

It’s not a design choice, it’s a design flaw in this type of game.

The game does not have metroid-vania elements like Ori.

The main focus of the game is the combat, not the exploration and traversal (these are side elements for me), otherwise it would have more movement related mechanics like wallrun, double jump, air dash, grapple, glide and so on.

This would make traversal really nice, like Ori did. It was cool to backtrack an old zone with all the new powers, it felt nice.

In this game is just plain walking/running/dash spamming.
_
I just got this idea while writing this.
They could add movement related runes that act like platforming skills as base runes.
Accessible from empty weapon slot.
For example an air dash, long jump and so on.
_

Anyway.

The main problem for me occurs while farming. Actually the main issue is farming, and not farming for exp since fighting is the fun part.

One has to farm some resources and materials that are zone-related.

So one is forced to always go to that zone and follow a farming route.

This is where the game gets boring an tedious and where the teleport will make it faster for those who get bored farming.
Walking around gathering materials it’s not an activity that anyone likes to do. If you like it, it’s okay I am not asking to remove farming from the game.

If one likes to spend time walking across the levels, do it, but this is not a core aspect of the game just because you like it.

There is no real counter argument to this, it’s just a matter of time. Real-life time.

From the trailer the game gave me single-player, story driven, ARPG vibes not a live service multiplayer MMO.

I would like to be able to play the game for the story from start to finish without getting bored doing something that is not fun for me.

We will see after the next patch, my guess is that a lot of people that are against it might change their mind about it (not universal fast travel but some kind of solution that allows fast travel between major zones).

199

well i don’t see it that way. when u take away teleporting everywhere freely, but would have 1 whisper in each area, you would 1. drastically reduce travel time and 2. when doing quests, bounties and challenges, u would still have to walk a bit and therefor automatically walk past the resources.

what you say about unlimited fast travel is exactly promoting what you do not want, that u teleport to any whisper and follow a farming route from there.

if u use all game mechanics like bounties, challenges, and later possibly random NPC encounters on the map, you would not want to go anywhere always. you would want to follow certain main roads etc, just so u have these actual gameplay elements combined: exploration, chest/loot, resources, bounties, quests, NPCs etc.

unlimited fast travel takes that away in parts. it makes the great level design and shortcuts almost obsolete, and instead of promoting to collect resources, while bounty hunting and exploring you promote whisper hopping and players staying in a radius of a few meters around the whispers. that makes resource runs even more boring in my personal opinion.

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I am also against full unlimited fast travel btw.
I would like fast travel for the end game and not available from the beginning or easily obtained.

I personally do not like to farm resources in general.
I would prefer to farm resources via combat as I said multiple times, create specific enemies like treant for wood, golem for rocks and so on.
This way one can just farm by doing something that’s fun.

what you say about unlimited fast travel is exactly promoting what you do not want, that u teleport to any whisper and follow a farming route from there.

Even with fast travel it depends on where the farming spot are.

The level design and shortcut do not become pointless, sometimes might be faster and better to use a shortcut than to going back to another whisper.

For example the tower in the top spot in the Glades. It connects with the sewer, it is better to go there than go all the way down to the whisper.

Some whispers are better for bounties, some for resources, but to get the best out of a zone the best way is to have a farming route to to all these.

The levels could be partially re-worked to better adapt to global fast travel, so that the spawning points of bounties are distant from the whisper and are filled with resources spots along the way.

Another main issue if with ingredients for food.
As we level up we need better ingredients that spawn only in certain areas. I would like the idea to just teleport there, gather ingredients craft melas and go back to whatever I was doing.

Anyway we will test it out and see for ourselves.

As I said I am also against unlimited fast travel, but it would be still better than no fast travel at all.

1 Like
201

Will the game level reset from the beginning when version 1.0 is released?

202

i would assume so, but thats just an educated guess