Detailed Feedback After 40 Hours

Wicked Feedback
22

I agree with almost everything you have said and altho, there are more things I wanna see addressed, this would be a great start. I would also like to add that respec cost, once they add respecs, should not exist until they fix weapon/shield stat requirements as its straight up punishing for new players for not knowing what was not explained to them in the first place, basically, for trying to play and learn the game.

I was thinking about estus flasks as well, and now that I saw ur post I do agree that they should be rechargable on death, and not by interacting with whiper, however, they should also be recharged by slaying enemies, as in, every few enemies killed or something, and maybe with time as well. However, whisper should full heal u when u interact with it, otherwise u r punishing new players for no reason, and it stops mattering once you reach town anyways.

Additionally, all food items being primarly healing items should cease to exist. This is my suggestion for reworking them. You could make a hunger bar that gets filled fully by eating any 2 of them. Add a button to throw up if you wanna switch buffs, animation could last 3+ seconds to not allow exploiting food as healing items on bosses. They would basically be an hour long buffs that slowly decreases in value over time, and once you reach 50% hunger again you can eat another piece of food. If you go with this system cooldown for eating food should be removed, and cooldown for estus flasks should not be implemented to begin with.

Talking about quickitems, oils and vials last for far 2 short of a period, their duration should increase fivefold at the very least. I do not wanna be applying it multiple times through a bossfight.

And there is third point I had to add, when it comes to upgrading sacrament and housing, why doesnt upgrading sawmill, furnance and what not in sacrament upgarde the ones you can place or have already placed in ur house?

Coming to my last idea. All weapons that do plague or heat damage should require faith, while all weapons that do cold or lightning should require intellect to use. Inserting a plague or fire rune should add faith requirement to the item and scalling as well, depending on the items rank. If you wanna keep 1 element per weapon limitation for this to work you would have to remove option to insert gems or runes to an item of wrong elemental type in enchanted weapon with certain element and you could use this same method to limit about of affixes you could roll by enchanting an item with rune of gem of certain element already inserted in it.

Additionally, it would be very cool if dual wield weapons were allowed to have separate extra damage type for each hand, as in, one fire, other plague as affixes, maybe both that belong to the same stat, or even not neccessarly, with halved values of each. I, personally, would enjoy running daggers with fire and plague. Additionally you could introduce certain unique armor gear later on that allows you to do more damage to targets affected by x element.

EDIT: rethinking food system and explained it in a way I think would be the best way to have it in the game

EDIT2: explaing my take on elemental weapons and their scalling

2 Likes
23

please increase the number of attribute points and also let us reset …so that we can use all weapons and make fun builds …

24

that aint it. There would be no reason to increase stat points if weapons required a more balanced number od stats to be usable, as author fo this post has pointed out. Howevere I do agree that quests or some special one time events should increase characters power in some way, amybe trought additional stat points as well.

1 Like
25

I was just saying cause game like elden ring lords of fallen allow you to max out your points …I think they have a cap if 99 I think don’t remember

26

I am new to this genre, but the whole stats system feels off to me. For example, I have a STR sword and focusing on that stats. Naturally, I have minimal DEX, INT, and FTH. I can understand that my sword attack are slow but powerful, I also have minimal magic affinity and whatever FTH supposed to represent. The problem is:

if I decide to switch to other weapon (sword or no sword) and the requirement/scaling is not STR, then the STR is basically wasted. It’s not used anywhere else afaik. HP are from HP, HP regen are from enchantment, and melee attacks scale from weapon’s scaling stats. It discourages people to switch weapons / class and make TONS of great weapons unusable (albeit it can be transferred to other realms).

My suggestion is to back to the basic RPG formula, where all stats matters and have their own role shaping the character. This is just my example:

  • STR scales with physical melee attacks. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, sword, dagger, staff, club, katana, or even smacking with your bow. Also scales with melee rune attacks…
  • DEX scales with physical ranged attacks. Bow, knife throw, crossbow, throwing lance, etc. Probably with other bonuses like evasion, extra backstab damage, or attack speed. Also scales with ranged rune attacks.
  • INT is from magical rune abilities. Fireball, ice ball, thunder strike, etc.
  • FTH is where I’m not sure. it could be used for buff / debuffs like heals, attack buff, poison, etc. But it could also be used to scale with armor (since you have to have faith in your armor when defending, I guess). Higher FTH scales with higher armor efficiency.

With this changes (and nothing else), the class will resolve itself. Well, probably have to tweak weapon requirement a bit.

If I want to be a sword main, I would put most of my stats to STR, my melee and rune melee attack would be strong, but if I equip ranged or magical weapon, the abilities wouldn’t be as strong.

If I build assassin character with dagger, the base damage of dagger should be lower than a heavy sword, but the stats would still be to STR. The movement would be faster than above, but with less damage. And I can allocate some of the stats to DEX so I can have bigger backstab damage with options for ranged combat (since the game has no evasion, some of assassin’s skill can’t be implemented).

I know this suggestion is huge and has it flaws too. But I still think the current stats system is way off and does not align with dev’s vision of giving players freedom to explore the world and its “soft class systems”.

edit: I’m not suggesting the stats requirement for the weapon to be removed, but I’m suggesting for the damage scaling aspects of said weapons. The requirement could still be used. For example certain sword requires certain amount of STR while certain dagger requires certain amount of STR and DEX (while the melee attack itself scales with STR)

edit: formatting

27

They have introduced attribute point system similar to all other soulslikes so they should keep stealing all stat requirement systems from soulslike titles since this whole problem was already well solved in all soulslike games before and theres no need to reinvent the wheel. Switching weapons should be something that you should not be able to do whenever you want otherwise whole point of requirements becomes void. whats the point of requirement you can just turn off by redistributing your points for no cost? respects should be costy, but weapons in the weapon pool should make more sense and respect certain criteria as original author pointed out for respects to feel meaningful and point distribution to feel good.

P.S: FTH is faith, used in all other soulslike titles I have palyed so far.

28

this one probably has a lvl cap, not a points cap, which I think is far more interesting approach. We will see how that plays in endgame, but there should be far more build diversity in true endgame.

29

  1. Yes, exactly. That makes a lot more sense to me. If it was those exact stats I would expect that to be a fairly endgame weapon so a mage build would already have high int (but not necessarily meet the requirement) and most likely meet the dex requirement. My level 30 character has 30 str and 28 faith so finding a similar weapon in the crucible for example would make sense. One of my big issues was finding weapons with really high requirements too early in the game, to the point where you are incentivised to ignore other stats to unlock the weapon.

  2. I like that you may find a new item and can’t fit it into your quick slots so you have to make a decision about what will be most useful to you in combat. Or prepare for a specific fight. For example, this boss is weak to lightning, I’ll equip my lightning oil and lightning pots.

  3. I think I understand what you mean. My problem was that I was constantly returning to town to stuff all my chests full of resources and I didn’t have any space for much else until I bought my house. I really don’t like the idea of having 10 chests in my house all filled with resources, instead I’d much prefer 2/3 filled with useful items leaving me with a lot more room to decorate with other furniture. I’d much rather occasionally return to town, to upgrade my gear, sell gear I don’t need and store gear that I might need later.

Regarding risk taking and what to destroy: I love Resident Evil 4 it’s one of my favourite games of all time and has one of my favourite inventory systems of all time. If you are knowledgeable about the game and are an experienced player, you are most likely always going to have an inventory filled to the brim with ammo, healing items, grenades and weapons. So, when you stumble across something that can’t fit, which will happen a lot, you have to make meaningful decisions about what to keep and what to trash. You have nowhere to stash items and once they are gone, they are gone for good. You have all the knowledge available to you with the items; you know what everything will do. I believe this incentivises you to put more thought into a choice and it will matter a lot more. With this inventory, treasures and key items are kept in a separate inventory which has infinite space.

Let’s say you are in the crucible, if your gear storage/item storage is full, you are forced to discard otherwise it is gone for good. Having all the information about what a blade oil does or this new ring does allows you to make that decision. For me that was simply discarding the cheapest gear first, keeping the most expensive to sell. Or removing the item that I don’t use and don’t plan on using. But maybe when shared realms come, I may want to keep some items that my friends may find useful?

I do not think this works with resources though, as I said before you cannot make as meaningful a decision when you do not have all the information available to you. Especially with the volume of resources present, many will just come across as useless that might actually be incredibly useful unbeknownst to you. Deciding based on the information you have vs guessing is far more interesting to me. I understand why you like the other system, I think it’s just a difference of what we find interesting here. I think having limited resources makes the game feel too much like a survival game, and although I do enjoy survival games, that is personally not the experience that I am looking for with NRftW.

To summarise: I don’t like having 10 different chests all filled to the brim of bear paws and pine wood. I don’t like constantly returning to town to empty resources to storage. I don’t like having to run back and forth from chests in order to craft and I like having more information to better inform decisions.

30

Love the idea about additional damage modifiers being associated with stats, and I agree that magic scaling weapons should offer a different damage type by default. If you want to primarily deal physical damage than you are probably not going to level int/faith at all but if you want some magical properties adding some scaling to plague/fire/lightning etc. seems like a great way to incentivise this. I like the options of removing a gem as well, I think I would like this to have a cost attached though (and not just a gold/silver/copper cost). Maybe a raw gem or something similar to remove it? So, you can’t just try everything with no consequences, but the consequences aren’t as severe.

Dual wielding would be great, I was disappointed when it discovered it wasn’t possible. But with only having 1 attack button I’m not sure how it would be implemented apart from making a set of dual wielding animations for every weapon which would require a lot of extra work. Maybe on weapons like the twin daggers we could equip two damage gems, one for each dagger?

I like that oils only last a limited amount of time and you have to reapply. If you apply it you are going to want to make the most of it so it may make you more reckless. If it lasts the entire fight you are just going to be better during the fight with no trade off. For Echo Knight, I would use the damage buff rune before going in, then halfway through the fight find time to eat a vegetable cake or recast it to keep it going. Recasting it takes a lot of time and leaves you vulnerable so I like the risk here, and vegetable cakes are a limited and powerful resource.

I don’t like the idea of a hunger bar, but I like the idea of adding more buffs to food, but not hour long buffs. I’d probably keep the buff lengths the same as they are now, but add in more variation to encourage food over a healing flask. The healing flask would always be a fall-back preventing farming. This is all with the knowledge that having “unlimited” healing will stay, if it were made more limited and the timer removed, then I would prefer food’s healing element to be reduced and more emphasis placed on a flask. I have come to appreciate the healing timer in combat though, healing at a bad time has far more severe consequences than in Souls. In Souls you can just chug another charge of estus, in NRftW your health may now be lower than it was originally and you have to wait a while to heal again. I love the extra planning I have to do to decide when to heal.

Honestly, I typically do not like respecing. I feel it is necessary in this game with the current stat requirements (and because of that I believe I advocated for it in another post) but I would rather the stats be changed rather than adding respecing to the game. I want my decisions when levelling up to be important and define my build and have a level of commitment to them. I understand the vast majority of players want respecing so I would be fine with it being added, as long as it has a cost.

31

Maybe some food loot should apears next to you after being killed by a boss (only if you use food during the fight). And the very first time you pick it there’s a letter from Gordon saying “you need to eat well to fight well” or some nice word like that. Moreover, maybe the marchants could gives the players some free food sometimes when talking to them, with a line like “thanks for what you’re doing for Sacrament” or “It’s dangerous outside, take this”. It could soluce the food problem and makes the NPC feel more alive

32

I’m quite happy with the food instead of estus system. There are even fires everywhere so that you can cook on the fly.

And ingredients for food are literally everywhere.

I do want the ability to respec, but it should be like a 25 silver process or something. Maybe even a gold or something. Ooooorrrr …

… $x per level. So at level 5, maybe it’s only five silver. At level 20, it’s 20 silver, etc. Respeccing should hurt your pockets.

1 Like
33

Amazing review!

Can’t help but agree with most points!

Here’s my take on stats, you may or may not find interesting aswell!

1 Like
34

I don’t think I was as clear as I could have been with my point about healing, so I made another edit to the end of my post. Basically, I am not advocating for food to be removed, I would like a healing flask to exist purely so you can never truly run out of healing items for boss fights and forcing the player to farm.

35

My biggest issue with the game is the stat reqs/scaling too :smiley: As a DEX user I see a curved sword and I get so excited… only to realize it’s 26 STR / 26 FAITH??? So frustrating :smiley:

2 Likes
36

that was exactly what I meant, heres an example. Basically, maybe it would be nice if dual weapons have double amount of gems, but they apply at 50% rate?

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There is a tradeoff. You used a consumable item and it is now gone. Is that not enough of a trade off? If you die to boss, its just wasted. I do think they should be rarer if they do that tho.

Reason why I fully disagree with this is very simple. Nobody would bother picking up any ingridients or food, or at least, 90% of players would not if food basically was another estus flask. why bother with food if it just a bit better version of the flask? This system would basically fully invalidate whole food system and it would be a waste of development resources and time and it would end up being a bad system nobody uses. I would rather have food be a slight long buffs and have whole world balanced around them instead. That way if I am struggling I am still incentivized to go out there, collect few peices of food (which should probably be rarer if devs decide to go with this), cook smth up that gives me hp and dmg buffs, and try again. If I am a good player however, I can challenge myself to do content without those buffs. It allows a slight option to self impose challenges, which is good as well. There would be no downsides of having no food on u, and having ur hunger bar empty,.

I personally never or rarily use them, however this game simply needs them, and with current weapon requirement situation going on it really needs to be free until that is adressed.

I think faith would be the best connected to fire, I simply do not see faith not being connected to a rune like holy flame, and well, plague makes so much sense as well, given that the whole story is that its faith vs plague. I have no idea what those stats give by themselves, I will assume they do not give anything, and if thats the case thats really unfun and bad. That whole issue would be fixed tho, if they add soulslike weapon scalling in the game, However it should be reworked to make more sense to new players as ratings F to S would not mean much to new players. So instead of rating stats weapon scales with with a letter, how about writting a number of damage each stats type provides. Doing what u suggested would break the game in so many levels, I do not think its sustainable at endgame once game fully launches.

1 Like
37

Isn’t that 1 + (-1), you’re adding more gems to the pool but dropping their active rate by half, meaning if you’re enchating these weapons you might run into even more frustration getting the wrong picks that are running at half the rate normal picks would.
If you’re gemming a normal weapon (gray) - With double the gem slottage you’re just wasting double the amount of gems for the same result in the end, purely from a mathematical standpoint. I like where you’re coming from, the idea is there, but not quite polished.

I agree that food should be the integral part of the game. Perhaps this could be solved by giving you a sort of debuff everytimeeeyou encounter a boss fight, limiting the amount of food you can eat (unpolished Idea, just throwing it out there)

Respecing enabled - kills replayability but strengthens the quality of late game

Respecing disabled - promotes replayability but is risky as not everyone is here to create multiple characters nor be inticed to grind through the whole game yet again,

Respecing limited - perhaps the first x levels you’re allowed to respec, from that point forward you get a warning that respecing is not possible, so choose carefully

In terms of what element would be connected to what stat is a bigger subjective debate i think but yeah. Mages/druids are sort of the users of primal elements most of the time as we know them today, that’s why I was leaning more towrads fire and ice being a mages/druids intelligence elemental pool

Lightining historically is used in terms of faith and godly presence, lightining and plague were historically reflected upon being the doing of higher powers, so yeah, i mean you could take fire and make it the same argument, I think this is more a debate of taste, but othwerwise my stat passives suggestions were just wild ideas, could be integrated to a lesser degree. Or have stat passives scale small in early and a lot in late game (meaning you’d really have to invest into a ceratin stat to get the passive going)

38

Yep, but you can also score 2 elements that belong to the same stat and then you would be applying both, and that would be pretty fun.

Problem is that food is a temporal resource, and a temporal resource never feels good to use in a soulslike fight. Nothing feels as good as limited permanent estus flask. There is no need to reinvent this. But the problem is what to do with food then to not invalidate it. My idea is all I could think of so far, I might think about it further, but the bottom line is food should evolve and become more of a way to buff urself than to heal yourself ocne you are out of early game.

Ur gear will constantly shift weight and that means u will constantly want to play with weight load stat value, that alone makes respecs a needed part of the game. Another huge problem with gear rn is that there are no indications what stats u will wanna put point into to use a weapon of a certain weapon type u like. Until second probem goes away respecs should be free or very very cheap, once that is solved, they should be costy, but nothing overly insane, as u will still wanna play with equip load stat value.

Honestly, this part is whatever, I kind of guessed thats what u were going with. If they implement any of those 2 systems, I would be happy.

39

Gotta weigh the cost and benefits here a bit, but I can get behind mixed elements on dualwield weapons, just with a different solution.

Yeah I can see where you’re going with this, it’s hard to crack this one honestly, wihtout just going to the standard of what souls-likes do. I like that the game has it’s own integrity with this, it just need poishing. I’m definitely more of a fan of trying for something new, even if it means re-inventing the wheel until you’ve cracked it.

My idea here was trying to protect replayability and “soft class” identity, I don’t want to get to the late game, only to respec every 3rd run, just because I found a complete new shiny ‘this and that’ that may be completely out of bounds of my build in the first place.
With multiplayer, I’d love to see diversity, not just seeing everyone hobbing around that one 2-hander that’s super overrated.
Respecing completely kills the value of the message behind the “soft class” system for me, especially with the arpg element of rng drops, everyone can get everything, and with respecing enabled, everyone can use everything at any time. So there are no real values attributed to commiting to a certain stat weight at all.

In terms of eqiup load, I’ve got around 30 hrs in the game. It feels like it’s a must right now, yeah. As the early-access end game is pretty much hard hitting and there’s no way to circumvent that other than equipping heavier gear, which is a shame. Equip load should not be the stat we debate around on account of having respecing in the game or not.

EDIT:
I might be reaching here:
But to me - If you keep respecing out of the late game - you perserve class identity, choices playes make have more weight to them, and you’re only worried about adding more content to those “classes” that feel underappreciated,

If you enable respecing across the board - you completely nulifiy the meaning of class identity, and you’re suddenly worried more about balancing what you have in the loot pool instead, since everyone is going to naturally be drawn to the “best builds”, what is “meta” so on so forth, even if you’re riding the high horse “trying to find your own way”, there’s no going around the noise that the community creates with “hyped builds” and the meta, you just feel like a stubborn fool for going your own way, especially if there’s multiplayer.

English might not be my first language so bear with me please!

EDIT2:

By keeping respecing out of the late game - you also give value to the community chest.

You might find items along the way you know you won’t be able to use, which gives incentive to share and help, connect with friends or other players. (possible trading)

If you have respecing in the late game on the other hand, you more incentivised to hoard whatever you get, becuase the possibility of you using items that would otherwise be way out of your reach are now a possibility.

40

I dont think this is a good system to keep for full release, thats what I am sure about. The fact that ur healing is a consumable puts a mental barrier on the player to not use it because it will get wasted. And that kind of mental abrrier is not only unfun to deal with, it also results in more deaths and overall worse experience ofr the player.

Same pieces of armor/weapons can have a totally different equip load thx to a different modifiers on gear for quipment load. And note, this is an rpg, and respecing and minmaxing is all rpgs is what it is all about in the endgame, so do expect something similar here, and theres no way u can spec out of that. Now I do suggest that respecs should not be full respecs, rather point by point respecs, than wont feel expensive on adding/removeing 2-3 points from one stat and putting it in another for this exact reasoning. And until weapons are adressed, I want them to be free.

41

i agree like 90% with you, good post

1 Like