Hey MoonStudios folks, below is a list of items I’ve encountered while playing that feel in need of attention in one way or another. I recognize the mountain of work you’ve all done to get to this point and while the game looks and sounds amazing, there are MANY things from a gameplay standpoint that need considerable work for this game to be something worth investing time (and money for those who’ve not already bought the game) in. The list below is scattershot/flow of consciousness.
-UI/UX-
- Keybind options NEED to exist. Ideally multiple options per game function (look at games World of Warcraft and Starfield for multi-bind options as a reference). I hate controller gameplay in general and to me, KBM support is accessibility.
- Direct bindable abilities: So far it seems like spells/weapon abilities are defaulting to a chorded bind, as defined by the game, rather than being able to have a user-defined bind to use Ability/Spell 1, 2, 3, 4 etc with a single press. Savvy users can and will use things like AutoHotKey scripts to get around this, but they should not HAVE to.
- Need a “quit game” option from Main Menu: Having this only in the “tab” menu is insufficient. ESC → access to menu options, of which quitting the game should be one.
- “What is a Cerim Whisper, and why should I care?” I’ve seen a handful of these now. I find them, I press “E” on them, and I’ve noticed that if I die near one I’ve interacted with, I will resurrect at it. Beyond that I have no idea what they do. I can channel on them after “unlocking” them but that doesn’t seem to actually DO anything. What is this / why is this not explained / why does subsequent channeling not do anything
- Stop with the “mobile game timer” systems: Town upgrades. These are not fun. Stop. Now. Please.
-ITEMS-
- Inventory Space / Management: This is an absolute nightmare. This needs to be quadrupled, and/or the player needs to have access to a chest/storage at campfires to manage this. Managing inventory space can be cool, but give the player a way to still hold onto resources in some way. I’m fine (if a bit annoyed) to have to run back to a campfire somewhere to stash a bunch of items to continue adventuring if I HAVE to. Having to decide what items to keep or seemingly junk FOREVER? That feels absolutely awful. Especially when seeing the sheer volume of different types of items that exist in the game Note, this also ties in with the below-mentioned Healing items / food. There’s WAY too much of that stuff taking up inventory space when a simple single item for healing (Flasks or some such) would do the job
-AUDIO-
- Need a “Audio plays in Background” option: This is a pretty standard in many games these days. Tabbing out to check discord, or whatever, I still want to hear music, ambient sounds, and specifically because the game cannot be paused - nearby enemy sounds! (and you’ll likely be amazed at Audio bugs your folks will find with this enabled and the game running in the background)
-COMBAT-
- Auto Targeting is atrocious: On multiple occasions I’ve been ACTIVELY moving my character towards the intended target, with my mouse in the direction of or directly over the intended target and instead been auto-target-redirected to a different target which resulted in my death. This feels actively horrible in play. Allow the player to determine where their attacks go if they so choose - an option to disable this, and/or more intelligently check for player input (moving direction / facing direction / aiming direction (mouse location) to determine the target.
- Dagger Special attack doesn’t stagger?: So this ability costs a TON of runic power, seems to do very little damage, and doesn’t stagger/mini-stun targets it connects on? This feels like a trap button to press. Unless I’ve managed to kill the target with this, it’s ALWAYS been IMMEDIATELY countered by the enemy because they just seem to shrug it off entirely.
- Enemies dropping absolutely nothing feels bad: I’m not looking for weapons/gear/resources on every single kill, but I have killed 3-6 things back to back, multiple times - and not seen ANYTHING drop at all. It feels real bad. Having them drop even a little bit of currency would feel better than this. Also, as an aside, I know EXP gain is happening, but because it doesn’t happen in a more visual way it, too, contributes to these “lootless kills” feeling that much more unimpactful.
- Staff Spells / Spellcasting Feels bad: Mana required to use these feels too high / restrictive
- Healing feels bad. Food is not good. Flasks work. Do flasks: I don’t like gathering items to make food to eat. It, combined with the incredibly limited inventory space, feels woefully clunky and unnecessarily convoluted. The “sit at the bonfire, replenish your healing items” is a thing that works, and works well. I see and appreciate the attempts to do your own take on the genre, but this does not feel like a place where the current system is innovating on this in a way that feels fun and exciting - at all.
- What the fuck is with these bomb throwing assholes? Pardon my language here, but seriously what the hell? Their kit is TOO good. They seem to have heat seeking capabilities with their bomb tosses, and then when you gap close on them they IMMEDIATELY switch to melee weapons and slice the shit out of you? They don’t seem to have a downside, and this feels really bad in play - especially at such lower levels.
- Ranged Enemy Accuracy feels TOO good: I touched on this above with the bomb throwers, but the archers as well seem to just have hyper accurate aim. This, combined with incredibly slow player move speeds, high stamina cost on dodge, high-feeling health pools on the enemies themselves, and many ranged attackers also having VERY GOOD melee options… it just feels like the player is at TOO much of a disadvantage here.
- Enemies Not Respawning Feels Bad: I’m to understand that this may just be part of Early Access, but this feels like a big misstep. Having some enemies respawning in some way would allow the player to not only keep leveling up if they feel they need a mathematical edge, but also allow for continuing to practice moves, try different weapons, etc. Also, if - systemically speaking this is part of the long term intended design, it would seem better to get as much early testing on it as possible.
- Some enemy attack hitboxes feel very off: Seeing other videos about this has confirmed I’m not imagining it - there just seem to be some things that have wildly different collision for their attacks than what is visually present on screen. This feels really bad.
- Enemies can see, and attack the player without being able to see/attack them: A handful of times an enemy has been behind some structure obfuscated from player view, but theoretically not obfuscated from character view. This feels REALLY bad. If the player CANNOT physically move their camera in such a way to see and attack or react to an enemy, that enemy shouldn’t be able to act/attack the player. It’s cheating.
-MOVEMENT-
- Base walk speed is too slow: Especially when compared to other enemies that often seem visually more heavy than the player, this feels unnecessarily slow. I thoroughly enjoy Soulsborne and Monster Hunter games - I enjoy a slower pace experience, truly I do. This tho, this is TOO slow. It feels like the base movement speed could be bumped 20-25%, and maybe bumping the sprint speed 5-10% to still keep a nice feeling of speed increase between the two.
-CAMERA-
- Add “Camera Look-‘Cheating’”?: Many platformers and/or other fixed-perspective games allow for one analog stick, or mouse to cheat the cameras view (and sometimes angle) with a small leashing range based on the player character’s actual position. With the aforementioned issue of enemies being able to see the player without the player EVER being able to see them, this feels like it might slightly tip the scales in the player’s favor without being overpowered.
