Hey Wicked People!
I would like to shortly preface by thanking you for creating such an amazing experience. I just finished killing the Echo Knight endboss after clearing a solid amount of Pestilences on max difficulty (bonfire suffixes and world difficulty). I feel like I was partially shooting myself in the foot by building a full glass-cannon fire-caster build this time around, but hey, I had fun doing it! (please reflect on some of the Pestilence affixes. The “spend all your focus on focus-use” one in particular completely breaks caster builds as it procs out of your stamina-filler making it impossible to use it for gathering focus. I had to come up with a completely different weapon for that one Pestilence just to be able to perform in melee and get all my focus from there. I started double checking all the items I was sacrificing on the bonfire since then)
I am very familiar with Souls-like games and I’ve learned to distinguish between thoughtful carefully-placed hoops that create an engaging experience, and accidental difficulty for the sheer sake of giving the player something else to bash their heads into. For example, in Elden Ring I found bosses with big hitboxes particularly hard, not because their moveset was complicated or anything but rather because the camera could not keep track of their movement and/or show the proper queues for their actions. Also, “you killed boss X and boss Y, now let’s put them both on the same room and see how you manage”. Both of these gripes were absolutely not a problem for me in NRFTW because of the “bird’s eye view” perspective that gives you a (mostly) unequivocal view of the battlefield (please have another look on the Depth of Field effect. While kiting as a ranged I found myself looking at a blurry screen way too often. In particular on the Meadows area as you are progressing Southwards confusing the Engine on what should be blurred out). Even the double boss fights were extremely well designed in my opinion, something I have yet to see so excelently replicated in other games.
That being said, I urge you to rethink which boss-arenas are elligible for each end pestilence-boss as that turned out to be a roller-coaster of emotions. In particular the big two-headed giant with a log from the ending of the Nameless-pass campaign arc. I had the joy of getting him in the dark dungeon in the starting Beach area (a boss inside a pitch black room… Bold move… Even with lighting being a thing) and in the Weeping Sisters area. Both experiences were quite simply not fun to go through. If you pick a boss with an area negation mechanic (purple poop) and you take it from a simple big circular arena into an area filled with tight choke points, you are bound to find problems. In the Weeping Sisters area in particular, I had to run so far with the purple poop in an effort to keep the choke points clean that the boss reset three times on me, even though I was still within bounds of the arena. Also, terrain! How many times did I get hit by an invisible log-swing that went through a wall or a sand dune? After 3 hours last night I finally got him, but boy was it annoying…
My suggestion is to have the bosses spawning in the story boss arenas of each zone or at least on open spaces. I believe most Pestilence areas have at least one. These are extremely well designed fights that risk being ruined by the completely accidental assignment of an arena that is simply not compatible. I talked about a harder fight but I could also refer to bosses getting stuck and becoming exploitable (especially as a ranged character). It’s a can of worms that I don’t think merits opening.
Also, I watched Raxx’s video on the state of the game from a few weeks ago. I have since played since the change to allow certain basic spells to be cast with stamina. I got the impression that you would like to treat ranged gameplay as an after-thought and balance the fights for melee first. I myself have always played melee on Souls-likes but this time I decided to try something fresh so I built my fire mage for a change. I really did have a blast! It took a while to start feeling balanced, my damage felt quite underwhelming for a long time. During the campaign I had to outlevel the areas quite often until it felt viable. But in general, yeah, I’m fighting at ranged from a safer position I should be doing less damage. It’s a very fair exchange and the tuning felt quite on point! There were a few dragged out encounters for sure but as soon as the items started to drop it started feeling really ok. (I think Cold-builds might have an edge due to the freezing component of their status effect, but I didn’t play those for long.). My point being, don’t forsake the ranged players. I know that it gives you some unwanted complications on the fight design department but you are doing great. Most mobs are very good at using their gap closers and/or ranged attacks to keep you on your toes. Maybe check on the few that don’t have either one or the other so that they might take cover (dogs could hide behind terrain for example) and you are golden!
Once again, thank you for working on this game. As an avid Souls-like ARPG fan, this game is a dream come true. And to see it being done with such artistry and dedication… It’s a good day to be a gamer!
I wish you all the best,
Nethelor