Hi, just wanted to drop by and share my thoughts on the game. I have to say I have full faith in this project, because even so far the game is great, it’s beautiful, combat is great, and despite game breaking issues I still enjoyed my time with it. I believe it can be amazing when it fully comes out, especially with such rapid fixes in these past two days.
Anyways, getting to the point.
Weapon scaling → It’s either too good for hybrid scaling weapons, or too bad for single scaling weapons. You, as the developers should choose which one is it. I played as a faith/str cleric, having a weapon with str/faith scaling gave me +1 for every point as long as they were even, so +2 str +2faith gave me +4 dmg. This is not at all the case with weapons that use a single stat. I found a late game weapon that required 22 faith, and it had less than half the scaling of my previous weapon, getting +1 dmg after +3 faith (could only test with one level). Either do +1 dmg for each point no matter what, or do +1 dmg after two points no matter what. +1 dmg after 3 points is too bad.
Carry weight → The baseline is too low/weapons are too heavy, whatever, pick your poison. I didn’t even go with a full “heavy” build, despite wanting to, as even with 35 (so 25 invested) into carry weight I still couldn’t just wear full heavy armor (even without a shield). Early game you are pretty much forced to dump your first three levels (9 points) into carry weight so you can have your weapon of choice + any rags at all on you and not fat roll. I don’t think the game would be ruined if baseline carry weight was something like we currently have around 20 encumbrance.
Difficulty → It’s great. The final boss was a bit too easy for me, but overall I think it feels just right. “Endgame” feels like a sudden difficulty spike that’s a bit too much, but maybe that’s intentional for now. My point here is, don’t make it too easy as a baseline, if you need to make the game easier for the casual players just do “an easy mode” with more player health and damage.
Town → No clay requirement for upgrades, it’s criminal with the current implementation. Irl wait time is fine, but could be lower, especially for the final tier, dropping it to 2 hours would be better.
Enchanting → Let us choose whether we want magic or cursed item. Let us disenchant and enchant again for a price.
Items → Cursed items are shit in 80% of the cases, with possitive attributes not at all outweighting the heavy penalty. I’ve seen magic items with better stuff on it than on cursed gear. The idea is great, but it needs a big change. Either make the punishment smaller, and keep the buffs the same, like -10% max health, or loose 15% stamina when getting hit, etc. Or give it massive buffs, bigger than on unique weapons. Like 10% lifesteal, 50% more damage, 50% less stamina consumption etc. I’d like the curses to be more gameplay altering, like you can’t dodge roll, you can’t block, you can’t use healing items etc.
Gathering → It’s great, I like the mechanic. Increase the stack size to 40 as a baseline and let us upgrade it further with ichor (to the max of 99). If you insist on keeping clay as a resource/want to add something like that for the next tier later, just add SPECIAL PILES that are just exclusively that, a special clay pile, that works just like metal ores and trees. Preferably just get rid of it.
Farming → I think it’s on the roadmap? I feel like I heard about it. There’s a little field in the town, the player should be able to plant the roots of the healing plant as soon as they unlock the city, which would help with the “I DON’T HEAVE ENOUGH HEALING ITEMS” argument.
Build diversity → It’s bad. There are lots of weapons, which is amazing, but you tend to… not really see the ones that are “for your class” for like 10 hours. And you beat the game with the one weapon you liked since early game. Please just give us a general “basic weapon recipe” “advanced weapons recipe” etc. That lets us craft all the bronze tier weapons, then all the iron tier weapons etc. This way we can upgrade every tier. I for example played the entire game with the str/faith 1h hammer I found like 15 minutes after the prologue. We need a guaranteed way to get our hands on the intented weapons for our class. Otherwise all the variety just goes to waste, especially with no re-spec, and high weapon requirements.
Also, I’d love if we could at least try out weapons we don’t have the stats for. Make them do 80% less dmg or whatever, I just want to see if I’d like the moveset and the skill on the weapon.
Performance → The game runs bad. It’ll need lots of work, but looks great and I believe you can do it. Just don’t neglect it.
To sum it up, the game’s great and I love the foundation, and had a lot of fun with it, can’t wait for more updates and what’s to come, and I’m hoping you’ll hear the fans and really polish this rough gem you have now.