General feedback after after 20+ hours

Wicked Feedback
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1

Hello there,

I have now given the game another proper try after hotfix 3, and have some general feedback I just need to get off my chest.

Ranged enemies
You know why the saying “straight as an arrow” exists? Because arrows famously fly in a straight line. Arrows are not homing missiles. Having archers in this game fire homing arrows is incredibly immersion-breaking, besides how annoying it makes fighting them. No, they are not difficult enemies at all, but unbelievably annoying. Especially since they can disengage, reload, and fire twice before you’re even close to them. Ranged enemies should not have so many tools, and their attacks should just fly straight ahead.

Targeting
Targeting just feels completely off at times, with the player character wildly moving in a different direction than where a locked-on enemy is. Another issue seems to be that even though auto-targeting is turned off, the game still loves to automatically switch to the closest enemy whenever possible. Combined with the fact that the player character seems to love to hit anywhere but the targeted enemy, this creates an incredibly frustrating loop of “miss the enemy, try to re-adjust orientation, targeting swaps to another enemy, try to re-target the previous enemy and attack, miss the enemy by a mile, rinse and repeat.” Considering how fast some enemies are, and the, frankly, ridiculous level of gap closing most enemies have, targeting should be way, way more reliable.

Input Buffering
This is a quick one, but there are some serious input buffering issues in this game. There are many situations where inputs seem to be buffered for way longer than intended, so sometimes even after getting hit by enemies, attacks that should have been cleared out of the input queue are still being performed, resulting in multiple attacks being done when only one is intended.

Enemy balancing
This is not even about difficulty, more about immersion of the game world:
Bulky enemies with large, heavy two-handed weapons should never be faster than the player with agility-based, fast one-handed/dual-wielded weapons (fists, daggers). It is absolutely hilariously immersion-breaking when a brute enemy can fire off two or three attacks in the time a player character with daggers can even start a single attack in some situations. That should just not happen. Period.

Tutorialization
The game needs more tutorials or better tooltips on many core systems. Here’s a list of questions the game should answer for new players (I know the answers now, but the game didn’t make any of this clear):

  • What are fallen embers, and what can they do?
  • What is the difference between a rune like “Aura of Healing” and “Front Flip”?
  • When can I infuse, socket a rune, or enchant an item?
  • Why can I re-roll some enchantments with Fallen Embers, but not others?

“Start your build”
Maybe there are changes to stats etc. planned, but the early game/starting area (beach) should provide either known drop points for every “build archetype” (int, faith, agi, strength) so players can decide where they want to put their stats based on playstyle, or even something like an “archetype” selection for the first “weapon found”: You get a popup and can select daggers (agi), a bow (ranged), a wand/staff (int/faith caster), a claymore (strength), sword and board or club and board (examples of hybrids). Just examples of course.

Make it clearer when and why things happen/change
The game needs better information on when and why things change in the world:

  • When do enemies respawn? (I had situations where I cleared an area, moved just a pixel too far into a different area, moved back, and enemies literally popped up right beside me)
  • When do the enemy types in the different areas change?
  • When do resources respawn (both collectables and “gather-ables”)?
  • When do vendor items change?
  • When do bounties and challenges get reset (because it is NOT every 24 hours, I timed it ;))

MORE music
The addition of music to areas is fantastic. But the game needs more. MORE. M O R E! :smile: More music, and play it more often. It adds so much to the already fantastic atmosphere… MORE!

Other than that, I think the game is on a great trajectory after the hotfixes for the Breach. As someone who likes challenges, but isn’t so single-minded as to ONLY want challenge to be the be-all-end-all of a game, the game feels good to play, exploration is fun, the art style is as amazing as ever, and the story and characters are really engaging.

Keep up the great work!

5 Likes
2

After some more consideration, there’s one point that needs immediate addressing, everything else is completely unimportant:

The fact that Gauntlets allow you to Suplex and Dropkick enemies is great, but the fact that the animation for the “Heal Aura” rune is NOT the character flexing is an almost criminal omission! :grin:

3

You have a lot of criticisms that bear looking into. However, I’d urge you to consider using a shield when charging the archers. Simply put your guard up and they can’t stun you and you’re in their face. This is why upgrading your ability to wield two weapons is helpful because you can main a two hander and then charge an archer with sword and board.

4

I feel the same about the ranged enemies, the input buffer (I find myself attack when I want to dodge because I spammed become attack), and also about the brute enemies. 4 super fast attacks where each does so much damage…
I find myself almost die because I cannot dodge enough or eat, since a 3 attack combo finished, and a 2-4 combo is coming..

5

Thanks. While I do understand your sentiment, I’m not entirely convinced by your solution. Isn’t the fact that a single enemy type “requires” you to build specifically to counter them a strong indicator that that enemy type might be overtuned? As I mentioned, I don’t find them particularly difficult; archers will be suplexed. But the immersion-breaking aspect of them firing homing arrows and disengaging with two backhops over almost two full screens, at least to me, is way more egregious.

Edit: Also, happy birthday!

6

I think ranged enemies would feel a lot less annoying if their ranged attacks weren’t staggering, knocking back or down, or doing poise damage at all.

If they’re gonna rapid fire arrows and dash all over the place while having more HP than they have any business having, then they should not be able to stunlock you in a multi-enemy fight.

Bruisers similarly feel like they’re able to cover too much ground.

The fungal and balak taw Goliaths seem to be able to smash lunge like 4-6 times while covering a lot of distance.

Obviously, they need an answer to the player cheesing them with endless kiting. But the player’s stamina is simply not balanced to have to dodge roll 5 times as the goliath lunge smashes on top of having to also deal with other attacking enemies.

By that point if you even have the stamina to dodge all the attacks, you sure as hell don’t have the stamina to punish when they stop the onslaught for a few seconds.

Then it’s rinse and repeat.

7

Thanks!
To your point…Lords of the Fallen had a similar problem with snipers. Perhaps their solution, ie less fast arrows or just saccuracy cone tuning, might be needed. But then youd still have the problem of ai. The archers are intelligent. You charge em they back up and shoot you in the face.

8

Yes, some inaccuracy for the archers would definitely help.

Another point of feedback:
The devs should maybe really think about introducing a dedicated “jump” button. I know Patch 1 is looking into input delays, and maybe this will help, but I cannot even count anymore how often the run/dodge/jump controls have killed me in this game. Probably more often than the enemies themselves. Having all of these actions on the same key is… awful, frankly. You want to run and jump over a gap? Nope, game decides you wanted to run and roll. For a game that focused on platforming passages, platforming controls need to be tight and responsive. Right now the controls, unfortunately, are neither.