After some initial hours, I wanted to provide valuable feedback and improvements (QOL mostly) that I believe it could improve the overall gameplay experience. I’ll try to keep this list short and simple, but well explained
EXPLORATION:
Dodge/run and climbing button shouldn’t be the same one. I find it difficult to climb to some places more times that I would’ve like just because the button is the same for those three actions. In several occasions I tried to climb upon some places and the character would just roll and fall to his death or took fall damage. It can become frustrating very quickly, so I suggest to change it to something more suitable.
I think the time for gathering resources is a bit high. It could be shortened a little so it prevents it to become a chore. Gathering resources from the scenarios to achieve our upgrade goals should always be something fun and not too time consuming.
The distance at which the player can interact with objects should be greater and also not require the player to be facing it. Occasionally I have not realized that I was close to an object that I could interact with, or I just had trouble interacting with it, forcing me to move and reposition my character several times in order to be able to successfully hit the button.
Readability for the environments should be improved. Interactable objects in the environments are difficult to distinguish because they do not stand out from the art assets of the environments. Also, since there are so many things going on in the background (rain, wind, lightning and such other COOL effects) makes it even harder to spot. This should be easily improved by adding some kind of strong color silhouette near the object once we are near enough.
COMBAT
Foe’s telegraphy should be tweaked and improved. In a game with a combat so precise as this, we should be able to avoid damage as much as we can with more tools at our disposal. This could be achievable with the implementation of colored areas so that we can know where some enemy skills will land, allowing us to read the moment and avoid powerful blows or throwable objects.
Gear durability seems a bit off to me. This could be improved by tweaking the values at which gear breakes, so it could be less punishing and frustrating as the player put hours into the game.
Initial stamina should be a bit higher so the player can perform a bit more actions before tiring out. I find it a bit off. It somewhat messes with the rythm of combat. Especially at the beginning, when the player is getting the ropes of the game, I feel it should be more permissible.
I feel the game’s general pacing somewhat slow at times. Occasionally just nothing happens. I’d find it interesting to increase the number of enemy encounters or introduce environmental hazards, dangerous traps or enemy ambushes, so the player could feel the dread while exploring, pushing them to be aware of their surroundings and to always stay on their toes.
This is all for now! Overall, I’m enjoying the game a lot. I think it’s artistically GORGEOUS and I feel it has a good general starting point. I just know it will be an excellent title as soon as it can improve over our feedback! Of course, I’ll keep providing suggestions and reporting bugs as I go further and further into the game. Until then, keep up the good and hard work!
I also wanted to tackle similar topics so I’ll just post here and expand on expand on what you said.
Dodge/run and climbing being the same button was my worst enemy for the first hour of the game. I took so much fall damage because I dodged instead of climbing and fell down… it got much better with experience and doesn’t happen anymore, but I still get scared when I have to climb in a high up place.
I found gathering resources not much of a chore, mainly because I only do it while exploring. Still, I agree that it needs some tweaking towards a less time-consuming task, as I can see it becoming a problem with more costly upgrades for wapons.
To me the distance looks fine, just make it so you can pick things up just by being in their vicinity and not having to face them directly.
I feel like a color silhouette would break, even if just a little bit, the atmosphere the game wishes to create. Instead I’d propose making interactable objects appear brighter in color.
I have little problems with foe’s telegraphy. It’s not precise, yes, and it actively makes the combat harder. But I feel like it’s a matter of knowlede and expertise, one that both your character and you as a player need to acquire. Many of the enemies that used to give me trouble in this regard are now much easier, since I have a general idea of their reach and moveset. This kind of get-better-by-learning feeling is wonderful for this type of games and brings lot of satisfaction.
Agree on gear durability. Lessen the amount of durability lost on death, this keeps the player adventuring for more while still retaining the punishment on death.
Agree on stamina.
So far the game pacing has been wonderful for me. Even with trying to explore every single pixel on the map and delaying the “main quest” as much as possble. As pacing is a very subjective thing I’d wait a while before making changes in that regard.
Yes, many of these things are just ideas that crossed my mind in the hours played, but they can be tackled in different ways and still preserve the developers envision and gameplay intentions. For example, I find your idea of making the interactables appear brighter in color much better than mine.
I’m sure we all be shaping the game into something fantastic!
let us customize controls. Default schema is fine IMHO but I for example would like to move “autojump” to “manual jump on RT” since I’m not intending to ever use emotes in a single player game
-durability: should only go down upon dying
-starting stamina: even dark souls allows more dodging than this on a lvl1 character…
-distance to interact with objects should be increased by ~100% (from 4 pixels to 8…) and work in a circular area. I was standing in front of a door but couldn’t use it because I wasn’t at the right pixel of the door…
-gathering resources: ugh, time for making a coffee. Speed it up by 100-200% please (reduce time by 50-70%)
-readability is mediocre. I don’t think it’s terrible, but I think it should be improved significantly to be a top tier game
Adding since it sounds reasonably aligned: the standard out of combat walking speed should be slightly increased (maybe 15%). Does this character roleplay as a snail? That would also help with the “too long periods of nothing happening”
weirdly in PC the sprint and dodge key are separated (and I actually wanted to combine it). I do feel they should add some sort of controls customization, since every player plays in their own unique way
ranged enemies: the crossbow guy shots instantly but never reloads the crossbow, and the tracking on the fire bomb enemy is just baffling accurate >.>
stamina consumption on great sword: I can barely do two attacks and a roll, ok there, BUT the animation take ages to end and we have no hyper armor
even the strong attack and special attack has no hyper armor, why?
platforming: jumping is visually weird, died so many times on the crazy floaty weed effect for not being able to tell in with direction the game wants me to jump and losing a lot of durability for free
can’t we just take damage when falling and be respawned from our last grounded location?
