Long list of miscellaneous issues

Wicked Feedback
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1

These are my demands!

Horrible way to start a post, I know, and I should probably start with “Hello” and give you the old slurp and tickle to butter everybody up to some blunt criticism, but I’d rather get to the point:

Preamble (So not the actual point):

I cannot stand the loot the system, and effectively can’t play this game until it’s fixed. I’ve quit games like this in the past for this very reason. I came here for sweet parries and combat, and was even pleasantly surprised by the overall presentation – including the stylish cinematography - BUT every bit of enjoyment I have is currently being sucked out of the game by a few elements that should honestly be completely fixable; as in I’d expect these changes within a week (maybe not collectively).

Bottom line is, I can’t enjoy any of the actual good parts of the game due to a few systems, and especially the nonstop bottlenecking of inventory management where I feel like a cleaning lady at the wrong end of a conveyor belt trying to sort the dirty laundry of a coven of horders. This isn’t what I came here for. I’m not a housewife. And I don’t like being treated like one. Especially when I don’t get so much as a slap on the ass for the work.

Despite that, in my magnanimity I’ve done you the courtesy of giving you some homework sorted by some combination of least important, and quickest to fix, and least contentious lol.

The actual Points:

CHARACTER INTERFACE:

Move the armor and poise values to the top or of the character or at least group them together with other stats.

More UI Clarity:

eg: “Low focus” is when? 50%?

Complete transparency like PoE is something I’d like, but that’s too much for now.

Scribe table interaction:

When I press B, go back to the category selection, don’t close the whole menu.

BUYBACK:

Even after all the bossfights, I’m most at the edge of my seat when interacting with traders due to the possibility of forever losing my items due to a misclick. Have the mercy of a buyback option.

This is truly the dark souls of UI design.

CHESTS AND RESOURCES:

Let me mass drop off resources from my inventory, to all chests. As opposed to just the one I’m currently interacting with.

Better yet, why not just let me carry all of it – no chest required? Let me remind you, I could be out there doing a plague run or crucible instead, so why am I RPing as Frieren with my legs dangling out of chests for most of the game?

SWIMMING/CLIMBING:

Stop using stamina. It’s not doing what you think it does.

ENCHANTMENT AND EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT:

Make enchantment extraction free. Move the resource cost over to applying the extracted enchantment.

Preferably, make the extracted effect permanently replicable and something you can upgrade over time rather than required hordes of extractions to fuel an enchantment economy.

Make enchantments that can be rolled on both magical and plagued actually allow their extractions to be applied to both. I just wasted an enchantment I’d been saving because I just have to guess how this obtuse system works.

Make runes something I can just add to a collection and only have to extract once.

Likewise, let me make molds out of weapon facets as a craftable base.

Overall point: Make it feel like I’m COLLECTING single copies as opposed to HORDING duplicates

ITEM TAGS AND READABILITY:

Visual indicator for enchantment strength and strength range, especially if it’s maxed. In fact, put a visual indicator on the item icon itself if it has something maxed.

Which will lend itself to…

ITEM FILTER:

The same way you can tag items with the different enchantments, the player could then pick which ones they care about.

The more contentious one:

GEAR REQUIREMENTS:

Just remove them so I can actually effectively try the weapons without respeccing for each one.

In fact, you might as well just have one stat for damage. Giving it a different name like int or strength for flavor is a poor substitute for freedom.

Stat requirements effectively force combinations instead of letting players decide which ones they want.

Which I can understand if you want to restrict players to specific archetypes.

What I don’t understand is why you’d want to restrict players.

As goofy as going two handed hammer, wand and fist weapons might be, I feel like YOU, THE DESIGNER need a pretty good reason for stopping me from using them. And atm. It feels so bad stat spreading, that I’ve effectively tried a grand total of 5 weapons. (update, now 6) And that’s not mentioning all the runes I don’t want to destroy if I have the audacity of wanting to try them.

I don’t want another dark souls / elden ring situation where there’s 300 weapons and you use maybe 5 of them an entire playthrough.

The damage stats also have even less function here when they don’t have additional simulation effects like in dark souls, just increased damage. Supposedly the introduction of classes will fix this, but you can effectively make a single stat on the UI end increase all the damage stats on the backend, and the game would functionally be the same, but flexibility would be fixed until then, which would make me, personally, extremely happy.

Also, TRANSMOGGING:

Because I’d like to dress like an adult.

BREAKING NEWS! (update)

Rested buff

Don’t make it expire on death. If you’re making go home and lay down every time I have a whoopsie, I’m likely to do it in real life.

Quickslot

Dear god, why does my quickslot item change WHENEVER I GO HOME?!

I know it gets replaced with furniture, but BY JOVE stop assuming I live on food stamps and need to use repair powder everytime my feet leave the threshold of my home! I’ve got a literal red carpet entrance! I can afford the repair cost!

Crucible.

Don’t grant me echo points from breaking stuff. If I’m optimizing my run I’m fine with murder, but I draw the line at vandalism.

I know this is a lot of different issues, but I don’t think it’d be better for me to create separate threads for issues that are a single sentence long.

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Thomas is pretty adamant about no transmog. He cracked on timers but I can see him stick to this point.

This PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. A CRUMB OF CONVIENENCE.

Cannot agree on this point. You don’t need to respec to try the item or use it. All weapons and runes you can use without commitment to a spec and see if you like the combo and runes included. Trying out a combo set in sacra is really all I need to determine if I like something or not. Not 2 hours of testing against various enemies. I know how I like to play.

Alot of your points will be resolved with the class system and 1.0’s higher level roof. Allowing for funkier builds. Currently 30 is just restrictive to play around with overall.

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Eh, I’ll bite.

The condescending writing is certainly going to make Devs interested in reading your feedback despite how good it might be. I agree with a lot of your points so no reason to reiterate them, however I strongly disagree with removing stat requirements and stat scaling. This is a completely fine design and there’s a reason it remains in every souls game HOWEVER the reason it seems egregious in this game is because the RESPEC option is HORRIBLE. Truly I have never seen a worse respec system in any of the games I played. New players unaware of this consistently end up with stats they dont use that are just too expensive to respec out of which can brick their character.

4

I haven’t gone through this game’s development history outside what my friend has told me already. Assuming he’s elaborated on this on several occasions, could you give me a summary?

you do to understand its actual value.

An alternate way of doing this pretty easily would be doing this like monster hunter where you have training weapons right by the dummy, that don’t scale, so all of them operate at the same baseline. Then comparisons make sense.

I was considering simply leaving this quote with this name by itself without further elaboration, but I like to think the devs are adults with a sense of humor and can deal with the first world problem of snarky gits like me.

I DARE you to justify that claim beyond a vague sense of logic and tradition lol.

5

In the latest FAQ streams he has mentioned it twice. Their main designer (former OG of WoW and had a hand in Diablo) doesn’t even like that fast travel exists and doesn’t use it. Which is funny cause those games have it and transmog. Links to videos:

  • * FAQ 1 (Mostly Thomas answering community questions while playing)
  • * FAQ 2 (Thomas and more community questions)
  • * FAQ 3 (With Lead Designer - Kevin Jordan)

Thomas wants their classes to look/wear their respective armor sets instead of people wearing whatever they want. I also think it is a stance to keep from introducing the possibility of microtransations - which people actually got mad at them for saying they are not doing.

If a Fallen Ember dropped 1/5 for every dig spot I think it would really solve a lot of the ailments with their current use/value. Considering they are worth 50 copper but a weapon that is frankly booty is worth a silver and a half is frankly beyond me. They control your enchantment rolls AND respec. I think there needs to be resources specific to each or a drop rate increase is needed. Especially with the new embers added.

I have also found that once you start The Black Trench narrative arc - their drop rate falls off exponentially. Worth having a world in that state (right after your first meeting with Darak) just to hit dig spots. They for some reason appear to drop more in that world state compared to others.

6

I assume that’s a misquote?

My statement was specifically aimed at his, though I appreciate the engagement lol.

But honestly, It’s not about the respec even costing a resource, there’s enough of them. It’s that I have to respec, leave and test the weapons, Come back, respec, Leave and test the weapons, respec, come back, leave and test the weapons.

Each for every time I want to not fudge up other stats while testing the weapons.

I’ll watch those links (much appreciated, btw), but still say,

Those are some of the most game designer stances I know of.

It reeks of “We spent time on this, and I’ll be damned if you wont sit there and enjoy it.” - it’s the same reasoning people had for unskippable cutscenes. But it takes a whole lot of hutzpah to tell somebody else how they should be allowed to spend their time.

Actually, I disagree with this so much that I think the best skill that ES:Oblivion ever had was athletics. Because as you played the game, travel increasingly loses its charm, and to compensate you were just able to gradually move through it faster.

There really only is 3 consequences for this design:

  1. they don’t mind the restriction because they’d do it anyway.
  2. they put up with it, but all you did was annoy them.
  3. they hate it so much, they stop playing.

Or, as some designers apparently would put it: Truly the best of all worlds.

In fact, I’m already suffering from this, like I said, I’d like to test more playstyles, but (on top of not wanting to respec) because I don’t want to take my weapons all the way to the training dummy and back, so fuck half the combat, I guess lol.

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7

Why not just carry like 5 sets of stuff you like and try it in the Crucible since you are there anyway? Seems way more practical than the training dummy. Only thing I use the dummy for is to finish parry challenges. Otherwise useless to me imo.

That way you actually make something back as you test - should you progress. Don’t like it? Jump off a ledge and go back to respec and try your other gear. Seems like a better use of time.

I also loathe how small the graveyard house is for the price but maybe it’s supposed to be a gear house for the crucible now that I think about it. It’s way too small to be called a home.

8

Mostly because I haven’t taken the first step towards trying other builds yet lol. But true, that’d be way more effective than the dummy trip.

Well, obviously you’re paying for the location with the convenient proximity to the graves, should you ever need one after a hard day.

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