I’ve spent the past month putting this list together after analysing countless friends & strangers play the game, including my own playthroughs.
After keeping a keen eye on the team’s work towards improving the game, as well as the communication on discord, I greatly commend you guys for what you’ve done so far.
I also plan to cover Wicked on YouTube when it shapes up further this year, I have a sizeable channel that I would love to use as a platform to share and promote this game.
Wicked has incredible potential, so I figured it would be worth the effort to provide significant input and feedback from both a design and player perspective.
There are many ideas I have that the developers already addressed via Discord/The Breach, so nothing below should conflict with existing solutions/ideas that I’m aware of.
It would be great to hear back from any developers regarding this post, as I would be keen to provide more ideas in the future.
COMBAT
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Dodge Instantly When Rebound
Games like Elden Ring always felt clunky having to Press & Release the input to execute dodge, especially considering it’s such an important time-sensitive action.
Wicked already differs by being able to bind dodge separately from sprint.
With dodge separate, no contextual input is needed. Dodging on Button Press will make combat feel much more responsive.
This also helps solve the classic complaint: “But I pressed dodge!” - meanwhile players didn’t release in time. -
Input Queue Reduction
Plenty games don’t queue inputs, leading to a button mashing tendency. Wicked punishes that tendency with very large queue margins, resulting in the player attacking or dodging more times than intended. A shorter margin before animations end will be more forgiving. -
Address Backstabs
Many players spam backstabs by constantly repositioning behind enemies. Backstabs feel earned when certain conditions are met - via stealth and after parry or stance break.
Idea: Increase poise damage from behind, encouraging stance break to set up a backstab. Remove ability to backstab an attacking enemy. -
Camera Control
Slight camera deviation with right stick held momentarily could assist with stealth/information. -
Enemy Invulnerability
Players should be able to damage enemies while they are knocked down.
GEAR
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Rework Random Item Stats
Base stat values for Damage, Defense, Stamina Use, Focus Gain, and Weight should be fixed to each item. This gives weapons and armour clear identities while being easier to balance.
Identifying good base stats for your item is harder when it drops at a higher level.
Players aren’t encouraged to upgrade/infuse gear if a better version exists. Hesitation can prevent players from naturally engaging with some of Wicked’s systems. -
Rework Item Durability
The implementation of durability for weapons and armour in Wicked serves no function. For most players, dying ~20 times to break an item is meaningless, and serves only to punish struggling players who get stuck before the first boss. I would recommend changing durability for weapons and armour to a Quality system, mentioned below.
Tools can maintain durability degradation because players actively engage with this system. (Maybe make Torch a tool that activates in dark areas?) -
Item Quality System
This aims to solve two of Wicked’s controversial systems - Durability and Random Item Stats.
Weapon and Armour Durability gets replaced with Quality, using the same 0-100 scale. Items can’t break.
Quality degrades through death or damage thresholds (eg. taking 100 damage reduces Quality by 1).
Damage, Defense and Weight values decrease up to 50% with Quality. This creates an interesting dynamic of reducing equip load while losing some defense and damage.
Some players might choose to keep items at a lower Quality to keep within a weight class.
Quality can be restored individually/all at Fillmore by using the repair tab. Repair rune and powders would see more use.
This system would also replace some durability-based enchantments, for example:
- Damage increased at Full Quality
- Attack Stamina decreases with Quality
- Indestructible (no Quality degradation)
- Quality degrades faster
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Inspect Armour Option
Players might never buy armour from vendors if they can’t be previewed. Appearance matters a lot to many, and the current armour system is done very well to encourage mixing as there are no set bonuses or special stats.
Light slim-fitted armour could use more design variety, considering the abundance of Medium and Heavy gear designs. -
Transmog
This feature seems pointless due to the armour system’s design, but is apparently in high demand.
If you guys are considering transmog, an idea would be limiting it to armour types.
Eg: Only Plate armour appearances can be applied to other Plate armour. Unlock the ability to craft/transmog an armour piece by breaking it down at Meri to learn a blueprint. -
Learn Items
As I just suggested above, learning armour and weapons for crafting by breaking it down would be useful.
This streamlines the process for obtaining specifically a Blue or Cursed enchantment. -
Lock Items
Locking items can prevent accidentally selling them.
If the Quality system is implemented, maybe locking can prevent restoring with the repair all option.
INTERFACE
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Focus Clarity
Wicked has an overuse of orange bars - Heat status, Poise bar, and Focus.
I would prefer Focus as a deep blue colour - it represents mind and clarity thematically; and Poise being a light grey bar.
Poise vials already have a grey colour, but Focus icons and vials would need their colour changed.
Players would naturally associate a blue bar with mana/abilities from other games.
Focus bar thresholds need to be more apparent and/or rune icons should display when available for controller.
Thresholds of 25/50 should appear as a brighter shade than the rest of the unfilled bar, rather than just a full bar.
Changing Focus and Poise bar colour could also just be an optional UI setting instead. -
Improve Map Clarity
Many markers for quests are off the visible map. Starting zoomed out, an automatic zoom in to the previous zoom factor and position would allow players to see other objectives briefly when they open the map.
The current drawn map lacks enough colour/detail to make elements easily recognisable, including region/area themes.
Only show markers on the edges of player HUD when they are in the same map region as their marker, or shorten the distance detection. -
Status Wheel
I never notice/pay attention to the health/focus portions of the wheel, but the stamina wheel is perfect.
Maybe add a UI option to disable the health and focus elements?
If only health is disabled, maybe have focus be a secondary wheel surrounding stamina, with visible thresholds of 25/50. -
Force Some Subtitles
When ancient languages are spoken during cutscenes, nothing displays with subtitles disabled.
I prefer subtitles disabled to appreciate cutscenes more, but not understanding Seneschal or the voice after The Twins does ruin it.
Perhaps add a third option for Ancient Language Only, or just force those subtitles when disabled. -
Portrait Option
Give a choice in settings to have a static or animated character Portrait.
MISC SYSTEMS
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Core Stats Idea
The primary four stats for weapons could use more identity.
Bonus stats are introduced every 5 levels, eventually having a cap (Level 60 each?).
Strength: +1 Poise
Dexterity: -1% Stamina Cost
Intelligence: +1 Focus Regen (per second)
Faith: +1 Health Regen (per second) -
Elemental Effects Idea
Heat burn damage applies at any point of buildup - more damage the higher the meter, rain/rolling reduces buildup slightly faster
Ice damage slows enemies down up to 25% before the full freeze proc. Slowdown % can scale with the bar.
Electric damage improves ability to stagger, with a damaging electrified stance-break on proc.
Plague damage only starts draining health when poisoned, with the full proc causing a damaging mist burst and applies % total health damage over time until bar fully decays (reduced vs bosses). -
Upgrading Idea
A slight rebalance to the requirements for upgrades can make it more initially engaging.
Example for each upgrade from Tier 1-2: 1 Shard - 1 Shard 2 Ingots - 1 Shard 4 Ingots - 1 Shard 2 Rare Resources 6 Ingots
Copper ingots for Tier 1-2, Iron for Tier 2-3, etc.
Same for other upgrade resources like Pine Planks, Spruce Planks, etc. -
Improve Fishing
Being able to catch treasures on occasion could provide more incentive.
Perhaps add more depth to the timing-based minigame for catching fish, difficulty scaling with reward.
QOL
Exiting vendor menu returns to initial sub-menu rather than fully exiting.
Learn recipes/blueprints from any menu.
Gordon’s callout audio from the bridge isn’t indicative of his position, sending players into the fortress confused rather than towards the tower.
Unlimited Focus in the training area against dummies can help test runes.
Stamina and Poise vials arent seeing much play, perhaps change to 2 minute duration?
Lock Danos’ Buy inventory behind a house purchase.
Add tooltips explaining the relevance of material refinement at each vendor.
Contribute to building project at vendor/location in addition to Danos.
SERVERS
- South Africa & Australia.
Mostly a personal request for co-op seamlessness, as it’s uncommon to see support for these locations. PvP arguably matters less, as it can benefit more from dynamic latency matchmaking for reduced queue times.
This request may be the least relevant, as I am aware you guys are handling net-code differently with this game. I’m also unsure of which servers you’ll utilise due to not having disclosed your partner, but Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are among major datacentres available. Games that support these locations tend to grow strong communities from the inclusion alone.