I don’t think the current state of weapon choice and build variety is in a good place, and I don’t think the reality of the game matches Moon’s intention. The devs have clearly tried to design a system that offers maximum freedom of choice to the player, but due to the nature of RNG loot, I feel incredibly restricted in what weapons I can actually try out.
Quote from Thomas (CEO) on Twitter:
“We designed our systems to allow for maximum creativity. We don’t know what kinda crazy roleplaying fantasies people have, so the thinking was that we should restrict them as little as possible.”
I’m going to provide an anecdote of my time trying to create a dex samurai build to explain a situational example of my issues before diving into my main problem.
After completing my first playthrough and the crucible using a str/faith build, a wished to create a dex build as I had seen my friend playing with a dex curved sword it and it looked like a fun weapon to use. I created my new character and received the twin daggers as my starting weapon. Okay, off to a good start that’s a dex scaling weapon from the outset, not the one I was intending to use but I’m fine to try it out for a bit. After playing around with it, I found that I was not enjoying this weapon much at all. That’s fine there are plenty of others available. Right? Well, Fillmore doesn’t offer any additional dex based melee weapon prior to or post Sacrament (maybe he does after doing all the upgrades but I haven’t done this yet and by that point it would be far too late into the game). So for now I’m either stuck with the daggers I don’t really like or I can switch to a str based weapon that has a base requirement of 10 that I enjoy a lot more than the daggers. So that’s exactly what I do, this already doesn’t feel good as now I’m using the same build as my previous character. I can’t level up the scaling for this, because I wanted to create a dex character and with no way to respec (which I don’t think should be a necessity but 100% feels like it is in this game), I would be wasting points by putting them into strength.
In the Black Trench, a club drops that needs dex and a little faith, okay great a weapon I can commit to and use. But the problem is this weapon does not offer the playstyle I was looking for as it as a pretty slow weapon. Okay, I switch to this so at least I can start to level and utilise my dex thinking another weapon is bound to drop shortly. It isn’t till I reach the end of the Nameless Pass, that I receive a spear. FINALLY! I thought, a weapon that seems in line with the build I initially wanted. This spear had a heavy faith requirement, quite annoying as I didn’t want to build a magical character or roleplay as a holy priest type archetype but fine, I’ll take it for this weapon. With no way of knowing if I’ll like this weapon or not, I commit down this path. A few levels later I unlock the weapon… and I don’t like it. It was far slower than I imagined it being that I felt I was better off going back to the club. Unfortunately, due to user error, I accidently sold the club whilst selling my inventory. Buy back option please! Obviously, this is my fault, but even if I did go back to the club, it still didn’t offer the experience I was looking for.
Now, I had had many curved swords drop at this point, remember the weapon I was initially hoping to use, but all of them were magical or required strength and unusable due to the number of levels I had already spent. I know there are dex curved swords as my friend used one in his initial playthrough and I watched him play with it. By this point in the game, I had finished the main content and I still had yet to even use the playstyle that I wanted when going into the character. So I run the crucible for a while, under levelled with a weapon I don’t particularly like, praying to the RNG gods to present me with the weapon I wanted from the outset.
Which brings us to present day. At the time of writing this post, have yet to find a single dex/faith (as I was forced into faith) curved sword, a dex only curved sword, a single rapier or other typically speedy dex based weapon.
For a game that’s “designed (their) systems to allow for maximum creativity. And (we) don’t know what kinda crazy roleplaying fantasies people have, so the thinking was that we should restrict them as little as possible”, I felt incredibly restricted and forced into a particular playstyle.
Okay, anecdote over,
Lack of Build Choice
There may be a lot of build options, but I feel there isn’t much choice.
A lot of players going into an RPG, will have a preconceived plan about what type of character they want to play. A chivalrous knight with heavy armour and a sword and shield, a brutish barbarian in a loin cloth with a giant club, a sneaky thief with a dagger, a speedy samurai with a katana, a wizard that destroys their enemies with elemental spells, a holy paladin that utilises magic to enhance their abilities and so many more.
I went into the game wanting to be the samurai, or some kind of eastern warrior. I wanted to build my character this way and I wanted the tools available for me to do so. I didn’t want to be a magical character; I didn’t want to be a really strong character. I wanted my character to be skilful and quick. But the weapons offered force you down those other paths. A significant number of weapons require magical stats, with all these placed into a random loot pool it can be very hard to find a non-magical weapon that suits your intended playstyle. You have lots of options for builds, but you aren’t always able to choose the build that you want and these are builds that are very much possible in the game.
This game isn’t like other RPGs in terms of weapons, but far more like Souls. Weapons are all very unique and have wildly different movesets and playstyles. So having to choose a weapon that has the same stat requirements but isn’t a weapon you like whilst you wait until you find one you do, will force you to play in a completely different way. My example above about using the slow-ish club as it scaled with dex but I wanted to use a curved sword or rapier.
This makes respecicng feel essential which I really do not like. I want to build a specific character and eventually commit to it. If respeccing was in the current system, I feel like I would just use a weapon that was given to me, then when I finally get one I want, just undo all my character progress and put to towards using this other weapon. That is better than the current situation where I have to either deal with using a weapon I don’t like and wait for one to drop or waste points using a different one.
Also on Twitter, there was poll asking if people would prefer “maximum freedom” or “exclusive classes”. These seem like two very bizarre choices to have as the only options here. These are both at completely different ends of a spectrum. You can have heavily restricted classes like in DnD where you have to play the role that you first choose. You can have soft-classes like in Dark Souls, where the class simply determines your starting stats and gear and then you have plenty of freedom to branch out if it turns out you don’t like what you initially picked. And many other options that lie in-between and branch off. I don’t like framing the poll options as the only two. I reluctantly chose “maximum freedom” as I don’t want to be heavily restricted by class. But I would like a starting class, something that guarantees a starting playstyle that I can then branch out of if I want to.
Right now this is heavily impacting my ability to replay the game, as I feel that I don’t have much choice in a particular playstyle and that my options are dictated by RNG. For a lot of my second playthrough, my playstyle was basically the same as my first
Possible Solutions
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Add more weapons to Fillmore’s shop in the early game allowing us to start with a weapon we want to use.
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Add a soft-class system similar to Dark Souls where we can choose an archetype that presents us with starting weapons and stats and then branch out later.
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Reduce the number of magic-requiring weapons to give more options to non-magic players.
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Generally increase weapon drop frequency to make it more likely that you’ll find something you like and matches your intended build.
UPDATE:
After writing this post but before publishing, I have played a bit more of the game and FINALLY a weapon has dropped that I can use! I found a dex faith rapier and a dex faith 2 handed great hammer. Surprisingly, this hammer was fast, it seemed faster than the club I was using earlier on and does a massive amount of damage. The rapier was pretty underwhelming dealing only 18 damage fully upgraded. I choose to use the hammer as it seemed to be an objectively better weapon. I still never got to use the curved sword though. These weapons dropped for me at level 24, which is far, far too late in the game in my opinion.
