To start off: we don’t pretend to be experts but we’re both having knowledge in design and programming, also making mods for different games trying to enhance player experience (PC controls, camera, gameplay when we can), so yes, it gives us a certain level of familiarity with those systems. Plus being gamers for 30+ years and being able to recall old forgotten features that some are trying to “reinvent” nowadays. When we like a game, we do such a feedback to try and summon the devs to get their attention and hopefully help make the game better.
We do like V Rising very much. It has a unique feature of light and shadows gameplay which works well with the top-down point of view. The game is using a combat system from an old MMO - WildStar: “hot spots” on the ground indicating attack zones players need to avoid. And it fits with the top-down view, in fact, it’s probably the best one to use for it. Combining those two features was totally coherent and logical. V Rising was also able to find its own unique and fitting way for the parry system and this is what we think NRftW needs to do - go away from the overhyped and overused souls mechanics and find its own way. In terms of exploration V Rising is not bad, but we think that NRftW is superior here with its map design especially.
Souls mechanics come from the old times when hardware was very limited and difficulty was created by making the player uncomfortable so he would make mistakes - Resident Evil was the first to do it. We’re past those times now and we’ve got computing power to use not just for the looks, but also for proper gameplay.
We’re playing V Rising since EA, never talked about it because of the lack of time, but we do have plans for it. If you’re searching for the games with similar perspective, take a look at (from interesting to OKish): Thunder Tier One (unfinished, but probably the best example on top-down UI, controls and camera), Red Solstice 2, Synthetic 2, Satellite Reign, The Ascent, and solo: SeVeN, Winter Ember, Gone Rogue.
We had different experience with runes, giving you both.
r457:
I was not using runes at all because I was having an armor with focus debuff, so I was at zero focus constantly. I found the game a little bit hard at the beginning, not that much challenge by the middle and easy by the end. I was using tactical positioning and trapping enemies by the terrain. I also do appreciate the fact that enemies have friendly fire and you can use it against them.
gh057:
I was using runes from time to time, but mostly relying on fast attacks with dual daggers and life leech. Yes, you can get focus in no time and spam the runes, which feels broken. But even without it the game becomes too easy by the end - and it’s coming from someone who was struggling at the start and even said “oh, I won’t be able to beat the first boss - too fast for me”.
You can see here we were having two different approaches, but came to the same conclusion.
And a very showing example from the internet on how the system is currently broken:
In our opinion the problem of the NRftW system is that RPG part removes A part of ARPG the longer you play and roll the dice on item generator. Character development can be described as a transfer from hard to easy mode when the player just overcomes difficulty with stats. It’s infinite power creep and it will only become worse if they leave it like that and start adding levels and tiers on top.
Rune system suffers from lack of descriptions and “choice paralysis” - the more choice you offer to people, the less they will be willing to choose, because they will be lost in all the options (huge respect to artists at Moon Studios for their work on items and the quality of that work, but wow, the amount is too much). Dark Souls can skip descriptions because the players touch a bonfire and get all the mana back, so they can try every weapon and every combo easily. Here it’s the opposite, you don’t have your mana regenerated, you need to go and get it, which might not be bad, but in this case they need to add clear descriptions to each rune, maybe short videos like many games do nowadays or a training room like in Monster Hunter games. Otherwise players will either stick to what already works for them, i.e. easy choices, or go to youtube and pick up meta.
Problem of meta comes from the lack of balance: the AI is not set to handle ranged combat properly, this is why devs limited the bow usage with mana. But at the same time for some strange reason they decided to add ranged attack to every weapon with throw runes and negate a problem of mana being limited and requiring direct enemy contact to get it (which means risking) with enchanting bonuses that literally generate mana. Instead of being creative with active skills (i.e. runes) they just give players more and more power that allows to bypass combat with one button click.
To sum things up: every aspect of progression currently makes it so the higher players go, the more and more combat elements they are allowed to bypass, which ultimately leads to no challenge left.