| General / Disclaimer: | ||||||||||||
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| Hi guys my name is Tylicius, and this is my feedback for NRFTW. Tried go to with a numbered format to keep it less bloated but some sections are quite large. Really enjoying the game, had 200+ hours before the update and about 50-60+ hours after the update already (I’ve been playing a lot). Some of the feedback might sound harsh or brutal, I think it needs to be for the Moon Studios team to know our feelings, but please take it in a positive light as I care about the game getting better - otherwise I wouldn’t bother writing this feedback. I’ve split up my feedback into 3 sections: Things I like (and wouldnt touch / change), Things I’d change (dislike) and Things I’d tweak (like but could improve - quick wins / QOL) as well as some random bugs I encountered. |
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| Top 5 things I like (and wouldnt touch) | ||||||||||||
| #1 | Artstyle / World / Voice Acting / Sound / Environments. I think this is all extremely well done. The feel, mood, story and experience is very cool, and we can see real progress between whats in the game now and what you added since the last Crucible update. | |||||||||||
| #2 | Difficulty. The combat difficulty is pretty much perfect. For a souls-like ARPG its difficult yet rewarding when you successfully kill the monster (feeling, loot aside). As your level gets higher and your gear gets better there is a good feeling of progression. One thing that can feel BS is having too many enemies but that case is very rare (3-4+). | |||||||||||
| #3 | Housing / Storage. Feels much better now, your house can actually be a house instead of chest stacking like an episode of ‘Hoarders’. The new waypoint / whisper in the house is very good QOL but not perfect (more below). | |||||||||||
| #4 | Fallen Embers. Really like how you turned this Crucible Key into a currency. It feels strong and impactful even in the campaign. (PSA: if you’re strong enough you should probably save these for end-game lol. But I had too much fun with it during the campaign so idm that I was using it early). | |||||||||||
| #5 | Secrets. I love finding secret areas, caves, tunnels, chests, shortcuts etc. Wishlist: I think we need more. Would be awesome if in a set location you could get a specific or fixed item, so if you know you want to play a wand build for example, then one particular area / secret spot always gives a wand. | |||||||||||
| Top 10 things I’d change (dislike or could be better) | ||||||||||||
| #1 | Gravity. Reported this previously but gravity is super brutal in this game, and one of the biggest existing pain points since release. Considering that your character can do a one arm pull up (if you wear a 2h weapon) while holding a 2h weapon in the other hand, you would think that your character is strong. But any fall from 1m or more just outright kills you. Something doesnt quite add up here. This is too brutal and was the majority of my deaths (can also be very frustrating). Even after the patch the gravity is insane. I recommended in my last feedback post to make a featherfall ring that reduces fall damage by 99%. I think if you made this, and saw that 100% of players were wearing it, you would realise how brutal this element is in your game. | |||||||||||
| #2 | Auto-jump. I gave this feedback previously as well but this is probably the main culprit related to the gravity issue, going up to a ledge and climbing it is the same keybind as jumping off that ledge to your death. Personally I think the keybind for ‘climbing’ needs to be different from ‘leap off’ and also different to dodge roll. As the other thing that can happen if you dont leap off a ledge is you accidently roll off it while trying to climb it. Its just a clunky system in an otherwise great game. While you’re there, you could add another keybind to climb down ladders or vines etc. Lots of unintended suicides happen here also. | |||||||||||
| #3 | Stuck / Unstuck. Theres no unstuck button. This game has so many nooks and crannies that are all very discoverable while searching every possible corner, shadow, crevice for secrets, that it desperately needs an unstuck button. I’ve gotten stuck a handful of times, and most of the time it makes me want to quit the game or take a break. If you’re lucky you’ll fall through the floor and die. Not the best feeling for the player. Yes you can log out and return to last whisper but that too is an inconvenience and is immersion-breaking. | |||||||||||
| #4 | Inventory Management. Right now the inventory management loop is not great. You fill your inventory, still have to run to all the market NPCs to craft, sell and use the crafting stations, eventually you can get all the crafting stations at your house so that part is a bit easier but what about a vendor? Also we run around with full bags for much of the early game that we are either forced into destroying gear or not picking it up, that I think its warranted to have a storage chest or more vendors in each zone. Town is fine but the size of town is so large that its quite a distance between the houses and the market, making it immersion breaking when you just want to quickly sell or deposit and keep blasting. Ideally you could have chests in the world that are deposit only, and lets say it can hold 30 items. Then when you next get to town you can sort through your deposit only stash and clean it out. Then as you progress you can increase the capacity of your deposit chest. | |||||||||||
| #5 | Ichor Acquisition. Normally this would help with the above issue as ichor lets you expand your different inventory capacities, but the rate of Ichor acquisition is very slow / low. You get two pretty quickly in the campaign then it takes a while before you get any more. For those who don’t know, you can just make another realm / world and redo the first boss + weekly bounty to increase your limits. My personal suggestion to improve this is to make atleast 1 daily quest for 1x ichor every day, and then one weekly quest for 5x or 10x ichor but its quite challenging (requires the campaign to be complete etc). Also what use are ichors once you get all upgrades from the Watcher? He should let you buy other mats or torn items in exchange for them. Right now they just accumulate once you have all the upgrades with no visible use. |
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| #6 | Early Game Healing / HP sustain. Healing in this game really sucks early on. Until you get some sort of sustain like lifesteal etc, many builds really suffer from not being able to sustain healing. Especially now that your food is capped to a limit. I dont mind the food cap limit but I think to compensate, food should be cheaper, stronger and/or give a regen component. During the campaign you are chugging food like you’re some sort of competitive eater like Man vs Food lol. I think there needs to be some sort of regen stat or health regen potion that lets you heal a % of your HP every x seconds. Maybe its a higher % out of combat and less during combat. Either way its a problem that needs to be fixed. | |||||||||||
| #7 | Low level items. Low level items can be some of the strongest items in the game, due to how ‘upgrading’ works in this game. Getting a low level item and upgrading it yourself has a chance for it to be better than an item that drops natively at that tier. Might just be RNG but personally I think this feels weird lol. I do like that crafting items yourself is strong, but I dont like how you have to go back to the lower ‘world tiers’ to farm the best possible version of your item. Also there is a roll range for weapon damage, but the game doesnt show it. So your level 3 upgraded item could be higher base damage (better / higher roll) than your level 16, but theres no way for the player to know without spending the required upgrade costs. | |||||||||||
| #8 | Pestilience / Pestilent Zones. Great mechanic. Wish I could do more of it. Wish all the zones became corrupted with pestilence multiple times per day. Wish the ‘Seneschal’ (sewer-grate head guy in the crucible) would RESET the map instead of CLEANSE the map, so I could clear the zones again. Replayability is 0/10 (even with effigies). Fun is 9/10. Gear/rewards is 8/10. Once you clear one zone, the pestilence should spread to another zone, then another if you clear it in time. That or more ‘torn materials’ need to drop to let you craft effigies and lots of them. Also a recipe would be amazing so you dont have to rely on the ‘Watcher’ NPC. And ‘torn materials’ should also drop from the Crucible. Or have it for sale from the Seneschal NPC. | |||||||||||
| #9 | Crucible. The crucible being a rogue-like mode is fun, but I feel like it doesnt really have a purpose. Before you are max level it grants decent XP. Afterwards its like an omega loot cave, but loot is so RNG in this game, you could play all day and not find any correct base types, let alone any upgrades. And its basically a cake walk if your build is strong enough. I was really hoping that the higher difficulties of the crucible would be made available this patch (perhaps using the blood sacrifice altars in the Atrium that are up the stairs)! Anyway what I’m trying to say is that it feels like we need a scaling vector on the Crucible like we have on the pestilience mechanic to make it harder / more challenging for better rewards. Perhaps target farmable rewards? Spending an ember to say I wish 2h weapons or plate armour drops were more common from the IK boss kill / chest room. | |||||||||||
| #10 | Loot and Loot Filter. Loot is so vast and varied in this game, that especially at end game you really need a loot filter. I think setting thresholds for anything below the loot filter to drop as gold would be amazing. At a minimum we would want to filter for: specific items / slots (weapon, armour, ring, tool), base type (2H Greatclubs), specific sub-bases (Brutish Cudgel), rarity, stat requirements, specific stats (positive or negative). Let us have specific beams or identifiers for items that are shown after filtering. | |||||||||||
| Top 15 things I’d tweak (like but could improve - quick wins / QOL) | ||||||||||||
| #1 | Weapon Bloat. With so many weapons in the game now (additions of wands + gauntlets this patch), the game is experiencing weapon bloat. The issue is that finding your first weapon type for the weapon you want to play is rare. I think as a minimum there should be either set locations for different weapon types or vendors (Quest Filmore) that sell all of the level 1 weapon types you are chasing. That way you can get to using / making / trying your ‘build’ almost straight away. Also sometimes a ‘build’ isnt based on a weapon type so much as a ‘specific weapon attack’ or ‘specific rune’ etc etc. So we need more sources of farming specific higher level weapons too (like on the new vendor - more below). | |||||||||||
| #2 | New weapon vendor in town. Its cool that you put this in the game but why does she only sell gauntlets and gauntlet related runes? What about all of the other weapon types that arent available from other npcs? Also if its just going to stay as gauntlets it should say so in Danos Building / Upgrade Window. As right now it just says ‘weapons’ - implying that all weapons are sold there. I was disappointed when I got there and she only sold ‘gauntlets’. | |||||||||||
| #3 | Builds and Stats. Reported this previously but its not easy to find info on all of the items in the game, what they do, their base skill sets, weapon abilities, runes, stat requirements etc. So for a new player, you dont really have any guide or idea as to what stats are good or desirable. You can look up 3rd party websites or videos, but I feel this information needs to be in an in-game guide or maybe on an NPC. Maybe make those test dummies in town actually do something and have a weapon expert there that could let you ‘test’ different items / runes / setups (like a training room or something from other games). I think I suggested previously that there could be a weapon chest in the prologue that you could choose any weapon just to give it a test drive on some rats or some barrels - to see if you like it. Also this is less punishing than before as now the game has a ‘stat respec’, but its not until ‘end-game’ so it is still punishing to a new player that may not know this exists or might not even get to end-game. | |||||||||||
| #4 | Secret access to high level zones. There are ways to get to very high level zones while exploring. I think there should be more clear flags that these areas are very high level and very dangerous. I think its cool, it just needs more clear signaling. I accidentally went in there on what I thought was a decent build and got humbled pretty quickly lol. | |||||||||||
| #5 | Blue Items. Blue items seem like a campaign / gearing step now, and they get superseded very quickly. Would like to see more crafting / upgrade options for blue items. | |||||||||||
| #6 | Secret Vendor. Would like to see the secret vendor appear more often - atleast once per day for a few hours. | |||||||||||
| #7 | Plagued Items / Purple Items. These items are cool and having one downside to deal with is very interesting. Sometimes it can brick your item, but with Fallen Embers atleast you have a chance to reroll it now. Also some of the new stats seem strong. One small QOL I would like here is the ability to see the ‘pool’ of possible affixes on that item - like the enchanter from D3 or D4. So you’re not endlessly wasting mats hoping for an affix that cant roll / isnt possible to roll. | |||||||||||
| #8 | Harvesting Mats. I think every game suffers from this but could you please increase the stack size count of materials and resources in your inventory. In your stash it stacks to 99 but in your bags / inventory it stacks to 20. Not sure why, when you need so much resources for the town / building upgrades at Danos. Having more holding capacity (especially early on) would be an amazing QOL. | |||||||||||
| #9 | Traversal between zones or town and a new zone. The running / traversal is pretty crazy in this game, its quite immersive but it takes too long. Alot of the zones do have shortcuts but town is pretty spawling. One idea is to give us extra run speed in town once we unlock certain quests. So that inventory management is easier without affecting immersion. I would like an option to waypoint into a new zone from either my house or at the town whisper (after you discover that zone first on foot). Also its nice that you unlock the waypoint / whisper for your house, but let us add the Cerim Crucible as a static option from there - considering it comes from the Crucible mechanic itself. | |||||||||||
| #10 | Mark Items as ‘Safe’ / ‘Favourite’ / ‘Locked’ or ‘Junk’. Locking items would be amazing in this game especially for your main equipment slots (current loadout). And marking items as junk would be nice to quickly sell unwanted items. Also a loot filter would be useful here for end-game blasting. | |||||||||||
| #11 | Pinning Icons. (Small gripe). Not sure why but pinning chests (icons) on the map has a limit?! There are not enough pins to pin all the chests in the world lol. No idea why this is a thing, maybe it was just an oversight. Now instead of chests I have to start using other markers for chests, which just makes it confusing. This is silly imo and should be changed. At a minimum we need the number of pins equal to the number of chests in the world. Same for trees, mines, fish and soil. Ideally there should be an option to auto-mark things the first time you interact / loot them. Please and thank you! | |||||||||||
| #12 | Target Farming / RNG. Aside from bounties and challenges, theres no way to target farm for a specific item or even item types. Lets say I only want to find heavy armour and 2H weapons, theres no good place to go to, my only option is to just keep blasting content. Theres no loot filter to hide unwanted items, or low value items - everything is just RNG (pray to the NRFTW gods). | |||||||||||
| #13 | Reactive / instant dodge roll. Dodge roll now does not immediately cancel what you are doing, instead it lets your full animation play out for your attack you were in, THEN it dodge rolls - which is often too late. I think for this type of game, having an instantaneous dodge would be very helpful. | |||||||||||
| #14 | Excess Mats. What to do with excess mats? For example: Ichor after you get all the Watcher’s upgrades, Gloam crystals (that you spend at the Seneschal) after you get all upgrades there. Need a way to spend these. Right now aside from RNG drops theres no incentive to keep playing after you fully exalt your gear. Bounty quests and Challenges also continue to give EXP after you hit max level. They should be changed to give extra gold or items instead once EXP is no longer required (at max level 30). | |||||||||||
| #15 | Danos workers - the requirements are too harsh. I finished all building projects before I even unlocked the torn mats, or got the recipe for vegetable cake. Either make torn mats and vegetable cake recipe available earlier on, or remove them from the final upgrade (Rank 3). Also while you’re there, once you learn a recipe please remove it from the vendors. And also remove the chance for recipes to drop in duplicates. I.e. if you LEARN a recipe, it cant drop for you in the world (or be an option on vendors). There are so many recipes that getting doubles (one you already learned) just feels bad! | |||||||||||
| Random Bugs: | ||||||||||||
| Deleting a realm bugs out and throws up large error scripts. Scared me the first time it happened, I thought I was seeing into the matrix lol | ||||||||||||
| Spoken and Unspoken Quest. Quest does not complete. Last patch this quest completed upon gaining the tablet from killing EK. Now the tablet doesnt drop so the quest persists forever. Unless theres some trick to it that I havent figured out - which is possible. | ||||||||||||
| Thanks for reading. Props to the devs for their quick action with patches / hotfixes to address some of the above already and make notes that they are working on the more serious issues. Love this game, hope to see it get more updates, coverage and good publicity moving forward! Also, Multiplayer when?! |
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Overview
As of the release of The Breach, we were given multiple new Runes and two new weapon archetypes to help fulfill RP fantasies and breathe some new life into build diversity. Wands being the quicker counterpart to Staves and Gauntlets realizing the fantasy of a brawler or monk. These new archetypes have some fun Runes and weapon combos but are still falling short in a couple areas due to underlying issues unrelated to the weapons themselves.
Types of Runes
We currently have two main types of Runes: those that cost Focus and those that cost Stamina. The intent with the separation was to create Runes that fulfill the true idea of skills in your ARPGs and those that serve as moveset extenders, allowing the player to truly customize their weapon to feel different from others. While the intent is good the execution is thus far flawed.
Focus Runes
The purpose for the Runes that cost Focus are to be the skills a player is familiar with in other RPGs. Varying from powerful combo attacks, to healing yourself, or boosting your damage. They are what you would expect going into No Rest for the Wicked without in-depth knowledge. The issue we are faced with is most Focus Runes are centered around damage and not providing anything else.
It’s true that generally skills in games have a focus on damage but they do not always and even some damage skills have a secondary benefit in utility. An example of a Rune that could be utility and damage:
You jump and slam your fists on the ground, sending forth a shockwave that damages enemies and creates a wall behind them.
Now you have possibly cornered off your enemy from retreat and cut off assistance from ranged enemies, while also damage an enemy or multiple along the way. Then you have pure utility Runes such as Scream which sends out a large AoE centered around the caster that knocks down their enemies. You can even have a sword Rune that sends out an arcing wave of fire and now your weapon is Infused with Heat Damage, removing the need for an oil or gem and dealing damage simultaneously.
Stamina Runes
Stamina cost was made to bring to life the dream of allowing players to customize their movesets of their weapons which is a grand idea. The issue is two-fold: some Runes have the balance of a Rune that costs Focus and some should not be allowed on other weapon archetypes. There is a prominent Gauntlet Rune that players have been using on two-handed weapons that deal the damage of a Focus Rune but can be spammed almost ad infinitum due to the different cost type. Ideally, this type is the same as hitting an enemy with your weapon’s normal combos so it feels like it blends organically with the existing combos.
Enchantments
Affixes on gear have always been a hot topic in any isometric ARPGs. They are either too much or too little. Path of Exile is hailed as having some of the best affixes but even they generally succumb to being more about stats than large gameplay impacts. There are more nuanced stat bonuses such as:
- Adds X to X Damage to Attacks with this weapon per X Attribute
- Gain X% of Damage Type as Extra Damage Type
Ultimately, they are generally still stat boosters. No Rest for the Wicked is trying to change up the formula and separate itself from the rest in the genre so why not try do the same with the affixes or modifiers?
General Viability
The Breach introduced Enchantments with “events” being conditions. Some of them are:
- Fatalities,
- Killing,
- Damage Dodged.
Fatality and Killing are problematic, generally, since this game isn’t killing large groups of enemies. It can make sense for healing but it falls short when you don’t have more than one enemy and when you are fighting bosses. I don’t think every Enchantment should be ideal everywhere but I also don’t like having some just not work for bosses. This is admittedly a strong opinion and not objective.
Damage Dodged is effective but that is not necessarily good. Your average player will be dodging commonly even if they have a larger focus on parrying. It’s not a pure stat boost but it feels a little too free which can work if the benefit isn’t a large one.
Durability is its own can of worms that are not limited to the Enchantment itself. It’s a much larger discussion involving Durability on its own and as an Enchantment event.
There are more events but these are the more troublesome ones.
Less but More
The title of this section is probably very misleading and this is not a thought I have fleshed out fully yet. There were many forum posts on this subject when Early Access began but it’s best to bring it up again after the most recent suite of Enchantments. While events are a priority topic as well, everything else is still in the vein of simple stat boosts. The more general Enchantments are, the less expression there is in builds.
It definitely is harder on paper to make Enchantments that are true gameplay-changing effects rather than numbers but I believe it’s worth the attempt. There were some good suggestions in the past from forum posters and a couple stood out to me the most.
- Hitting a plague-infected enemy with a rune attack or charged attack heals you for a X% of the damage dealt (only applies to first hit of rune)
- Dealing damage to a burning enemy has a X% chance to cause the enemy to flare up and explode with damage
- Blocking attacks with your shield accumulates damage up to a cap of X. Parrying an attack then consumes all the accumulated damage and deals that damage to the parried enemy
- Having light armor increases your move speed by X% and allows you to ignore unit collision
- Deal “X Faith” burn damage and burn build-up in a small radius around you.
Sources: Why Gems and Enchantments NEED a boost and Enchantments and Curses - New Suggestions for more interactive Builds
Conclusion
This is not the comprehensive of everything but I think this post is long enough and ideally the conversation is started up again from this. If No Rest for the Wicked wants to shake things up from their stagnation then it shouldn’t hold back. I won’t say my ideas are how things need to go moving forward but hopefully it’s a good foundation for discussion.