My first part was about my steam deck crashing, this has to do with options and reviews in the steam community and offering some suggestions on how to make this a great game.
First, yes I gave a negative review but I am honest with my review, I will update it at different time periods but I feel that around the 5 hour mark is a good place to give my first review of the game. This will be long but I hope you read it and take this info and hope you make this game great.
Years ago a went to a panel at a gaming convention, it was about balancing a game for hard core gamers VS the casual gamer, most games never solve or get this right, typically the hard core gamers win and you lose the casual gamers and then you can’t get them back. No I am not saying listen to only the casual gamer, I respect the hard core gamers and stand in awe at what they can do. What I do not stand for is being bullied for my option and I see that in some of the Steam Comments on this game. I would love this to be a game where both communities can coexist.
ok onto my frustrations as a casual gamer, I am no means a hard core gamer, I want to chill at night take out my steam deck and grind away and beat a couple hard characters as I grinded for gear that would make that possible. I also need to learn game mechanics, so here is where an auto leveling game becomes tough cause even though i can grind for gear to help the game cranks up the difficulty thru come algorithm, and in fact I like the challenge.
Now I spent my first 5 hours and never got to Sanctuary. I spent 2 hours beating my head against the boss, I assume the one just before sanctuary and had to repair my gear at least 2 times as I could not figure out what was going on and how badly I was getting beat. I literally ran out of money and could not repair my gear, I was stuck and I was frustrated. This is when my 5 hour timer went off and left my initial review. I feel at 5 hours I should at least feel good about where I am in the game, get some feeling of worth about spending the $$ to buy it, and I know this is pre release so I am hoping that this might help. Just so you know how frustrated I was about getting nowhere I was about to ask for my $$ back and leave the game. Luckily for this game I found an article that said to create another realm and grind it for more in came money and gear. This was not evident that I could do that. this has helped, I found other areas I never new I could get into and now the minions that i was even having issues with I am at least dealing with on an ok basis.
Now on the Steam community their are people ridiculing people for leaving bad review up to the point of bullying, I will not acknowledge those trolls as it is my opinion and I have a standard for leaving my opinion and will not be bullied into changing it. That is my 2 cents on that.
Now as for balancing the game I have a couple of things here that might help, I am not offering a solution, I don’t have it but I do have some answers for the following questions.
I know you will be offering PVP, make this either a zoned area that can be avoided or a switch to turn it off on a player vs player thing. Casual games sometimes like it and sometimes don’t, forcing them to endure it will cause you to lose them.
Invasions, same thing, some people want to work with others when they can but don’t cause invasions to be a detriment to the game but more of a thing you can opt into.
Last thing, don’t always fall for the squeaky wheel, before relenting to that person that is yelling the loudest, ask is what they are asking good for the game, and if you even want to implement it. Sometime what they want while they might like it will be the death of the game.
I hope what I have left here helps, I will review the game again once I get to 10-15 hours, it seems to have gotten better, I am still having issues with parrying and combat mechanics, but listen to the community before you listen to this Gen Xer.