Hello everyone and Moon Studios!
Intro
On this post I will be giving my feedback & suggestions after playing the game for 1 week and I will be addressing the general concepts of the game and what could use some refining as well as providing some suggestions and examples.
I won’t be touching on smaller things such as how difficult it is to parry and so on; I believe other post will be addressing that enough so I will try to avoid it.
The game also has a plethora of positives, but I will be focusing on the things that I think could improve about the game.
FEEDBACK
Game Loop
First I want to address the elephant in the room. Durability. As it was quickly apparent on launch, people were not happy with the durability balance (me included) and was quickly patched up. However, even though it’s much much better now, there’s a lingering issue; why have durability at all at the moment? It’s not as crippling as launch day, however in it’s current state its almost ignorable, and that’s not fun. Why even have it at all?
Now, I love the idea of durability; but right now it’s pretty bland or simple and even though important, it’s not particularly fun. My suggestion is to make durability not only matter more, but also have combat implications.
My suggestion is to make durability be like some kind of health bar that has different threshold which affect the performance of it. At a certain durability threshold eg on weapon durability 35%, the base stats of the weapon will suffer be cut in half. Now, this alone is not fun, where it becomes more interesting is i would then design enemies/traps etc… that can create an area of corrosive fumes that will damage your gear’s durability. Making combat more interesting, and more consequential on the long run. Also rewarding positioning and preparation by the player to survive the wilderness by keeping repair powers and creating value to durability enchantments on a weapon. Same goes for armor and so on, perhaps low durability armor can become cumbersome and increase the weight of it by a small amount.
Also, I’m not sure if gear disappears when reaching 0 durability, but I would make it so the gear is still there but at 0% durability it provides 0 stats and none of the enchantments are active.
If you’re familiar with Monster Hunter, the concept is follows the system of weapon sharpness.
You might be wondering what this has to do with game loop?
Well, I think the game could use some tweaking and perhaps some focus around making the player prepare for his/her voyage while in Sacrament, and at the same time making finding resources in the wild more exciting. Especially if you find that repair powder right when you need it, but also making the player have to decide that he probably should return to town before continuing because supplies are running low. I would also make resources a bit more scarce, because they are wildly abundant at the moment. This would create enjoyable tension whenever exploring and a greater sense of safety when in town.
Durability doesn’t have to be an empty shell of a mechanic, it can also work as a timer to indicate to the player that he probably should go back to town and prepare again, or simply wind-down and relax. It can be a passive way to create a rhythm of play between the town hub and the dungeon areas.
Combat & Builds
Backstab…
Backstab, or riposte, or whatever you want to call it, feels a little bit too easy to pull off at the moment. Which honestly I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, it wasn’t very difficult to pull off in dark souls, and I don’t think it should be difficult to pull off in No Rest for the Wicked. However, I do think it might be a little too strong?
My suggestion would be to introduce a “Critical power” and “Critical chance” base stat to weapons. I would make it so weapons have a set % critical damage chance and critical damage modifier depending on the weapon type.
Critical chance as it implies simply gives a chance per hit to modify the damage when a critical hit is made, and critical power is the amount of damage modified. For Example Critical power 35, means a critical hit will do 135% damage.
Critical power also affects backstab damage, making it so some weapons are better a dealing damage with backstabs but not necessarily better. While at the same time introducing new possibilities for enchantments, upgrades and also new strategies when it comes to combat.
Overall, I think the combat is pretty good; however it could be further tweaked. One feeling that I get from it, is that dodging/rolling is too spam-able on light and medium weights. I believe the invincibility frames are okay, however I think there needs to be a small cooldown before you can roll again.
Other than that, I think some weapons are too slow and clunky. I understand the idea of having slower weapons to create more varied gameplay, however the swing of a two-handed sword as it is right now is kind of absurd and comical. I don’t like it. Please make the move set faster!
Also, on the topic of weapons, I think weapon categories should matter and have gameplay implications.
For example: I think certain weapons should be tied to a certain attribute. I was kind of shocked that I got a two handed hammer, who’s Icon looks like an axe, but requires dex and faith? My character was a dex, faith cleric of sorts, but I never expected to be able to use a two handed hammer?
I think players would like to see a cohesive categorization when it comes to weapons and what to expect.
On a related side note, I would like to see stats to have some kind of system attached to them other than being a simple stat check to be able to use certain weapons.
As a rough suggestion I would make it so weapons gain bonuses depending on the stat of the character.
STR = + “x” Poise damage per point
DEX = + “x”% critical chance per point
INT = + “x”% Elemental damage per point
FAITH = + “x”% Rune damage per point
I think this could make building a character way more interesting.
Gear & Loot
Gear… The reason why we enjoy ARPGs…
Super important right? However many ARPG’s get it wrong, or don’t do enough.
At the moment, to be honest; it’s kind of bland. All the enchantments kind of revolve around the primary resources that any character has. Health, Focus, Stamina and poise for the most part. Besides that, you get things like "on hit"or “on action” events that interact with those stats. And well that’s good and all, however from the developers interview, they mentioned that they wanted to let the players create their own builds and roleplay their own class. But as it is right now, other than your weapon’s move set; not much feels like you’re playing a unique class at all, it does indeed feel classless in the way that you’re not much distinguishable from any other builds. All the enchantments are pretty generic, and on top of that, some of them are (to my assessment) much better than others and basically no brainers; such as the “health when dealing damage” or “stamina when dealing damage” and of course “focus on dealing damage”
I find them not to be very exciting, and a lot of the other enchantments are not interesting enough, or straight up useless. Such as the durability one, since durability is kind of a boring system at the moment.
I have a robust suggestion which I hope is interesting.
I love the idea that white gear is the most customizable and usable, however i think it’s not quite there yet. Cursed item’s seem to be the best in slot almost no matter what; and blue items are kind of meh or temporary.
What I would do first, is buff GEMS, make them actually pretty good! Good enough that, blue and cursed items can only have one ( as it is now) I would also make it so there’s rarity to gems with increasingly more powerful/ dynamic effects according to the rarity. The more common gems, are great for very specialized builds (min/max) type stuff or patching up weak spots, while more rarer gems have crazier effects that alter your playstyle. Effects, that in combination can do some really wild and interesting things .Now imagine having 4 slots? Now that’s something else!!!
This would really make White items interesting, but not necessarily better if balanced properly. Something that Blue and cursed items can’t do or at least not to the same effect.
Gem examples
- Common gems: give bonuses to stamin recovery gain.
- Uncommon gems: give Focus regeneration.
- Rare gems: enchant weapon to deal "x"fire damage.
- Ultra Rare gems: Enemies hit by your weapon have a chance to drop coins.
Enchantments
Now for the enchantments overall, I think we simply needs more and more interesting ones; which obviously will come in due time. However, I do have a suggestion that might address some concerns over having too many and random enchantments.
I would make it so all Enchanted items have a Primary affix and 2 or 3 secondary affixes, depending on your luck.
Primary affixes, always have effects that are usually affected by your primary stats (STR,DEX…etc…) Which will have a predetermined stat that will always be the same. That way players know what to expect and can even build their characters in the hopes of getting a specific drop.
To exemplify my point, here’s some examples for Weapons.
Primary Affix
-
Deal “X” Poison build-up/damage equal to your Faith Stat.
(pretty simple) -
Charge attack shoots a shockwave blast in a cone in front of you when swinging your weapon dealing damage equal to half of your STR stat. (applies all effects from weapon)
-
Light dodge now damages enemies it passed through equal to half of your DEX stat.
You get the idea.
Enchantments that White items cannot get, but change how you fight, or how you rely on your gear.
Ill give you a few more for Armor.
-
Replace Shoulder Bash with “Iron Skin”, when using Iron Skin the character has reduced movement speed for 3 seconds, doubles current Poise and takes reduces damage equal to your current weight cumbrance. This ability has a cooldown of “X” seconds.
-
Reduce elemental damage by “x”% based on your armor type.
Cloth = Cold, Leather = Electric, Plate = Fire, Mesh = Poison. -
Dodging over enemies pushes them back and deals “x” damage equal to half of your STR stat.
Secondary Affix
For the secondary affix, I would keep them very similar as the ones we currently have in the game. Mostly dealing with Health, Focus, Stamina, etc… which to my view could be seen as more supportive core stats.
The idea of categorizing gear in this way and creating a separation is to create variety of build that are more dynamic and interactive but also to create an expectation as well as an ease of structure for the player to strategize and plan their builds. Not only that but it also makes it so the players will try to get a specific enchantment with supporting secondary enchantments that cater more to their build.
Finally, I would make it so the enchantress can also reroll secondary enchantments for a fee.
Cursed Gear
Right now, I believe most of us aren’t very happy with the curse enchantments, they are either too punishing, straight up deadly, or just kind of annoying. But overall, they are not super interesting.
I think curses should be effects that do have a drawback, however it can also be a way to allow players to create clever builds that sometimes might even benefit the player under the right circumstances, yet might really hinder the player in others. Here’s some examples:
-
Cursed Metabolism: Potions and Elixirs effectiveness reduced by 50%.
-
Curse of the Messenger: Every dodge generates 35% burn build-up.
basically if you roll 3 times quickly you get burned, punishing the dodge spam
- Curse of the Harvest: Gathering resources from trees, ore, etc… takes twice as long.
kind of reverting to a previous version of the game that people probably found a bit annoying that it would take too long to gather resources, however i think it could be a fun curse that even though it doesn’t have combat implications, it could be one of those curses that players bear with because it doesn’t have combat drawbacks. But instead, you pay with your patience many times in small doses, making the curse be brought into the real world in a sense
Other
Information
One BIG BIG BIG thing. The game needs to communicate better what the stats mean. It’s an ARPG. We want to understand the stats, give us the information and communicate it to us clearly. for example, I have no idea what the shattered symbol next to the weapon damage is, i assume it’s either poise, or armor penetration. And what does 10 mean? 10, what? poise damage? I assume that’s what it is, but i only figured it out when I found out you can turn on poise bars in the menu. Please Avoid this!
Saving
Small fix. Currently you can abuse the save system by force quitting the game in case of death to go back to the last save state. Maybe, changing it so the game saves on death would kill this exploit.
Stealth
At the moment, the game seems to hint at some kind of stealth system, being able to lean onto walls and tap the wall to make noise gives me some serious Metal Gear vibes! I would love to see stealth be more fleshed out and of course I imagine its a huge undertaking to implement a system like this, but it would be amazing to have something like this in the game. It would further increase build variety and playstyles, and it would also make use of my previous suggestion of “critical power” stat which could be used to deal bonus damage to “unaware enemies” for example and also make ranged combat pretty cool.
But then, this is just wishful thinking at the moment.
> Outro:
Sorry for the very long post, and if you’ve made it this far, thank you very much for your time! Hopefully Moon Studios, reads this and finds it helpful or even better consider to implement some of these ideas. I understand that a lot of these might take quite a bit of effort to make, and obviously I’m not expecting to see any of these included in the game (although i would be ecstatic). I know they are far from perfect but I tried to hone in on their vision and make suggestions based on that.
I can only feel jealous of the game designers and developers working at Moon Studios for working on such a cool and ambitious game that I could only dream of working on.
Again Thanks you and…
Cheers!
