Regarding the lv/stats system’s future changes and the general direction of the game

Wicked General
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First of all in souls-like a player lv 100 is always stronger than a lv1 even if you put points in stats you dont use, because defense is increased by the general level.

So a player lv100 with 99 points in luck still has muuuuch greater defence than a lv1.

Other thjng, even in games like elden ring a lot of players lamented dying too fast as they didnt want to level vigor/hp. The average player is dumb, they prefer to increase damage by 5% compared to increasing hp by 20%. It’s seen in a lot of action rpg series, like monster hunter too, where 90% of players use only hyper offensive skills to increase damage by nearly nothing while taking a lot of damage.

That doesnt mean the system doesnt work, you just have to take player’s dumbness in consideration and balance it accordingly.

The real problem of nrftw’s lv system is that the difference between stats is only the list of weapons rhey can use, so it doesnt really feel like a game defining choice. In souls each stat has an added effect apart from the scaling of weapons/magic, so that a pure intelligence playstyle is completely different from a pure strength or dex …

Last thing, you’re changing too many things by being scared of players not liking or not understanding things, you have to commit to design choices and continue developing them, not change ideas all the time.

You want a challenging isometric souls-like with diablo-like loot? Do it. The majority of players will lament the challenge (they do it in from’s games too, all the time) and the loot. Have you seen all other arpgs like diablo and poe? If you make them not spammy people will cry because they cant dodge and learn movesets. Commit to your choices, not everything has to be for everyone.

Or at least add an hard mode for those that like challenging games, as that was the game you advertized.

Great games are made by creating what you love, not by making what the mass thinks they want. A game for everyone is a game for no one.

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Trying to make a game enjoyable by the most and not niche is a choice.

Now, you need to keep in mind there are players that just want to chill with the brain off, enoying the art, destroying everything feeling like a God until the credits. While the hardcore players will have to dig into stats, game mechanics and NG+.
Hardcore rush then dig, Crowd rush then switch game.
Do we need all the drama ? Problem is we cannot avoid it ^^!

Using a 2 handed sword that need 42 strengh ? You will need to make some choices, less Stamina, charge or HP ?
Not a bad system, actually I like it.

At PoE forum at least you can tell a little bit about who is writing. New comer or a 100h player.
Not much but it helps.

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There should be multiple difficulty options if the game wants to please a large playerbase.
Elden ring does it with spirit summons and A LOT of broken weapons/skills/magic. The majority of players use that broken stuff, they read online it’s strong and they dont want a challenge.
That’s perfectly fine but the minority has a lot of options to play the game in a way that is challenging.

For nrftw the easiest and more user friendly way would be to have at least 2 difficulty modes: normal and hard, even better if there was an easy one too.

Limiting the hard content to endgame or ng+ is a terrible way to balance a game as the majority never finishes games and someone that wants to play an hard game probably wont wait 30/40 hours to reach the point where he really has fun (apart from the fact that early/mid game and endgame balance are a completely different experience).

In the past unlocking harder game modes in action games was limited to after having finished the game but those games were usually short and still having to unlock settings is disliked by the majority and in fact a lot of games are abandoning that limit.

I’m a 100+ hours player, i have experience with souls and path of exile but i’m not a super good player or anything. I like taking my time to explore and learn fights.
Btw i liked the breach a lot, i was waiting for it already in the first announcement trailer that had snippets of content from this patch. Love the sunflowers.

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I think people do jump the gun with firing back against this. And saying it is all to appease the masses. The way it sounded to me, they always kept the thoughts open to change the stat based system, so if they always thought it may not be the right fit how is it catering to the masses instead of catering to their vision?

Everyone here judges it before they even talked more about the new system and only gave a warning about it. If it does not work out the change can still be reverted. This is the nature and purpose of early access, to test and see what works. Maybe we all will enjoy the new system way more, maybe we enjoy it less.

I understand the worry and push back, but can we agree to at least be civil and not insult those that are more on the excited and dislike stat based games like that? Give the new system a chance and let have them cook. It was their vision for an ARPG that was not the same and innovates, that gave birth to no rest for the wicked, so why can’t they do the same about the stat point system and see what they cook there?

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I’m not insulting anyone and my suggestion of difficulty selectors was exactly to appeal to everyone.

This game had a lot of changes in direction and they should focus on what’s here. The stat system isnt bad, it just needs some work. They could swap it with something else but that will need work too, it’s not a systemic problem. Mechanics need balacing and tests, if they continually swap them they’ll never refine anything.

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I did not mean you should have made it clear I am sorry, in the replies of this and many others I see players with less inclination towards harder games be called plebs. My message was towards them not yours.

Yours was a well structured post I did enjoy reading. I should have been more clear

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I think the system is fine, but If they want to try something new, I’m all for it.
It sounds a little worrying at first because taking away stats means taking away build complexity, which is why people are feeling negative about it. But the devs aren’t simply removing the system, they’re replacing it with a new system, I think people completely missed that part. The new system could be even more complex & fun, but with less pitfalls.
Don’t judge it until you see it. If it turns out bad, simply give more feedbacks to make it good.

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removing attributes because players make mistakes makes no sense, it is by making mistakes and learning the game mechanics that the player improves.
this is a new game that wants to last for years and therefore must have a minimum of complexity where the developers do not seem to have a clear direction to take.
let’s take for example the “complexity” of a game like poe, if an average player did not watch videos and tutorials he would hardly understand the mechanics and if the developers to meet him had simplified everything it would not be the game it is today and the same goes for all successful games.

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another thing: deleting things will be the easiest and fastest solution but it is not the best.. casual players always want a lot of things because being casual they do not know the game at all.
adding walls to prevent falling because you do not know how to engage enemies, asking to be able to choose portals because you do not want to run when at the moment it takes less than 4 minutes to travel the entire game map (with blink and regenerative focus pre patch even less) and other things are all things that make you lose focus on more important things. listen to those who really play this game

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Multiplayer is on its way, it should ease the difficulty for some players.

I am not an “elite” hardcore gamer, never mind about difficulty option. Guess the question is more about how to make casual players enjoy difficulties.

Playing J-RPG, it feels natural to play and max out everything for the optional bosses fight while the final boss of the story is just a clown.
The price (40€) makes me think it going to be 10-15 hours for the story more if you do the crucible, pestilence and so on.

True, the “fun” part is to add DLC and have people enjoying buying it >_<

Guess Kegaran was referring to “player’s dumbness” when he says insulting.

@leonardo_costantini Then comes : why do I need to make mistakes if others shows me how to avoid them !
Dying multiple times to learn is not funny (another subject, I should really watch the movie Mickey 17 :slight_smile: )

My brother is bossy while I always try to make my nephew do things he doesn’t like with super hero stories or games.
No good or bad, my nephew stills loves both of us, it is just two different way.

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The theme of developers sticking to their choices and their vision is one I support. However with the changes to the attribute system, it’s clear they were never attached to it from the beginning. And I think the reason is that it was never their personal vision for what a leveling system should be. It feels like they bought a generic attribute system from the market just to have something ready quickly for the launch of EA. In that sense, the way they are trying to change things means that the next step will be their actual intention and choice of vision. Then we can talk about sticking to their guns against those who are not adjusted.

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at first I thought that they ruining the existing system tbh but the more I learned about the approach to future of class-building and attribute system that thomas explained on interviews I convinced that it will be definetely better then the linear attribute system. I love how “new world” (the mmo) approached to the class and attribute system (out of the context I also love artifact items and arena pvp etc in there) and would love to see similar approach on here as well. Since I witnessed that they are collecting the best parts of the other genres.