Everything @sBAM wrote is “correct”/“I agree with it” I would have written it too if he hadn’t commented first.
But the general idea of removing things that are just wasting time, I agree, and even though all the things that have been said here are minor things they add up.
Like the animation to collect loot, it is a bit too long (it could last half as long or even less), and why it is not cancelable?
I remember thinking the same thing in Dark Souls, Elden Ring solves this problem (by having the dramatic animation only for key items), but in this game where you are always collecting loot the problem is there again and it is even more serious because the loot is everywhere and it is very important to collect it, and the game is designed to be replayable.
There’s a strange delay when changing inventory pages (both the character’s and the shop’s ones). If I have to go 3 pages forward and click the button 3 times, it only goes forward one page because there’s this delay (even if it’s made to avoid double clicks, it should be an option in the settings, not a default setting).
I think the worst problem in this theme is still the wrong implementation of the RNG, such as rerolls with embers (more on that here: The RNG Problem, Enchantment System Vs Gem System (Refined)) or the fact that to find a particular loot you have to be lucky because there is no direct and guaranteed way to get it (and I’m not referring only to unique weapons but also to building materials such as boar tusks, and many others).
In this game if you just want to play with things you find by chance without trying to get things you don’t have, the building experience is ok but in the moment you try to make a build and you need something you don’t have based on the RNG it can take a couple of hours or days to complete the build.
And this then connects to the inventory problem, where the game is full of different loot and your inventory fills up quickly then you have to go back to the city and you can’t sell random things because you probably need them in the future for something you don’t know (like when we get a skull we can’t know what we might need it for in the future, if you’ve played the game you know it’s needed for some armor but you don’t know if you’ll ever need it because you don’t know if the things that require it interest you or not since obviously you don’t know every recipe in the game) so you put it aside, but the chests have a very limited inventory and you’re always placing new chests.
And all this is a great waste of time, given that it would be enough to have a chest for each section of the inventory to have things quite organized.
The construction materials are too redundant, there should be less since there is no need for example for the mermaids to drop 3 different loot (skull, claw and tail) when these materials are used then it competes without a criterion, i.e. why do I need the heart of a bear to make mash gloves?
Is it because I have to go to the area where the bears are to get a piece of equipment of this level?
This is not how it works, as you can find high-level gear without ever interacting with bears or going to advanced areas.
But even if that were the case, Why the bears don’t have a single drop that I can use for everything (any recipe that contains bear parts), what gameplay reason is there for having three different drops from the same mob (and all 3 drops have the exact same role)?
The only two possible gameplay reason that I can see:
- Immersion: having multiple body parts instead of just one makes the game world seem a little more real (too bad he then we use a bear’s heart to make chainmail gloves, so immersion goes to hell xD, and in any case, creating a gameplay problem over an immersion detail isn’t a good idea).
- Since the various body parts have different rarities, the player might be happy to have found the rare drop, Too bad this is not the case since if you are looking for the drop to do something in particular, the process is so long that the player feels at most relieved that his frustration is over, and if he finds the drop randomly he doesn’t know its use and therefore he doesn’t even notice it as a rare drop.
At this point, let me trade or transform these pieces into beast blood or beast essence Or something, a more universal crafing maitirlal, like: Beast Blood I, BB II, BB III, BB IV etc. based on the rarity of the loot and the type of beast. You can then use this beast blood to upgrade the gear in more universal ways like the Smithing Stones from Elden Ring, instead of having this mixed and confusing system that serves no one and has the only result of being more grindy and time-consuming.
With a similar system you can also keep the rarity system of the drops as the rarer drops give a higher amount of BB (and money as they already do), although I would prefer if they dropped the BB directly instead of the body parts so as to save time and confusion, or as I already said that each animal/creature drops only one crafting item and not 3.