Hi Cerim! I’m revising my post to be more focus on specific feedback, analysis on system (game mechanic), provide suggestion and I’ll finish with a few tips for the new player!
Hot Take: TIMER
- Pros: Create a sense of immersion and progression of the world that is building slowly around you, plus in some case it give you something to look toward the next time you log-in
- Cons: It feels bad when you farm all these resource and then it hit you in the face with “wait 1 to 4h” before you can interact with it. I’ll add that if they x4 the time every next tier or +3h it get high pretty fast.
TLDR: They are needed and can be good/healthy for the game but they feels bad. What to do?
@Suggestion: Lets us choose how we interact with it.
- Normal approach ( you were going to bed anyway? or you’re in no rush and plan to hop in different realm etc good!
- Focused approach ( You need that blacksmith furnace asap to start melting your ore?) You got it !
@How
- Cost more resources and even maybe silvers ( you have to pay for the extra worker).
(it cost double the resources but is 50% faster or 50% more expensive for 25% faster) - Limit building production to 1 (you have limited supply of worker in that town, cant have them doing everything at once.)
With this new approach, people will feel empower by their choice and wont feel as bad + the mobile narrative is a bit. Overreaching. If people think this game gonna turn into some mobile shit fest that you will pays $$ to speed up the process… I mean you haven’t took the time to get a educated look on who’s the dev working on this game. They want to redefine the genre and make a game that will be look upon generation. This is not a mobile shit fest type of game.
Crucible Feature & Key point
@Exalted
- Finding over and over the same 4 affix that I want for my build just to get 1% better isn’t fun for me and I’ll add, I’ve notice that I get even more exited knowing that I finally found the right combination and it’s just a matter of time before perfecting it. I love it. Plus, the game has been evolving into: we have a ocean of affix (good and bad witch I’ll touch on later) and finding the right combination is the key
- On the other hand, getting perfect item without the need to accomplish anything for it feels bad. (To be fair, you did find the base item witch is a good but if I find the right combination and just got unlucky with the stats… I do feel we should work harder to get it perfected.
We know that the game rely heavily around the “Tier” system (up to T6 we’ve seen so far). It could be the perfect opportunity to have some feature be gated by defeating the first, second EK.
Example: You have now unlock Exalted feature but haven’t kill the first EK.
- Exalted item will simply increase the base value of the weapon.
And as you progress through the crucible and accomplish milestone, your exalted item get better and at one point: affix are maxed.
@Shop
- They removed Ore bar from the NPC because they wanted us to interact more with the world system (furnace etc) then they added it back into the crucible shop…my first guess would be it is a temporally feature that will be adjusted. Personally I’ve wish that I could spent my extra gloamseeds to buy gear (could be randomized chest, weapon etc) since after exalting all your gear…there’s not much to do with it. It’s still nice to farm EK for the chest and currency but it feel bad that my gloamseeds become a little useless later on (could be a non-issue depending on how the future content shape out)
%Focus regen on multiple hit
- Not overly relying on drinking Focus is a good thing and the fact that you can define a build to solve the focus problem is good and healthy. (It’s a tool that help you overcome challenge when you need it)
- On the other hand, I do feel that we don’t have trade off.
Let’s make the trade off meaningful. How?
- First step; lets have more parity on how powerful these archetype build is.
@ Focus build (They are very strong and even if some rune could see more adjustment (coneshot could be 125 focus as example) it’s good because it require a very high investment to make it work.
@ Hybrid AA-Focus ( I Made a Spirit Edge build that would chain 1-3 auto into Evasive strike witch felt very good and is decently strong) Now I’ll admit, damage wise the AA is decent because of the ice nature of the weapon.
@ Auto-Atk build ( Looking at you Talwart, duel dagger and such) These build can be nearly invincible with the fast atk and % life on hit but the main problem lies in the fact that if you don’t use your focus that you are generating. You don’t do much damage.
@ Special mention I felt I needed something extra for those specialized build like thorn or parry/block used for dmg.
@Suggestion:
- We currently have a ring that sacrifice focus generation for survivability but not for damage. While I understand that AA were not meant to be the main source of damage, I still feel that the game should support the archetype if someone would decide to invest into it. Obviously, it need to be decently balanced so you’re not forced into one archetype.
Tier system
- Gear use T1 up to T6
noticed: you enchant a T1 weapon and it roll affix with a limited T1 value, if you upgrade into T3 the affix value stay T1 even after being exalted (It limit weapon variety as lower Tier become irrelevant to the fact that specific focus affix are limited (newly added focus on use up to 2 on T1 and up to 9 on T3) - Town NPC (T1-T3) Upgrading Tier on your NPC does:
Unlock extra Tier of gear/rune/consum/etc available
T2 NPC unlock a new tools(furnace, sawmill etc)
T3 NPC unlock new building for some
Side note: I’ve seen Core Keeper game recently and they also use Tier system(bronze, iron, silver etc) but one thing that stick to my mind was the additional tools/feature on every early Tier. T2 & T3 has one and I’d like to see more going forward. Here’s a few idea and please fellow Cerim tell me yours. (some of them are better than other!)
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T(x) Enchantress - Unlock Spellbook. Sacrifice a rune to permanently unlock it into the Spellbook. (still cost silver to put rune into our gear) bonus: help mitigating inventory management
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T(x) Blacksmith - Replace repair by Sharpening. You repair and sharpen your gear to increases his total durability by 50% plus you get additional 5-10% armor/damage (buff last the 50% over base durability)
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T(x) NPCs tools (furnace sawmill etc) is faster (birch wood is 7+ min to craft into a plank) so maybe every tier reduce it by a little and if not… something that would let us queue more than 8 could be really nice QOL
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Crucible EK (up to 5 level) To me these milestone are the same as the tier so we could see them impacting what item we see at the shop, could change how exalted item are, even let us unlock new feature with the gloamseeds.
Rune & Key point (work in progresss)
- Description in tooltips UI mysterious “you know when you try” vs exhaustive description
- Overall balance damage value vs focus cost
- Design elemental, physical, type, number of hit
Tips for new player - If you know great early game tips, please share!
- Weaponless Running attack “Kick”: Better than every T1 Weapon in the game (without upgrade) It does more dmg, more cc and is faster than Claymore to give some perspective.
- Combination: Focus regen + healing spell or health regen + focus spell simple as it’s effective (literally infinite focus pot or food out of combat)
- Heavy load Shoulder barge: You can stun lock most giant (shoulder barge 1-2 hit, wait for stam recovery, repeat) SB cancel their attack animation plus have them bend the knee (if they finish their animation your toast)
- You can always get all 4 resource gathering tool for free in the starting zone (before sacrament)
EDIT for later: I also wanna touch on Rune balance, affix and other “Tier” system that will be edited later!
That’ll do for my revised first post, please share your thoughts and explain why you agree/disagree or what you’ll wish to see. Cheers!