I’m 76 hours in. Made a few characters and tried a couple of builds. This is just a few of my thoughts regarding some of the designs around the game items and mechanics. It’s a bit of a rant and I may not be completely right about everything so feel free to educate me. I’m staying away from critizing QoL stuff like better inventory management or whatever. This is more about how this game is intended to be interesting.
I understand this game is early access and that certain design choices aren’t necessarily permanent, finished or perfected yet. I haven’t read too much into what the developers aim to do and what philosophy they have towards ARPGs and their “new” direction for the genre. While the game is isometric, as ARPGs tend to be, it certainly has elements of a soulslike and some other genres of games. I also saw some response towards respecing where Thomas Mahler stated they want to implement a respec feature but that it won’t be free but rather should be costly to ensure that the philosophy that “choices matter” stays relevant.
I can agree with a lot of this. And regarding if respecs should be free/cheap during EA to allow players to test and play around with different builds and playstyles is, in my opinion, fairly irrelevant to me as it doesn’t bother me too much. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
CHOICES MATTER. This is great and in my opinion, necessary for games like this to stay relevant. I’m a pretty seasoned ARPG player with D2, D3, D4, PoE, Last Epoch and Wolcen under my belt. I’ve also played a fair amount of soulslikes where Sekiro is my favorite because I love parrying (and I love that it exists in an ARPG).
That being said, I wanted to raise some questions to things I don’t feel I fully understand. I’m not saying these things are all bad. I just don’t really know what to make of it.
Weapons / Gear
Generally, there are fairly good affixes on gear that encourages different playstyles and builds. There are definitely ways to work around blocking, parrying, stamina/speed and focus/rune attack aimed builds as well as ailments.
However, to receive affixes on an item, you need to enchant it, or find it enchanted. This removes 2/4 rune attack slots and also removes 3/4 gem sockets. This may or may not be a fair trade. I can’t really say because I don’t understand why anyone would use a non enchanted (white) item… Perhaps in the first 1-3 hours as you’re learning the game and you haven’t found/afforded an enchanted axe or whatever. But at that point you also don’t have the gems to make some specific affix combo by socketing 4 gems instead of enchanting the axe.
There are also further incentives NOT to use a white weapon, as I understand it. You can’t socket more than 1 of the same gem type in an item. And attributes/affixes granted from gems are lower than that of what an echanted item can roll.
This means it’s not possible to make an odd 12% focus on hit weapon, for whatever reason by using 4 topaz gems.
I don’t understand the reason for “white” items to allow more gems/rune slots because as soon as you have a half-decent weapon with one or two (out of 4 possible) affixes that you want (+1 affix from a gem of your choice) - it’ll be better than a white weapon with 4 possible (different) gems. And once you have an enchanted weapon you never have a reason to swap it until you find a better enchanted weapon.
If white weapons were supposed to bridge some power-gap where, until you find/enchant a weapon to use, you can use white weapons with gems to progress your power level. But again, this would only apply to the first hour or so of the game. If the design to give players choices to make then I don’t see how white weapons are part of the discussion as they’re pretty much irrelevant.
Rune attacks
Lets talk about rune attacks / abilities. It’s a cool thing and similar to PoE the abilities are given from gear rather than innate skill trees or character classes. I like this as it opens up for more choice during gameplay and character progression rather than at character creation which then locks you into a certain field of playstyle. However, I think it’s a bit of a mess at the moment.
What I don’t fully understand is why enchanting removes rune slots on a weapon. I get that it’s part of some “price” to have an enchanted weapon. But as I argue above, white weapons have no real purpose in this game past the start of the game as it is right now. So if it’s pretty much mandatory to use an enchanted weapon then we can disregard the fact that white weapons have 4 rune slots. Any useable weapon will instead have a default 2 rune slots and remember, one of them is already in use and CANNOT be altered.
I understand that runes I socket myself can/should be permanent as it’s a choice made by the player. But finding a nice hammer/sword/spear or whatever, you find that you like the moveset of the weapon but hate the rune attack. Then sure, you have the option to socket a rune attack you like but the innate rune attack is just… there. Unused and only reduces the player choice as I can never find another of this particular weapon, hoping for better luck in the innate rune attack. It’s always the same and I can never have my preferred rune attack along with blink/heal aura or whatever else I wanted to combine my preferred rune attack with. It’s just sad to find a weapon type you like but then have the innate rune attack be unchangeable.
My suggestion would be something along the lines of: Have the innate rune attack vary like a random affix on an item would. Perhaps even include the possebility to find a weapon with no slotted rune attack to allow that potentially amazing “holy grail” item to be crafted by rolling a good enchant and then slotting the preferred set of rune attacks/abilities on it. OR if randomized rune attacks on weapons isn’t agreeable then maybe make the innate rune attack be changeable once? That kind of gives the same result but through an easier/less RNG process which isn’t what I would expect from an ARPG. Perhaps rune attacks and gems should use the same socket slots on a weapon - further increasing player choice regarding the properties you insert on a weapon? I’m just spitballing but at the moment the main choice when choosing a weapon to play with is either its moveset or its rune attack. If I’m lucky I like both. Otherwise I’m usually forced to prioritize the moveset because I can always slot in a rune attack I like and just let the innate rune attack stay on as dead weight.
Yellow Weapons
I don’t know if they’re called unique or legendary but whatever.
The yellow weapons are cool in the sense that they offer affixes otherwise unavailable on other items. However, they’re so uninteresting that I’ve barely tried them out. And by “uninteresting” I don’t mean that their design is bad. Just that they’re the only kind that can both have affixes like enchanted items would AND have 4 rune slots and the 4 rune slots are all already in use. This forces the player into some kind of playstyle/build.
Take the staff for example. I think it’s called Falling Sky? It’s got 3 ice attacks of different kinds and blink. Well I wanted to play with chain lightning, so that staff is of no use to me, ever. It has really cool stats and I would have loved to play around with it on a lightning build. Or a Fire build. Or litterally having any other attack than the ones found on it. I’ve tried it. It’s not bad, but I can’t use it for anything other than what it’s designed for. It’s litterally the opposite of player choice. These, really cool, end game items that completely oppose the design found throughout the rest of the game. I’m baffled by how static these items are and yeah - completely uninterested in them as I would much rather find my own way and see/use what I like. They’re not bad. It’s just that every player using Falling Sky will pretty much build their character the same, as well as the playstyle, because there’s not much else you can do with them.
Now, you could argue that that’s the point of uniques. They have unique affixes but they’re also static and that this is present in most other ARPGs and gear oriented games that have uniques. True, good point. It’s just not what I expected from this game which seeks to reinvent the genre, to a certain degree. Also, these uniques (apart from the shield) are WEAPONS. Which further forces you to a certain moveset and rune attacks. The unique affixes you may be interested in cannot be found on a helm or ring in order to let you use that one mace or combine it with that cool rune attack you like.
Gear slots
Moving on to gear slots. Specifically the additional weapon and offhand slots.
Here’s what I would guess they’re used for.
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If you’re a dex build you can use a bow on swap.
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You can use trash white weapon on swap as a “rune attack” / “buff-mule”.
So here’s the one use of white weapons I found. Since there are issues fitting rune attacks/abilities on your supposed main weapon you can slot a trash weapon and pack it full of repair/return/Health Aura/Damage Surge or whatever else kind of utility or buff abilities you want. Any weapon you can equip will do.
Other than this, I don’t see how I would pretty much ever have more than 1 main weapon. Perhaps a bossing-specific weapon? But that just seems unlikely and a bit weird to switch your whole playstyle between bosses and regular enemeies.
This might be a consequence of the game being EA and level cap at 30. If the intent is to allow players to switch between say, a dexterity Bow, a strength sword and an intelligence staff, depending on the situation then that is a fair argument. It may not be what I would prefer, but atleast it’s a rational argument. For this you would need far more stat points which would make more sense in late game with a higher level cap.
There is however, a big issue with that reasoning as well. Most ARPGs, and Wicked is no exception, rewards investment. By this I mean, find one ability/mechanic and focus on that. Make that one aspect the thing you build around and invest heavily in that and you’ll excel compared to some jack-of-all-trades build with a little bit of stats on everything. I’ve seen the 97 int builds and some others that go full glass cannon and pump everything to make them extremely powerful. This is encouraged in this game since weapon damage output scales through certain stats and that’s even stated on the items. Which means, a strength build could never use a bow or int staff. So what are strength builds supposed to do with the extra weapon slots? I doubt the main purpose intended was to have rune mules? Because again, weapon enchants reduce rune slots which implies rune slots are a valuable, limited resource.
