The attack animation of a weapon has more of an impact than the level, and gold gear is unattractive

Wicked Feedback
1

I’ve played for 100+ hours and acquired a lot of weapons, and I’ve used basically all of them except for the staff type weapons, which I don’t like. Each weapon has an exclusive attack animation, which is a very intentional approach, but it’s not always the right approach.

The attributes of a good weapon can be gained through multiple attempts at enchanting, and some skills can be gained through runes, plus the ability to promote a weapon in the Crucible allows the attributes to be maximized. At this point, the difference in comparing weapons becomes whether or not the attack animation is good. And the best attack animations at the moment are not the best quality weapons. After being augmented by various attributes and upgraded to the extreme, a gold-colored weapon is unattractive in terms of attack animation and attributes in comparison.

My coworker, who also played the game recently, has completed the first chapter of the story and complained to me that since getting Undercurrent Double Cone, the game has become steeply less difficult, completing the story with ease. And won’t be going for great weapons anymore, as that’s his favorite now.

Similarly, there are players in Chinese video sites who will review every weapon and every rune in detail, literally every one. They’ll rate the weapons and runes, none of the gold quality weapons get high scores, and none of them are in the recommended Top5 list. Most of the recommended weapons are ones that can be obtained at level 10-15, or can be crafted, or can be purchased. Weapons like this are unbalanced and will kill the game.

The studio needs to rebalance the performance of each weapon, especially the attack animations and rune animations. It’s like car design, beautiful exterior design, must be made into a luxury car, if it is made into a normal family car price, then luxury car to use what appearance?

My point isn’t whether or not I or the author of the video is right about a particular weapon, it’s that there are now several weapons that outperform other weapons of the same type with the same standard of build, and that this has been discovered and publicised by players, which can instantly change the experience of the game.

The design of the game’s weapon system is unique in its own way, but the colour system brings inertia, as it is exactly the same as many previous RPGs that have defined colours for item levels. Changing the colours that define qualities might also be simple and effective.

In short, users need to be guided, especially if new rules have been invented, and they cannot be familiarised with the whole evolution of the game by default. This isn’t a suggestion for gameplay, this is a suggestion for the underlying user experience. The weapon system needs to be improved not in terms of specific parameters, but in terms of the way it is expressed.

2

damn do you have a link to that chinese ranking video?

but yeah exaclty my sentiment, they need another balancing pass over that. a friend of mine complained as well, that the claymore i think, (the first 2h sword you can stumble upon) trivialised the whole game…

3

This URL is one of the more recent analysis videos that analyzes weapons, not runes. But the author of the video didn’t make subtitles and didn’t turn on the auto-translate function provided by the site, you may not be able to understand what he is saying, he doesn’t have clear diagrams to show what I’m talking about, but just expresses this kind of meaning from the words.

Kobolds’ Choice: Introduction and Recommendation of All Weapons in the New Version

I do this myself, using the Governor’s Short Sword and a small round shield I got from level 5 to level 30 and upgraded to the very top, they may not be the prettiest, but I blast Echo Knights just the same. I have a lot of gold weapons and shields in my item box that I just used once and left there.

Also, one of the users briefly summarized this 50-minute video. I copied the translation of his response here. Because the software translation may not be very good, some of the weapon Chinese terms in the content can’t be correctly translated into English. I didn’t play the English version either, and I don’t know what the correct English names are.

  1. Double Dagger:
    Undercurrent Double Cone (Attack Module Damage Segment High)

  2. one-handed hammer:
    Furnace Brick, Rostock (a segment of stored power can break shields)

  3. one-handed spike hammer:
    A Malice (easy to get to, hold forward and press attack to cycle through one attack)
    B Last Will and Testament (three attacks with high speed and long displacement)

  4. Two-handed Giant Hammer:
    A Pulsating Viscera (fast dash attack, can be combined with power-up attacks, invincibility when jumping with power-up attacks)
    B Articulated Cranium Breaker (3 attacks with fast speed), Yu Molten Stone (sprint attack plus one attack with fast hit)

  5. One-handed Axe:
    A Jade Ridge (fast dash attack, can be connected to a power-up)
    B Cutting Axe (same as Last Will and Testament)

  6. Two-handed axe:
    A Flaying Long Axe (first two attacks are extremely tough)
    B Shattered Teeth (good module)

  7. Bow and Arrow: Doesn’t matter (with scatter arrows, it’s all the same)

  8. One-handed clubs:
    A Wolf’s tooth stick (can be infinite power)
    B ogre club (battle skill “epidemic assault” knockback ability is very high)

  9. Two-handed clubs:
    A Fishy Rot Rod (very high damage increase)
    B. Mangy Stick (invulnerable to a section of the attack)

  10. Samurai Sword:
    Rubbish (if you must use it, use Aurora, for the same reason as Wolfsbane)

  11. One-handed long knives:
    A Shacheng scimitar (good overall performance, and easy to get)
    B Hao Clan Saber (the world of martial arts only fast and unbreakable)
    C Devil’s Key (good attack module, sprint attack is great)
    D Gut dissection (storage attack is great, but don’t bring a speed ring or you’ll fall to your death through the module)

  12. Two-handed scythe:
    Only one, can be collected

  13. two-handed mowers:
    Attack power is too low, waste

  14. one-handed thin sword:
    Attack power is too low, waste (if you have to use, the devil tendon, crazy devil long nail, Xiang falcon, roasted pig skewer, Yuezhang, especially Xiang falcon, battle skills good module good)

  15. two-handed giant sword:
    A hot summer bite (attack module fast, with the body, battle skills broken hammer is the highest damage in a single damage battle skills)
    B Prime Cell (good attack module, all sweeps), Flathead (good module, and easy to get)
    C Icebreaker (attack module only has one section, can play turn-based)
    D Branching Inferno (attack module is the most handsome, but need to equip speed class ring)

  16. one-handed sword:
    A Kronos (good module, easy to get)
    B Soul Blade (noble frost damage)
    C Governor’s Short Sword (good module)

17.One-Handed Spear:
A Tumor Harpoon (invincibility on third attack and dash attack, and easy to get, but low damage)
B Calyx Leaf Fern Spear (highlights one division, other less inquisitive)
C Poison Needle Spear (good for blood-sucking streams, but not easy to get to)

18.Two-Handed Halberd:
Nail Tooth Forbidden Guard (Punch attack cuts toughness high with interrupts)

19.Staff:
A Canopy Fall (great, no words needed)
B Crown of Sinners (good module)
C Yu-Gi-Oh Deer (Noble Flame damage)

20.Shields:
Play bounce back with small and medium shields
Play counter damage with giant shield

1 Like
5

My point isn’t whether or not I or the author of the video is right about a particular weapon, it’s that there are now several weapons that outperform other weapons of the same type with the same standard of build, and that this has been discovered and publicised by players, which can instantly change the experience of the game. Weapons need to be revisited for balance.

I don’t have a huge desire for gear, so I’m late to the party on this one, but a lot of people who play RPGs have a desire for gear, both in terms of styling and performance.

Colours correspond to qualities that are agreed upon in the minds of RPG players. Most default to the idea that gold will be the best gear they get, when I first got a gold weapon I was excited but disappointed after actually using it.

When gold gear is a disappointment, then the player loses motivation to keep playing, at least half of it. When the game is officially released, I don’t think this is an issue that can be ignored.

I don’t know how to do this properly, I can only express my concerns first.

7

A player playing the same kind of game will use the rules of the previous game as an experience, if he sees a long red bar, it means it’s HP, which is inherited from Diablo. in FPS games WASD has to be a four direction movement. apple’s gesture operation is the same on android phones because users are used to it. Whichever brand of mobile phone is not designed to be the same, that brand will die. If you don’t want to mislead users, don’t use already agreed features to express new meanings, this behaviour is dangerous in product development.

Going back to the gold quality, the developers didn’t call me to tell me and my native language is not English. Even though I bought the game during the EA phase, I don’t read the forums every day, much less the previous content. If the game doesn’t force the user to read the developer’s definition of colours and qualities like the user agreement, then this developer’s definition, for the user, doesn’t exist, and the user will follow the inertia of thinking that different colours correspond to different qualities, and the game is essentially similar, with blue having two words, and purple having 2-4 words, and with a better quality of words. Then the user instinctively thinks gold, useful for the best results, especially since gold weapons have no negative phrases. But the user will be disappointed after using it, it’s not good enough.

Less balanced weapons are basically in the table above, such as the first two-handed weapon, with words such as Focused Response and Focused Improved Damage, and an Impact Rune, this weapon is basically unbeatable. It is the second most popular in China. The first would be whichever one-handed spear, but I’ve never been a fan of spears and didn’t try it. My own experience is also that I don’t have a goal or quest right now.

If the game opens up new maps in the future, I’ll happily continue to play, but I’ll probably just keep holding my current weapon for a long time. Because I can still finish the game even if I stop using better weapons. That would probably halve the fun of the game.

Moon Studio has been developing this game for a long time, and I think they’re under a lot of pressure on all fronts, like financial pressure. Both of the studio’s previous games were very popular in China, which contributed to half of the sales. But those games weren’t RPGs and didn’t have complex systems. This time, when EA started, there were a lot of bad reviews from players for many reasons, and the developers expressed their concerns because they didn’t understand why, and that’s what happens when user habits are different, and behaviour you take for granted doesn’t exist in another large user base.

It’s ok now, only about 50K very few people have bought the game. When the game is officially released and heavily advertised, even a small percentage of people (maybe a million) will see the studio’s name and buy the game. And yet, because of what you said, this game is the rule, you didn’t check all the forums and familiarise yourself with all the words of the developers, so you’re wrong about the game, and have to play the game as the producers want.

Believe me, Chinese gamers are not so kind. They are consumers enjoying the convenience of a competitive marketplace in one of the most competitive marketplaces in the world. Online purchases can be made for seven days without reason only refunds and not returns. Electric cars from European brands are sold at half the price here. If they’re not satisfied, they’ll flood the entire Steam with bad reviews, which should be accompanied by massive refunds as well. Of course, the studio has the option to ban Chinese purchases if they can afford that loss.

The improvements or balancing of these weapons that I’m hoping for aren’t limited to the level of whether or not this game is good, it’s the level of the user experience, and it’s my concern for the future prospects of the game. I’m not proposing specific improvements, these need to be judged by the developers themselves after they understand what I’m saying, they developed the game and I’m sure they’ll have a suitable and interesting way to be able to solve this problem.

I love this game, and this is a deep concern of mine.

8

This is a response to the OP, not the ongoing discussion.

What I disagree with is that every next Tier of a weapon needs to be better than the previous Tier. We can’t swap enchants from A to B. And, weapons have different levels of accessibility. Drops vs Crafted vs Bought. I think each weapon should have its unique appeal to the player. This is what the aesthetics are for but more so the attack animations. Also, yes some legendaries feel bad to use.

Which leads to where I agree with you on. There are attack animations that feel horrendous to play with, Corpse Smeared Blade (Legendary from Warrick). It’s attack animation is too slow, in my opinion. If some people like it sure, but I don’t think weapons should appeal to the niche but rather the majority. Same with Shattered Sun, the running attack feels like it has too long of a windup. Summer’s Sting on the other hand feels very smooth with its arcing sweeps. Different weapons should appeal to different playstyles, but they all should feel good to use. Some runes also feel clunky in their use. And, I’m worried that they will just keep on making more runes/animations rather than polish what exists.

TLDR

Weapons should not get better with each tier as it wouldn’t make sense with the current enchanting. They should keep their unique feel, however some weapons just feel bad to use. Therefore, they could use some more polish to be brought up to the same level as other weapons so that they don’t ‘’underperform’’.

10

This is my fault. English is not my first language.

The level is not the point, the colour rating of the item is. Gold weapons have to be a player’s dream, in many games this represents the top gear, they can have characteristics but they must be the strongest. Otherwise players will lose a large part of their motivation to play. Or drop this system of using colours to represent levels so that it doesn’t mislead players.

12

Sorry, English is not my native language, there may be misunderstandings if the software translates, and I can’t fully understand your words.

IGN has a Chinese channel, I watched the trailer, bought the game, and that’s it. That’s how a lot of Chinese people buy games, they buy the game first and only get to know it if they like it. Chinese users like to feel the ingenuity of the creators from the product, and some of them even intentionally don’t go to the reviews and introductory videos in order to keep their purest feelings.

Regarding the issue of weapon damage, are you asking me which specific weapon is so particularly powerful that there is an imbalance? My point is not that a particular weapon will be particularly powerful because of a particular attribute, because enchanting is cheap and all white weapons can be enchanted, this is something that will be exploited by players who will go crazy with enchanting to get the best attribute for that one weapon, the attributes are fair for all weapons, but for some of the highly rated weapons listed in the form, the ones that have a very good attack animation, are fast, frequent and resulting in much better gains than weapons with slow attack animations. The player then becomes dependent and will not explore other weapons. Because the weapon is so powerful, the game’s difficulty balance is easily upset. Cleverly designed boss fights will be mindlessly eliminated by the player with dual-wielding daggers. And then left with a comment that this game is nothing more than that.

The design of the game’s weapon system is unique in its own way, but the colour system brings inertia, as it is exactly the same as many previous RPGs that have defined colours for item levels. Changing the colours that define qualities might also be simple and effective.

In short, users need to be guided, especially if new rules have been invented, and they cannot be familiarised with the whole evolution of the game by default. This isn’t a suggestion for gameplay, this is a suggestion for the underlying user experience. The weapon system needs to be improved not in terms of specific parameters, but in terms of the way it is expressed.

13

i do partially agree here. i have in all honesty never used a “legendary” so yellow/gold weapon, because my enchanted common items were always outperforming them, at least in my builts.

sure u can tailor your built to a specific weapon, but it should also work the other way round. if that sweet nice shiny drops, you want to use it immediately, and not feel like your 25 cent sword with 1 silver enchantment is better than the dropped boss weapon.

16

well i do understand it. when you played 20 games where yellow/orange means legendary and therefor is what u were grinding for in those games, and suddenly there is someone giving out yellow weapons but not intented them to be a “legendary”, then it is confusing.

a good example is marketing. if your users/buyers are used to a specific color, for example “diet or fat reduced” products in the supermarket are light blue, then u do NOT market your double bacon extra cheese burger in a light blue packaging. you (to some degree) should cater to the color codes your clientele is used to. you do no have to, but it makes things easier for everyone. user understands what you want to sell them, and dev has less hassle of explaining what they originally intended.

17

i think this is simply about expectations. i too did expect gold items to be “high end” and something desirable. but they are not. they just collect dust in my “gold items” chest, never to return to the light of day.

i understood OPs post as critique, that it is not well balanced, when a white (common), cheap item can outperform a boss drop weapon that suggests to be superior, but it is not.

and we are having that discussion in many forms in this forum. overall i think we all agree, that weapons and enchantments need a lot of work and re-balancing :wink:

19

nah, you are not. i understand your point, but i am sure u can understand the psychology behind all this.

being used from other games for almost 20 years that orange means legendary will always create an expectation when u first get your hands on one of those.

how to manage those expectations is not out job tho :wink: but in my humble opinion, it would sometimes be easier to cater to what people are used to, than manage their disappointment. but thats just pragmatic me :woman_shrugging:

21

Okay I get what you mean now. In other RPG’s we have the following:

Item Rarity Chart

Gold

  • Legendary
  • S+ tier

Purple

  • Epic
  • A tier

Blue

  • Rare
  • B tier

Green

  • Uncommon
  • C tier

White

  • Common
  • D Tier

But, in Wicked we have:

Wicked Item Chart

Gold

  • Legendary
  • Handcrafted by the devs
  • Unique affixes, questionable use…
  • Strongest infusements
  • 4 rune slots, but filled with runes, some are weak
  • Not widely usable in build, but a niche…
  • Clunky or slow animations

Purple

  • Cursed
  • Negative affix
  • Stronger, unique and often more affixes
  • Stronger infusements, 1 slot
  • 2 rune slots, 1 filled

Blue

  • Enchanted? Don’t know what they name is, we just call it blue’s
  • weaker affixes and sometimes limited, some strong unique affixes in certain items
  • strong infusements, 1 slot
  • 2 rune slots, 1 filled

White

  • Common
  • no affixes
  • 4 infusement slots, weak in some cases others are same as purple
  • 4 rune slots, 1 filled

Discussion

Basically, each has it’s own use. White items have the most versatility but less power. Purple items are stronger, especially with good affix rolls, but have a cursed effect - which depending on the curse doesn’t matter. Blue’s are a middle ground, but also not really. They have some unique affixes, so you often use them in specific cases. They could really do with maybe 3 rune slots tho. And gold items are vendor trash. Also any found blue/purple is also vendor trash in my opinion due to the randomness of the affixes.

100% agreed this is a big issue. Especially with how some affixes work with ‘‘on-hit’’ or ‘‘on damage’’. It also feels slow and difficult to use when the enemies attack fast. Meaning you need high poise defense, armor and health to facetank through their attacks. But, there are 2 more issues. We don’t have any attack speed affixes outside of the agility ring to potentially fix the slow attack speed. Furthermore, bosses have limited punishment windows. You want to put as much damage in those windows as possible. With some of those weapons you swing maybe once and deal the exact same damage as a faster weapon. I noticed this especially when swapping from Summer’s Sting to Shattered Sun. Summer’s Sting is very clean with it’s auto attacks, whereas Shattered Sun is a lot slower and feels clunky to use.

Agreed, it needs to be made more clear to players what each specific item type offers. That it isn’t just better gear due to rarity. Maybe it can be added in a tutorial. But, I also think we need cleared distinctions between blue’s and purples. Especially with enchanting, since we can get either at random. We should be able to chose what we get.

Finally, I do think Legendaries should be something players should pursue, I even think we should hunt for them as endgame and be able to make our own.

This.

… and runes …

1 Like
23

For Bowuser and @JoeAndersen I don’t think that many players will inherently think gold > purple > blue to be honest. Like it used to be the thing for ARPGs and it is the way it works for stuff like Apex Legends & Fortnite but many MMOs & some ARPGs actually don’t have Legendaries be the best possible weapon. They can be the best for specific scenarios & builds but it’s not a “master-of-all-trades” type deal.

You might think that at first even if you read the tutorial pop-up at Eleanor that explains blue/purple/gold but IMHO if you still think that’s the way the hierarchy works like 10 or more hours in … you just might be stupid. Like realistically when you loot/enchant you will see a pattern of a purple can be really hurtful to your build, and combine that with the fact Blues don’t have a negative affix. Like come on, if you don’t have basic thinking to realize that colors aren’t universally better IDK how you even played other games.

24

That’s a dumb change…

How the fuck are new players supposed to know that overall speed also includes attack speed, but not let’s say animation/projectile speed. The word ‘‘overall speed’’ implies something vague whereas ‘‘attack speed’’ implies something concrete.

25

Right, you basically got what I was trying to say. My concern lies in the fact that the average amount of damage done by weapons other than gold should be approximate, but right now there are individual weapons that are very dominant and highly sought after, which is why I suggested adjusting the balance.

As for gold weapons, the fact that the definition of color can be misleading is one aspect. A lot of gold gear has boss drops. Players work hard to defeat enemies and get weapons that are unattractive to many. Then it shows that something is wrong with the positive feedback design of the game. These details are accumulating and causing problems in the big picture, and that’s what I’d like to remind the producers of. This will make a lot of casual users’ first feelings after getting their first gold gear turn into disappointment.

As for the localization, there are some problems with the Japanese fonts used to display Chinese. There are a lot of typos in purchases, value descriptions, and other text, even words that don’t exist in Chinese, and some content is not localized. There are also problems with the font display. I’ve already given feedback on these issues separately.

PS: I’m also concerned about this displaying Chinese with kanji from the Japanese character set, or as I said, there are few people trying it out right now, and if it’s not improved for the official launch, this has the potential to rise to a national sentiment issue. The game will be flooded with bad reviews for another reason.

26

Yes, your analysis is spot on. I love the weapon system as well, which is why I only started thinking about it when I played it for 100 hours and was confronted by a coworker about it. I was originally against him, but it was only when I looked at my storage and dozens of gold gears were being thrown there that I thought this, was a problem.

1 Like
27

The previous post was a bit of nonsense, so maybe you didn’t have the patience to read it all. The point I’m trying to make is not so much about the weapons themselves, but the design details of all aspects of the weapon system that bring bad feedback. It’s bad that will affect commercial sales.

I think the inertia that comes with color is worse than you think, especially the bigger the crowd, the more pronounced it is. Gold also represents quality in one’s daily life, I casually asked my colleagues around me, no matter how much or how little he plays the game, I listed the four colors in the game and asked him which one he thought had the best quality, and everyone’s answer was gold.

Apex’s gold weapons can be characterized not as the best, but as having a different way of spawning. Malice’s gold equipment is obtained after defeating bosses, players will have high expectations for it, especially since it’s hard to get started in the early stages of this game, players are definitely excited to see their first gold equipment, I was screaming for it, but the trial let me down.

Now it’s because of the imbalance of the weapons and the lack of distinction between classes, and it’s causing a much more serious, blow to the player drive. Outside of exploring the maps and watching the story, it’s important to build weapons this undifferentiated, and it’s going to de-motivate a lot of people. When he has no intention of acquiring them, or looking specifically for them after reading internet guides, the game loses half of its fun as soon as he gets those unbalanced weapons. Those weapons are not cheats, but do a similar effect.

30

I would like to provide a different view on this topic.

Initially I also thought that gold gear was weak. Now, after playing around with it, my opinion changed.

First of, gold gear may not be as powerfull as perfectly rolled purple gear, but it is also much easier to get. A Corpse Eater Blade dropped from the first boss is a massive boost for a new player.
As such I would say gold gear works well as a mid-tier quipment which you use to get the godroll purple one.

Second point is, gold gear is unique and it still provides unique boni, not obtainable by other means. This can leed into some funny builds.

  • Proud Lance is the only weapon in the game that increases move speed atm. Together with Agility & Willow rings you get some nasty move speed. I call it the race car build and use it to for open world bounties, challages and gathering. It comes with geat moves and runes.
  • Bleeder’s Delight dual ddaggers are insanely strong. The attack speed buff helps with trash mobs in Cercuit and the runes melt Echo Knight. I avarage at 1min with those daggers; once I even killed him in like 20 seconds.
  • Fetid Club goes well with heavy armor and deals a ton of damage. The moves are also not bad.
  • Midnight Blade incentivises backstab playstyle against mobs and parry playstyle against bosses.
  • Fallstead’s Furry is the only weapon with bonis HP, deals extra damage against bosse and has some nice runes (not Kickslash though, this rune should not be forced on 1H weapons as it is not even designed for them)
1 Like
32

Yes, one of the complaints is that unique gear seems not as strong as purple gear. But I think this opinion is based on not enough gameplay experience with unique weapons. Two weeks ago I would mostly agree with this statement.