TLDR:
- Please enable more playstyles for longer
- Fill niches
- Balance is nice, but secondary, make sure things keep feeling good
- Give us breadth but not too much depth
- More intricate systems lead to over optimization and confusion
Preface
My favourite way to play ARPGs and Souls Likes is to find an interesting playstyle, completely lean into it and make it as fun and strong as possible. Then do it AGAIN.
This is why i prefer Games with options for playstyles, that don’t force you into a playstyle and in which these different playstyles feel good.
All the different weapons and their movesets, weight class and effect, runes, interesting monster designs, a focus on execution as well as stats, damage types and status effects, …
NRFTW has the strong potential to have it all. I’d love to see it lean into that aspect and give us even more freedom and options for playstyles
Some objectively sound reasons:
- More player freedom
- More player identity
- More gameplay goals
- More replayability
- More discovery
- More highlight reels
Feedback & Possibilities
Weapons
- Focus on Stat scaling more than requirements
- Allow us to use more weapons, but be a bit worse at using them
- Weapons can scale with more than one stat (even if its not the required stat)
- Maybe let us remodel weapons
- E.g. Strength weapon now scales with Dex, is faster, but does less damage
- Let us upgrade weapons that we love
- Currently lategame Items are strictly better
- Weapons already have hidden tiers
- Higher Level Weapons can start at higher tiers
- Can be expensive, that’s not an issue
- Give us more access to basic weapons at the start of the game
- Why not choose a starting weapon?
- There could be an armoury on the ship for whatever reason, that let’s you try out the weapons and keep one
Runes
- Give us more Runes (they don’t have to be super strong, but feel good)
- More Rune versatility, options for similiar Runes (e.g. slower cast for stronger effect)
- Maybe just maybe support Runes
- The ability to switch out Runes! Let us combine our favorite weapons and Runes
- More Rune slots for enchanted items (negligible if can be switched)
Enchanting
- Love the cursed items - Yes please, i want to heal all the time but die in two hits
- Losing Exp/Focus on dmg feels bad
- Taking away progression and gameplay options takes away fun
- Exp loss on death is fine imo (unless you die from fall damage)
- Taking away progression and gameplay options takes away fun
- Losing Exp/Focus on dmg feels bad
- More stats
- Some way to control / reroll specific stats
- Can be very costly
- Maybe make it cheaper for weaker stats → Choice between POWER and flexibility
- More options for White items?
Status Effects
- Make status Builds and status abuse fun (or annoying when faced with them)
- Make status effects easier to apply
- Allow status effects to ramp - Some ideas:
- Heating up could damage you on actions (force you to cool down for a moment)
- Ramps up to Burning
- Shock could stun you periodically or on actions
- Ramps up to guaranteed stun / high damage burst
- Frost could make you slower
- Ramps up to frozen / brittle status
- Plague could make you weaker
- Ramps up to strong slow and power degradation
- Heating up could damage you on actions (force you to cool down for a moment)
- Add additional status effects (not too many!), to add diversity - Some ideas:
- Bleed
- Dot that deals extra damage on fast movement (running)
- Ramps up to weakness
- Dot that deals extra damage on fast movement (running)
- Poison
- Slow Dot, long duration
- Ramps up in damage / to instant death
- Slow Dot, long duration
- Bleed
Archetypes
- Enable more Archetypes for Solo and Group Play
- The Goal of Archetypes imo is to create diversity in intent
- Not everyone has to aim to kill the enemy as swiftly as possible
- Ideally on the way to defeat the enemy there are different sidegoals
- The most efficient archetypes will usually be well performing assassin classes - That is fine, other Archetypes just need to feel good
- Don’t be scared of ranged Classes - Enemies seem aggressive enough and confrontation within Boss arenas can’t be avoided
- Example Archetypes:
- Tank
- Role: Hold the Ground for your team (or kill enemies with thorns)
- Add strong defensive and Aggression drawing Runes
- Raising your shield could draw aggression
- Runes for Shields (Shields in Mainhand?)
- Summoner
- Role: Summon the right allies for the job
- Summon temporary allies with or without hitpoints
- Totems / Zoner
- Role: Area Control, create save zones for allies and punishing zones for enemies
- Summon temporary immovable sources of long or shortrange Buffs, debuffs or damage
- Support / Healer
- Role: Supports themselves or their team, for slower but consistent gameplay
- AoE Group Support abilities
- Healing, Hots
- Provide Meals? → Set down for others to use mid fight (shares cooldown with normal meals)
- Archer / Ranged / Sniper
- Role: Snipes from afar, stays out of range
- Base Focus for Ranged weapons / ranged mainhands?
- Ranger / Beastmaster
- Role: Beasttaming, invests in having a friend (even when playing solo)
- Beast pet / taming of beast type monsters
- Balance idea: Require to be fed and cared for → If you want one you have to invest, also not too powerful
- Marker / Softener
- Role: Makes enemies easier to hit / receive more damage / be more visible
- Drainer
- Role: Drain the enemy - Curses, debuffs, dots, etc.
- Maybe based on plague
- Controller
- Role: Apply Crowd control in all forms
- stun/slow/diversion/displacement/conversion
- Role: Apply Crowd control in all forms
- Channeler
- Role: Get to a safe spot to channel from → unleash devastation
- Channeled not charged abilities, maybe even as standard/charge attack
- Can be magical or melee (e.g. spear)
- Tank
- These are just some ideas, all of which could work and feel good within the game, most of could be implemented/improved vastly with the addition of one or two runes, items or a look at status effects
- The Goal should be to enable Archetypes as a baseline, make them feel good, not make them too competetive