I’m now 125 hours in, and while I have a lot of feedback for other systems in the game (which I can mostly all see getting fixed and tweaked on the road to 1.0), my largest concern is the games balance and maintaining that gritty challenging souls-like combat vs its loot grind.
The problem is these 2 core pillars of gameplay feel like they are at odds with eachother currently. Im going to paste a point I wrote in my general feedback post below.
"I am very concerned about the balance in this game. The most fun Ive had (combat wise) was the opening hours of the game, or running to endgame on a 2nd char and having to fight at a higher world level (or echo knight with a crappy build). It forced you to interact with the enemy attacks/animations, the food health system and felt enthralling to play. But unfortunately once you get a good build going, the game becomes a literal breeze. Some of the end game builds are so strong, I feel it is essentially going to break the game in the long run. % healing builds on hit just being able to spam R1. Focus regain/tank builds being able to just stunlock echo knight in an endless loop and kill in 30 seconds. Mages sprinting through the crucible in 5 mins nuking everything.
I was hoping endgame would be coop with players, where we all feel about as vulnerable as those first few hours on the beach, but if multiplayer released today, it would be players sprinting through just mulching everything in their path as fast as the game can load. This would prob feel dreadful to other players not super geared too, as they would have no real input in the combat and just be running along picking up the loot.
I think many of the stats on items should be nerfed substantially, and I think the “% health on damage dealt” stat should prob be removed from the game. Managing your food use and how fast you can spam it is the core difficulty and fun gameplay loop that makes you approach each fight trying to not get hit, when that is not important, the combat breaks down in my opinion. you can just tank Echo Knights strongest attack, and by the time he goes to hit you again, you can be at full health after a few dagger swipes with the health on hit build.
I dont think the chasm between a player with upgraded gear and bad/average rolls should be enormous compared to a player with god rolls. Otherwise you will never balance a fun, difficult and engaging end game between these 2 types of players. it will be either impossibly difficult for the average geared, or just super easy and unfun when geared. (unless you have world difficulty system where you can run the content at a harder level for more drops etc, which could be a solution)"
The main problem I see long term is just how the loot system allows you to become so ungoldy powerful, that it essentially destroys the combat. But on the flip side, the loot grind is fun. If I had to choose 1 of these to prioritize 100% though, it would be keeping the combat balance as consistently engaging as those first few hours on the beach. Without it, the game feels like I’m some diablo 4 monster just slaughtering waves of enemies.
REBALANCING THE GAME
I don’t know if all or many of these changes are the key, but just spitballing ways I would consider changing the game. My goal would be to make it so a god rolled character is at most roughly 30% stronger than someone with just average gear. And also maintain a loot system in the game that still keeps you on that grind and enjoying finding loot.
- I think you should remove “gain % health on damage dealt” as a stat altogether.
- I think the buff % of most perks or slotted gems could nearly be reduced by 50% on some of the strongest ones, and less on some of the weaker ones on a perk by perk basis.
- Limit “health regeneration” and “focus regeneration” to max 2 of each. (so health regen on pants/armour & Focus regen on helm/gloves.
- I would limit perks on items to a max of 2 (instead of 4), yet make it rare to even get one perk then very rare to get 2 perks on a piece.
- Add a few more perks to the perk pool, so loot drops are still quite varied to get the 2 perks you want.
- Put a cooldown timer of 2 stored uses on any weapon rune attacks (more charges for mages and possibly unlimited for archers) that stops you spamming those rune attacks. It doesn’t have to be super long (like replenishing the rune cooldown is anywhere from 3-6 seconds per charge). Runes still need to use focus.
- White items can only slot 2 gems (instead of 4)
- Blink rune has its own separate cooldown timer from weapon attack runes (2 charges)
- An Infusion system. every time you get a duplicate armour/weapon, you can take that to an infusion bench/NPC. you can sacrifice that armour/weapon into the same armour/weapon to buff one of the 2 perks by 1% (allowing most players to eventually get max stats of those pieces). You can also use excess gems to buff gem slots by 0.5-1% to its max.
- Most rings need a 30% nerf to their max stats, some are fine. But allow duplicate rings to be infused to buff the stats to its new lower max value.
- Nerf the base power of rune attacks, but allow collecting of duplicate runes to be able to use the infusion bench, to get those runes to full strength. Fully unlocking a rune allows you to add a damage type to its attack (like +5% fire/plague/ice/lightning)
- Allow runes to be freely removed and slotted at will.
- The rune that buffs your damage output should only work on the weapon it is slotted into.
- 2 other things i would like to keep an eye on is frost stunning bosses, and how good plate armour is (or how bad cloth is). with co-op and 3/4 people running frost weapons, i hope you cant just insta stunlock the boss (I know people are doing that solo with rune attacks against echo knight right now).
I also wanted to tack on another idea below from my other post about making parrying more of a core part of combat and a little more fun. Id also change the “parry damage” perk to a “Backstab & riposte damage %” stat
- "Combat. A big problem is combat gets janky fighting multiple enemies, so I have a large suggestion here both that would add a bit more depth, be fun, and give the player more agency to fight 1vX. currently parry damage builds dont feel fun because you just parry and the enemy dies. I suggest add in a parry with auto-riposte animation system that gives you iFrames throughout (like the way backstab does). I know this is asking for A LOT of extra animation work from the devs but I feel it is worth it if it’s possible and a missing link to combat flow. Fighting multiple enemies becomes a bit tedious because they don’t stagger (which i like but creates problems like 1vX fights) and you’re just dodging/running around looking for an opportunity to get a single strike in. If there was a parry-riposte animation, this would make fighting groups far more manageable and rewarding. With regain Focus on parry perks, this could create a far more satisfying and immersive loop fighting multiple enemies where you are more invested in their attacks and counter attacks as opposed to just spamming focus skills and drinking focus potions. The loop would be more like: watch enemies for a telegraphed attack-Parry fish for riposte- earn focus from parry- use focus skill- get in stabs on stragglers/stunned enemies- parry again etc. Different weapons could have different crit% chances or other different utilities from this animation, for example:
Daggers have the highest single target damage,
Claymores are able to do a sweeping slash cutting other enemies,
Spears can do a wide foot sweep (knocking down multiple small enemies) followed by a ground stab,
Katana could do a sheathed slice that travels 4-5 meters then enemies in the path spill blood a second later,
Great hammers could pound the enemy to the floor and release a shock wave in surrounding area staggering enemies,
Bows could do a flurry of 3 arrows/ or a powerful arrow that travels through multiple enemies,
Shields could do a bash/ sweep/ knockdown,
Staves/wands could do a foot sweep then send down a rain of ice shards/ fireball/ vines that ensnare etc,
Great clubs could knock enemies back far being able to ledge them off a cliff,
Scythes a wide swipe,
Rapiers 3 deep pokes etc
Then for bosses, parries work as usual (just staggering the boss) until a certain amount of parries (3/4) builds up and puts them in a downed state, where you can walk up and do a high damage critical strike, or the game automatically makes you to the riposte animation (to prevent ganking the boss as a group in this downed state instead of doing the riposte)"
Anyway thanks for reading my post, let me know what you think. Cheers.