I’m 100% sure that Grinding Only makes sense IF it doesn’t compromise the experience.
Adding grindy mechanics just to prolong the life of the game at the expense of the quality of the experience It’s terrible, and that’s what happened in the beta.
A lot of players, faced with the amount of work needed to get the build they want, even if they still wanted to play, either gave up or started over with a new character rather than working aimlessly because of the RNG (and this problem was there even before the change that limits rerolls, it was just less evident).
In My system In post game you have the possibility to make the “Complete” build you want, allowing you to experiment and be creative, but to get the “Prefect” Builds there are also many hours of gameplay, and if you want to get all the Big gems it takes at least another 100 hours of gameplay, and if you really want to get to have all the possible combinations with the big gems, that means you have to have 6 copies of each big gem which is several hundred hours of gameplay.
The system I proposed is not perfectly deterministic, but it is reliable enough not to be frustrating, It’s designed to make you progress and be rewarded on each step instead of being lost in a sea of RNG where every time you seem to get close to your goal it’s thrown back and you have to start over again. Read the discussion with Steven Hunt, if you want to understand some details that you may not have caught from the main topic.
My system encourages players to continue playing, and does not make the game die immediately after finishing the story, and at the same time makes the experience of playing through the story better, The player does not have all the options at his disposal but he has enough options to make choices and have fun with the possibilities that the system provides him.
In the Beta (and partly also in the current system) During the story, the game incentivizes (almost forces) you to do the best with what you find, but the player doesn’t make any choices; it’s always the RNG that chooses for them, and if players don’t follow the RNG’s guidance they are essentially doing a challenge run.
A bit of a Rant:
Realistic and not particularly unfortunate experience In the beta system where you try to roleplay or to only use the weapons you like:
You Are trying to make a build that suits your preferences? Too bad, it really seems like your weapon, that you just tried to enchant, has a curse now that makes it unusable, You found 20 embers, you use them all, but you can’t find an acceptable curse, but don’t worry, you can craft it away with two wolf claws. You don’t know where the wolves are?
keep playing and you will find them, when you play with a weapon you don’t like just because it scales with the same attributes as the weapon you want to use. You found the wolves, but they didn’t drop the wolf claws? What a shame, you should go back to the same area in 2 hours (repeat until you have the wolf claws).
You build the weapon, you don’t enchant it anymore because you’re traumatized and instead you put gems in it.
You play a bit everything is fine until you get to a new area and it doesn’t seem like you do too little damage, the weapons you find around are at lv 9-10 but yours is at lv 4-5, You go to upgrade it, you upgrade it a few times but then you need new materials at random and depending on the RNG you may or may not have them. Too bad, it really seems like you don’t have enough material to upgrade it. Go kill this mob. The mob Didn’t drop what you need? Too bad, try again in 2 hours, and repeat until you don’t have the material you need.
Now you can go back to doing what you wanted to do from the beginning, Among all the random loot you find an interesting weapon, and you consider using it, unfortunately it is already enchanted and has a curse and after having rerolled 20 times you were unable to find an acceptable curse (during the rerolls the same curse reappeared 7 times). You try to see if it is worth crafting it, you find out that it requires the same resources you just used to bring your weapon to the right level, you abandon the idea and continue to use the weapon that you have been using up to now.
Oh and of course you did all this dressed like a fucking idiot, because if you had even tried to have a nice armor, either you would have been left with an incredibly weak armor for the whole game or you would have had to waste the same time you had to do for your weapon with your armor.
I avoid the problem by completely ignoring the fact that my gear is under leveled because I have 600 hours on the game and I don’t need good stats to win, but essentially if you want to play according to your preferences you’re doing a challenge run.
It’s the death of roleplay.
I know almost nothing about D4, I’m not interested in the game. The only things I know have been said by players in this forum, and it seems that the enchantment system is similar and is RNG based and many don’t like RNG, and then those who say the game is easy to trivialize, and that the combat becomes monotonous, and it seems that everyone for one reason or another has a love-hate relationship with that game.
But If the game has 100 hours of good experiences, it will be played for 100 hours. If it has 500 hours, it will be played for 500 hours. But sooner or later you have to let go of a game. There is no point in trying to create immortal games at the expense of the quality of the experience.
General reflection on what kind of game is NRFTW
Many people who played D4 saw NRFTW and thought it was Diablo-like, and tried it for that. Many people saw that NRFTW saw the Souls-style combat and thought it was isometric Souls-like, and tried it for that.
But I think that NRFTW is a mix of Souls + MMORPG without the “massive” + RogueLite.
I personally was attracted by the combat and not by the RPG systems I like Soulslikes, and I like the replayability that the RogueLike systems give.
If NRFTW wants to focus even more on replay ability it should do so through the Rogue mechanics it has available and not through repetitive grinding.
Crucible has the potential to become a true RogueLite, similar to Minecraft Dungeons.
But essentially, almost everything this game has in common with MMORPGs either doesn’t interest me, or is slightly annoying, or creates serious problems:
- Inventory management: Can be fixed but its causing problems for stupid reasons (see: Ichor System Balancing Solution)
- Farming resources: It’s not fun to spend time knocking down trees, now they’ve improved the mechanics a lot and it’s something that I can accept but it will never be fun.
- Housing: It’s okay, but doesn’t interest me, It seems to make some sense only in multiplayer.
- Crafting: It Can be fixed But is Very Problematic
- Daily missions: I don’t understand, they must be tied to real days, and not with time spent in game.
- All the mechanics that require a Timer: Why? I understand waiting 10 min for a matter of immersion that they are actually building the thing, but 2h could mean that if I only have an hour to play that day then I have to go back the next day to be able to interact with the vendor, for no real reason.
- Grinding: It is not balanced correctly.
And then this game also brings with it many of the problems of Soulslikes.
And the Roguelike RNG is not easy to contextualize in this game and in fact the RNG often causes problems.
The potential of this game is very high and obviously the combat, the level design and the story are 10/10 but there is a lot of work to do in all the other areas.