wow, this got quite personal.
we are all passionate about the game, otherwise we would not be here, but can you please try not to attack each other? 
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Can you let us have some fun please? 
Aye, aye, Captain 
I just thought it would be really funny to do a parody post criticizing op’s abilities to play the game by using sentences taken straight out from his original post with very slight modifications.
No more misbehaving in this topic 
Catto took the time to write an honest review with emotions and explains the reasons in great detail.
You want to trivalize the whole review by putting it into a simple point form.
I strongly disagree with you. Catto’s post is what the devs need to hear and understand what they are doing wrong. So they don’t have a repeat of going on social media and crying to the masses to help them so they don’t go bankrupt.
Look at Expedition 33. They made an AWESOME game on a small budget and with 33 devs and were rewarded 10 fold.
Make a good game and people will buy the game.
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They didn’t make it with just 33 devs, stop spreading this BS crap. They outsourced to a bunch of contractors, it’s literally in the credits.
Also, a tiny indie studio does not just afford the voice actors for Shadowheart and Clive Rosfield or Gollum. Gollum’s VA himself made the most money in all of the Hobbit’s actor budget.
They’re a AA studio, stop spreading nonsense propaganda. How is $60M+ budget “small” by any indie standards?
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Interesting.. where did you get the $60M+ number from?
Checking around, the devs never announced the actual budget.
Instead, saying that “Expedition 33 cost far less to make than Mirrors Edge” which had an estimated budge of $18-25M.
As for the “outsourced” talent, it’s reported that the “50 outside people” they hired, included voice talent.
All things considered, I’m not sure I’d ever call a game with a budget over $1M an indie title.. I can still see why people view them as such.
While I don’t share the particular invective that Catto has used to articulate his points and subsequent solutions they are valid nonetheless, particularly as it relates to reward tracks being strapped to QoL or deliberate inconvenience. I enjoy the game in the same way that I really want it to be better and have added my own perspective in other threads to address my own misgivings about the current state.
When you ask for feedback - you generally do not get to control the form it arrives in. Catto’s remarks are very candid but his disagreeableness has integrity.
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It’s estimated. 5 years of development with core team expenditure, top ticket voice actors, the marketing. Andy Serkis alone billed $1M for voice work in the LotR as Gollum. They didn’t net amateur or fledgling VAs. Look at Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, cheap European talent, still $40M+ to produce, and they had completely undiscovered voice talent.
As for the outsourced talent, it was more than 50 people if you look at the credits.
Sandfall has been tight-lipped, especially since the CEO has a marketing degree, which he no doubt has put to great use with the whole narrative about the tiny studio shaming the big studios. It’s a fad that sells games these days, but many of these studios claiming to be small still end up using upwards of 100+ people to put out a game, just a large part of them don’t get the glory since they’re contractors and nobody reads the credits in videogames or movies. It’s a really scummy thing to do to the QA teams you outsourced whom without them, the game would have sat in overwhelmingly negative reviews and gamebreaking bugs.
Even if the estimate is half of that in truth, all the people bragging about the production conveniently ignore most of the core Sandfall team were juniors who made $40-60k/yr, misery wages compared to the competitive pay Moon Studios has to put out for industry veterans.
Of course budgets can be smaller if you use cheaper European labor, it’s easy to keep budgets leaner that way, but it’s certainly not good for the developers, just as it wasn’t for the CDPR devs who made peanuts putting out Witcher 3 through the door.
Expedition 33 is by all means an outstanding game, but it’s really annoying how hive-mind like the gaming youtubers and “journalists” keep implying that in order for games to be good, teams have to be rather small. It’s just not true. There’s a lot of indie crud out there, AAA just has a larger spotlight to fail in. Baldur’s Gate 3 certainly was AAA with a team of 400 people, and it didn’t make the game any worse.
I disagree, your feedback was a bloated mess of questionable criticisms that were obviously emotionally charged and could be overcome with more experience or better handling of the game, the summary they provided was a huge improvement.
I disagree whith many of Catto’s points including this one.
Let me phrase it the other way around. When you start the game, your character is bad at everything. As you level up or obtain better gear, you improve aspects you want to specialize in. If you for example wouldn’t struggle with the stamina management, it would render the whole resouce management pointless. I’m not saying that tweaks here and there or more interesting mods as not needed. What I’m saying is that the current solution is legitimate design decision.
I on the other hand know many games where too much convenience trivialized the game complexity to the point it made it straight up bad.
It’s true that the game currently kind of struggles with the variety, but that doesn’t mean the whole system needs to be reworked considering we haven’t even seen the whole picture. I mean more features are obviously coming.
What I like most from Catto’s feedback is a suggestion to make the runes more interactible with each other. I know only about freeze shatter combo, so more of those would certainly make the game more spicy.
I don’t think the success of Expedition 33 comes from players giving feedback to devs on what the game suppose to be.
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And? The success of Baldur’s Gate 3 definitely did come from years of early access feedback.
The success of Expedition 33 is that it is a well done western JRPG released in a year where almost no turn based combat RPGs had been released. It virtually had no competition in its niche subgenre.
It also had a huge games media hype machine, and the fact is most people don’t want to criticize perceived winners because they like to be seen as having good taste.
I get this premise, but I also feel it is inherently flawed, or at very least angled in the wrong direction which allows you to come to bad conclusions.
The example you use is Stamina management. Stamina management is a legitimate aspect of character power - right along with damage done and focus generation. It is a legitimate source of meaningful character power that provides clear playstyle feedback when a character is rewarded by progressing this.
Inventory space, however, has nothing to do with character power. Alternate main-hand/offhand slots are similarly not aligned with character power because the bonuses do not apply when not “in hand”, and you can only use one set at a time anyway…so it provides for “on the fly” versatility at most. Which in the grand scheme of things is worth very little in the “character power” space. If there was a playstyle choice that enjoyed a specific synergistic effect with hot-swapping weapons, that would make it relevant to character power. But there is not.
In Diablo 1, you used to have to manage your stacks of 5,000 gold in your character’s inventory. By late Diablo 3, gold as well as every other crafting component was taken out of the inventory management system altogether because these things detract from the game. There is no “gamesmanship” in managing an inventory. Using this as an attempt at rewarding progression INSTEAD of directly boosting character power is both antiquated and unimaginative.
Catto’s points about boss design and boss fights hold true as well - a very simplistic mechanical formula (giant boss, long ass lunges from offscreen, long ass retreats) which is a surrogate for a lack of technical depth to both skills and other maneuvers like backstab, etc.
Wait, you haven’t even completed the content? You haven’t even interacted with the plague system?
Seriously?
At least finish the game before going on the rant.
For what it’s worth, you lost me at ‘Your combat sucks, its dogshit, period.’ Then go on to wax lyrical about POE’s systems. A game where the community is open rebelling at ‘The Vision’ and ‘Meaningful Combat’. Meanwhile, most of their endgame builds are just one button snooze fests.
Elden Ring? Seems like a 3rd person perspective but most of the core Souls-like functions are similar between that and NRFTW. Many of your ‘criticisms’ exist in Elden Ring.
If you explore the runes more you’ll find that there are moves that are gap closers. If you explore your weight class and movement rings and stat bonuses you’ll find you can be quite quick. Your complaints about stamina, again appear to be because you don’t understand the game well enough. You’re either not putting enough points into stamina, not using enough stamina recovery/cost reducer, not using the rings with stamina bonuses or even worse are using a plagued item with negative stamina effects!
As for the artificial potion limitation? The limit is not 1 as you describe. Are you even playing this game? The rest of that paragraph suggests you just aren’t very good at the game. If you dodge or parry properly you don’t need life leach. I suspect you are trying to button mash your way through the content and you’re getting punished for it. I think you just don’t get the concept of healing. Is it maybe more complex than it needs to be? Perhaps, you clearly couldn’t figure it out. Maybe they do need to simplify it for the masses.
Backstab, you are doing it wrong. You can literally run up to a knight after he misses you and backstab him. Sorry, you need to get good. Not all mobs can be backstabbed though.
I’m not having problems with Focus and I have a Plague mage and a Cold Mage. I do not have the ring of Cheesiness.
Parry is off. It’s fine for some mobs but other’s the window seems to be illogical. It needs tweaking. So I agree with you there it could be improved.
I agree combos would be nice for runes. You can equip 8 skills, or rather you could prior to Breach. I think they are going to add it back so you can have 4 utility skills and 4 combat skills, which to me is fine. If you add 2 more weapons and 2 more off hand you are adding 16 more skills potentially. That’s more than enough.
Mechanics, you should have played to the end. Their Plague is like the mechanics from POE. Again, it’s EA.
You have to consider that this is a hybrid game. It’s not going to excel at one thing. It’s not going to be the best Souls like. It’s not going to be the best Loot Grind/Gamble/ARPG out there. It’s going to be average at both. Hopefully good to great at some point. I like it so far and can’t wait for more tweaks/changes/content. I think I have 250+hours in the game since release a year ago.
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It seems like you just don’t like the game, period. But I really enjoy it a lot I find the combat very interesting, it’s visually beautiful, and it’s full of adventure. So I totally disagree with what you’re saying.
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I read this claim quite often which is very broad and nebulous in nature: Boss design is too simplistic as if other games have bosses that require quantum computing to unravel. Since the opposite of simplistic, is complicated, can we pick one boss from the game and improve it by making it more complicated? It is possible to take simple mechanics and create an engaging design. If what we really want to say is that the bosses are uninspired, then sure, but that’s a wholly different can of worms that simplistic.
Furthermore, the claim that bosses attack you from off-screen is somewhat inaccurate. Every time a boss retreats to a position significantly out of your reach (which I suppose could translates to off-screen) the camera actually pans out enough that you never lose sight of the boss. Not to say the camera doesn’t have issues, because it does, but I have never been attacked by a boss off-screen after the Breach update. I remember Echo Knight used to initiate his charge off-screen pre-Breach, but haven’t seen it happen since.
I don’t mean to sound antagonist at all, so please don’t take it that way. I’m actually really curious.
Fundamentally disagree with the core of your opinion. The gameplay is great, as a souls veteran, and an amateur ARPG player. You’re so far off of the average opinion ive read from people I respect in those spaces, that i disrespect your opinion from jump street, and am tldr your dumb novel.
As surprising as it may be to some, critique does not imply that an opposite extreme is desired. In the grand extent of the vast cosmos…there are other conclusions to arrive at other than an opposite extreme. If you really want to critique vernacular and are dying for an answer - take up Catto on his original post, with his words and explanations, and start there.
From my own perspective the bosses in general lack technical depth/ mechanics. Positioning is irrelevant apart from not stepping in ground AOE, and the prevalence of long input-reading retreats (95%+ of the time you will be out of range once a retreat is executed, and this is intentional…so positioning is just not meaningful at all). The damage is over-tuned on some attacks to one-shot viable builds at appropriate levels of progression. This is because there is no depth to these encounters and they are poorly executed and balanced. There really aren’t many different types of attacks - huge AOE swings for heavy damage and grabs for unavoidable heavy slam/chomp damage, if grabbed. There’s no choosing to take a damage trade to maximize an opening as part of a strategy because there are no such strategies - if it happens it is incidental and people are happy they survive/ heal in the aftermath. It’s all block, memorize timing, dodge. Every “strategy” is basically to play every boss no-hitless - if you took damage you made a mistake. We’re similarly not using the environment in a meaningful way apart from it getting in the way - another opportunity missed for making a boss fight more technical and engaging.
As for offscreen lunge attacks - yes it still happens with Echo Knight - generally most prevalent when he is in the foreground extreme left or right.
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My question was directed at you, to see if you would present a solution to go along with your criticism. I put zero value on criticism that is devoid of solutions. Critique matters when it comes from a source with insight on the matter being criticized, at least that is how it works in my line of work.
The fact that you’re alluding to the boss design to be at the end of the simplistic extreme, meaning they are basically nothing to contend with all when there are countless players struggling with them, makes me seriously question your judgment on the matter.
Again, this is yet another blanket statement.
Many bosses have different attack patterns based on your position. EK for example will back swipe if you’re behind him, stomp if you’re in face or do the 3 hit combo/fire missiles if you’re far away. Positioning matters.
What is a viable build? If you’ve invested so little in defenses that you’re getting one shot, that’s on you. I have never been one shot by any boss at any given point in the game.
Tell me 3 new attacks that you would implement to give these encounter the depth that you desire.
This is the case with any boss in any souls game. Are all souls game also lacking in boss design? If you’re expecting boss encounters on the level of WoW raids, then you’re looking at the wrong game. Most bosses are on par with other games on the market, the problem is not in the design of the encounter, it’s in the agency given to players via broken spells and combat.
My proposition to you still stand, take one boss and make it better.
In my opinion the most important thing that bosses lack is that 90% of their attacks are dodgable in any direction, making the fight only about timing and not positioning. There are some exceptions: Eco Knight charge and dashes , The Caretaker & Tusk phase 1, the Twins’ spin attack, the Huntress’ triple bite.
The second most problematic thing is that almost all the bosses have the same attack where they create a plague bubble under your feet and you have to dodge it for a long time, in my opinion the twins can keep the attack as it is, maybe the other bosses could have a pattern to dodge as Catto suggested.
The third problem is that all the bosses have the tendency to always do combos of 3 or more attacks, if you dodge the first one and manage to move away you have the certainty that the boss will waste time repeating those attacks without a real target instead of turning around.
Furthermore there are no variations in the combos, think if the hunter instead of always repeating the attack where she stands on two legs and hits down with her front legs in an aoe for 3 times could change the combo making a different attack for the her second attack of the combo, the fight would be more varied.
Increasing complexity doesn’t necessarily mean making bosses more difficult but adding variety, To counterbalance these changes, bosses may do less damage or be slower on some attacks.
Also the bosses are good and satisfying to face the first time but these mechanics are necessary since we meet them several times. The variations that make the bosses too complicated, could be used only for the plague version so as not to overwhelm new players.
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I’m not hear to appease anything you are lacking, so there is that.
Also, if you did not see the solutions Catto offered alongside his criticisms, in addition to those which were implied - I invite you to re-read his post in its entirety so you make less contradictory statements (namely, about no solutioning with provided critique).
My remarks were simply a commentary on Catto’s points, expanded with some of my own words and perspective. I agree with his basic premise, and indicated as much in a passing remark (initially). If you took this to mean I’m rolling up my sleeves and intending to have an in-depth conversation about boss design you thought wrong. As it is, I’m simply acknowledging points made by Catto.