Thomas asked why it doesn't sell as well, so I answered as best as I can

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63

That’s more of a WoW thing..
*Mukluk has a great series (Get to the point) that breaks down complex boss fights and their mechanics in Guild Wars 2.

Check it out if you wanna see where MMO’s were about a decade ago.

Again, that’s an old MMO mechanic.
*GW2, FF14 and many others now give each player built in healing spells.

Each class does it in a different way and has various pros/cons to their utility spells.

Ironically something that’s been annoying “healers” in FF14 a lot more with each expansion due to how unneeded they’ve become (better to bring another tank or dps).

That’s the beauty of the various energy systems.

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Yes, in many fights you have to stagger bosses in various phases to prevent them from nuking everyone in one go.

If players just spam spells to “waste the stagger”, they wont be able to build the bar fast enough to interrupt the boss again during his “party wipe”.

Indeed, while it will be interesting to see what happens.. I have no plans to participate in the co-op or PvP features.

To me, they only detract from my enjoyment of solo play.

Of course, I can’t blame the devs for aiming for the multiplayer audience. It’s a great way to prolong the life of your game.

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So either stand or don’t stand in circles depending on the color. That sums up that boss fight. Oh and bring a guardian and not an engineer.

But other than the circle game it seems like not much parrying or dodging going on. It’s more about managing the battle field.

I mean don’t stand in plague bubbles is a bit like circles…

I suspect they won’t have something like raids in MMORPGs. You would have to zoom out way more and then suddenly what makes combat fun in NRFTW wouldn’t work.

And you never know, maybe there will be a boss that you can’t get past. Then ‘Let me Solo Him’ comes to the rescue.

Or maybe trading items.

Depending on how they scale the bosses it could be a fun scenario, especially as friendly Fire will be on.

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That was a playlist..
The first vid is just the “entry level” fight that he takes all the n00bs to (babies first raid).

In some fights the devs show they have a sense of humor by giving enemies green powers, that create green circles on the ground that hurt players.

There’s also the Slothasor fight that has players turning into enemy mobs (allowing them to take friendly fire).

Some raids use a combination of elemental effects (tornadoes, water, ect) rather than just colors:

If complicated fights are your thing..

There’s lots of dodging, jumping and yes.. even what could be considered a “parry”.

IE: A timed attack or spell that “reflects” the enemy attack and CC’s (stuns) them.

The point tho.. is that MMORPG’s created in the last decade can and often do have more complex and interesting fight mechanics compared to “dark souls” games.

That’s not to say one is “better” than the other as each appeals to their own respective audiences.

Regardless, I think energy systems (casting resources) would be a great addition to No Rest for the Wicked as it would increase the pool of interesting builds (allowing for more unique gear/items (drops) as well).

This is where FFXIV and even League of Legends shine.
*Makes it easier to balance things like the Ring of Determination as well.

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People who think MMOs don’t have complexity aren’t doing any content at any high level in these MMOs.

MMO complexity doesn’t come from brute twitch reflex. It comes from complex decision making trees and handling multiple forms of information and juggling these to not enter the multiple fail states the game has, be it dispels, interrupts, doing the appropriate rotations with optimization on ability timing and usage to make sure the DPS and heal checks are made while also having the cooldowns available during critical points of the encounter because you had smart resource usage.

You think your Malenia 10-15 minute parry choreography is hard?

Omega Protocol is tuned right down to the very second of timing in DPS check with complex, highly varied spatial reasoning and tight reaction windows to overlapping complex patterns.

Far more people have completed Malenia in the hardest difficult in the WORLD than the sub 2% of players who have completed Omega Protocol in FFXIV.

People who think twitch reflexes are the only form of skill expression should not be taken seriously.

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Indeed and it’s even more complicated because you have to rely on the skills of other players in MMOs not to screw things up.

As for OMEGA.. I definitely don’t have that achievement.
*I typically spend all my time crafting/gathering when I’m not insta-queing as a dedicated healer. ;3

On the topic of challenging content in FFXIV..
Do we know what the clear % is for all the various versions of the Deep Dungeon?

It’s been a while, but I think there was even an achievement for soloing them.

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I don’t think anyone said there was no complexity. The complexity is just in a different area.

And you’re literally comparing a MULTIPLAYER GAME to a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. Yes, that’s what we have now. So until that changes, just stop.

Thomas has said NRFTW combat is supposed to be a like a fighting game. I don’t think a raid, regardless of how complex it is, is related at all to the topic at hand. NRFTW was not designed to have 20 people in a raid. Heck there aren’t even healers. There aren’t even DPSers. Just, no.

Zero people said twitch reflexes are the only form of skill expression. So chillax BRUH.

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Arguably the only challenge to most of the raid content is relying on other people. Unless you are the people that the bad players are relying on…

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Might wanna read the upcoming class update:
*We’re getting healers.

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If you don’t understand why we’d need healers.. it’s because they’re adding multiplayer and pvp to the game.

In essence, the game is becoming an MMO-lite.

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So out of 30 classes we have one healing class? I didn’t see one class labeled as a tank.

I mean…

90% of those classes are just giving descriptions to what already exists and are mostly based on the weapon type.

The main new stuff being necro/summoners.

I would NOT hold my breath for this stuff. :slight_smile: (could take awhile) and most likely will change. I suspect that 40+ class system gets reduced, by a lot, if they intend the class system to be meaningful in any way.

I could see some MMO lite stuff coming in but it’s going to still have to be a balance between twitch skills and battlefield control/knowledge. Essentially you can’t have a Street Fighter 5 combat complexity combined with whatever that raid was that only 2% completed (sounds like an awesome concept…). And if you scale beyond 4 players forget about it!

People are already complaining about the difficulty, while some people think it’s too easy. You want the people crying for easier combat to ALSO know which circle to stand in or the whole party gets wiped? Know when to throw a heal out at just the right time? I think you’re asking too much of the average player and too much of this game. And then some people also want the build complexity of POE.

To be fair, I don’t think the developers help themselves in this regard.

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NRFW has nothing in common with POE or DIablo, POE is first and foremost a rogue-like and then an ARPG to a lesser extent, it is also an unbalanced garbage dump of one-button builds, press X to win and die from one shot, and they also added parrying and it really is dog shit))). NRFW has more in common with Diablo, but Diablo has been dead for a long time since Part 3, since Blizzard essentially no longer exists, there are no longer those people who really made good games, now it is a factory producing slag at an inflated price.Comparing the game to Souls-like games is also not rational. The game has elements of this genre, but in fact it is not one. Overall, 99 percent of this post consists of toxic opinion and 1 percent of truly rational criticism. If you just don’t like the genre of the game, it doesn’t mean the game is “dog shit”, it means that this game is simply not for you.And regarding the sales of the game. Games like Diablo or POE have more sales only because they are more advertised, since the first parts of these games came out a long time ago and the marketing opportunities of large studios like Blizzard are much greater, they do not do anything new, but simply earn money on popular franchises.Coming up with something new and your own and selling it is much more difficult than buying a ready-made franchise and milking it like a cow year after year.NRFW is divine. Compared to most ARPGs of recent years. Respect to the developers. :heart_on_fire:

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True, but you did say “there aren’t even any healers”. ;3

lol, jokes aside.. if you look at the replies to the topic, you’ll see most people aren’t a fan of the class update.

Specifically due to the redundancy and perceived limitations implied by simply adding so many of them.

In all honesty, I wouldn’t be surprised if the recent success of Nightreign affects the devs decisions going forward with multiplayer.

It being a separate mode all together.
*Which could hurt the over all development of the game.

Further, it would open the door to creating different “breeds” of Cerim.
*Much like Elder Scrolls, each “subrace” gives flexibility in the character creator and allows for more interesting roleplay.

Speaking of Nightreign tho.. seeing all the memes, I can’t think of a single moment in No Rest for the Wicked that picking up a weapon made me feel this powerful.

While I had zero interest in playing Nightreign, this peaks my interest and I might buy if/when the game ever goes on sale.

*Limitations on the character creator, in combination with the restrictive gear optics make silly things like this a bit more challenging for the NRftW devs.

One thing many people have asked for being Transmog, yet due to PvP coming, Thomas said it’s “unlikely” because he wants players to know your build by simply seeing you walk around with your weapon and gear.

All in all, I’m not sure about the direction of the game at the moment.

It feels like the devs are trying to “find an identity” and are experimenting with everything that’s popular.

Guess only time will tell.

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A few of us have been talking about GW2 and it’s many systems that could improve the game.. so looking back, I’m curious to see how you would feel bout the “Break Bar”.

IE: Would you consider that a good game play mechanic for NRftW or would it fall into the category of “inconvenience”?

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In practice, this could be used exclusively on bosses.
*Any effect (frost, shock, burn, ect) reduces the break bar.

Once broken, the boss is effectively “broken”.
*Reducing it’s armor and resistances.

Allowing for a burst window.

Although, perhaps this should only be used when playing with friends in multiplayer?

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Isn’t that what the stagger bar is anyways? Only without the missing damage amp part.

The problem is in the Pestilence with 50% stagger resist, it can barely happen, outside high frost build up builds spamming, and in the case of parrying enemies the enemy is able to immediately attack again after the parry because of the stagger resistance.

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Yeah it’s the same to me as well. I think too many bars becomes dumb. I think they could do a better job of showing the resistances. For example, if they have resistance to fire, perhaps the fire goes away much faster or turns to smoke. For cold, they either take much longer to become frozen or break out much quicker. Lightning need something to explain why some mobs are just not building up stagger properly. Plague…is weird because most of the mobs at end game are plagued and probably should be resistant…

That said, there should probably be a CC immunity for X seconds. This would prevent perma freeze or perma stagger, etc…

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Not really. The Defiance Bar in GW2 is a solution that allows crowd control (CC) skills to affect bosses instead of making them completely immune. The bar is usually damaged by any hard CC effect. Then, it enters a cooldown stage, preventing it from being broken too frequently, something that could easily happen in GW2 since bosses are often fought by large groups of players. Lastly, it has immunity phases that stop the boss from being interrupted in specific scenarios, such as during transition animations.

Personally, I don’t like that solution. Instead, I’d prefer status effects on bosses to be harder to apply but also decay much more slowly. That way, status effects wouldn’t feel like they either apply instantly or never at all.

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Oh, I know how it works on GW2, I played it, but the defiance bar is effectively worse than a stagger bar because it made a lot of debuffing conditions worthless in GW2. Weakness and slow were heavily devalued compared to hard stuns, and even then it didn’t feel good that your 30-40+ sec cd skill did 1/6 of a defiance bar when fighting a boss, and if the defiance bar didn’t get broken, it just went back up and your skill might as well not have done anything.

I prefer CC skills have consistently tangible and visceral benefits on the boss, even if it means them being not actual hard CC.

For example, we all know the current frozen status in Wicked is just busted on bosses.

But instead of making them outright immune for large parts of the fight, you could just lessen the duration of the frozen status on bosses, make the buildup slower but remove the quick decay when fighting bosses so playing defensively doesn’t wipe out your build up.

Frost build up is also out of balance right now because people are allowed to spam focus skills, which won’t be happening once focus gains are fine tuned and the rings nerfed.

Alternatively, frozen and other CC effects can instead on bosses act as a debuff. The boss won’t be frozen solid, but his attacks will swing 33-50% slower and do 25-30% less damage when in a frozen status.

That way you still have to deal with fight choreography and the boss cannot be stunned out of performing mechanical checks.

A game system should never make resource-consuming skills feel anemic to use. I know some people love their soulslikes making all about the boss being the power fantasy, but most people don’t want that. Most people want to feel powerful as players too, and those heights of power need to come in the form of feeling like your kit is having meaningful, immediately felt impact on the boss.

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The Defiance Bar is a compromise between completely trivializing content by permanently controlling the boss and giving it total immunity. It might not be perfect, but it’s better than either extreme.

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Beyond making other “gems” competitive.. what are your thoughts on “fine tuning” lifesteal by doing two things.

  1. Lifesteal is granted by DMG to remaining enemy HP rather than total DMG done.
  2. Lifesteal is broken into 2 categories (Physical) Lifesteal - (Magical) - Spellvamp.

Justifications:

  1. The RoD is only considered OP due to the spam it facilitates because you can lifesteal more than the spells cost, especially once you add in “HP on kill/fatality”.

  2. Spellvamp doesn’t regain HP, it instead charges a shield that mitigates damage (leaving true lifesteal to physical based builds that require you to get up close and personal).

//Thoughts?

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I just think RoD needs a redesign. Having an effect that cannibalizes the purpose of focus as a separate resource from health is just not good. Overhauling stats to patch up that design mistake just seems to me like needlessly tinkering with working systems to fix a bad one.

I’m also not a fan of penalizing ranged builds by design. Melee should not have better stat functionality on an item drop. If they struggle in melee range, then melee need more innate survival added in by their melee weapons.

With the advent of the class system, you could have melee class traits that increase armor, provide increased damage reduction, more lifesteal, etc.

I’d rather the propping up of melee come from the class traits and that items in general stay neutral so as to feel equally rewarding to all classes when they drop.

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Get rid of RoD!!

But I’d like a retooling of damage and focus so that runes can be cast more often. Right now it feels like you have to use normal attack 4+times for one rune attack. At least give us twice as many rune attacks per normal attack.