Hi Moon Studios,
Hope you read this. First, I want to say congratulations on an amazing game and your recent sales success. This has the potential to be my favorite game of all time. I love the art style and the combination of different game genres. I see the vision. Even the story has piqued my interest. I especially love your “realm” system because I always wanted to play an RPG with some friends where the things we do in game affect the world for everyone; unlike MMOs where you see your friends, but it’s still basically you playing in your own world. And this will be the first time I’ve ever actively participated in providing early access feedback. I wanted to hold off on playing until full release, but because the game has so much potential and watching 7 hours worth of Thomas Mahler interviews with gamers got me too excited, I wanted to be part of the process. So all of the below feedback comes from a place of wanting the game to be as good as it can be:
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I like the idea of fast travelling from only whispers, but maybe allow fast travel from the map menu if you’re standing next to a whisper. That way, the intentional, restricted fast travel is maintained, but you can actually see where you’re going on the map rather than trying to memorize the whisper names and their locations.
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Could a training dummy be placed closer to the marketplace? Testing new facets, enchantments, runes, weapons, and builds would be less painful if a training dummy was closer to all of the vendors and their crafting areas.
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If you’re willing and able, I’d suggest adding an in-game way to see what runes do and how much damage they deal by just hovering over them in your inventory or when in the runes menu with the enchanter. Maybe the damage number is in the description and calculated from your current equipped gear. And maybe a video showing the attack animation pops up if you hover a rune for a few seconds. This would be beneficial so that you can see what you can potentially add to your weapon without having to own another weapon with that rune equipped and then testing on the training dummy. And it would also allow people to avoid going to outside sources online to find this information. And if this system works only by hovering runes in your inventory, runes you do not yet own are not “spoiled”. I also think this level of “polish” would impress a lot of gamers.
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Could markers be added to items to designate them as favorites or part of certain builds or ready to sell? This would make inventory management quicker and easier so more time can be spent on your wonderful game.
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Could you allow multiple people to talk to the same vendor at one time?
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The houses in Sacrament are beautiful, are you planning to add more then the current 6 to buy and explore? Aside from the possible castle which I heard in an interview.
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After switching my utility runes and weapon runes buttons, it wasn’t clear that this also switched the button for “shoving” when under heavy load. Maybe add clarity to this.
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This one is more a question to think about which I had while early into the game: Are mesh and plate armors meant to relegate players to heavy rolls? If that’s a deliberate design choice, that’s okay and I just need to recalibrate my understanding of the armor types. I ask because even though I was very early in the game (and I also understand that attributes are getting replaced by traits in the class system), I dumped half my points into carry capacity and was still “heavy” with only a few pieces of mesh armor, not even plate. Again, if this is deliberate, that’s fine, just something to think about.
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To prevent new players from being deterred or frustrated here’s a few more suggestions. And I tried not to list anything which could be considered as too much “hand-holding”:
- Add some clarity to whispers requiring offerings before they allow fast travel. I know the offerings option is in the whisper menu, but after playing for a little bit, it wasn’t immediately clear to me that the offerings unlocked fast travel…until I opened that menu option.
- After forgetting how to manage utility runes on my first session, there didn’t seem to be anywhere, including the compendium, that told me to go to the enchanter for this. Maybe add a note about this in the compendium or when you hover utility runes in your inventory.
- Maybe add a brief overview of crafting system somewhere. List every option for what you can do with items (sell, extract runes, add runes, enchant, infuse, upgrade, use embers to change enchantments, rarity level, etc.). Maybe also add a note explaining that facets cannot be added or altered (unless they can and I haven’t gotten there yet).
I can also separate all these notes into separate topics on the forum if that’s better.
Love the game so far and can’t wait to see the finished product.
