What does this game want to be?

Wicked General
,
1

So, I’ve written quite a LONG feedback post in a word doc with my thoughts on a lot of the aspects of this game, but to be honest, I think it probably isn’t specific enough about specific systems. While I am tempted to dissect every major system in the game that I have problems with to a granular level, I find that I have a very simple question for the devs and maybe someone here has some insight based on community interaction that I haven’t seen.

What is the vision for this game? The more I get into it and the more I read about upcoming reworks, it seems like there are probably at least 4 competing genres vying for their identity to matter in various aspects of NRFW. I understand scope changes during development, but the lack of coherent vision for core aspects of combat and gameplay mechanics, in my opinion, is resulting in a rather mediocre experience when interacting with those systems.

I realize I’m being vague, I can get more granular if needed, but hopefully what I’m saying makes sense.

2

What you’re saying definitely makes sense because I’m feeling it as well.

For me, I noticed that:

  • It wants to be a souls-like but the gearing system in the game trivializes the souls like part completely later.
  • It wants to be an ARPG but any gear you can craft is guaranteed and there’s no rarity in gear loot making the gear progression loop and satisfaction of finding gear non existent.
  • It wants to be a crafting/survival game but lacks any sort of meaningful mechanic at the moment to supplement it. I did read that they plan to expand on this later though.

Those are the 3 major ones for me. What are the 4 genres that the game feels like it is for you?

2 Likes
3

You pretty much hit the nail right on the head for me but mine are for slightly different reasons.

  • It wants to be a souls-like with ARPG gearing and camera, but the POV makes it very difficult to have extremely precise combat that souls-likes are known for. Combat in general just comes down to stats, but their backend for attribute scaling is VERY simple and leaves no room for build identity
  • It wants to be an ARPG but the ARPG systems are weak at the moment for the reasons you stated as well as being marred by survival and crafting mechanics that feel entirely out of place and like they should be post-release FLC updates.
  • The new class system rework they have shared about sounds entirely like a ARPG class system, but the attribute system appears to still exist with stat requirements for weapons so like… ???
  • They have implemented a bunch of systems that exist in live service ARPGs but it’s a solo/coop experience.

I cant tell if it wants to be Fable, Path of Exile, Dark Souls or a co-op survival looter. Oh and that’s all without even mentioning the Roguelike mechanics.

4

Oh yeah, you’re definitely right. For me, I’ve always viewed it mostly as an ARPG that’s trying to introduce harder combat mechanics. For most ARPGs, it really just comes down to pressing buttons, so this was actually a welcome change for me since I tend to stay away from mindless button mashing and favor more meaningful combat.

Because of that assumption, I give it a bit more grace for not having the ultra-precise combat that soulslikes are meant to have.

The farming and crafting systems feel like they’re there to add immersion and give content to people who don’t want to spend all of their time fighting, which I actually think could help bring in new players. So I’m open to that side of it as well, especially given that co-op games with these systems tend to be successful and the co-op seems to be really working for them right now.

I think the real issue is that they need to pick a primary identity to focus on, and then let the other genres supplement it rather than compete with it. Right now it does feel like they’re unsure of what they want the game to be, and as a result some of the systems end up feeling a bit shallow.

It also kind of feels like they’re afraid of negative feedback (noting the suggestions about making combat easier even though its a soulslike, and making gear easier to obtain even though its an ARPG) and are trying to please everyone, which tends to be really dangerous if they’re unsure of what they want to be.

5

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly how I feel. They just need to pick a direction. The co-op update I get. The housing and survival mechanics, feel like they’re trying to cater to WAY too big of an audience and the game is going to end up being in development hell with a ton of different systems that are quarter baked.

I hope I’m wrong, I know the company went through some turmoil apparently but I’m unsure exactly what the context was behind that. I’m rooting for them, but I can’t help but feel like a lot of these changes are being pushed by a vocal minority on forums that don’t represent the player base the original concept was supposed to reach.

If you don’t have a specific target market, you don’t have a market.

6

I’m with you on that. I’m honestly struggling and a bit worried about the game, because what I thought would be a long, rewarding, and difficult journey turned into this weird mishmash of a story-driven experience where I was able to farm essentially perfect gear in four days and one shot the hardest boss in the game, which ended up feeling pretty unfulfilling.

It also feels like that shift was implemented recently in response to people not liking the gear grind, even though I thought the game was supposed to lean toward being an ARPG in the first place. Once that grind disappeared, a huge part of the long-term motivation disappeared with it tbh, so the ARPG side of it is out the window.

Especially when the devs have mentioned having a whole 10-year plan, but the core loop can be effectively finished in four days. That disconnect makes it really hard to understand or trust what the long-term vision is supposed to be. And I’m only here saying all this because I absolutely love what this game could be for me.

1 Like
7

i def mainly played the game becuase it was a PoE styled character builder where they said they wanted the combat to be a solid PVP fighting-game-like experience.

The thought of building the perfect build for a balanced soulslike-ARPG pvp combat is a dream come true for me.

This of course, adds to the bloat, but damn if they pull it off? gonna be good.

i would like to see the survival aspects removed in favor of focus caches, and more PoE-style drops and economy. Like I just want to run through and turn every enemy into a loot pinata that i dont even pick up, just look at, assess, and move on.

Of the aspects, I don’t even think POE fully realized the potential of the loot box enemies. in terms of NRFTW, finding a weapon with 4 enhancement slots, a high quality facet, and high quality version (think the 20+% quality on items in Poe) would be fun to then augment with all of the PoE consumable items to gamble the best thing i could get out of it.

The problem with this idea, unfortunately, is that weapons are also the player’s playstyle, hence i understand why they did the survival aspect. They wanted you to craft the weapon and get random facets from there. but if THAT is the point, then i need to get way more mats from nodes and monsters (damn you boar’s heads!!), and the gambling rolls more interesting, maybe like something from NewWorld. Because the time ratio of getting a build online for one character is… insane. i know some disagree, but sorry guys, i have a life, and i shouldn’t be punished for having one.

8

Everything said is felt and appreciated. Since playing this game at the start of early access it keeps changing. It feels more and more like an ARPG than a Souls like as when it started. I think the biggest issue with the game for me is the leveling system for enemies. I’ll get into a groove in certain areas and suddenly everybody is level 15 when last I came to that area they were level 3. I’ll try to play a new game with a new character and it’s hard to level up that character unless you start a brand-new realm (which I’ve had over 15 realms at once to farm Ichor). I’ll play one realm and level up a character without any of the Ichor rewarding quests and beat the game anyway because I’ve just gotten better at it. I’ll do laps around a boss because he’s all alone yet get murdered by groups because they suddenly have several more levels than I expected. The game is becoming more and more like the Witcher 3 with its leveling system, unable to kill an enemy 5 levels above you, yet trivially one hitting an enemy 5 levels below you (HATED THAT).

Everything this game does hinges on its Combat 2.0 Update, and there’s no news on when that’s happening so everything I’m saying now could be rectified and dealt with. But there just isn’t any way of knowing. The early access really turned into playtest development without pay. And while I really enjoyed most of it, I’ve begun to hate it.

9

I don’t know, I work full time and am going to college part time in my late 20s. To me, it feels like there’s nothing to chase. So getting a build online taking awhile is irrelevant because like…what build? The enchantments in my opinion are fairly boring. Weapons have no meaningful identity, scaling is basically a placeholder system (most weapons can be used by every stat) split scaling has no drawback or benefit, numerically it’s the same investment for the same % increase in damage.

Runes have no scaling with attributes and the way resource management works in the game, spamming one rune is the best practice.

There’s just so much “wrong” with how the game tries to do stats and gear that building a character feels irrelevant. Aside from the fact that nothing feels challenging or rewarding to fight in the first place.

To Irbanthony’s point, the leveling and scaling system does feel weird as well. It’s something I noticed right away, I told my friends “Wait, this cave is level 15? I can’t just go anywhere and win on skill?”

As someone that used to skip Vordt and go straight for Dancer in DS3, having my progression level locked by arbitrary stat boosts feels weird with the souls-like combat. That being said, it’s not like you CAN’T beat higher level content than you, the game just doesn’t reward and actively punishes you for doing so.

10

i think the vision for this game is to be sth completely new but potentially spearheading a new type of game, which is a huge ambition.

which i think the team knows and i also if i remember correctly they said sth like that when they released the EA.

since then, there was tons of changes in systems based on feedback, which is not a bad thing imo, but esp with the latest patch the game drifts away, from me at least, more and more. i will still play it cause i love the artstyle and the way the game feels when i move my character through the world.

i also know its still EA and it essentially IS a playtest.

for me personally i would hate if it gets more like POE cause i think - again, my personal opinion - poe is a mindless game. i like playing it every now and then as well, but i rarely play endgame there, cause it makes literally zero sense for me to grind for nothing but items, to get stronger, just to grind better items with no real goal. at least for me.

i like playing a story with a goal, i like the rpg elements of building your character, evolve through the story and sharing moments of emotions even with NPCs. also i love fantasyworlds. and also i like looting. not mindlessly looting tons of stuff, i wanna find rare things, i wanna explore stuff and feel good when i find sth that maybe was hard to find or even surprising to find, if its and item, a recipe or whatever doesnt rly matter.

essentially it comes down to having a challenge also but feeling like your actually in the world and things you do matter. i think this is what they wanted.

but now it caters to so many different audiences and every system ends up being kind of mediocre because of it and the worst part is it takes away from the feeling the game had at the start for me. granted, this is probably also part of because i played it around 500h now, so its not exactly a lot of exploring left to do, which is take into account, so my opinion is definitely different from ppl who just bought it and explore it now. Id love to have that experience again tbh.

but seeing ppl complain about not having enough embers to instantly craft their best options for trying out builds makes no sense to me, you can try builds without even having remotely perfect gear. yes to go to the limits of it, you need it, but not to try it out.

also i dont need tons of lists with all the runes, which dmg multiplier each rune has, how much this, how much that. i dont want to play a game where i constantly calculate everything to a number. doesnt mean i dont like to understand how things work, but i dont need to know every little detail and minmax everything there is to minmax. i get other ppl think otherwise and thats also totally fine.

and to all of the different opinions this game now wants to cater. its not rly realistic imo.

the new class system for me sounds fairly amazing tbh, but lets see how it works out in the end.

11

Note: with ARPG I refer to Diablo-like ARPG, as ARPG genre includes more sub genres.

The direction seems to be heading towards an ARPG model which in my opinion ruins the game but whatever.

Saying that it lacks the ARPG RNG is simply not true, and frankly frustrating, given that the developer focused on adding RNG elements to please ARPG enjoyers, which seems to be the most unhappy as well, the crafting itself is full of RNG elements, except gems nothing is guaranteed. And crafting an item is more like a transmog, the benefits of the item come from the stats. You don’t have to use the crafting system, or the reroll system if you want the full ARPG hunting for items experience, as they are implemented as pity systems. The item rarity system in ARPGs in my opinion is overappreciated, and it loses all it’s meaning from the moment you reach mid to end game.

As I’ve said the RNG elements of this game break all build crafting, and locks you in the first decent piece of item you find that allows you to play the game until the end game, when you hit the build crafting RNG wall. And this system which should please the ARPG nerds, seems to do not.

Then if those added changes pleases absolutely no one, soulslike, arpgs or survival nerds, why do they even exist? Hell, I like all those 3 genres and still don’t like the progression system of the game.

1 Like
12

Well, I have to be honest I feel like we’re playing entirely different games.

The changes they made with crafting and enchantments with embers were specifically made to reduce rng reliance for getting good gear, the crafting system, as you already pointed out, acts as a pity system. Everything they did goes against the idea that they were increasing loot friction for arpg enjoyers.

As for getting locked in mid game by whatever crap you find.. idk again that’s just untrue. The game is wildly easy on the intended difficulty if you use even a tiny bit of logic in your build approach.

Which like, I have to be honest though, what builds? All stats scale the same way, your primary stat choice literally doesn’t matter. It just determines what moveset you get basically. If we’re talking about enchantments, idk, I’ve been playing with whatever random garbage I find that somewhat synergizes and it’s more than enough to beat the game.

I do agree with you greatly on one thing though, the systems they’ve added aren’t working and they’re trying to straddle to many genre lines at once without a core mechanic identity that works well.

Ultimately they just need to pick a main direction, make it good, then they can add all this cross genre stuff. Right now they’re pleasing no one.

13

Open world loot drops items come from a RNG loot table with RNG stats (enchatments), they also have on top of it an additional RNG, Facets. The enchantments can be rerolled with RNG, you can also exalt an item a maximum of 4 times with RNG. The crafting adds an RNG Facet as well.

The only deterministic system is Gem Infuse. But, the gems are as well received from an RNG loot table. The Runes are extracted from weapons, thefefore they are also RNG.

The embers made to reduce RNG are also part of a RNG loot table.

Vendor shop loot tables, also RNG.

The scribe pity system is also RNG.

14

Essence embers allow you to pull enchants of items onto another item.

Radiant embers can buff enchants to max.

Exalting further buffs enchants.

Yes, there’s still rng involved. All of those things however, reduce friction relying just on rolling gear to get the enchants you want at the level you want. It’s still rng, but they’ve given you ways to significantly reduce the grind and optimize.

Crafting is exactly the same thing. It’s another way to reduce reliance on drops.

It sounds like you just don’t like rng at all, which makes me wonder why you bought a game that from the beginning was market as a souls arpg.

15

I was just showing that game has a lot of RNG at it’s core, while also noting that you don’t have to use the pity systems if you want the thrill of grinding random gear drops. You already have what you are asking in the game, the extra stuff you can ignore. It’s a single player game, and the coop is private at the moment, so you (and you friends) decide how you should play the game.

If you want to know my opinion on the new changes, I would rather have pure RNG system(without exalting and rerolling or swapping enchantments) than the bloated ember system and the facets, which break the deterministic system. But I would keep the crafting + infuse for a deterministic outcome if the player wants an alternative to RNG.

16

In my opinion, the world-building and level design is simply unparalleled. They did an incredible job and deserve all the praise from their players, peers and critics they’re undoubtedly going to receive.

The platforming and combat is subpar and this sentiment is echoed by the group of friends I play with.

You routinely jump off platforms because you hit a pixel you mantled on to, routinely jump off ladders because you didn’t find the pixel, routinely jump off climbing walls because you didn’t find the pixel. You routinely climb a ladder or climbing wall during combat because you happened to find the pixel..

All of the above could be resolved by giving us E-interact on ladders and walls and by removing walk/sprint and making SPACE jump instead. You’re already able to slow your sprint to a walk by putting your mouse close to your character; I assume controller analogue performs the same.

17

@2MinutesofFury You should really add this as a new feedback instead.

18

If the mods wish to move it they’re welcome to; I thought it was still on topic with regards to the OP’s,

19

Up to you, but it won’t have enough visibility here.

20

Id consider making one TBH. The pathing and parkour system are something I’ve crashed out about multiple times.