So recently theres some twitter drama, which made NRFTW pop back up on my radar.
i’m currently staying away from the game until it fully launches as i m not keen to play and have my gear/progress wiped.
the twitter post was highlighted by some yter. and it highlights a few reasons why i LIKE NRFTW.
no spamming, and more deliberate combat. POE and Diablo series are SHIT at this. i really prefer NRFTW in that aspect but since i want to sink my teeth into NRFTW when it releases, i might as well give my wishlist early.
Balance the game
some spells/abilities let players one shot or cheese bosses. if a build is overperforming, find out why and nerf it.
Avoid alternate scaling mechanics
Damaged based on stats/ damage based on defence. etc. POE has a ton of different ways to scale damage and its a huge mess. NRFTW has the beginnings of this issue with how weapon damage scale based of certain stats.
Get rid of all speed modifiers
One thing NRFTW has that most D-likes dont have is deliberate gameplay. I’ve played actual soulslikes/roguelike-lites etc. one thing that is constant is SPEED modifiers are very rare. The way i see it, if you have any speed modifiers such as the rings that make you move faster, instead of making them a buff, they become almost mandatory. on the flipside if you give random speed modifiers to enemies or detrimental speed modifiers to the player. you’ve effectively wrecked the game balance and made the game unfun. I’m currently playing WWM. there’s literally 0 global or random speed modifiers in the game. the game remains challenging but in a fun way.
Reduce the need for multiplayer
MP should always feel optional. Beneficial, sure. but always optional. d3 fails at this, split runs farming keys/objectives is vastly superior than playing solo. in poe strong players WANT a full party for drop bonuses and can carry the entire party with no issue. all this makes me feel the game is not for me.
Optimization should be rewarded but not required
decent gear should always be a requirement to do content. in d4/poe, good gear/build feels more like a requirement than a bonus. speaking of which. when it comes to powerscaling, at the very peak of gearing players will find it easier to kill mobs perhaps 1 shotting weaker enemies. but never to the point of 1 shotting bosses. clearing bosses should be faster than an unoptimized player but never one shot or clearing a boss in a few seconds.
Random global mods are simply unfun.
back when d3 was hot. one thing i appreciated d3 over poe was that harder content was just, harder content. simple as that. in POE we have random mods such as reduced leech/regen effectiveness and monsters totally avoiding status ailments. all it did was make us feel like “oh another map we cant run”. it did not make players feel challenged. we felt like we were punished for bad luck and had to either not run it or reroll it. also it made players feel punished for not running a different build built around being able to run more or less all map mods.
MF if any should not be on gear
Personally i feel MF was created back in d1/d2 because there was no such thing as end game content. now, its the norm. i feel that players should always want to get the best gear to make them as strong as possible instead of weakening themselves.
Lower the ceiling, harder content should always feel optional
One thing i HATE about modern d-likes is the ceiling is very high. back in the day POE’s hardest content started at t14 map equivalent, this helped weaker players gradually get stronger to t16 and run the hardest content. Now? we have t17s and ubers. the jump from t16 to t17 is huge. as for the ubers, they dont feel optional as some of the best items exclusively drop from them. it would be better if they dropped more/rarer items and their exclusives could drop from their regular non uber versions. else, everyone would feel that their build fails if they cant run ubers. build diversity shrinks as build viability requirement increases. in many d-likes, players mainly feel punished for organically playing without a build guide.
Keep the game as classless as possible
I get that class bonuses are being added in to the game. implement it without making gear/spells class locked and all is fine.
Consider having a more traditional character model alternative
i appreciate the art direction and the character proportions. its DIFFERENT and UNIQUE. but one thing i learned from LE is that if you want a larger audience, you need to appeal to more people visually. LE is a game i enjoy. a lot of my friends who i recommended the game to, liked it BUT couldnt stand the art style. Tho i can appreciate it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. other people (even myself) may prefer a more conventional artstyle rather than the contorted ones we currently have. just to share. i once recommended POE to a friend many years back before they revamped the graphics. upon reaching town my friend said the game was too ugly. freaking uninstalled. thats less than 1-2 minute gameplay. some people are just so unforgiving. that same friend came back years later after they improved the graphics and became the first person in my guild to kill the shaper.
Fuck seasonal content
GGG kickstarted the idea of seasons/leagues. And it started with a very small scope. just a minor add on to keep players coming back every 3-4 months. GGG initially suffered with low player count. but once they got the engine running, it became a well oiled machine. GGG creates seasonal content, players give em money. GGG has more money, they make more content for their seasons, more players come, more money. EHG (LE) wanted to copy that business model. unfortunately they came in to the scene where players expected a full fledged seasonal mechanic with npcs/bosses etc before LE could even grow a player base. they started they started their engine before it was tuned properly so instead of having a symbiotic relationship with the customers, all they did was bleed money, giving players a lot of content but the amount of playerbase they had could not foot the bill or refused to. LE is now sold off and a lot of fans are dooming on the game.
I would also point out, that the amount of content POE is putting into a single league, might as well be a mini expansion. NRFTW has no mtx for sale and i respect that. sell us DLCs/expansions once the game is out. trying to emulate POE’s leagues is a very uphill battle. Torchlight infinite did it but thats thanks to them being available also on mobile and having a huge market in china.
There won’t be any seasons/seasonal resets. Events were somewhat recently discussed though. Just judging by player feedback and Thomas’ comments, those will probably be reoccurring events, that will take place during specific times of the year. DLCs are planned. We know of 2 big DLCs, that will continue the story and add new playable areas on the mainland. Before those, they will release free and paid expansions for Isola Sacra.
Having only a single dmg mechanism removes any depth to building an arpg character. I want an ARPG not a pure action game.
I’ve finished the game once and haven’t considered the speed modifiers to be an issue. Making use of it trades in it’s slots for things you could otherwise have, it’s a balancing act.
The game is totally enjoyable solo, I don’t see the issue. If you think min maxing is mandatory you aren’t enjoying the gameplay itself. I stopped playing POE2 because it makes me feel exactly like that. I realized I found the game itself to be actually terrible and the economy was the only relevant factor.
My character was using completely random gear and weapons I used because of the playstyle preference. With only upgrading a few times and a few rerolls here and there I could ‘easily’ do most of the content aside from some tricky bosses that heavily favored Parry over dodge. I don’t think optimization is that required for a normal playthrough but overall balancing is always something to look at.
There are already selectable difficulties? I chose the intended difficulty in my playthrough and felt the overal challenge was fair.
You say you take learnings from LE to cater to a larger audience. I don’t think that is a good way to look at design. 1. Catering to a wider audience does not imply that everything should look ‘normal’. 2. ‘Normal’ art direction is no art direction. I’m not interested in UE5 metahuman faces slop that many modern games are plagued with. 3. LE imo looks absolute garbage because it does not have any coherent, deliberate art style/direction, especially in it’s characters.
But even disregarding all the above, designing an additional set of ‘normal’ models for people that want to play the game but do not want the art style is such a wild thing to even consider.
I agree with his sentiment. I despise the look of BG3’s characters so I don’t buy the game even though I’d play it otherwise. But I don’t care that it is this way, it’s their creativity not mine.
on the flipside, having multiple damage mechanicsms makes balance more or less impossible. too many different multipliers to consider.
different people have different experiences. some builds rely less on speed while others feel bad without it. if you’re using a build that can damage from a safe distance you really dont need too much speed, especially if you can obliterate the safely. if you’re playing melee and you say you’re doing fine, thats good, you’re a good player, but it would be dishonest to assume that it wouldnt feel better if melee players had as much speed as they possibly can. like for me. having speed rings lets me confidently run in and out of combat, without it feels… slow and puts me at risk of getting hit.
agreed 100%. it is that way now, but who knows about the future. hence i m putting the feedback out now while the game is still “in development”.
in nrftw it feels that way now, but similar to the above, I’m mentioning it out now. for games like POE. its a ship thats long sailed away with no way to course correct.
also similar to the above. i really appreciate the selectable difficulties. its fair and you dont feel forced to raise your difficulty.
poe1/2/d4’s no art direction makes them popular. you might not like it but generic is the safe bet. nrftw’s body proportions is a huge part of the art direction. i appreciate the art direction BUT if i m being honest, i prefer regular body proportions. if there was an exact clone of NRFTW but with regular body proportions, i m pretty sure it could outsell nrftw quickly.
i m current playing WWM. there are tons of whales there and tons of paying players that bought the “cheap cosmetics”. for sure its a different business model and different market. but the reality is, people are mostly visual creatures. plus sized models are beautiful in their own way. so are people who are not super models. some of them have very unique features that make them special. but companies still mainly employ the conventionally attractive ones all the time. theyre all pretty and by now all look the same. but i still prefer to look at them rather than some random plus sized chick.
poe1 used to look way worse than it did now. BG 3’s characters i dont like em too much either but in BG’s case the gameplay overcame the art direction. players that bought BG3 bought it because of the gameplay more than the art. i would argue they’re mainstrean as DND/turn based RPGs have a large community.
NRFTW caters to a very niche market. they would do well to increase the size of their net.
Some players even argue that they want slow attack speed but still complain about their attack speed being slow.. they can have a goal that totally goes against how they want to experience the game.
We are still HOOMAN everyone can have slomood swings!
all depends on the dev balancing it. great sword in monster hunter feels very weighty and can do tons of damage. people who play that game learn to live with it. the problem is when faster weapons appear to out perform slower weapons or monsters attack in a pattern that the slow weapon has no counterplay.