My 40 hours into the game fair feedback

[cANe]

Let me first state that I am in no means emotionally invested with the game. I didn't know of it's existence (or attemplt at existance) until about a month ago. I have not played the wizardry games although I have played plenty of old unforgiving games.

With that said I feel like I still can and want to give some feedback on what issues plague this game. I won't go into detail about bugs as I believe those will all be fixed in due time and I know those are not intended to be in the game. I won't mention the manual since we know it's on the way and should in due time clear a lot of confusion regarding basic elements of the game.

I will try not to spoiler anything here but there might be some light spoilers

Let me start


1. ***Severe lack of balance***

There is no way around it when it comes to the balance of the game, it's borderline unexisting. Everything from XP gains, gold gains, level requirments, enemy strength, spell strength and so on feels like it were simply made up by randomly selecting numbers.

A single enemy can give a certain amount of XP despite being very difficult to bring down while another one can be a cakewalk and still give more XP. Gold gains in general are laughable compared to what easily available items are sold and bought for.

Spells like deep freeze can be obtained already at level 6 ( or 5, not 100% sure) and it can easily hit for over 1k damage and one shot most bosses.

I could go on forever about this but I'm sure most people would agree with me and in the end I can somehow understand the issue of proper balancing when it comes to a single man project but a simple rule would be to at least make sure every new area have stronger enemies that give more rewards.

Oh and as a last note on balance, NPC's recruited have way more skills and stats than they could even come close to roll by that level. I can accept NPC's with max rolls on their levelups but this is simply insane and makes them demi-gods


2. ***Graphics***

Don't bring out the pitchforks yet until you've heard me out.

Grimoire suffers a lot in the visual department due to a few reasons. First of all almost every single area looks the same. I would go a long way to even do something as simple as switching the colors of the bricks in certain dungeons to let's say brown/red or something along those lines. It does get a bit boring to look at the same environments all the time.

Places that should be intimidating and give a feeling of dread ( like first getting to samhain) fail to do so because the place looks like every other place

The enemies and friendly NPC's is another issue. The graphical styles of certain characters and enemies look way off compared to the others to be point where I can find it quite distracting. Just compare someone like Raghilda to Argosyre and it's hard to say she doesn't fit into the game.

General lack of empty space is another issue i've noticed. Just a few item strewn around in the dungeons and world map would help a lot of iy ou ask me.

3. ***Leveling system***

I've come to be really frustrated with the way leveling works in this game. Some of it is probably due to the lack of info on attributes but that is just a small part of it.

First of all you have a ton of different skills which is a good thing, whats not a good thing is the fact that some level up by usage while others don't. This right off the bat means you gimp yourself by using points on skills that naturally level through usage.

Secondly the level up bonuses are way too random to the point where unless you save scum you risk having a huge pile of useless characters. I don't know the exact formulas but the difference between +1HP or +6HP is quite a lot for a caster and if you are screwed and get 2x1HP level ups you might just have to resurect that character after every single bit of combat.

I know that this is often a part of games of this genre but considering how difficult it is to protect back line characters and how important magic up is during leveling it makes it difficult not to save scum during level ups. For example a 1D4+2 would be way better than a 1d6 for casters.

Next part has to do with balancing I guess but it's also about leveling and it's the simple fact that amount of XP needed for level skyrockets at a certain level. From 5 to 6 you need more than what you needed for 1-5 and combined with quests giving barely any XP and neither does monsters you end up having to play ages and ages for the next level up.

4 . ***Items***

I already made another post complaining about the generic chests but I feel like I have to mention it here as well.

Just a few hours into the game you will come to notice that the majority of chests all roll from the same limited loot table. A few hours later you will realize it's probably not worth opening the basic low tier chests since inventory space is both limited and the less the easier it is to navigate so another flannel shirt or sandals hardly will be worth picking up.

Merchants also suffer from this, not only do they not refresh inventory by themselves over time but you need to completely empty it and they only seem to refill it with the items they previously offered.

Where are all the magic items? We find tons of magic items with charges but it's disappointing that an amulet of fight does not increase strength unless you use one of the highly limited charges. Does items with permanent magic buffs even exist?

I would suggest more different tiers of chest and a way bigger loot table. I would also suggest more chests with set items because those are often fun to open.



Thats it for now I guess, I do have some issues with the UI and needless amount of clicking though the item journal but I felt that I don't have enough to say about that right now

I don't expect everyone to read through all of this but I hope that does that do actually found my feedback to be fair to the game and Cleve himself and know that I'm only writing this to make the game better.

[glenn3e]

Yeah, I agree with the above which is very apparent once you get to Saimhain onwards.

[pZi]

It's good to see constructive criticism. I haven't had yet the time to play this much, but I hope this might get Cleve's attention. I'm sure he's thinking about these and other suggestions.

[willsama974]

Nothing to add here, same boat as cANe and glenn3e.

[Loki]

Sure you ever play a Game like Grimoire? The Rolls for lvl up in this Genre are always random. Thats why all World save the Game befor an Update and reload when the lvl up is too bad. The Fights always random and in a Range from Cakewalk to impossible. I found the Groups are to small and not so many like in Wizadry 7. Loot is unbalanced (Rangerstuff like Bows or Arrows?) The Grafik is like the Grafik for a Game like this is. Yeah the Colors change but the whole Architektur in the Game looks like the Same. This is how Game like Grimoire or Wizardry looks like.

[streaming instability]

Am I the only person who doesn't scum the level up rolls?

[Grumple Stiltskin]

I recall Cleve saying he wanted to eliminate anything needlessly annoying or pointless, and its because of that that I would question why we're keeping mechanics that force us to scum regardless. Do people enjoy scumming?

I agree with all this, especially with the balance being terrible. Giant bats gave me around 100xp and are VERY easy to kill, but nasty monsters like Ore worms(?) or the Dragonflies give much less XP for being a much tougher fight. Gold gains haven't seemed to matter, there hasn't been a thing I've found that I needed to buy yet. The graphics having a lot of inconsistencies is also rather immersion-breaking. I mean, Raghilda's portrait looks like it was rendered in 3d first, and stands WAY out from all the other flat art portraits. Caves look more like an infested alien cavern than a cave, although that might be intentional. More color variety and debris in the dungeons would be nice too, to avoid everything looking too samey.

Originally posted by Loki:

Sure you ever play a Game like Grimoire? The Rolls for lvl up in this Genre are always random. Thats why all World save the Game befor an Update and reload when the lvl up is too bad. The Fights always random and in a Range from Cakewalk to impossible. I found the Groups are to small and not so many like in Wizadry 7. Loot is unbalanced (Rangerstuff like Bows or Arrows?) The Grafik is like the Grafik for a Game like this is. Yeah the Colors change but the whole Architektur in the Game looks like the Same. This is how Game like Grimoire or Wizardry looks like.

This guy is completely missing the point, (unless I'm missing everyone's point) Why would you want to stick to the old styles when the friggen opening screen of the game screams "INCLINE!"? Just because they've always been that old way doesn't mean they still SHOULD be that way. Everyone, except you apparently, found most of that stuff really annoying.

I was under the impression that this game was supposed to be more than just inspired by the old games, but also an improvement on them. Why would you want it to stick to the same poor traditions?

[cANe]

Originally posted by Loki:

Sure you ever play a Game like Grimoire? The Rolls for lvl up in this Genre are always random. Thats why all World save the Game befor an Update and reload when the lvl up is too bad. The Fights always random and in a Range from Cakewalk to impossible. I found the Groups are to small and not so many like in Wizadry 7. Loot is unbalanced (Rangerstuff like Bows or Arrows?) The Grafik is like the Grafik for a Game like this is. Yeah the Colors change but the whole Architektur in the Game looks like the Same. This is how Game like Grimoire or Wizardry looks like.

I'm well aware of rolling for stats in a ton of other CRPG's and PnP games but that doesn't mean that the system is all that good, especially not with such high varibles as in Grimoire. Another compromise is to give max rolls the first 2-3 levels to make sure RNG doesn't screw you over too much or as I previously mentioned padding out the roll I.E. making a 1D6 change to 1D4+2 or a 2D8 into 2D6+4.

There are tons of ways to make it less of a pain to play

[korsobar]

Originally posted by Grumple Stilskin:

I was under the impression that this game was supposed to be more than just inspired by the old games, but also an improvement on them. Why would you want it to stick to the same poor traditions?

I agree. First thing I did replaying Wizardry 6 was get a mod that allows you to cheese the character generation stat rolls and gives you max hp rolls on level up. It isn't actually much fun to hit reroll 100 times or to reload over and over to get a good roll.

[willsama974]

Originally posted by streaming instability:

Am I the only person who doesn't scum the level up rolls?

I do too ;)

[Tanist]

Originally posted by willsama974:

Originally posted by streaming instability:

Am I the only person who doesn't scum the level up rolls?

I do too ;)

Yeah, I never understood people complaining about being able to save scumm. They don't seem to understand that any game on a persons drive is subject to ANY cheat that person is willing to provide (ie hex editing, cheat engines, etc...).

The other option is to tardsole the game up with "check points" and other types of idiotic features.

Don't like save scumming? Don't do it is an easy solution.

If someone needs a developer to implement special features to disallow people from using "outside" game functions to gain advantage, than that person is an idiot without self control.

I mean, sure... if it is an "in game" possible exploit, that I can understand, but saves have never been an "in game" development feature, so they should not be balanced as such, just as we don't "balance" a game based on some idiot who uses cheat engine or the like.

[Shams]

I definitely agree with most of this - bar the graphics bit. But I haven't been that far into the game.

But ever since I worked on this 20(?) years ago and first played it, I thought the balancing was off - and it still feels like it is to me. This applies to combat, skills, items, etc.

And that was my favourite part of Wiz7 - it felt balanced brilliantly.

...

Anyway, please post honest feedback - and give Cleve time. It took him 20 years to get the game released, and since then there have been huge improvements in stability and feature fixing.

[Loki]

Originally posted by cANe:

Originally posted by Loki:

Sure you ever play a Game like Grimoire? The Rolls for lvl up in this Genre are always random. Thats why all World save the Game befor an Update and reload when the lvl up is too bad. The Fights always random and in a Range from Cakewalk to impossible. I found the Groups are to small and not so many like in Wizadry 7. Loot is unbalanced (Rangerstuff like Bows or Arrows?) The Grafik is like the Grafik for a Game like this is. Yeah the Colors change but the whole Architektur in the Game looks like the Same. This is how Game like Grimoire or Wizardry looks like.

I'm well aware of rolling for stats in a ton of other CRPG's and PnP games but that doesn't mean that the system is all that good, especially not with such high varibles as in Grimoire. Another compromise is to give max rolls the first 2-3 levels to make sure RNG doesn't screw you over too much or as I previously mentioned padding out the roll I.E. making a 1D6 change to 1D4+2 or a 2D8 into 2D6+4.

There are tons of ways to make it less of a pain to play

yes as example unlimited Rerolls at Charcreation including a Rollsavefunktion would make Charcreation mor painless. Also a Reroll/save function at Level up would be great. :)

[Grumple Stiltskin]

Save scumming I've never had a problem with. But this feels almost like it's balanced AROUND scumming, and I'm not really sure I like that.

[BooMSticK]

I agree with everything in this post.

I posted this in another location but I am going to add here as well.

I had to start a new game because I had a level 3 Drow Wizard with 17 magic points. My Giant Berserker, Barrowman Warrior and Rattuh Thief all had more magic points than my Wizard due to random rolls. That doesn't make any sense at all.

i don't want to play the save scumming game for leveling up. In my opinion that is a work around and adds zero value to the game. Nobody wants to keep fighting the same battle over and over to level up to get those perfect stat rolls. It just isn't fun.

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

Grimoire is unbalanced. It has suffered from piecemeal editing of monsters without the global overview being present for years. These issues will be ironed out in V2 where whole genera of monstrum will be gauged incrementally and adjustments made to them to reflect their level and context. At present you have some fights that are way too hard for too little XP. I just have not tightened this up yet with so much else to do. It will be straightened out shortly after it is ascertained there are no serious bugs left in the game. We are almost to that stage now. There are incredible items in the game - but you will almost never find anything spectacular in the regular supermixer chests. They are designed to be rather blah and generic. The incredible stuff you have to hunt for and often like Caliburnus they won't be found in a chest. The items in the supermixer chests are to give your party average equipment and supplies of average magic items.