Baldy's Feedback Compilation

[JackBaldy]

Just a thread to compile some feedback i have for this game after having gathered all the achievements:

• I'm not a big fan of how the questlines are handled in this game. First, the player must randomly come across an NPC in a procedurally generated expedition and get a quest where they must usually enter another procedurally generated expedition, complete some tasks, leave, and enter yet another procedurally generated expedition to return to the quest giver.

Here's the thing, once this is done, the NPC does not give the following questline like they should (And like they did in previous iterations of the game based on some videos I've seen). So the player must yet again try to randomly find the same NPC in a procedurally generated expedition (And they don't always spawn) and repeat the cycle quite a number of times.

This is exhausting, it's not fun, and it really has no purpose in a game that is trying to move away from cancerous live service waste your time mechanics.

I think a middle ground here would be that once the player turns in the quest, the next one should appear right away. Having to repeatedly do an exhausting amount of The Pit runs just to find Old Kite repeatedly is not riveting gameplay.

It's easily the worst part of the game, especially so because expeditions do not level scale so you're wasting your time on numerous fronts. It's mind numbing because these low level expeditions pose zero challenge or riveting gameplay even on the highest difficulty settings because the lack of scaling, and having to repeatedly do them in the hopes that the RNG gods grace you with their presence and grant you that random NPC spawn is exhausting.

• This has been mentioned before but I'll go ahead and reiterate. I think that the final portion of the game should include expeditions. What do I mean by this? Once you reach the "final final" portion of the game, the Mythic Hunts, there is no "Mythic Expeditions" equivalent. It would definitely cut out the monotony of going to Skylight, going through the portal, fight a boss, return to Skylight, rinse and repeat.

• I know this game can be a bit repetitive by nature, but there's certain things that make that repetitiveness feel more repetitive than it should be. For example, if the player is doing boss runs, there's the constant need to head back to Skylight. So you load into the boss instance, and load into Skylight afterwards, rinse and repeat.

It would be nice if that go-between segment could be cut out, in a manner of speaking. Like being able to choose the next instance you want to go from the mission complete screen rather than having to return to Skylight or whichever place you traveled from.

The game already has a lot of loading, and if some of that could be cut out, I think it'd be convenient and nice.

• Lets talk about sprinting. This game has toggle sprint and hold to sprint. Here's the thing though. The toggle sprint this game has is the worst kind of toggle sprint. It is toggle on-off sprint.

Now this wouldn't necessarily be a big problem if the hold to sprint was properly implemented. It's not. The idea behind hold to sprint is that if the player is holding the sprint key, then the player is sprinting whenever they can. This does not happen in this game.

For example, holding the sprint key while standing still and then moving forward a few moments later while still holding the sprint key will not make the player sprint. There's many more instances of this in this game where the sprinting is absolutely janky.

The middle ground here would be to have an option for a toggle on sprint instead of a toggle on-off sprint. That way if the player is spamming the sprint key, at least they know they will sprint as opposed to having to second guess it with a toggle on-off sprint or a poorly implemented hold to sprint.

• Moving onto something in a similar vein, dodging controls. There are instances in this game where the player is only able to dodge in four directions. For example, when the player is blocking and they're holding the forward and left key, the player dodges left instead of diagonal left upward,

It would be nice if in these instances the player could dodge in more than 4 directions.

• This might be a personal preference for me, but given that this game has an active reloading mechanic, I find it a bit annoying that pressing/holding the attack key can initiate a reload when the player is out of ammo.

This creates instances where I go to reload without realising that the game already initiated a reload (Usually causing me to mess up the active reload) and I would just prefer to have a bit more control over reloading weapons.

• I really love the customisation in this game, it's great and I think more games should have similar features. One thing though I felt missing was the lack of save-able loadouts.

Sometimes it's nice to try different things out, but without the ability to save loadouts, it becomes quite cumbersome. For example, merely switching a weapon at higher levels, you have to reapply quite a bit of echoes. And if you didn't really like it? Going back to your previous weapon means that you have to again, reapply quite a bit of echoes. And that's only for swapping weapons.

If the player had access to loadouts and even the ability to duplicate/copy loadouts, then they could copy their main loadout to a secondary loadout, try things out, and if that doesn't workout they could recopy and keep experimenting or just go back to their original loadout.

• This bullet point has more to do with what I can only assume is a bug, but sometimes when the player is switching things around, the power rating doesn't seem to be accurately reflected until instances are switched. This can lead to some confusion and is an obstacle when a player is trying to accurately determine what's a higher power rating and what's not when switching things around.

• Another bug in that area that has been discussed already is that for some inexplicable reason, sometimes echoes will be unequipped. I noticed it started happening to me when I unlocked Heroic Niss, but that could just be a coincidence.

Obviously it's a bit of a problem when echoes are unequipped and you're not always going to be certain what you even had in that slot. This sometimes happens with accessories as well, but usually that's solved by switching instances.

• Regarding the netcode, it's not too bad but I do wish sometimes that it was a bit more trusting of the client in certain instances. When playing offline/single-player, certain things are a lot smoother like being able to sprint strike.

When playing online, it takes a moment for the game to register that the player is sprinting so the player can't sprint strike as smoothly as they can in offline/single-player.

• I think it should be more clear as to what attacks can be blocked and what attacks can't be blocked. Often times it felt like a bit of trial and error and it would just be nicer if the game was more clear on what can and cannot be blocked.

• Small bug: it appears as though when using the Typhoon cosmetic style for Breaker weapons, it's not wielded correctly by Grendel. I only tried it with Grendel but this may apply to other Wayfinders.

• Smallish bug again: some of the trees in the Reaver Woods expeditions are very easy to get stuck in with the only way to get unstuck being fast travel or the "Help: I'm stuck" command.

• I noticed that when the player is buying weapons, they can sort by "Weapon Class". Would be nice if that was also available in the player inventory/player loadout.

• In the Fallen Greedlord fight, there are certain instances where the damage over time effects from the "greed/lava pool"(??) get stuck on the player and I'm assuming this isn't intended behavior.

• Furthermore, in the Fallen Greedlord fight there is an invisible chest in the arena before the Fallen Greedlord is defeated. What this means is that the player and player camera can collide with the chest even though it shouldn't be in play.

This makes the fight more frustrating than it needs to be because the player now has to worry about running into something that shouldn't be there to begin with in an increasingly smaller and smaller arena.

• Small bug: Affinity respecs are a bit wonky at this point in time. I think it's a known issue, but if I recall correctly, in order to spend the player's respecced affinity points, they have to have at least the required materials to be able to make the affinity point purchase, even if it doesn't subtract from those materials.

Say an affinity point requires 5 Red Gloomstones and a character has 5 Red Gloomstones banked but no actual Red Gloomstones in their inventory or less than 5. That character cannot attain the affinity point despite having 5 Red Gloomstones banked via the respec.

• Minor annoyance: When playing in coop, exiting an expedition/hunt doesn't spawn all players in the same location. Would be nice if it spawned all players in the same spot, preferably by the host.

• Small bug: When defeating the Kindled Heartwood, it seems like enemies stop responding to the player and a zone/instance switch is required to make things normal.

• Small bug: When playing in online coop, sometimes as a non-host I will not be able to emote at times.

I think that's all for now. I'll add more as more come to mind. All in all I enjoyed the game and I appreciate the turnaround done for this game.