Gameplay Design Feedback

[9rd]

Warning: feedback contains a minor spoiler at the bottom.

There are a few minor game design flaws that are really frustrating and make it hard to fully enjoy this game. It seems like the devs are active here, so I figured I would throw some suggestions out into the void in hopes of making the game enjoyable enough for me to finish / replay.

1.) The equipment bar should fade to near invisibility a second or two after switching items... or better yet, just give us the option to turn it off entirely. The equipment bar killed me dozens/hundreds of times by blocking visibility of my character when I was near the bottom of the screen.
2.) Dash/attack probably should have been bound to RB/LB instead of RT/LT by default. The actuation distance for a trigger pull can become a factor in gameplay, and since the actual Z axis feature of the triggers doesn't seem to be used as part of the gameplay, it needlessly adds time to reactions for dashing.
3.) Invincibility frame duration after taking damage are slightly too short. This is just my opinion, but going from full HP to dead in under a second because a cluster of bullets all damaged you individually seems unfair. I'm a huge fan of bullet hell games and have put hundreds of hours into titles like Enter the Gungeon... there's a certain balance to be struck with i-frames, and the current approach just isn't there yet for me.
4.) Fall damage - to be honest, fall damage should probably be increased. It feels a bit cheesy to be able to dash off a ledge and take minimal damage to avoid a wall of bullets that would have otherwise done much more.
5.) Melee is fairly useless, though I think this is the consensus among the entire community.

Spoiler-y section:
6.) The arena design for The King phase 1 should have a barrier form over the stairs to prevent players from becoming trapped / having their dashes blocked due to moving too far toward the bottom of the screen (which is not visible due to the equip bar as mentioned in point #1).

[Aurora]

Melee isn't useless, at least not in normal mode, in hard yes, but the game is getting a big balance rework which is in progress...

[MayoSucks]

They can only increase fall damage if they change the dash off of the trigger. The dash puzzles in the dungeons can be really frustrating, and are really my only gripe about the game. It's odd, but I sort of feel like I get some fatigue from the dash presses as they are which made the puzzles take even longer.

Flail is really the only melee weapon I could use, and that made the game much tougher than just using magic.

[DJ Wafflesnatcha McOwnage]

Slight agree with everything
1) The bar didn't really bother me until some of the trials. Ugh...
2) I used keyboard and the default is shift, which I immediately rebound to right click which makes more sense, imo.
3) I-Frames, I'd say give a badge to extend it by a hair.
5)All melee for my playthrough definitely felt like they was useless. I tried using other weapons and it seems like the throwing axes were miles ahead of everything else 90% of the time. They pierce. they're ranged, and they deal a good amount of damage. The other 9%, you switch over to a bow for single target damage, and 1% a beam rod for super long range when there are a couple of spam enemies. Well, until you get the Arch Lexicon which just craps over everything. Literally just kills the Old King like 10 seconds per phase.

[Thunderclaude]

I don't know, the falling off the ledge thing takes a second or more to actually drop, there were a lot of times that I accidentally dashed off the ledge and still took the bullet damage before falling into the pit.