Requested Quality of Life Improvements from a QA

[Cookie Monster]

This game is fantastic. I hope that every company that makes a tactics game in the future looks to this game's seamless co-op, it really is a baseline for the future of co-op tactics.

I have also been compiling a list of quality of life improvements that could put this game even further over the top, for as my brother said: "This game has no right to be as fun as it is with as much improvement as it needs." I agree, the game is just superbly fun, well done.

1. The Ability to sort equipment by stats. This would be useful for any equipment page, but especially weapons, and especially when playing solo with a team of 6. As an example, I have been trying to find 2 decent 1 handed guns for a character, but it takes me several times scrolling through the list to find all of my 1 handed guns, and it's nearly impossible to compare them side by side without writing them down. This leads to number 2:

2. The ability to lock or tag equipment. In any given run I may end up with 20+ new items, occasionally with no new gear that I actually want. If I have a team of 6 and I'm trying to save 1 or 2 extra weapons or armor for each character for different scenarios, that's one hell of a packed inventory, and is extremely cumbersome when it comes time to sell equipment. This leads to number 3:

3. A sell all/better shop management. Perhaps I just haven't figured it out yet, but it seems like there is no way to use the keyboard at the shop to sell things. The ability to move up and down in the shop with the arrow keys and sell or buy with the enter key would drastically improve the shop interface. And if #2 was implemented, a "Sell All Unlocked" button would greatly improve the experience.

4. Show the currently equipped player when re-forging. When a player is using the forge it shows all of their equipment but does not show who it is currently equipped to. This has been a bother many times as I need to keep closing out of the shop, opening my character menu to find the exact item name, then opening the shop back up. This is even more of a problem when you have multiple characters with the same named item equipped, as you either need to guess which one you are reforging or just unequip one until you are finished.

5. Commodities need to be reworked. It seems like commodities were created for a feature that never got implemented, and instead of scrapping them were just turned into money. In their current form commodities exist only to clutter the players inventory, as all they are used for is money, so it would make far more sense/create less frication if the player just received the money that the commodity was worth. Possible ideas for commodities:

- Use commodities for more direct or powerful enchantments. For example, if you wanted an enchantment that had a higher chance of giving the player something ice related, you would use some sort of water related commodity, or if you wanted stronger armor you would use a stronger metal.

- Upgrade reforge common items. The player gets a lot of common items, which are almost always completely useless and pose the same problem as commodities, in that they just clutter your inventory and would be better replaced by gold. But if you got a common item with better base stats, you could use rare commodities to turn it into a magic item/uncommon, etc. If you've ever played diablo 2 think imbuing here.

- Upgrade or purchase various things in the Hub World. This leads to number 6.

6. Make a more interactive/evolving hub world. The current hub world is fine, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and many great games have never gone above or beyond the basic shell that is here. I highly recommend looking into Suikoden 2's hub world. It evolves from a broken down, empty castle at the start of the game to a thriving metropolis where every decision you've made throughout the game becomes an interactable, fun, or important piece of your world. This could include things like:

- Have players unlock the ability to reforge by finding x amount of commodities, or getting to x level, or paying x gold.

- Require the player to unlock specialty potions beyond the basics, either with commodities, or missions, or recipes, or w\e

- Allow the player to purchase buildings/shops/upgrades to the town. The game is already designed with an evolving style map like Bastian, and if you added that to the hub world to allow players to unlock shops like gamblers that allowed the players to gamble for a chance at rare equipment, builders that let the player build new features on their town, Tailor where players could change the look of their equipment, Skill shop where the player could unlock new skills for trees in later updates, etc.

- Include features in the town that the player can unlock to create extra effects on their runs. Think things like building a statue that allows the player to double the damage of enemies for a run but increases gold by x, or create a fountain that increases the amount of fountains a player will find on their journey.

7. More random events on the map. The game is often compared to For the King for it's styling, and one feature from For The King that really made the game phenomenal was the random encounters on tiles. I'm very aware of just how much work this idea would take (as well as most of the other ideas), but as it stands each section of map is pretty bland (beautifully graphics wise, but empty interaction wise.) Hiding interactables that the player either needs to click on, or happen automatically when the player walks over would add a great deal of fun interaction that the open maps are currently lacking.

8. The ability for players to do any preparation during open maps between battles. Perhaps in the form of special/expensive or hard to find potions that can be used in between battles, or some form of camp that the players could rest at or prebuff their party at.

9. Fountains need a buff. Perhaps I just don't understand that mechanics of the fountain, but at level 7, when my character had ~300 health and ~250 mana, I found a fountain on a map and it healed about 20 health and 20 mana. That covered the cost of one cheap spell and didn't even cover the damage of one attack from the weakest enemies. I don't think the solution is to buff the fountains outright, but to incorporate it with any of the changes above, giving the player the power to make ingame objects more valuable and exciting to receive.

10. Allow the player to undo stat changes when leveling up. When you choose a skill, you can unclick the skill or exit the menu and come back in the clear your selection, but when you are selecting skill points there is no undo. Just adding a minus button like during initial character creation when a player is leveling up could solve this problem.

11. The Player needs to click Leave at a shop to continue on. This is more of a defect, but when a player runs into a shop during a run, they need to click "Leave Shop" in order to continue. If they just hit escape it will not count and will force them back into the shop to click leave before moving on.

12. A toggle for names or player specific colored rings under characters. Since characters change equipment and therefore looks often during the game, it would be beneficial to be able to toggle character names above players, or to toggle/customize colored rings underneath characters. This would greatly help with colored blind folk as well, though I understand with the name toggle there is always real-estate to consider.

13. The ability to cast onto portraits. Sometimes trying to find the character on the field is a hassle, especially on smaller screens, and especially when they are surrounded by enemies/other players. Being able to right click cure, then click on the damaged players portrait to cast the spell if they were within range would be a great feature.

14. Friendly Fire. This is controversial, but can make a game infinitely more tactical. Spells that have an AoE, both healing and damage, should hit both players and enemies. Instead of just blanketing your tank with mass heals and aoe damage, the player would need to carefully aim their attacks and weigh the benefits of whether or not it was worth hitting an extra few enemies if it meant stunning their tank. This would also lend itself well to creating new branches of skills of specialized AoEs that do different effects depending on whether they hit an enemy or ally, or different shapes of AoEs/allow the caster to select AoE shape on cast.

15. Healing damaging undead. This is a classic trope, and although the game is fine without it, it always makes you feel like a genius when you run out of damaging spells and realize that your priest can finish off that skeleton. Mixed with Friendly Fire above this would make for great scenarios where your priest has a shining moment of being the most powerful character on the map, both healing your tank and wiping out the enemy in a single blow.

16. Allow for the modification of totems/auras. Giving the player the ability to move, buff, alter, destroy the totems in battle would help to make the game more tactical, perhaps either with skills, upgrades to towns, or modifiers on equipment like a hammer that could destroy them, or a magi robe that would increase the effectiveness or add characteristics.

17. A box in town to store things. This could be an easier solution to the locking items system, and would make inventory management much easier for players who like to horde things.

18. Slightly different outcomes/options for the same events. Seeing an event and knowing exactly what it is after a few runs starts to suck some of the fun out of the discovery. Creating multiple possibilities for each event, even just slight alterations, like sometimes shawn won't be as disappointed and will only give you 10% loss instead of 15%, or maybe he surprises you randomly and gives you a 10% boost because he's trying to quit taking souls.

19. More events where the player receives a boon and a curse, Picking the better stat increase is fine for an event, but having to balance whether or not the better stat increase is worth the extra weight that comes with it makes for more positive tension.

20. Hardcore Exploit. There is currently an exploit in hardcore mode where you can just exit a battle you know you are going to lose. This isn't as big of a problem in games like diablo 2 where it's really hard to quickly exit when you think you are going to die, but here it's pretty obvious early on if you will survive or not. I don't know how technically difficult it is to tell if someone has quit the game, crashed, or alt f4'd, but apart from creating a scenario for each, the player could just be punished if their game is exited during hardcore mode as a balanced option. Such as removing all progress from the last map, or reducing levels/stats by 10% or something.

21. Allow linking from shops. It's a pain to have to describe equipment in the shop to my team, especially when there is already a feature to easily link equipment in my inventory (which is very well designed and implemented).

22. Allow the player to view their teammates characters. This is mostly so that in co-op you can easily see what your teammates are wearing so you don't have to ask about every piece of equipment if it's better or not.


This game is Excellent. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun in a game that I wanted to write a feature request/bug report, well done. I really believe that the formula you've created for the co-op tactic game is a revolution in the genre (unless it's been used before and I just missed it), and I can't wait to see what else y'all do with it!

[Sir Sunkruhm]

This is highly thought out feedback. I do hope the devs have the manpower and interest to consider some of it!

[Disappointed]

Great Feedback! Additionally if you're curious:

3) You can hold shift and click to sell things quicker, but I agree there needs to be better ways to mark items as 'sell' or some other such effect.

5) In their roadmap, there is Crafting coming this month sometime (Feb) I think a lot of the commodities will be used with this implementation.

17) Stash is already in Beta and coming when the next update is live.

[Cookie Monster]

On additional thought:

23. Characters need taunt skills. There have been many scenarios where my tanks have been essentially useless as entire groups of enemies just ignore them to target my rear line of defense. I love that different enemies behave differently and there is a delightful challenge in knowing that some enemies are going to try to take out my dps, and having a way for my beefier characters to intercept that damage would greatly add to the tactics involved in each game. I think a single skill that accomplished this would fall flat and leave the tank feeling like a one button pawn. Instead, a series of taunts, each with their own downside, would keep their role fun and exciting. Possible ideas:

- A hookshot to drag enemies towards them, but gives the enemy a free attack on the tank.

- A shout style taunt to taunt enemies around the tank, with either a long cooldown and a buff to armor, or a short cooldown and a reduction in armor, or possibly both options as different skills

- A set-ahead protection where the tank casts a protection spell on another character, and if that character gets attacked while active the tank jumps to that location and does a small area taunt.

- A simple throw stone style taunt where the tank has a singular ranged attacked that causes the enemy to target him for the next turn or so.


Again, you guys are doing wonderful, keep up to good work!

[Cookie Monster]

24. The ability to ping the battlefield during co-op. It can be pretty difficult to explain where specifically I want the mage to teleport my tank. Being able to ping the spot with something like For The Kings falling arrow ping would be nice.

25. An item log similar to the damage log. Essentially just a log so you can see what items have been picked up and from what during a session. This would be useful both to easily see if you missed anything you picked up, and to better catalog what enemies drop what items.

26. Prevent Enemies from using spells when they are out of mana. The boss of Act 2 has energy shield, but when they are out of mana they can still cast spells. This is likely just a bug that needs to be fixed.

27. Explain what "Mana Mod" means. I received an item that just said "Mana Mod 15". It appears to have the same effect as the Fire Skill that increases damage while reducing mana, but it's not explained anywhere.

[JJ]

Originally posted by Cookie Monster:

This game is fantastic. I hope that every company that makes a tactics game in the future looks to this game's seamless co-op, it really is a baseline for the future of co-op tactics.

I have also been compiling a list of quality of life improvements that could put this game even further over the top, for as my brother said: "This game has no right to be as fun as it is with as much improvement as it needs." I agree, the game is just superbly fun, well done.

1. The Ability to sort equipment by stats. This would be useful for any equipment page, but especially weapons, and especially when playing solo with a team of 6. As an example, I have been trying to find 2 decent 1 handed guns for a character, but it takes me several times scrolling through the list to find all of my 1 handed guns, and it's nearly impossible to compare them side by side without writing them down. This leads to number 2:

2. The ability to lock or tag equipment. In any given run I may end up with 20+ new items, occasionally with no new gear that I actually want. If I have a team of 6 and I'm trying to save 1 or 2 extra weapons or armor for each character for different scenarios, that's one hell of a packed inventory, and is extremely cumbersome when it comes time to sell equipment. This leads to number 3:

3. A sell all/better shop management. Perhaps I just haven't figured it out yet, but it seems like there is no way to use the keyboard at the shop to sell things. The ability to move up and down in the shop with the arrow keys and sell or buy with the enter key would drastically improve the shop interface. And if #2 was implemented, a "Sell All Unlocked" button would greatly improve the experience.

4. Show the currently equipped player when re-forging. When a player is using the forge it shows all of their equipment but does not show who it is currently equipped to. This has been a bother many times as I need to keep closing out of the shop, opening my character menu to find the exact item name, then opening the shop back up. This is even more of a problem when you have multiple characters with the same named item equipped, as you either need to guess which one you are reforging or just unequip one until you are finished.

5. Commodities need to be reworked. It seems like commodities were created for a feature that never got implemented, and instead of scrapping them were just turned into money. In their current form commodities exist only to clutter the players inventory, as all they are used for is money, so it would make far more sense/create less frication if the player just received the money that the commodity was worth. Possible ideas for commodities:

- Use commodities for more direct or powerful enchantments. For example, if you wanted an enchantment that had a higher chance of giving the player something ice related, you would use some sort of water related commodity, or if you wanted stronger armor you would use a stronger metal.

- Upgrade reforge common items. The player gets a lot of common items, which are almost always completely useless and pose the same problem as commodities, in that they just clutter your inventory and would be better replaced by gold. But if you got a common item with better base stats, you could use rare commodities to turn it into a magic item/uncommon, etc. If you've ever played diablo 2 think imbuing here.

- Upgrade or purchase various things in the Hub World. This leads to number 6.

6. Make a more interactive/evolving hub world. The current hub world is fine, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and many great games have never gone above or beyond the basic shell that is here. I highly recommend looking into Suikoden 2's hub world. It evolves from a broken down, empty castle at the start of the game to a thriving metropolis where every decision you've made throughout the game becomes an interactable, fun, or important piece of your world. This could include things like:

- Have players unlock the ability to reforge by finding x amount of commodities, or getting to x level, or paying x gold.

- Require the player to unlock specialty potions beyond the basics, either with commodities, or missions, or recipes, or w\e

- Allow the player to purchase buildings/shops/upgrades to the town. The game is already designed with an evolving style map like Bastian, and if you added that to the hub world to allow players to unlock shops like gamblers that allowed the players to gamble for a chance at rare equipment, builders that let the player build new features on their town, Tailor where players could change the look of their equipment, Skill shop where the player could unlock new skills for trees in later updates, etc.

- Include features in the town that the player can unlock to create extra effects on their runs. Think things like building a statue that allows the player to double the damage of enemies for a run but increases gold by x, or create a fountain that increases the amount of fountains a player will find on their journey.

7. More random events on the map. The game is often compared to For the King for it's styling, and one feature from For The King that really made the game phenomenal was the random encounters on tiles. I'm very aware of just how much work this idea would take (as well as most of the other ideas), but as it stands each section of map is pretty bland (beautifully graphics wise, but empty interaction wise.) Hiding interactables that the player either needs to click on, or happen automatically when the player walks over would add a great deal of fun interaction that the open maps are currently lacking.

8. The ability for players to do any preparation during open maps between battles. Perhaps in the form of special/expensive or hard to find potions that can be used in between battles, or some form of camp that the players could rest at or prebuff their party at.

9. Fountains need a buff. Perhaps I just don't understand that mechanics of the fountain, but at level 7, when my character had ~300 health and ~250 mana, I found a fountain on a map and it healed about 20 health and 20 mana. That covered the cost of one cheap spell and didn't even cover the damage of one attack from the weakest enemies. I don't think the solution is to buff the fountains outright, but to incorporate it with any of the changes above, giving the player the power to make ingame objects more valuable and exciting to receive.

10. Allow the player to undo stat changes when leveling up. When you choose a skill, you can unclick the skill or exit the menu and come back in the clear your selection, but when you are selecting skill points there is no undo. Just adding a minus button like during initial character creation when a player is leveling up could solve this problem.

11. The Player needs to click Leave at a shop to continue on. This is more of a defect, but when a player runs into a shop during a run, they need to click "Leave Shop" in order to continue. If they just hit escape it will not count and will force them back into the shop to click leave before moving on.

12. A toggle for names or player specific colored rings under characters. Since characters change equipment and therefore looks often during the game, it would be beneficial to be able to toggle character names above players, or to toggle/customize colored rings underneath characters. This would greatly help with colored blind folk as well, though I understand with the name toggle there is always real-estate to consider.

13. The ability to cast onto portraits. Sometimes trying to find the character on the field is a hassle, especially on smaller screens, and especially when they are surrounded by enemies/other players. Being able to right click cure, then click on the damaged players portrait to cast the spell if they were within range would be a great feature.

14. Friendly Fire. This is controversial, but can make a game infinitely more tactical. Spells that have an AoE, both healing and damage, should hit both players and enemies. Instead of just blanketing your tank with mass heals and aoe damage, the player would need to carefully aim their attacks and weigh the benefits of whether or not it was worth hitting an extra few enemies if it meant stunning their tank. This would also lend itself well to creating new branches of skills of specialized AoEs that do different effects depending on whether they hit an enemy or ally, or different shapes of AoEs/allow the caster to select AoE shape on cast.

15. Healing damaging undead. This is a classic trope, and although the game is fine without it, it always makes you feel like a genius when you run out of damaging spells and realize that your priest can finish off that skeleton. Mixed with Friendly Fire above this would make for great scenarios where your priest has a shining moment of being the most powerful character on the map, both healing your tank and wiping out the enemy in a single blow.

16. Allow for the modification of totems/auras. Giving the player the ability to move, buff, alter, destroy the totems in battle would help to make the game more tactical, perhaps either with skills, upgrades to towns, or modifiers on equipment like a hammer that could destroy them, or a magi robe that would increase the effectiveness or add characteristics.

17. A box in town to store things. This could be an easier solution to the locking items system, and would make inventory management much easier for players who like to horde things.

18. Slightly different outcomes/options for the same events. Seeing an event and knowing exactly what it is after a few runs starts to suck some of the fun out of the discovery. Creating multiple possibilities for each event, even just slight alterations, like sometimes shawn won't be as disappointed and will only give you 10% loss instead of 15%, or maybe he surprises you randomly and gives you a 10% boost because he's trying to quit taking souls.

19. More events where the player receives a boon and a curse, Picking the better stat increase is fine for an event, but having to balance whether or not the better stat increase is worth the extra weight that comes with it makes for more positive tension.

20. Hardcore Exploit. There is currently an exploit in hardcore mode where you can just exit a battle you know you are going to lose. This isn't as big of a problem in games like diablo 2 where it's really hard to quickly exit when you think you are going to die, but here it's pretty obvious early on if you will survive or not. I don't know how technically difficult it is to tell if someone has quit the game, crashed, or alt f4'd, but apart from creating a scenario for each, the player could just be punished if their game is exited during hardcore mode as a balanced option. Such as removing all progress from the last map, or reducing levels/stats by 10% or something.

21. Allow linking from shops. It's a pain to have to describe equipment in the shop to my team, especially when there is already a feature to easily link equipment in my inventory (which is very well designed and implemented).

22. Allow the player to view their teammates characters. This is mostly so that in co-op you can easily see what your teammates are wearing so you don't have to ask about every piece of equipment if it's better or not.


This game is Excellent. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun in a game that I wanted to write a feature request/bug report, well done. I really believe that the formula you've created for the co-op tactic game is a revolution in the genre (unless it's been used before and I just missed it), and I can't wait to see what else y'all do with it!

Thanks so much for this in depth post! We will definitely look through this as we plan for the future. A few things:

5) Commodities are still planned to be used to upgrade things in the future

6) We kind of addressed this with our new act based system

16) We will soon come out with an update where you can destroy battle shrines creating various effects in the area

17) We have already implemented an item stash in a recent update

Lots of good ideas here! Thanks for sharing!

[Well Done Gromit]

i too agree it needs colour blind mode i cant see bad guys from good and kill my party constantly.

[Ninefinger]

Originally posted by Well Done Gromit:

i too agree it needs colour blind mode i cant see bad guys from good and kill my party constantly.

I have the same problem too but for the time being you can use win 10 colorblind mode. windows+ctrl+C is the shortcut to toggle it and check what setting you need I am Red Green deficient and use protanopia.

[Well Done Gromit]

Originally posted by Clockwork Orange:

Originally posted by Well Done Gromit:

i too agree it needs colour blind mode i cant see bad guys from good and kill my party constantly.

I have the same problem too but for the time being you can use win 10 colorblind mode. windows+ctrl+C is the shortcut to toggle it and check what setting you need I am Red Green deficient and use protanopia.

I have that applied, i have fiddled with settings no improvement.

[Ninefinger]

Originally posted by Well Done Gromit:

Originally posted by Clockwork Orange:

I have the same problem too but for the time being you can use win 10 colorblind mode. windows+ctrl+C is the shortcut to toggle it and check what setting you need I am Red Green deficient and use protanopia.

I have that applied, i have fiddled with settings no improvement.

I agree its not the best I think instead of a color blind mode since its limited a bit in settings like a preset that doesnt always work for everyone. I suggest that they just make it so you can set the colors of heath and mana bars of both enemies and friendlies manually using color picker or something.

[Well Done Gromit]

Originally posted by Clockwork Orange:

Originally posted by Well Done Gromit:

I have that applied, i have fiddled with settings no improvement.

I agree its not the best I think instead of a color blind mode since its limited a bit in settings like a preset that doesnt always work for everyone. I suggest that they just make it so you can set the colors of heath and mana bars of both enemies and friendlies manually using color picker or something.

that is great idea; on Anno 1800 i play yellow as it stands out but your idea is brilliant.

[stirfriedrice]

Multiple Hotbars

[MtHoodlum]

Originally posted by Ninefinger:

Originally posted by Well Done Gromit:

i too agree it needs colour blind mode i cant see bad guys from good and kill my party constantly.

I have the same problem too but for the time being you can use win 10 colorblind mode. windows+ctrl+C is the shortcut to toggle it and check what setting you need I am Red Green deficient and use protanopia.

Bloody Nine, is that you Logan?

[MtHoodlum]

I hate that during character selection, you cant really tell who is who. You cant click on a hero and see what their stats are or what class you made them into, so I have to end up naming them all Warrior, Pyro, Pyro/Heal and so forth.

I understand why there are no 'class' symbols because you can make anything however you want, but if you have more than six characters made, it starts to become a chore remembering who is who, and I'd rather not have to write something like that down just to remember.

Some kind of implemented system to be able to tell who is who would be a very much appreciated QL improvement. I might be the only one thats bothered by it though.