From Hype to Heartbreak

[Plaguestar]

Before the update, I actually liked the game — despite all the issues. I was genuinely looking forward to the update. It felt like the developers understood the core problems and knew what direction to take — or at least had a vision. But after this patch, I can confidently say it’s my biggest disappointment of the year. Let’s try to go over some key problems briefly.
(The visuals and setting? Massive thumbs up — no question there.)

1. Optimization
Bugs, crashes, invisible enemies (in the new zone, when the bird-people call reinforcements, they often show up invisible), NPCs sometimes don’t react and you have to reload, parries go through enemies or do nothing, damage doesn’t register... Optimization is just garbage. I have no idea what they “optimized,” but it honestly runs worse now — and frame drops have appeared.

2. Balance
I’d rather have 20 interesting weapons than 250 garbage ones. Half the arsenal is just unusable junk with weird, clunky movesets. And weapon level scaling is absolute hell. If you like a weapon, be ready to give it up — upgrading from level 3 to 9 requires grinding mobs for hours. As for armor — physical defense values feel totally broken. Wearing light armor is basically suicide, you get one-shot anyway.
I hit a point where I was supposed to go into a level 21 zone while I was level 18 — and I literally couldn’t kill anyone because I had no decent weapon and even the starting zones had scaled up with me.

3. Exploration
Classic procedural crap. “Crawl under some secret tree and find three wet mushrooms or a random berry in a chest.” The idea of revisiting zones sounds good on paper, but in practice — it’s pointless and boring. Nobody wants to go back to the same place just to open another chest.
The dailies, the base-building — all this stuff feels randomly shoved in from other genres. It’s a single-player game, why are we getting mechanics like "construction acceleration"? It should never have existed. Chopping trees and mining rocks? If I wanted to do that, I’d play Rust, not this.

4. Gameplay
Oh great, let’s copy Elden Ring-style input delay — the very thing people hated there. Combat swings between being way too easy and unfairly brutal. You either breeze through or get pinned by infinite mob combos. Some enemies can’t be stunned, some can be parried but keep attacking anyway.
Boss design? A joke. The first 3 bosses (before the update) could be beaten by a one-celled organism. But the DLC boss — the Boar and the Old Man — is just insane. They corner you constantly, the boar ignores parries (or maybe it's a bug, who knows), the old man throws crap across the map, and the boar attacks in every possible direction and snaps to you like a damn aimbot.
And when you finally kill the boar, the old man starts teleporting nonstop, only opening up to damage during some ridiculous full-screen combos, hunting you down if you’re out of stamina or not wearing ultra-heavy armor.

In summary:
Most players seem to agree — instead of dropping huge chaotic patches, the devs should have refined the game gradually, bit by bit, while listening to the community.
At this point, all the negative reviews are 100% deserved.
It’s a shame things turned out this way for the devs.

[Blowfeld]

I did not have any optimization issues.
The balance needs some finetuning here and there, especially the early game feels a little too forgiving now. Gathering rates are ok imo.
Exploaration in this game is great, I like to find hidden places and treasure.
And the gameplay you describe as bad... well, sorry. I enjoy that, too.

I guess we both agree to disagree and have different opinions.

Also, from what I see the devs are acutally progressing the game in a good way: Patching lots of stuff in, then finetuning it after the community feedback.
I mean, that is what early access is for, right? Playing an early build and being able to adjust that so 1.0 is no mess.
But yeah, maybe they should implement stuff in smaller increments, people seem to be quite overwhelmend and irritated when changes become unfavourable.
At least the devs are super active here and a lot of the issues / complains have already been fixed and adjusted in the first quick hotfix.

[Yung Gooner]

Those invisible birds are extremely annoying and frustrating. I thought it was a deliberate design choice.

[Sachiel]

Regarding balance and weapons it's funny that my experience is the exact opposite: I leveled my claymore to 8 and nothing I find is worth a switch. Same for my upgraded armor. I still like finding expensive stuff so I can sell it but that's not exactly what an ARPG strives for. Still having lots of fun because, funnily, I also just went into that lvl 21 trapdoor at the start and clreared it just fine and it didn't feel like it was because I was so skilled but because I could just smash everything to bits. Not completely mindlessly but enough to keep me engaged.

[Trüffeldino35]

For Bug-Report: https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/c/no-rest/wicked-bug-reporting/13

[Crescent Dusk]

The game may be many things, but procedural sure as hell isn’t one of them.

This is one great thing they have done, there’s barely any procedural recycling.

My main struggle right now is with the inventory slots lol. I simply don’t get enough ichors in a reasonable time span to cope.

So instead I will have to cheese realm hopping and farm ichor off the first boss to have a reasonable inventory.


20 slots for ingredient/food/materials inventory tabs is crazy low.

[RedStar]

Originally posted by Plaguestar:

3. Exploration
Classic procedural crap. “Crawl under some secret tree and find three wet mushrooms or a random berry in a chest.” The idea of revisiting zones sounds good on paper, but in practice — it’s pointless and boring. Nobody wants to go back to the same place just to open another chest.
The dailies, the base-building — all this stuff feels randomly shoved in from other genres. It’s a single-player game, why are we getting mechanics like "construction acceleration"? It should never have existed. Chopping trees and mining rocks? If I wanted to do that, I’d play Rust, not this.

Well, people enjoy different things: I really enjoy going through the zones again and again, use the shortcuts i unlocked, fight different enemies, loot the chests again when they respawned. I think chopping trees and mining ores feels awesome and really rewarding.

I like farming the mats for the town upgrade and imo it's a satisfying accomplishment when they are done after the time they needed. I'm always surprised about people saying it's "mobile game crap" etc. You are doing this once for your town and then you are done. Why does everything have to be finished in 1 second? It's more rewarding when you have to wait for something in my opinion, because it feels more worthy.

This is how i feel about these things. And i'm pretty sure i'm not alone. Most people that are happy with something tend to not write feedback, because they are, well, happy.

[jeyk]

Originally posted by YosemiteBear:

Originally posted by Plaguestar:

Most players seem to agree

are those people in your walls

Yes I have to confirm, I'm eating through his walls like a rat.

[Plaguestar]

Originally posted by RedStar:

Originally posted by Plaguestar:

3. Exploration
Classic procedural crap. “Crawl under some secret tree and find three wet mushrooms or a random berry in a chest.” The idea of revisiting zones sounds good on paper, but in practice — it’s pointless and boring. Nobody wants to go back to the same place just to open another chest.
The dailies, the base-building — all this stuff feels randomly shoved in from other genres. It’s a single-player game, why are we getting mechanics like "construction acceleration"? It should never have existed. Chopping trees and mining rocks? If I wanted to do that, I’d play Rust, not this.

Well, people enjoy different things: I really enjoy going through the zones again and again, use the shortcuts i unlocked, fight different enemies, loot the chests again when they respawned. I think chopping trees and mining ores feels awesome and really rewarding.

I like farming the mats for the town upgrade and imo it's a satisfying accomplishment when they are done after the time they needed. I'm always surprised about people saying it's "mobile game crap" etc. You are doing this once for your town and then you are done. Why does everything have to be finished in 1 second? It's more rewarding when you have to wait for something in my opinion, because it feels more worthy.

This is how i feel about these things. And i'm pretty sure i'm not alone. Most people that are happy with something tend to not write feedback, because they are, well, happy.

The problem is, if you remove all the "mobile game crap", there's basically nothing left of the game. Right now, they're just trying to turn it into a live service. If you just go through all the zones, including shortcuts, skip the pointless pickaxe mining and shovel digging, and don't waste time farming better gear or grinding levels in a single-player game for some reason — you’ll finish everything in maybe 20 hours tops. This attempt to turn a single-player game into some Diablo-style stat-grinding lootfest, while having zero actual balance, is just hilarious

The game feels good only during the first few hours, but the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The current endgame content is literally just “plague zones” — massive areas where you have to track down every single enemy that can one-shot you in 1–2 hits, just to get a recipe for mushroom skewers and a couple of wooden planks.
( I have to clear out an entire mine, and even with Miasma Intensity 2, I die in one hit and each enemy takes two full minutes to kill.)

I'm level 27, and about 70% of my stats are dumped just to meet the weapon requirements, because for some reason they added stat scaling based on weapon level. One weapon needs 41 freaking points just to wield it.
I could go on all day explaining why every part of this game — aside from the visuals and the setting — is just total garbage.

And people are still asking: “Are we the only ones feeling this way?” Like... look at the flood of negative reviews and even the devs themselves admitting they messed up. What more do you need? 🤦‍♂️

[TheC☠stOfLies]

Originally posted by Plaguestar:

Originally posted by RedStar:

Well, people enjoy different things: I really enjoy going through the zones again and again, use the shortcuts i unlocked, fight different enemies, loot the chests again when they respawned. I think chopping trees and mining ores feels awesome and really rewarding.

I like farming the mats for the town upgrade and imo it's a satisfying accomplishment when they are done after the time they needed. I'm always surprised about people saying it's "mobile game crap" etc. You are doing this once for your town and then you are done. Why does everything have to be finished in 1 second? It's more rewarding when you have to wait for something in my opinion, because it feels more worthy.

This is how i feel about these things. And i'm pretty sure i'm not alone. Most people that are happy with something tend to not write feedback, because they are, well, happy.

The problem is, if you remove all the "mobile game crap", there's basically nothing left of the game. Right now, they're just trying to turn it into a live service. If you just go through all the zones, including shortcuts, skip the pointless pickaxe mining and shovel digging, and don't waste time farming better gear or grinding levels in a single-player game for some reason — you’ll finish everything in maybe 20 hours tops. This attempt to turn a single-player game into some Diablo-style stat-grinding lootfest, while having zero actual balance, is just hilarious

The game feels good only during the first few hours, but the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The current endgame content is literally just “plague zones” — massive areas where you have to track down every single enemy that can one-shot you in 1–2 hits, just to get a recipe for mushroom skewers and a couple of wooden planks.
( I have to clear out an entire mine, and even with Miasma Intensity 2, I die in one hit and each enemy takes two full minutes to kill.)

I'm level 27, and about 70% of my stats are dumped just to meet the weapon requirements, because for some reason they added stat scaling based on weapon level. One weapon needs 41 freaking points just to wield it.
I could go on all day explaining why every part of this game — aside from the visuals and the setting — is just total garbage.

And people are still asking: “Are we the only ones feeling this way?” Like... look at the flood of negative reviews and even the devs themselves admitting they messed up. What more do you need? 🤦‍♂️

Look at what now, negative reviews? I DID look at them, it's some kids complaining about estus flask absence and game being hard/too easy. Basically all the woke nonsense without LGBTQ+ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
They demand developers to bend the knee and listen to them while they're merely a vocal minority while majority of people who LIKE the game couldn't care less about trivial hiccups this early in development process and most certainly would NOT try to keep the devs hostage by review-bombing. If they are so eager to make their opinions heard and seen - why don't they post on NRFTW forum? Currently forum looks like an arid wasteland with close to no discussions/activity. Discord is the same. Hell, even steam community hub looks like an echo-chamber of deaf ignorant toddlers who can't provide any feedback other than their emotions about what the devs did "wrong".

As of now, 99% of suggestions I've seen were ideas borrowed from other games. Imagine what would happen if you structure your game like Dark Souls, but write a different script and use different visuals? You get another Dark Souls - exactly something the devs are steering away from.

If you personally feel that the game as a whole doesn't respect your free time/doesn't provide adequate source of dopamine it might just happen(and most certainly is the root of the problem) that this game is not for you.

If you go on Reddit - there's an outrage on how EASY parrying has become, how abundant resources have become, how weak enemies have become after the Breach update. On Steam it's the complete opposite. Treating yourself as a very special snowflake doesn't help in this situation

[[HBM] Cryxalis]

Pretty much disagree with most everything the OP here wrote and I'm a 1k+ hour rust vet with about 5k hours in POE and probably 5-10k hours in DIABLO/ARPGS - I absolutely LOVE that the map is not recycled - I LOVE exploring the locations I worked so hard to create shortcuts in.

The optimization seems like it's running flawlessly with a FEW boss fight stutters - but literally everything is on ultra and I catch myself staring into the distance in awe "How the hell is it running so well?!"

The weapon requirements? You realize you can wield ANY weapon that you have the level req for and even if you don't have the "required" stats it'll just reduce the damage slightly, right? You also realize that higher level/tier weapons will inherently have higher upgrade stats so even if you're lacking the "main stat" it'll still almost always rival anything else you have.

I LOVE how different each weapon feels, I love discovering a new weapon and throwing it on to try out the move-set - Sure, the loot tables need a little work - the affixes need more flavor - and maybe another pass on the crafting system in general - but I love that they decided to time-gate stuff, it doesn't make me feel like "I need to complete this RIGHT NOW" - I can just place it on build and go back out into the world.

I see people complaining about materials for healing/wood/upgrades - Am I like the ONLY competent gamer that on my FIRST play-through actually took mental notes of where the abundant spots are? The devs clearly hid MULTIPLE "OASIS" spots in EVERY zone that literally hold an insane amount of materials of their respective tier (I.e right outside of the main gate, up the vines - the trees by the whisper, or the farmland in the lower) - You mentioned RUST as if it's some valid comparison here, as somebody who's played rust over 1k hours - I laugh to myself imagining the OP as one of those kids who just holds down the mic outside of your base, tech locked on double barrel - crying because you killed him while he was farming - Maybe hardcore games aren't for you?!

I for one am LOVING the game - I loved it BEFORE the hotfixes and it was my FIRST playthrough and first ever souls-like game and I've been having a blast battling through each zone, learning the mobs and the fights - I just hope that they don't completely gut all these systems that make this game special because of people like this.

I suppose one of the things I do agree with here is the lack of inventory space - I would LOVE to see the "Chest" system in the town all connected, I would love to just be able to place a chest and access that chest from town or from any crafting menu (ALL CHESTS in ONE!) - or the ability to LOCK items so I don't accidentally sell them - it would be nice to access my storage anywhere and not have to place 50 boxes to hold all my crap - but alas, I will make do.

This game is SO damn good and in a sea of CRAP games, It blows my mind that so many people are so butthurt over this.

I can't wait to see what Thomas and the devs are cooking up!

[[Rdog]Maljas]

Skill issue, OP.

Your problems are largely yours alone. I just finished the story in the Breach update, and the whole experience, from start to finish, was genuinely amazing.

[Steel]

Do you know what procedural means, OP?

[andypandy]

" skill issue, my experience was amazing " - basically 0 info - those type of comments are useless



i mostly agree with you

for the past 17 hours i used literary 2 weapons ( the one that were viable after all the loot i got and i crafted ) and im sick of them ( only charging a claymore and light attacks with a spear. the spear is still not balanced at all, because before the update it was also OP as hell, just put fire element and its over. all 3 main bosses were a complete joke, compared to normal mobs, using the same spear )

the Crucible as end game is absolutely boring and non - satisfying to me, especially considering that if u die before finishing it, you get no rewards at all ( 1 mistake or one shot from an enemy can prevent you from getting any reward at all like wtf )

weapon stats requirements are a complete joke, considering u have to bump many points into equip load, especially at first

i was ok with farming berries and potatoes at first, but after i did not get a single good armor piece with crafting for 17 hours straight im kinda demotivated to craft at all, but im also demotivated to go to the same areas for the 35th time in order to get some new weapons and armor pieces ( hopefully )

i liked the game more before the BIG update

visually the game is perfect, except for some strong sun lighting in some parts of the city

there are frequent freezes and spikes, especially when changing zones or when enemies appear suddenly ( like falling from above )

most of the things feel like a chore and im totally disappointed from the annoyance the new update bring me

[KingDragoon]

people who complain about attack delay seriously just have skill issue. the one thing that breach ruined in the game is the fact tht there's no need for skill. can brainlessly spam, thanks to the tourist hordes smfh.

[TapewormJim (TJ)]

The dev can't handle basic feedback. They recently perma-banned a paying customer over a some simple negative feedback: https://imgur.com/yhz73KV

I hope this game fails.