Dragonwilds Feedback

[Hambo]

Background - Have played Runescape extensively since 03/04, including RS3 and OSRS and consider RS to be arguably the best MMO ever produced

Have not played - Valheim, Enshrouded or any other modern crafting survivals.

Have played - DayZ, Rust, 7 Days To Die, Minecraft etc.

Views - Are my personal opinions and may or may not miss the mark as to what you the developers are trying to achieve, but represent my views on whether I would continue to play this and enjoy this or not.

Summary from 26.9 hrs of gameplay - Extremely promising, fantastic bones, very enjoyable, but potentially falling into a big trap of missing out on lots of potential to just become an mediocre/average and totally unoriginal survival game

Likes:

• RS skills design with levels up to 99
  
• RS theme to all items , herbs, mining nodes, progression through bronze, iron, etc
  
• Base building is actually quite good despite me not normally having any interest in those systems
  
• Combat is interesting from an animation perspective - it's exciting to try new weapons out and see what animations they have, how they flow, and what special attacks they have.
  
• The game is challenging at times from a combat POV making it much more satisfying to achieve certain things
  
• Dungeons add alternative activities
  
• The dynamic world is very good , weather and time cycles change the world and wildlife, cutting down trees semi-permanently and seeing the landscape change is very interesting
  
• Graphics are very refreshingly nostalgic and interesting , it's a fundamentally attractive game and art style
  
• Spells are really interesting and fun , it's great to be able to do things in different ways eg cutting wood with spells, the ability to fly up in the air and float
  
• It's very fun to get rare recipes for things off mobs , this is one of the classic and unique Runescape things that I miss in many other games. It's fun for items to be rare and ‘farmable’

Dislikes:

• Stack sizes are far too small
  
• Hunger/hydration are degrade far too fast to the point where they’re just frustrating at times
  
• Dying and losing strength is just plain frustrating particularly when trying to recover your body and then being over-encumbered
  
• Over-Encumbered mechanic where you can't do anything but walk is too punishing, it should be a reduction in stamina or some other system to slow you down, in its current state it prevents you from being able to fight back, dodge arrows etc.
  
• Ranged enemies perhaps too accurate but unsure if this is a dislike, it can be fun to dodge an arrow, but stamina issues make it frustrating as you often don’t have enough stamina to attack then dodge
  
• Animation locks on attacks make dodging frustrating
  
• Skill trees don’t actually feel like they do anything . I didn’t check my skill trees virtually once to see what I was unlocking in the way you would definitely do in Runescape. Crafting/ingredients feel like the only relevant part of the game. I sorely miss needing ‘x’ level to equip ‘y’ gear. Eg, you should require 30 attacks to equip iron weapons regardless of whether you can craft them or not, this is what makes Runescape so unique. Currently the way the systems work make it feel totally unoriginal and make the Runescape skin to the game feel irrelevant as the systems aren’t remotely like they are in Runescape in actual practice
  
• I severely dislike how unspectacular the rarity and power of iconic weapons such as the Abyssal Whip, Granite Maul, Crystal Bow etc are in the game. They are so easy to get and so weak when you consider how much Iron weapons do etc. I think the devs need to remember one of the most fun parts of Runescape is how certain items are incredibly rare but incredibly powerful, and are not obtainable with any guarantee i.e. you have to simply farm and farm and farm rather than just do a quest or kill a mob for a guaranteed drop of the ingredients. Getting an Abby whip didn’t feel special at all.
  
• Skill trees are too generic. There should be a defense tree dictating what armour you can wear, how effective your blocks are, how much of a ‘tank’ you can be, what shields you can use, perhaps allowing you to do stun attacks with a shield or something
  
• Skill trees aren't interesting, all of the magical abilities to cut trees, jump and float are fantastic, but these should be tied into your progression through the magic tree. I.e if im a mage I should feel special in certain ways that my friend who is a melee fan isn’t and vice versa. A player with high woodcutting should feel important/special because they can help their team in ways that nobody else can.
  
• Skilling up is way too fast . I’m not saying getting 99 should be as hard as RS which is crazy slow by the end, but I reached 50 in half the skills within a few hours. Totally uninspiring and unrewarding. Levelling up simply isn’t satisfying like it is in Runescape.
  
• Dungeons are way too unrewarding , bosses are way too easy, loot is generic. There needs to be harder bosses, a more exciting loot chest at the end of the dungeon with a chance for rare items etc
  
• Being able to repair items with spells is way too dummified - the fact I can repeatedly fix my whip or crystal bow makes durability pretty much pointless, especially for powerful items or pickaxes/axes. You should have to repair them with actual ingredients.
  
• Heavy weapons are outrageously slow - Using an iron greataxe or other similar speed weapons is flat out useless against multiple enemies because you get interrupted by even low damage attacks. Have fun using an iron greataxe against 4 goblins or rats who just constantly hit you for 1 damage and prevent you from using your attacks.
  
• Weapons can be a bit plain at times - Middle mouse click is essentially the same as a special attack in RS which is definitely cool, but it's too spammable and therefore doesn’t feel special. I’d prefer a bit more variety out of weapon attacks too, right now it's just spam left click or middle mouse click every now and then, block feels boring. I wish there were more ways to perform different types of melee attacks, e.g. fast, heavy, stab, slash, different stances perhaps?
  
• Damage numbers are too high - One of the things I love about Runescape is how you could see this clear progression towards hitting high numbers, starting at 1’s, eventually being able to hit 20s or 30s was exciting. When the numbers are inflated to the hundreds it becomes like WoW where numbers are just completely unexciting. I appreciate this might be quite hard to figure out though, but any way you can crunch the numbers as low as possible would be more in theme with a very unique runescape reality.

Summary:
I appreciate this isn’t an MMO, it's a survival crafting game, but that shouldn’t mean it falls into just being another cookie cutter game like the dozens of others in its genre. It should have a heavy mixing and dose of MMO Runescape to make it original and unique.

More rewarding skills that take longer to level up and give you more clear cut rewards and unlocks, making players feel more unique and useful in different ways as they choose to focus on their favourite skills.

Less hardcore survival mechanics for the sake of having them, some of them are pure frustrating and don’t add anything fun to what should really be a casual survival game with challenging combat.

Alongside making skills more rewarding, make certain items far far harder and rarer to get, and make many many more of them. Abyssal whips should be incredibly rare and powerful, Granite Mauls shouldn’t be weaker than a freaking Iron weapon and shouldn’t feel completely useless, but they do!

More mobs with extremely rare drops, more challenging and rewarding skill trees that bring more variety and ‘requirements or unlocks’, a bigger dose of Runescape really is what this game needs. Stop worrying about making everything ‘unique’ or survival crafting themed. I for one am not looking for a survival crafter. I'm looking for a runescape survival crafter. Be unique. Runescape systems and mechanics are fun and unique, use them more.

This game has some serious potential if it can successfully blend enough of what makes Runescape arguably the best MMO ever with an incredibly popular genre, or it can be a totally uninspired unoriginal and simply ‘decent’ survival crafter with a soft Runescape universe theme, that's up to the devs of course, but my two pence says lean more heavily into Runescape than you’re doing. Good luck!

[Barely Average@sptfy/yt/sc]

i agree with everything except for the " power and rarity" of weapons and the "spell for fixing is too broken" .

Abyssal whip currently is so overpowered i cant imagine what the next weapons will be like if the abby whip is less than lvl 50. You can basically kill raids with a couple clicks. If anything they should nerf them not give them more power

Staff of light is pretty nuts aswell just probably doesnt do as much damage cause mage lvl is too low (since you can only raise by tomes right now

both of their animations are great

rarity- eh i think its fine the way it is. There's no need to kill 1000s of abyssal demons for it. Crystal bow and staff of light were both easily obtain in og runescape aswell so eh.

As for the spell repairing tools i think its fine. Nothing is more annoying than to get the ingredients again to repair it. It was honestly a relief when the spell was unlocked and hope it stays that way.

[Strong Hoov ✅]

I also agree to most of this.

[Hambo]

Originally posted by Barely Average@sptfy/yt/sc:

Abyssal whip currently is so overpowered i cant imagine what the next weapons will be like if the abby whip is less than lvl 50. You can basically kill raids with a couple clicks. If anything they should nerf them not give them more power

rarity- eh i think its fine the way it is. There's no need to kill 1000s of abyssal demons for it. Crystal bow and staff of light were both easily obtain in og runescape aswell so eh.

As for the spell repairing tools i think its fine. Nothing is more annoying than to get the ingredients again to repair it. It was honestly a relief when the spell was unlocked and hope it stays that way.

I'd argue that our points are somewhat similar just different ways of looking at it. The reality is, you can get a guaranteed abyssal whip by killing one demon which is very easy if you just use the jump spell to get up on a wall, and that whip can be obtained within like one hour and is extremely strong.

Sure we could nerf the whip and that would resolve it, but then the whip just becomes on par with bronze or iron weapons? Not really very exciting or inspiring or in theme with actual RS MMO.

I'd much prefer they made it so you got it much much later in the game or require a lot more farming to get.

I assume we're going to get all the other metals too, steel, mithril, gold, adamant, rune etc. Its going to be really dull when a steel dagger does 2x the damage of an abyssal whip.

Also you're mentioning you cant imagine what the next weapons will be like, but you're forgetting that the next weapons will be in higher level zones with more powerful mobs, so yes they'll be stronger, but everything will be.

Meanwhile iconic weapons like the whip and granite maul will be resigned to sit alongside bronze and iron weapons as totally useless. Just seems a massive waste to me..

I mean the granite maul is just totally utterly useless for example. Why? What a waste?

RE your point on fixing items - fair enough, I personally disagree, I think the spell to fix things just totally trivialises the durability system, they may as well just get rid of it in that case in my opinion.

[GafferGragz]

A lot of your cons is kind of what makes these games funny, bc you need to use your head.
7D2D has all the same mechanics + then some more.

[GafferGragz]

Who has said you have to use everything you can? If you feel that magically repair is horrible, just use the crafting bench for it. I do. If the magical repair required parts then the deal is good.

[Hambo]

Originally posted by GafferGragz:

Who has said you have to use everything you can? If you feel that magically repair is horrible, just use the crafting bench for it. I do. If the magical repair required parts then the deal is good.

Well 7D2D may have these mechanics, but its a pure survival game, you're comparing apples to oranges.

I personally don't find a game fun when I voluntarily choose to not play it optimally, thats just the way I am.

This list is nothing more than my personal opinions of course, some may feel the complete opposite about everything I said, but to me the cons are strong feelings I have and simply not using the repair ability isn't something I'd want to do.

[Triba]

I agree with most things stated here.

The single largest issue I have with this your comment about loot drops.
Chest drops, boss drops, dungeon loot (other then shards/cores), and even long quest rewards are just so underwhelming.

Finding a chest feels just like killing any normal mob. There is nothing ever good from chests.
Same with the amazing quest 'Dog Days' where you climb a castle to kill a King and then you get a cloak that provides the exact same stats as a day 1 pre-order item.
What was the point of that entire quest line just to end with almost the worst drop I've seen.

Loot drops need to be fixed!

Second: Please figure out a more interesting skill tree to be able to specialize towards things.

[SOLDIER]

It's funny how one person might dislike a certain mechanic yet others enjoy it. I for one absolutely love the mending spell to repair items, such a refreshing change from other survival games I've played which don't have this ability. I really appreciated having it in the game.

I do however fully agree with the following dislikes below which you mentioned and hope they are refined.

- stack sizes are far too small

- Hunger/hydration are degrade far too fast to the point where they’re just frustrating at times

- Over-Encumbered mechanic where you can't do anything but walk is too punishing, it should be a reduction in stamina or some other system to slow you down, in its current state it prevents you from being able to fight back, dodge arrows etc.

- Animation locks on attacks make dodging frustrating

- Heavy weapons are outrageously slow - Using an iron greataxe or other similar speed weapons is flat out useless against multiple enemies because you get interrupted by even low damage attacks. Have fun using an iron greataxe against 4 goblins or rats who just constantly hit you for 1 damage and prevent you from using your attacks.

Also, when I place an item into a crafting bench, I want to be able to craft more than 20 at a time so I can leave the bench for longer. I don't really want to have many multiples of each bench running if possible.

[Hambo]

Originally posted by Triba:

I agree with most things stated here.

The single largest issue I have with this your comment about loot drops.
Chest drops, boss drops, dungeon loot (other then shards/cores), and even long quest rewards are just so underwhelming.

Finding a chest feels just like killing any normal mob. There is nothing ever good from chests.
Same with the amazing quest 'Dog Days' where you climb a castle to kill a King and then you get a cloak that provides the exact same stats as a day 1 pre-order item.
What was the point of that entire quest line just to end with almost the worst drop I've seen.

Loot drops need to be fixed!

Second: Please figure out a more interesting skill tree to be able to specialize towards things.

Absolutely, I've officially completed all of the content now, I've believe I've got every single recipe now and one thing that really frustrates me (similar to your cape comment where all of the capes are identical) is how all the gear is too; There are 2 item sets for plate armour, leather armour, and mage armour, and they're all identical stats, the only thing that is different is the description text and appearance. And its a massive shame, because from a development perspective I genuinely believe its a pretty elementary blunder. Why are they not even different slightly, for example offering reversed melee/ranged defence stats, or slightly different set bonuses. I just cant understand why they are literally exactly identical.

The same of course goes for capes, why do they not have 1 mage cape, 1 melee cape, 1 ranged cape, and then maybe 1 really rare drop extra special cape that is just best in slot but very hard to get?

[Hambo]

Originally posted by SOLDIER:

It's funny how one person might dislike a certain mechanic yet others enjoy it. I for one absolutely love the mending spell to repair items, such a refreshing change from other survival games I've played which don't have this ability. I really appreciated having it in the game.

I do however fully agree with the following dislikes below which you mentioned and hope they are refined.

- stack sizes are far too small

- Hunger/hydration are degrade far too fast to the point where they’re just frustrating at times

- Over-Encumbered mechanic where you can't do anything but walk is too punishing, it should be a reduction in stamina or some other system to slow you down, in its current state it prevents you from being able to fight back, dodge arrows etc.

- Animation locks on attacks make dodging frustrating

- Heavy weapons are outrageously slow - Using an iron greataxe or other similar speed weapons is flat out useless against multiple enemies because you get interrupted by even low damage attacks. Have fun using an iron greataxe against 4 goblins or rats who just constantly hit you for 1 damage and prevent you from using your attacks.

Also, when I place an item into a crafting bench, I want to be able to craft more than 20 at a time so I can leave the bench for longer. I don't really want to have many multiples of each bench running if possible.

Absolutely and I totally appreciate and respect that, we're definitely all going to view these things slightly differently. To be clear, I do 'like' the ability, I just think it objectively trivialises the entire durability system to the point where I ask myself why does durability even exist?

I also agree with the crafting bench thing, its frustrating running back and forth over and over to get them going repeatedly!