Developers. Please don't trivialize your game

[ChubbiChibbai]

I keep seeing suggestions to basically nerf and trivialize your game design choices.

People asking for no punishment or loss on death for example. That is there to add risk to each encounter. Seeing an encounter and knowing that death will cost me means I am now more fearful. It raises the stakes. Or it means I have to flee and escape for now. That is fantastic. Withoit that you lose a layer of excitement.


Then people complain about inventory. But infinite pockets means what's the point in doing expeditions. I can just farm and upgrade everything in a single run. Boring. These people just want to clear a game as fast as possible and move on to the next thing tonconsume.

Complaints about stamina. Again a system designed to enhance situations. No stamina again trivializes many parts of the game.

Look. I really enjoy the game so far. I'm glad you are taking feedback but please don't ruin the fun for this who enjoy your game but are not vocal. Don't trivialize the gameplay and make it boring.

Many of the complaints are valid. Like tightening up combat. But please stick to your design intentions on some features. I don't want the game to become boring and lose risk / reward.

If you do feel the need to trivializethese game systems then maybe do it via a separate game mode and call it casual mode and keep the current core design in tact for people who enjoy what you have spent time designing and balancing.

[[BIO] Orangecoke]

There’s nuance in these complaints, though. For example: infinite inventory is not necessarily the solution to what feels like an overly restrictive number of slots at the start of the game. I’m sure they will just make adjustments and not overcorrect.

[76561199730406677]

Thank you for sharing! We are taking in feedback, listening and prioritizing player requests based on a number of factors. One of which is definitely the intended design, DNA & vision for our game. Our dev team is quite proud of the work they've done and of course, we are very interested in implementing quality of life changes that can help make the most player's experiences as enjoyable as possible. But we don't plan on fundamentally changing what we think makes Eternal Strands fun & unique 💛

[Savatage79]

No I don't want infinite inventory, but can I at least make it a little easier to hit town and take my stock back a little more frequently? I don't thinks trivializing anything.

[illustrious.jfunk]

To be fair, I think most of the complaints about the relatively light death penalty stem from the janky mechanics. The combat so far is trivial, my only two deaths are from bizarre suicides by my character throwing herself off cliffs (or in one of those cases, to be more precise, being thrown 50 feet in the air off a cliff by an invisible force after hitting a crate). That's frustrating.

And while I'm not sure what some people might find fund about running the same 5 minute loop over and over again (that's all it takes to fill your pockets), I'm sure there must be some middle ground between "infinite" and "I can't get to a single objective on a mission without having to throw tons of crap on the ground" which is what it is now.

Also, I this is kind of the point of my long screed in another thread but, the worst moments for all of these complaints are right at the beginning of the game. That's a terrible design decision from a business perspective. They put some things into the game specifically to mitigate these complaints, but not until you've suffered through the worst parts of it for a couple hours. It's like they're refund farming or something, making sure the player is exposed to every mechanic in its absolute worst state as their first impression.

[ChubbiChibbai]

İlk olarak illustrious.jfunk tarafından gönderildi:

To be fair, I think most of the complaints about the relatively light death penalty stem from the janky mechanics. The combat so far is trivial, my only two deaths are from bizarre suicides by my character throwing herself off cliffs (or in one of those cases, to be more precise, being thrown 50 feet in the air off a cliff by an invisible force after hitting a crate). That's frustrating.

And while I'm not sure what some people might find fund about running the same 5 minute loop over and over again (that's all it takes to fill your pockets), I'm sure there must be some middle ground between "infinite" and "I can't get to a single objective on a mission without having to throw tons of crap on the ground" which is what it is now.

Also, I this is kind of the point of my long screed in another thread but, the worst moments for all of these complaints are right at the beginning of the game. That's a terrible design decision from a business perspective. They put some things into the game specifically to mitigate these complaints, but not until you've suffered through the worst parts of it for a couple hours. It's like they're refund farming or something, making sure the player is exposed to every mechanic in its absolute worst state as their first impression.

I agree there.
It wasn't until my first fight with a giant and then a subsequent dragon fight in the village that i was really sold on the game and understood its potential and how much fun it was.

I really wish the demo and even early game funnelled people into that experience faster even if they had to then back pedal to tell some story because the way i see it is that most the complaints appear to be from people who also didn't get into the actual meat of the game.

[Elveone]

İlk olarak ChubbiChibbai tarafından gönderildi:

Then people complain about inventory. But infinite pockets means what's the point in doing expeditions. I can just farm and upgrade everything in a single run. Boring. These people just want to clear a game as fast as possible and move on to the next thing tonconsume.

Yeah, can you imagine having the gall to request that your time is not wasted by doing mundane chores in power fantasy games? Forcing the player to do the same content over and over again in order to progress is obviously a brilliant feature that improves the experience in some way and not a tedious task that makes the game boring. Also the choice of which resources to pick is not trivial but a thrilling nail-biting dilemma - should you throw away the one star iron or the three star iron, how is one to know the answer to such arcane questions!

[ChubbiChibbai]

As others have suggested there is a balance somewhere. But infinite is not that balance.

[QQuixotic]

İlk olarak Savatage79 tarafından gönderildi:

No I don't want infinite inventory, but can I at least make it a little easier to hit town and take my stock back a little more frequently? I don't thinks trivializing anything.

Unless I'm going to be surprised with a time requirement in the future there doesn't appear to be a reason I can't drop stuff off without a time-advancing camp visit. I'd gladly sacrifice on-death gear saves and even some inventory space for the ability to drop off stuff at the gates.

[Elveone]

A balance suggests that there is some kind of interesting problem to solve by imposing a limit but in reality there isn't one. There is no utility versus cost or scarcity problem to solve here, just tedious micromanagement because of an artificially imposed limitation that doesn't make sense with the systems in place.

In PvP extraction games that kind of limitation does make sense because low tier resources are actually somewhat valuable. You need easy to obtain low quality resources to craft disposable gear so you can have something to wear when you die. The progression to higher tier gear in those games is a gradual grind until you collect a lot of high quality resources so you have multiple sets of high quality gear so that becomes disposable and you use it instead of lower tier gear.

Here you do not have that. Any gear you do craft stays with you until the end of the game so there is no cheap disposable gear to have at all. Crafting with low tier materials is an active detriment to the quality of your gear so there isn't really any reason to even gather them. The only reason to even use materials that are the same grade as your current gear is to make quick side-grades and that provides you with different options but do not really decrease your power.

What actually happens though is that the game bombards you with resources that are the same tier as your current gear and you actually have a reason to gather those resources so you do. At the same time it is also pretty clear that you should immediately drop them when you are out of inventory slots and find higher tier materials. That micromanagement of resources is grading for everyone and is an unnecessary amount of busywork. For new players the situation is even more frustrating because they have to choose which materials to keep before even having been introduced to the crafting system so they do not even know what resources are actually worth. This is why this is one of the most discussed issues with the game.

What is the balance here exactly? You either have more relevant resources on a map than the player can carry and the player has to juggle the resources because of that or you do not. If you do then nothing is really solved. If you don't then the inventory might as well be infinite. And again - what is the point of this limitation anyway if the decision making is basically trivial?

[ᗩSᕼᑘᐺᗩ᙭]

İlk olarak ChubbiChibbai tarafından gönderildi:

I keep seeing suggestions to basically nerf and trivialize your game design choices.

People asking for no punishment or loss on death for example. That is there to add risk to each encounter. Seeing an encounter and knowing that death will cost me means I am now more fearful. It raises the stakes. Or it means I have to flee and escape for now. That is fantastic. Withoit that you lose a layer of excitement.


Then people complain about inventory. But infinite pockets means what's the point in doing expeditions. I can just farm and upgrade everything in a single run. Boring. These people just want to clear a game as fast as possible and move on to the next thing tonconsume.

Complaints about stamina. Again a system designed to enhance situations. No stamina again trivializes many parts of the game.

Look. I really enjoy the game so far. I'm glad you are taking feedback but please don't ruin the fun for this who enjoy your game but are not vocal. Don't trivialize the gameplay and make it boring.

Many of the complaints are valid. Like tightening up combat. But please stick to your design intentions on some features. I don't want the game to become boring and lose risk / reward.

If you do feel the need to trivializethese game systems then maybe do it via a separate game mode and call it casual mode and keep the current core design in tact for people who enjoy what you have spent time designing and balancing.

Yes, stick to your guns and keep going with the 600 players you currently have.

[76561199730406677]

I'd like to add to my above comment because I feel like I failed to mention something that is important to know: Our team is working on an action plan that addresses the community's most frequent feedback points. One of the points being adressed in that plan will indeed be the frustrations that players have expressed with regards to the inventory space.

We'll have more details to share on that shortly - but know that this is being looked into, so stay tuned!

[ChubbiChibbai]

Thanks for clarifying.
I think you guys have a really great game here and looking forward to seeing improvements.

[Llamedos]

I think expanding the players inventory may be the wrong way to correct the problem, what if instead we had a way to send gathered materials back to camp without leaving the map, at a loom gate perhaps.

[illustrious.jfunk]

İlk olarak Llamedos tarafından gönderildi:

I think expanding the players inventory may be the wrong way to correct the problem, what if instead we had a way to send gathered materials back to camp without leaving the map, at a loom gate perhaps.

I guess, but what really is the point of that? Effectively the same as infinite inventory, except we force you to walk across the map twice to drop it off?

This is what is called a "time sink", a mechanic that exists for no purpose other than to waste the player's time. This game is full of them. It's a pretty common tactic to push the "number of hours to complete" up on a game that otherwise is lacking in content. A good game shouldn't need them. A 10 hour game filled to the brim with fun stuff is WAY better than extending that same 10 hours of fun content into 25 hours by forcing the player to run around doing nothing for 15 extra hours in order to experience the 10 hours of actual content.

Time sinks are bad. If you can't describe in clear and concise terms how/why the mechanic actually makes the game/player experience BETTER, then it's a bad mechanic and you should just cut it from the game entirely.

If I were to propose a sort of compromise here, it would be making material inventory unlimited but then making a handful of the rare materials that you need to make the best stuff at each level VERY rare, like maybe only one or two per map guarded by a tough mob. So going on an "expedition" to retrieve that specific rare material becomes an adventure all its own. In this case, the player has the choice of whether to spend some of their time "hunting" for this rare material to unlock the best gear upgrade at that level, or just skip it if they want and move on without the best possible gear.

Making the player shuffle nondescript rocks A, B, and C in and out of their inventory over and over again just isn't fun for anybody.

[MishaXG]

Inventory limit is just a bad game design overall and artificial play time.
Forcing players to go farm few things then run back and so on...

They should do an infinit inventory and keep the ''you lose everything on death'', except few things you can choose like it is right now.

That would make players make some choices, either you continue pushing forward with the risk of losing nearly all your ♥♥♥♥ OR going back to secure your ♥♥♥♥ and moving forward once again.
A simple and efficient way to balance everything with the only thing to change being: instead of upgrading your inventory you upgrade the number of items you can keep when you die.
So if you die it s your own fault cause you werent good enough and too greedy keep pushing instead of just securing your loot. It would be frustrating, but the fault wouldnt be the game that isnt allowing you to loot, but your decisions that were bad.

There s nothing more frustrating than moving forward then realise that you are full, have to drop some things that you spend time farming for the single reason that devs decided that you should be stopped in your progression or just lose your time moving forward as you cant loot anymore materials you ll need at some point.

For some reason decided to not refund that game cause i really like the game design, the gameplay and so on... and i want to support those kinds of games.
But the only fact that they make this proposition with the inventory size made me stop playing till they change it or a mod has been made to change it.
I know perfectly that if i continue playing and that every 10 min of gameplay i have to go back to the camp to free my inventory i will never finish that game.
This will result in a bad review cause of a bad experience, even if the entire game can be great, at the end all the fun will be taken away.

Limited inventory are a good thing only for games where looting is the general gameplay, like Escape From Tarkov so people cant just wipe an entire map of all the loot or games like Survival Games more or less for the same reasons but also cause those game have some sort of ''time limitation'' where you have to eat, drink and so on... so not being able to have infinit items is part of the experience to slow you down so you feel like you are struggling.
Here it s not the case, looting is just a feature to upgrade your gear, the gameplay is about following a story with fights that are more or less difficult.

Saying ''our game takes 50 hours to finish strait line or 200 hours to finish it at 100%'' doesnt mean anything if during 25 hours you only run point A to point B cause your inventory was full. Which is called ''artificial playtime''.
Assassin s Creed is a really good example in that, putting 100 chests, view points and ♥♥♥♥ to do all around their map, so people start to grab everything while all those things are 100% useless overall for the most part...