A humble opinion about the game

[Computer (bot)]

Firstly, I want to excuse myself in advance for any spelling mistakes or bad syntax, as you will see while reading, I’m not a native English speaker.
Secondly, it is just a humble opinion about the game, with some ideas thrown in on how to maybe improve it, but I have no experience in the video game industry.

As of now I played ~12h, I am level 27, and probably completed 99% of what the game has to offer so I think I have a good grasp of what’s going on, and I “found” 4 major things that bother me, plus some other minor ones.

1. Factions

I don’t see the point of having a faction system at the moment because there is no differences nor implications, and I will explain further with an example :
I created a new playthrough only to see if you could stay in the tutorial area where the Wykkans and the Union soldiers are fighting, and grind Wykkan reputation by murdering every Union soldier without touching any Wykkans fighters, and make them respawn by sleeping. Turns out you can as you can see in the screenshots below, I killed probably around 15 Union soldiers and this pops up.

https://puu.sh/J6wde/7bac9fcbba.jpg
https://puu.sh/J6wdo/bd63d20695.jpg
https://puu.sh/J6wdv/18a7212441.jpg

And that’s pretty cool you might say, and I agree. But it changes almost nothing, it has no implications. The Wykkans of the tutorial are still hostile and attack me on sight.
The Union soldiers hate me and attack me on sight (when they’re not bugged standing in place), but I can still continue the main questline like nothing happened even if I’m hated by the faction.
The “biggest” changes are the outlaws, they don’t attack me on sight anymore, and I can go to a tower in the second zone of the game and ask the NPC outlaw to follow me (which doesn’t work, they don’t move).
But it has no implications on any quests which is underwhelming. I still can’t go with Vela Callose on her ship, I don’t get an alternative questline with the Wykkans (or the Outlaws) for not siding with the Apostatic Union.

Apart of that, every faction seems to start at neutral with the player character, but it is not well made because, even if some of them are “neutral hostile” by default, you can still lose reputation with them, which does nothing (looking at you Goblin faction).

I think you all get the point of my development, and it brings two minor problem I have with the game:

1.1 You cannot kill “non-combatant” NPCs

A lot of NPCs cannot be harmed, which is kinda weird in a game with a faction system. I mean I can’t even hurt Hallowshire Guards for some reason, nor Sepulcher Guards, which are theoretically combatant NPCs.

Personally I’d like to see a more “immersive” system where you can hit (kill ?) almost anyone, but with a system where, if you just hit a NPC by mistake without killing him, you could put away your weapon, or run away and let him reset, at no dire cost for the player.

1.2 Stealing

There is no cost for the player to break into shops in the middle of the night, by just lockpicking the door even if a guard is patrolling right beside you. I’d like to see a system where the guards give a crap about that and arrest you if you’re caught lockpicking someone’s door, and get away with a fine, or reputation loss, or even jail.

2. Combat & Monsters

It is needless to say that the game balance heavily reward “non-combatant” characters compared to pure fighters (~30-40% of EXP and items are locked behind Charm/Lore/Lockpicking checks), and killing monsters does not give you any benefit apart of a cheap item that you already have stacks of. By fighting monsters you’re straight up just loosing time, and since they’re so easily avoidable, I founded myself zooming through areas without even fighting (I swear I killed less than 15 monsters in my whole playthrough).

And it’s even a bigger time loss, since the monsters are not even a challenge (when their AI is working). You don’t even need to dodge nor parry (I didn’t a single time), you can just run back and forth between the mobs attack, and even if you’re hit, it does almost nothing to your health bar.

What can we do to improve that ? I don’t know, maybe make the combat a bit more tactical, enemies faster and more dangerous, dodging and parrying, and obviously fix the broken AI. Then adding some relevant items (maybe rare drops) from monsters might be a track to improve the game (make archers drop low quality bows by example, because the game has no bows until at least the last zone).
Plus adding some bosses requiring a bit of skill/strat from the player would be great (projectiles to dodge, things to do/interact with during the fights, etc…).

Obviously we cannot talk about Combat & Monsters without getting into the next big flaw.

3. Fatigue

It already got raised in another thread but I would like to elaborate a bit on it.
At the moment, there is no interest of having this system in the game, because it literally does nothing except deplete itself really fast and give you a stat debuff. You can swing just the same at 100% max fatigue or 0% max fatigue, and power attacks do nothing.

Now, ideas for a potential fix by reworking the system :
- Your MAX fatigue is depleted only by time passing, and it depletes slowly.
- At 50% MAX fatigue you get the stat debuff.
- At 0% MAX fatigue, I don’t know, you pass out by falling to the ground like in Daggerfall and if you were fighting you’re toast.
- Every weapon swing consume ACTIVE fatigue (just like right now)
- If you swing too much and your ACTIVE fatigue drops to 0, you’re exhausted (or something) and you can’t run nor swing during a little period of time.
- Heavy attacks consume more ACTIVE fatigue and does more damage (or maybe even stagger the enemy).
- Your ACTIVE fatigue regenerate based on your focus point stat score, and if you’re not doing any fatigue inducing action like swinging, etc…

4. Questlines

NPCs do not acknowledge player choice. Two perfect examples are : the Paeguth questline and the farmstead, were when you side with Paeguth and put the little octopus at the top of the tower, the farmer and the Union soldier at the farmstead will still have the same dialogues even if their problem is theoretically resolved ; and the Sepulcher NPCs after “All good things…” after siding with the Ghost and destroying the throne room and the crypt, nobody gave a damn and talked like nothing happened. And there is a lot of other examples.

I’d like to see more faction quests like I mentioned in the faction paragraph, Wykkans, Outlaws, etc… And more implications on the out coming of said quests, like if I choose to destroy Sepulcher, let the whole town be destroyed by the ghost…

That’s it for the 4 big flaws I think are in the game right now, but there is a bunch of minor stuff that bothers me a bit :

Disparity between stealing in Hallowshire and Sepulcher

Breaking in Hallowshire shops at night reward you crazy EXP and loot, but breaking in the only two shop in Sepulcher literally give you only 2 Modest Treasures.

Items

I did not find any use for the Truth Potion. There seem to be nothing hidden, and even in the quest in the Castle with the paintings you don’t need it because the NPC tell you right after that the paintings are false, plus the level is really linear so you don’t risk losing yourself. Maybe implementing more hidden stuff like areas only visible if you drink a Truth Potion would be great and would drive the player to explore more and try to find more hidden things.
And for the castle, the idea behind it is good, but the execution with the painting is pretty underwhelming.

Nights

I think there is an NPC somewhere that warn you to be careful at night because there are things more dangerous or something like that, but in my 12h playthrough I did a lot of travelling at night to see what changed, and I did not see a single difference.

To make this a bit more immersive, maybe make some type of mob like ghouls replacing daytime mobs like goblins or whatever.

Difficulty

Oh boy. The game is REALLY easy. Enemies are slow, do no damage, and their AI don’t work half the time. The lore “””””””puzzles””””””” are not even puzzles, just click on things around the building you’re at. And traps are a complete joke.

Ideas to increase the appeal of the game :
- Make the enemies more difficult (like said in another paragraph).
- Make real puzzles, where you have to find clues and think a bit. Don’t put the interactable items required to open the hidden door in the same room/general building as the door. Put some of them around the map with some clues (and fix the interactable items reseting when exiting the game).
- Make traps faster, deal more damage, and place them better to make them deadly (what they should be) and make better trap rooms/hallways with them.

On the end note I would say that it’s only my humble opinions and suggestions about the game, I like the game - the aesthetics are great - and I respect your work as developers, but I find the game only ok-ish at the moment, while it could be a great game with some changing.

Thank you for your attention.

Best regards

PS : I don’t even know why I bother writing an essay about that kind of stuff, I’m not even paid.

[JakeMakesMusic]

First off, your English is great; I wouldn't worry about it, haha.

Second, I think a lot of what you brought up will be addressed as the game continues development. I know combat and fatigue, at least, has been mentioned by the developers as something they plan to improve.

[Lazarus]

Hey there,

Like Deadh34d mentioned, your English is great! And there's a lot of great feedback here (and the forums themselves), that we've been paying attention to. Thank you for taking the time to write it all down, and I hope you've enjoyed your time with the game so far.

[Computer (bot)]

Yes, I liked it, apart from the moderate amount of critics I already made.
I like the aesthetics, the OST is good, the writing is fine (except the Endless whose body parts won't stop detaching themself and being eaten by vermin, at a point where I was asking myself how can they survive so long...).

[Computer (bot)]

I forgot to add a paragraph about armor by the way. As of now there is no benefit to not put the highest armor rating piece of equippement you have because Leather Gear and Mage Robes/Hat does not give any other benefit than their lesser armor.
Except for the Goblin Mask that renders Goblins Friendly, and the Cultist Hood which (I suppose because i couldn't test it) makes Wykkans friendly.

[Sid Icarus]

The cultist hood made the white, spindly squidmen friendly to me

[Computer (bot)]

Originally posted by Sid Icarus:

The cultist hood made the white, spindly squidmen friendly to me

Ah ok, thanks for the info.