Feedback and balance suggestions

[Haplo]

I'm liking the game a lot and I wanted to give some general feedback on issues I've come across. I've played 15 hours, am in zone 4, and playing on Hard. I realize that Hard has its own set of problems but I'll touch on them regardless.

• I like the more linear nature of the game as it effectively eliminates the extreme grind that Darkest Dungeon had. However, it heavily encourages save scumming, as losing your party means a loss of resources you cannot recover, which could cause your entire game to be unrecoverable.
  
• It's hard to make good decisions when RNG could cause your decision to do nothing. Having abilities reliably perform their function leads to much more tactical gameplay. The illusionist ability that steals positive buffs is a great example of a well-made ability, and using it at the right time is very powerful. Traps having 100% chance of being placed is great too. Spinebreaker having reduced accuracy chance makes sense since it's a special ability that does extra damage, and you can equip precision gear to make up for it. But 50% chance to stun is so risky it's hard to justify using it - if it's important enough that you need to use it, then it's important enough that you can't afford to miss it. The Fakir stun is good because it's 100% at the cost of health, so you can make an informed decision.
  
• On the flip side of the above, enemy targeting is hard to deal with. It's common for a character to get marked then hit by 2 enemies in a row before you have a turn to react and they die. This can happen in virtually any fight (even "easy" ones) where two enemies in a row attack a weak character and they die from 100% health. It's hard to influence enemy actions - you can taunt every turn and drag the fight out longer (increasing your chance of dying), you can use escape artist damage reduction (which needs to be increased to be useful), you can try to stun (with a 50% chance, and if you miss... you're dead).
  
• Devotion is too easy to get. All my performers always have 100% devotion, and using 2-6% devotion on an ability is virtually free. Maybe I could use extra devotion to increase accuracy of an attack, or convert devotion into wrenches/food, or use all of a character's devotion to trigger a level 1 amazement ability.
  
• The training ground is a bit tedious. On Hard it's basically mandatory for the rewards. It could use a button to "autofight" and just give rewards for all characters.
  
• On Hard, I have no wrenches to level up buildings, which is sad. I think Hard should have 100% material drops, but reduce the effectiveness of buildings. (half HP restored and no devotion for the sleeper car, for instance). Drops for crafting materials could still be reduced, but I want to upgrade the buildings.
  
• The beginning of the game was a lot harder than the mid-game. I was really struggling to have enough food to survive until the training ground unlocked, I didn't have enough upgrade materials for the abilities I wanted, and the first two bosses were brutal with such a small selection of performers. But after region 2 most of those problems went away and things are a lot smoother now.
  
• I suspect that bosses are immune to stun, but their passive tooltip only says they're immune to fleeing and mind control. I've probably attempted stun over 20 times across the various bosses and it's never landed. Am I crazy or does the passive tooltip need to be updated?

That list feels fairly negative but I still think it's a really solid game. I love the devotion mechanic, especially as an alternative form of damage. The circus setting and themed classes are great. The minigames on the map are all pretty fun and there's a good variety of them. The unique versions of classes are cool. The weather system is good for changing up fights. Overall it's a fun game and I'd recommend it to people.

[DHBTVS]

I agree with all of this.

Two other QoL additions i'd add-

1. Let me save my performance layouts. It's cool its got you rotating between performances for maximum output, but for gods sake let me save the ones i used last time and auto populated them. if one dies or is fired, leave that spot blank or something, but trying to remember who went where for every one of the gets tedious.

2. Paying to level up a skill should never be a net negative. But several of the self damaging or team damaging skills have level ups that ONLY increase the damage, not the side benefit. Why? Why is that even a thing?

[Mois]

The unique characters should be spaced out better. Half of them are spread out over the first few districts and the other half are stuck in the last district.

Equipment loadouts, you should be able to change them easily instead of clicking one by one when you swap characters.

[HieronymusGoa]

Difficulty-wise I was actually irritated how relatively easy "normal" is but now I'm at the bossfight in district 4 and there is no way in hell this is doable for me ^^ (or actually for most, given the steam achievements putting it around 5%)

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by DHBTVS:

I agree with all of this.

Two other QoL additions i'd add-

1. Let me save my performance layouts. It's cool its got you rotating between performances for maximum output, but for gods sake let me save the ones i used last time and auto populated them. if one dies or is fired, leave that spot blank or something, but trying to remember who went where for every one of the gets tedious.

2. Paying to level up a skill should never be a net negative. But several of the self damaging or team damaging skills have level ups that ONLY increase the damage, not the side benefit. Why? Why is that even a thing?

On 2. Do you mean the Fakir? Because the tooltip does say +2 or w/e but if you look closely the damage he inflicts on himself actually goes down when you apply the upgrade.

[WeeCapo]

To me, Zen Studios already abbandon the game..

[snuggleform]

the dummy training is very tedious mechanic, it's preventing me from playing the game again. I really want to play it through again but the idea of doing all those dummies again kills the mood entirely.

[linne_zen]

Thank you very much for all the feedback, I will make sure the devs will see them