Suggestions: A Thread.

[WettyMcPants]

So I'm a bit under 20 hours (I suspect I'll hit 27+ before the day is done ;) )

Love the game, and nearly everything about it.. but I had some observations for future updates.

In my opinion, obviously, the bugs should be worked out first, but once that is done I hope to see these things on a roadmap at some point and in no particular order.

• Cauldron/Barrel/Shelf Upgrades - Please, please, please.. Let me upgrade my stuff without un-slotting them. I understand if you don't wanna let me upgrade them while they're brewing, which I think is fair, but I lost so much time unnecessarily because I went to go upgrade them but forgot to replace them with a different cauldron so they would be in my inventory to go upgrade them. It wouldn't be such a big deal if I could travel and shop for 1 time slot only, but in every case it ended up using 2--so I traveled (lost 1 unit) went into Muktuk's shop, simply looked at the upgrade options and saw there weren't any and remembered I forgot to bring them with me so I went back and lost another time slot. I understand somewhat logically that it takes time to travel there and travel back, but I think this is a situation where ignoring the logic improves gameplay.
  
  
• Romance Rewards - Romance-specific Ultra-Rare cards/Rewards
  I would really like to see special OP cards come from dating certain characters that double down on their strategy. This is a minor desire, though... Or it would be great if you unlocked something cosmetic even, such as getting an ingredient you can only get from romancing them (as a gift from them) or special equipment, or even a cosmetic thing like maybe your potions display in fancier bottles giving them a boost.
  
  
• Endless Mode/Sandbox Mode/New Game+ - I am echoing the same sentiments of a lot of people here. I am dreading completing the game because I know it is basically going to be over. Hopefully, in a future update as a higher priority, there will be an opportunity to explore the rest of the character's stories, build and upgrade our shop further, etc.
  
  I've done pretty well so far, just trounced the Swarmy fella... While I appreciate the pressure of having to make playthrough-altering decisions to focus on the competition or relationships and budgeting your time--when the pressure is finally off I hope to be able to learn more about them. You all did actually a great job on the characters in my opinion, both in their looks and dialogue.. it is a shame I won't learn everything about all of them eventually.
  
  
• Non-Romantic Dialogue - Better non-flirt dialogue options. It felt weird that it always felt like the best relationship-boosting dialogue option was the flirt when it was available. Once I picked my partner it felt bad having to flirt to progress the relationship optimally, because when I didn't choose the flirt option I got a single star boost, unless the heart doesn't add relationship value but it definitely appears to.
  
  
• Cauldrons - Cauldrons become obsolete too fast... This isn't to say they shouldn't, but I wish I had a way to recycle them or get some value from them once I move on. Same thing for aging barrels.
  
  
• Aging Barrels - I would also like to see maybe certain aging barrels, or maybe you upgrade aging barrels and they can add positive traits and/or remove negative traits. I.E. Upgrading Barrel X gives a +1 to trait Y, so if it has that as a negative trait it removes it to neutral, and if it starts as neutral then it gains that trait. I found that fulfilling requests was incredibly difficult and almost not worth the effort when they required traits and I think this could alleviate some of that.
  
  Small P.S. it was weird I could upgrade my barrel storage before I could use barrels.
  
  
• Stress Mechanic - As a millennial, I am all too familiar with stress and its escalation. The stress mechanic (while as a concept is great, I think, in this type of game especially) escalates and spirals out of control exponentially faster and faster without many great ways of mitigating it. There were multiple occasions I passed on wanting to open my shop because even 10% stress can easily become 50-60%+ and this was regardless of the strategy I used. I think you could mitigate this with perhaps some innate buffs either as friendship rewards, rewards for winning the contests, or perhaps as a scaling benefit based on recipe completion such as brewing each potion rank at max stars confers some small but meaningful benefit. Like, if you do it for health potions say you start the haggling session with 1, 2, 4, 8 defense or something. I think getting it to max stars without going to the next rank helps make it non-trivial to do and complete.
  
  
• Heroes! - This is probably my biggest complaint and biggest request for remediation: When you get a new adventurer, regardless of their level, they feel like a waste to use unless you're swimming in gold and mana/health potions. Xid just outclasses Mint by leaps and bounds, and likewise for Corsac. Perhaps adding an 'experience' or 'upgrade' potion of some sort with a really difficult or specific recipe would be a good way to address this and allow us to continue using our favorites even if they aren't our latest and greatest option originally. It also feels like their level-ups are really inconsequential and perhaps that is the root of the problem since the others start out almost double the level of their predecessors.
  
  
• Traveling/Time Increments] - Traveling feels kind of bad, as you can inadvertently use two-time slots without accomplishing anything. For instance, the story about my experience upgrading in the first bullet point. It just doesn't feel good and makes it harder to spend time with NPCs.
  
  The more specific request regarding time increments that I have is that give us a single time slot sink in the potion shop, maybe something like 'self-care' where I take a bath and reduce stress and/or maybe 'gather local ingredients' where I can get some small benefit while passing a small amount of time as it stands there is no other way to pass a single unit of time that I've come across (even traveling uses one slot to embark and another to return if you go anywhere unless my eyes have deceived me) or maybe even a 'pep talk' or 'practice haggling' in a mirror that confers some small but meaningful benefit when I open the shop next. I'd even take 'send a letter' to get a single point of relationship increase to an NPC friend of my choice. The point is, Let us burn a single slot easily from the shop, please, definitely at least in a way that allows us to reduce stress without going to bed early and wasting the day or traveling to do a hang out that is really expensive for the minimal stress decrease. I am okay with the trade-offs of the hang-out as long as I have another way to decrease stress to even a small degree in a way that is more efficient but doesn't get me all the extra benefits of hangouts.

For other people who like the game, I'd like to hear your thoughts, and feel free to improve upon them and add to my ideas. Not as interested in the 'this game is bad' rhetoric from the people who expected a different game, however. Which isn't to say I think the game is perfect (obviously, considering the critiques of my post) but nearly all the most critical discussions I've seen about the game sprout from a misunderstanding of what this game IS (in my opinion, of course).

[Cube-o]

One feature I would like to see is the ability to save recipes and be able to reffer to them when shopping. I don't want to use tools outside the game just so I can remember how I created that T4 potion.
On one hand, I do get it helps with more experimentation, but if I am brewing 3 cauldrons, 3 times a day, I would love to be able to use a recipe if I have the ingredients

[oeso0621]

Later heroes have smaller bag. Mint has 25, Xid has 20, and the third has 15.

[Stephan]

I would like to be able to see upgrades for cauldrons/shelfs, before you buy them.
And also the resources you need.

Better sorting of ingridiens in **every** inventory, The shop, your bag, while brewing potions.
Its so hard to just find specific resources and that they "resort" once they are empty or you pick up a stack with the size of 1 and it moves to the end in your inventory, super annyoing.

[formbextron]

This is a great run down of some issues I had as well. I feel as long as the cauldrons/shelves back at my shop are empty, I should be able to upgrade them without swapping them out beforehand (and inevitably forgetting to do so before I head out), and getting to sell or completely recraft them would help with the feeling of losing money once I've bought the newest cauldron.

Stress gets out of hand very easily once you hit 10-20%. Felt like I was getting more stress cards than regular ones and from there it's a death spiral. This wasn't much of a problem until the final boss, admittedly. Some tuning here would go a long way.

Mint became a bit obsolete once I had Xid and Corsac, maybe giving them their own unique buffs that can work with or against your current stock of potions might help?

And agreed that the characters are much too good to simply cut all ties with after the final boss! Really hoping Voracious can find the scope to make a post-game/open play mode, I just wanna hang out with the amazing cast more.

[djheat]

Even if they don't want you upgrading installed equipment because it might be janky with moving placed potions or dealing with already brewing stuff, at the very least they should show you the upgrade and gray the object out. It's nuts that you need to uninstall stuff just to go find out you don't have the required materials. I've just been saving before I try to upgrade anything but it's a workaround I shouldn't need to be doing. On a similar note it'd be nice if you could access adventure track maps from your book without having to travel to see them, I've also been saving before I go to send heroes out just in case I forget you need a drowsiness potion for whatever place I'm trying to farm

[GalaxySavageZ]

I agree with everything you’ve said! Personally, a couple of things I would like to see is a recipe book for ingredients you’ve bought, some sort of indication on whether the ingredients are already in Quinn’s shop, sorting in Quinn shop based on type, being able to see custom request while traveling, more romance options(they already have the rest of the bosses they can use), friends/romance partners vist the shop randomly and you can talk to them to reduce stress/increase relationship with them, and lastly maybe maybe different clothes for our character either the chibi version or 3D version. I know this is a indie game so if they needed to make a dlc that you have to pay for bigger changes like these I would be happy to pay.

[HellSlayer]

So much complaining...

so you want the muktuk to just upgrade your pot DURING BREWING period. That doesnt make any sense.

This game is about managing your daily activities.. stop whinning..

ALL YOUR COMPLAINS ARE JUST NERFING THE GAME.

There is not a single request that makes game harder.. everything is about extreme nerfs.

[djheat]

Imagine coming into "Suggestions: A Thread" to complain about people making suggestions

[HellSlayer]

Originally posted by djheat:

Imagine coming into "Suggestions: A Thread" to complain about people making suggestions

Its just nerfs.. imagine not wanting the game to be simplified - its too late the devs already mentioned to nerf the game.. I guess you won!

[djheat]

You think it would be nerfing the game to know muktuk needs 6 pig anuses to upgrade my shelf without having to uninstall it and drag it to him? Better inventory sorting and more non-romantic dialogue? These are "extreme nerfs" to you?

[Jopika]

Just adding some of my thoughts as well regarding inventory management and sorting from here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1874490/discussions/0/3493130356487939336/

Originally posted by Jopika:

<snip>

1. Negative filtering
Sometimes you want to look for all ingredients that give Red/Type A Magimin, but no Green/Type B. Being able to right click or click again to "negative filter" these items out would be useful.

2. Inventory sorting
This would be useful to sort base on some kind of heuristic. The simplest would be from lowest to highest total magimin, (perhaps even a drop down on different sorting options).

As of right now, ingredients start getting really disorganized as you collect more.

Additionally, potion sorting & grouping would be super useful! At least having all the Health potions next to each other would be great.

[AdvancedWind]

Originally posted by HellSlayer:

So much complaining...

so you want the muktuk to just upgrade your pot DURING BREWING period. That doesnt make any sense.

This game is about managing your daily activities.. stop whinning..

ALL YOUR COMPLAINS ARE JUST NERFING THE GAME.

There is not a single request that makes game harder.. everything is about extreme nerfs.

Put an alert: Are you sure you want to upgrade this cauldron? Your current brew will be CANCELLED. Yes No.

Now there's still a cost (you lose the current brew) , but the game won't stop you. A game shouldn't be hard because of stupid quality of life issues such as this. You can't even see the price of an upgrade without removing the cauldron. That's not "difficulty", that's straight up bad design, for a game that's otherwise great. It's downright stupid I have to save, cancel brew, unequip and visit muktuk just to *check upgrade prices*.

[HellSlayer]

Originally posted by AdvancedWind:

Originally posted by HellSlayer:

So much complaining...

so you want the muktuk to just upgrade your pot DURING BREWING period. That doesnt make any sense.

This game is about managing your daily activities.. stop whinning..

ALL YOUR COMPLAINS ARE JUST NERFING THE GAME.

There is not a single request that makes game harder.. everything is about extreme nerfs.

Put an alert: Are you sure you want to upgrade this cauldron? Your current brew will be CANCELLED. Yes No.

Now there's still a cost (you lose the current brew) , but the game won't stop you. A game shouldn't be hard because of stupid quality of life issues such as this. You can't even see the price of an upgrade without removing the cauldron. That's not "difficulty", that's straight up bad design, for a game that's otherwise great. It's downright stupid I have to save, cancel brew, unequip and visit muktuk just to *check upgrade prices*.

Just write the upgrade things on paper.. The way i understand is muktuk so busy that you transport your cauldron to him, where he upgrades it. So you cant just magically carry boiling cauldron. And muktuk isnt a pizzaboy like Fray from futurama - he doesnt just go around randomly.

I guess some improvements maybe can be made but will it clutter the UI? yes it will.

The ui is amazing but its already loaded. And people want more things that will overload ui.