Anyone Else Not Huge on the Progression System?

[gen3king]

After beating the game I am not a big fan of it, granted I played as a mage so maybe they are just an outlier but you get 16 main skills, can upgrade special moves and after that... eh? Can't raise your base stats higher, all you can do is boost borderline worthless item gains and elemental defense which is rarely helpful (the only useful one being spooky defense for the final boss). Sure you can boost meat gain but like, meat for WHAT? You can buy some decent items for your room sometimes and rings but usually each area has weapons at a set power and just differing elements. So you get one weapon fairly quick in an area since elements are not really vital and even if they were you can't change weapons mid fight so ya couldn't really act on it. The risk of death isn't scary since it is easy to clear debuffs and you usually get BUFFS for losing, which on paper is fine but there's very little tension, and with all this plus skills not scaling at all with stats, combat boils down to spam damage and ap so you can sweep enemies in one turn or failing that stack HP and whatever element you need (which will only be spooky cause you can kill everything else in one hit), and gather a bunch of weak useless items. This kinda made combat and rewards feel unrewarding and tedious save for the occasional perk, but aside from that, none of it was useful.

Am I misunderstanding the progression? Did I miss books that boost your base stats? What do you all think?

[Sammun Mak]

The progression system is one of my biggest complaint about this game. In the first game you were excited to go everywhere because there was so much good stuff to spend XP on, meat was harder to gather, AND there were interesting skills or items EVERYWHERE. No matter where you went it was interesting and exciting.

In this game progression is much more straightforward so the only reason I cared about exploring new areas was quest completion. I ran out of stuff to spend XP on really early so getting into fights just became annoying.

[littlegeek]

Unfortunately you are right. They gutted what for West of Loathing was a decently fun and rewarding progression and skill/ability system (albeit unbalanced during endgame in the player's favor) into an unfulfilling experience with less class identity, build customizability, and in-battle strategy.

[PKPenguin]

It could be made longer for sure, but I think for the sake of balancing puzzles that had stat checks it worked pretty well. Carefully setting smaller numbers let the devs fine tune a lot of situations a lot better, whereas in WoL it was kind of easy to get overlevelled and crush everything forever in and out of combat.

[leafy loaf]

well, considering the gameplay is a lot more invested in the player's stats it makes sense they went with kingdom of rouging instead of west of loathing for the stat system so you dont just grind yourself into beasthood in the first area(like i always do in wol)

[gen3king]

Originally posted by PKPenguin:

It could be made longer for sure, but I think for the sake of balancing puzzles that had stat checks it worked pretty well. Carefully setting smaller numbers let the devs fine tune a lot of situations a lot better, whereas in WoL it was kind of easy to get overlevelled and crush everything forever in and out of combat.

I think that's fine and all but it does beg the question, puzzles or character progression and the like.

Preferring puzzles is valid but I prefer the RPG aspects.

Also I ended up overpowered anywho and could brute force most puzzles with stats by the university so, that kinda falls apart if ya focus on doing most of the content.

[gen3king]

Originally posted by leafy loaf:

well, considering the gameplay is a lot more invested in the player's stats it makes sense they went with kingdom of rouging instead of west of loathing for the stat system so you dont just grind yourself into beasthood in the first area(like i always do in wol)

I find that hard mode is very fun in WoL if ya do a one day run cause there's real tension and limited resources.

Really my fav way to play the game is one day runs

[leafy loaf]

Originally posted by gen3king:

Originally posted by leafy loaf:

well, considering the gameplay is a lot more invested in the player's stats it makes sense they went with kingdom of rouging instead of west of loathing for the stat system so you dont just grind yourself into beasthood in the first area(like i always do in wol)

I find that hard mode is very fun in WoL if ya do a one day run cause there's real tension and limited resources.

Really my fav way to play the game is one day runs

i must confess i do hardmode too but not because of tension or anything, i just habitually grind in these sorts of games and the hat tells me when to stop and move on

[gen3king]

Originally posted by leafy loaf:

Originally posted by gen3king:

I find that hard mode is very fun in WoL if ya do a one day run cause there's real tension and limited resources.

Really my fav way to play the game is one day runs

i must confess i do hardmode too but not because of tension or anything, i just habitually grind in these sorts of games and the hat tells me when to stop and move on

Same

[Pyro Clown]

I mainly just find it limited, espically with the basic perks
I'd rather the basic perks allow you to keep leveling up a stat for increasing amounts like in WoL
Instead of stopping completely after you get all 3 perks for one of the Main Stats

[gen3king]

Originally posted by Pyro Clown:

I mainly just find it limited, espically with the basic perks
I'd rather the basic perks allow you to keep leveling up a stat for increasing amounts like in WoL
Instead of stopping completely after you get all 3 perks for one of the Main Stats

This exactly this.

Also since only your main attack sales with base stats +1 to a base stat and +1 to damage are the same save for skill checks.

[Bewul]

I agree all classes end up very samey. I am fine wiht limited stat points but, honestly the classes feel just cosmethic after the first couple levels, since most skills never 'scale' (by which I mean, they are not affected by your stats at all) and all. Even the gathering skill, it does have a couple uses on some quests/encounters, but otherwise, you still get the same components from it.

[entite]

yeah build variety definitely took a huge hit in this game

[Garden System]

I don't mind it but I do wish the class skills felt more useful. My first playthrough was pig skinner and I only used about 4 skills, two of those only unlocking at the end of the game. Hot foot only because I never used a non-physical weapon, cheerlead because my companion was my only source of field wide damage. Then at the end it all devolved because of stretch and wind up letting me literally one shot the final boss.

The fact the rest didn't really scale sucked. 3 damage to the field one time, 5~ burning, like 7 I think physical damage, healing I never needed, and 3-5 damage with low stat lowering I also never needed. I think in the secret super boss I used noogie a lot, but that was the only fight I ever used it in. While there were rings to... Slightly help, compared to 'Second you' and 'Buff everyone' it didn't really seem worth it.

[Clown Reemus]

One way to balance this better is to make encounters one-time only. It really breaks immersion (if you have any) if you can revisit the same event 10 times and get awarded every time. I would definitely appreciate a more serious approach to events here.

[khetrak]

i play as a jazz character and never feel like moxia was my main status or even necessary, it feel like i could just use a mystical weapon with mystical gear and everything would work just as fine.

only 1 skill really worked with moxia, the one that gives you 5 extra but even that didn't mater since there is a ring that make it gives +5 for every status. aside from that i think every skill i got up to chapter 4 were all unaffected by my status.
they also scale like ♥♥♥♥, 7 dmg, 3 every turn, 5 dmg with a debuff, its all useless after chapter 3. the only dmg skill i got with some sort of scaling was one that did dmg based on the enemy moxia.

hell my main way to kill random mobs is using mystical, i use the ring to make the buff be all status, spend 4 ap getting +20 mystical then use a offhand weapon that does mystical dmg aoe.