New update. Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

[DrDarkStorm]

-Everything feels so slow to progress now, cant even get into endless or overlord now due to the new boss system now.
-Dash should have the ability to wrap around walls and objects when dashing towards them and not get some how glued to them
-more abilities and passives are great but without faster leveling up or more rerolls/banish or just give us a bigger selection on level up it makes it way more RNG then i like. And yes i understand the Runes that you can get to help with this a bit-ish.
- Game is beautiful but there is so much going on screen with all the red enemy damage circles everywhere, I feel blind half the time
-minions feel worse and die easier. my poor plague rats don't deserve this
-Damage check hits you harder at times now it seems but with all the extra passives to make your stacks feel stronger, but it honestly makes it feel very bloated and this might be different when you become way higher leveled in the in-game
-fps is definitely worse in certain moments
-so many skills to choose from and I luv it, but due to the slow progress and small selection on level ups, it feels like I have tunnel vision

maybe no one else is having these problems, but since i wanted to wait for the next update since they put out that video on march. 14th I decided to venture out and try a lot more roguelike/lite, bullet hell kind of games and what soulstone is doing is amazing but still very held back on the progress due to the amount that they offer.

-Anyone else have thoughts on this any other Ideas to streamline this?

[BrziKorak]

I tried the new Monkey character with Curse 53. Barely made the trial (11:55) in cycle 0, and used up both death protections by the end of Endless cycle 4.

The gameplay overall does feel slower, though there are some interesting benefits when it comes to buffs like Might being able to proc off attacks. Duration increases or frequency are an easy banish choice now. Getting more levels is very sluggish even with 8-9 stacks of magnetism. The enemy counter stopping completely until the Lords snuff it is a strange choice: I don't particularly love or hate it. The rework of Curse intensity is a major plus, the additional punishments are not boring to me.
The slower pace when getting more levels does hurt the performance of some runes like Divine legacy or Reroll mastery. I'm not sure if Overwhelming chaos is as good as before either. The new stacking feature for enemies and the protagonist is also a mixed bag. Definitely needs some more time to test out properly.

[Killrage]

The first runs were a good experience. So many new talents and you are no longer a one hit to bosses. But playing often is now really annoying. Before you were reaching lvl 300 and now hardly 60 or 70. Too less experience and damage output too low. I played with all curses and it took over 30 min for the first level. Sorry to say that but before it was a fun game and in my opinion the best rougelike to play. Now it is boring and too hard to be fun. You can't try such funny combinations than before...

[Gremlin Yursa]

Originally posted by BrziKorak:

I tried the new Monkey character with Curse 53. Barely made the trial (11:55)

The portal timer has been made 15 minutes now. So you had time to spare

[Paratech2008]

Originally posted by Cutie ♡:

Yeah, it's pretty hard to play a minion build properly now, way too much RNG is involved.

Thanks, So I wasn't the only one struggling with minion based characters.

[NotxEevee]

Originally posted by Gremlin Yursa:

Originally posted by BrziKorak:

I tried the new Monkey character with Curse 53. Barely made the trial (11:55)

The portal timer has been made 15 minutes now. So you had time to spare

FYI : To unlock the Mastery:Earth rune and the Steam achievement "Time Trial - Monkey King", you need to finish a run with the Monkey King under 12min.

[Armorfish]

The game feels less fun. Everything is slow. Maybe I am just getting tired of having to relearn the game over and over again with patches.

I really dislike the upgrades that factor in distance from target. Please remove this upgrade. How is the player to know what distance the target needs to be? Also, this is the last thing you need to worry about as you are trying not to die and dodge the red stuff on the ground. The upgrade just feels terrible because you can't control it nor do you know if it's doing anything.

[taxi83]

Way too many complains about "too much RNG" in a roguelite game. Sense is not found but maybe just me.
Game was not balanced before, you could complete runs with anything you chose and not using the brain once, thats not a nice balance. Now they balanced the game way more and now RNG plays a nice part of the game, which is the core of every roguelite game

[bearcatrock]

If the games are going to last this long there must be a save and resume option. I don't have 4 hours to play in one go.

[Hans]

I managed to get to wave 4 on my first try with Monkey King, but I died horribly at the 23 minute mark and burned through all my extra lives. Enemies damage and attack speed seems to scale faster than before.

I could not dodge or move fast enough and was basically rag-dolled around the map. The lack of levels in comparison to before meant I had way less movement speed. Enemies were still more or less melting, but I died way faster. There was nothing I could do.

So far I have to agree with what others have said, the update doesn't seem to have made anything better, more like a bunch of sidegrades just to end up more or less where we were before.

[WasteOfPaint]

Originally posted by LunarisRuin:

I will never understand balancing > fun mentality in a single player game.

Yeah, it feels like this is where the divide ultimately happens. To me these updates are the epitome of "optimizing the fun out of the game" because I'm just here to feel like an unstoppable freak of nature but obviously for some people doing all the math and optimization IS the fun. So idk, really.

[paugus]

Originally posted by WasteOfPaint:

Originally posted by LunarisRuin:

I will never understand balancing > fun mentality in a single player game.

Yeah, it feels like this is where the divide ultimately happens. To me these updates are the epitome of "optimizing the fun out of the game" because I'm just here to feel like an unstoppable freak of nature but obviously for some people doing all the math and optimization IS the fun. So idk, really.

It's also to do with the replayability of a game. If it's an unbalanced mess where 80% of the available options are crap, it's much harder to enjoy having to go through and theorycraft a bunch of very suboptimal builds that you know will perform badly. Having everything balanced gives more chance of personal exploration and experimentation and ultimately lengthens the longetvity of the game.

[sashaisback]

Originally posted by Gremlin Yursa:

Originally posted by sashaisback:

in every other bullet hell roguelike you will run out of content in 40/50 hours if you are decent at this genre, this game will keep you busy for 200, so how exactly does it do less?
and regarding the patch, game made your character stupidly op before the patch, you could close your eyes and win on curse 48 all the way until overlord 3/4 where it becomes rng fiesta (random snipes from half the map away), now that it takes 1 second to read skills and make your own builds people are complaining.
what exactly is fun to you people when you know you basically cant lose, might aswell remove health bar and just kill stuff, because thats exactly how this game was for last 7/8 months.
And game is still very easy and if it takes long time then you maybe just simply suck

While I say the game isn't hard right now, you are mathematically way weaker in this patch. Only way this patch could have made you stronger is if you REALLY sucked at scaling your damage before. Monsters have almost 2x the HP at curse 48 now and curse 61 is something like 6x the HP. Aswell as have scaling armor and block chance now(had scaling armor before, but was nowhere near as much). Almost every damage rune has been reduced up to 50%, which runes are multiplicative with everything else. Leveling has been reduced by an insane amount, meaning you get way less upgrades overall. Meaning your stats in a match are literally weaker.

It may not be hard, and it may be more balanced. But its not fun, and its not Soulstone Survivors. Even the video showing the game a couple weeks before the alpha, said it feels like a completely new game.

So stop being weird and making up ♥♥♥♥ to defend a game you like. If you enjoy it, then go play it. And stop being weird and boasting how easy the game is for you when people are giving their feedback to the devs.

i am giving feedback aswell, you are countering your own point.
you say its not fun, i say its fun.
the people way complain about stuff is insane, instead of giving good feedback and make their own points proper we get this "i dont like the exp change, game sucks now"
discussions should be filled with "exp gain is slower than before, maybe make a button with fast exp/normal exp/slow exp check" so everyone can enjoy the game how they want. everyone just wants the game to be good for themselves even if it means million more wont like it.
just how curses are made, everyone can choose their own difficulty, some people enjoy curse 0, some 30, some 48.
and again, i dont get how me saying the game is easy is boasting when it simply is. its like saying inscryption is easy, or minecraft. like what is not true about this?
and what did i make up? what about my comment is fake?
maybe you should stop being weird?

[BrziKorak]

Originally posted by NotxEevee:

FYI : To unlock the Mastery:Earth rune and the Steam achievement "Time Trial - Monkey King", you need to finish a run with the Monkey King under 12min.

Yeah, exactly. That was the goal.

[Gremlin Yursa]

Originally posted by sashaisback:

i am giving feedback aswell, you are countering your own point.
you say its not fun, i say its fun.
the people way complain about stuff is insane, instead of giving good feedback and make their own points proper we get this "i dont like the exp change, game sucks now"
discussions should be filled with "exp gain is slower than before, maybe make a button with fast exp/normal exp/slow exp check" so everyone can enjoy the game how they want. everyone just wants the game to be good for themselves even if it means million more wont like it.
just how curses are made, everyone can choose their own difficulty, some people enjoy curse 0, some 30, some 48.
and again, i dont get how me saying the game is easy is boasting when it simply is. its like saying inscryption is easy, or minecraft. like what is not true about this?
and what did i make up? what about my comment is fake?
maybe you should stop being weird?

The point that's made up is you keep saying the update made you stronger. When mathematically it didn't, as I then pointed out in that post. And what your doing is not feedback. Going into every discussion and saying "the game is easy, and all your complaining is dumb" isn't feedback. Where most post just say the new update feels like ♥♥♥♥ to play, which it does. And the devs were told this in the alpha feedback. Also giving solutions for every problem is actually not a good thing. There is a pretty big saying about "people are good at finding a problem, but not the solution"

The problem is the game doesn't feel good anymore. And the way the game feels, trumps any balance. And this update doesn't feel like Soulstone Survivors. The EXP reduction sucks, because building your stats up with powerups was one of the key features of the game. As with how horrible the base stats are now for how long it takes to level. Only compounds the problem. And its pretty much dumb to not just build around the new synergy system. 3 of one kind of skill and 3 of another. Because the synergy powerups give huge amount of stats in comparison. And the new buffs feel like they are meant to replace the loss of powerups. But they don't do enough (unless its finesse, which was even nerfed in the alpha and is still the best)

I even agree with you that the game isn't really that hard. I had everything done 2 hours after the alpha was released. I say its more that its not fun. Before, while yes some builds massively overperformed and were even banned from use in some of the competitive events on the discord by not allowing some skills. There was a swath of skill combination and builds you could put together and just enjoy the game. But instead they pigeonhole you into builds with the new system. I have already decided that I'm not going to play the game until they find a way to fix it. I've already given my feedback directly to the devs.

And side note. You said "everyone just wants the game to be good for themselves even if it means million more wont like it.". Me and you, are the few people while the people complaining ARE the millions. I assume as you said 200 hours that you have everything already completed. Seeing how less than 1% have even gotten a single class to maxed. Which means, balancing the game around people like us, IS ruining it for the millions.

(edit)Anywho, I am done talking with you. As the devs have reverted the update. I really do love this game. Probably a bit too much some of my friends might say. I just want it to be amazing while still being Soulstone Survivors.

[taxi83]

Originally posted by Gremlin Yursa:

Originally posted by sashaisback:

i am giving feedback aswell, you are countering your own point.
you say its not fun, i say its fun.
the people way complain about stuff is insane, instead of giving good feedback and make their own points proper we get this "i dont like the exp change, game sucks now"
discussions should be filled with "exp gain is slower than before, maybe make a button with fast exp/normal exp/slow exp check" so everyone can enjoy the game how they want. everyone just wants the game to be good for themselves even if it means million more wont like it.
just how curses are made, everyone can choose their own difficulty, some people enjoy curse 0, some 30, some 48.
and again, i dont get how me saying the game is easy is boasting when it simply is. its like saying inscryption is easy, or minecraft. like what is not true about this?
and what did i make up? what about my comment is fake?
maybe you should stop being weird?

The point that's made up is you keep saying the update made you stronger. When mathematically it didn't, as I then pointed out in that post. And what your doing is not feedback. Going into every discussion and saying "the game is easy, and all your complaining is dumb" isn't feedback. Where most post just say the new update feels like ♥♥♥♥ to play, which it does. And the devs were told this in the alpha feedback. Also giving solutions for every problem is actually not a good thing. There is a pretty big saying about "people are good at finding a problem, but not the solution"

The problem is the game doesn't feel good anymore. And the way the game feels, trumps any balance. And this update doesn't feel like Soulstone Survivors. The EXP reduction sucks, because building your stats up with powerups was one of the key features of the game. As with how horrible the base stats are now for how long it takes to level. Only compounds the problem. And its pretty much dumb to not just build around the new synergy system. 3 of one kind of skill and 3 of another. Because the synergy powerups give huge amount of stats in comparison. And the new buffs feel like they are meant to replace the loss of powerups. But they don't do enough (unless its finesse, which was even nerfed in the alpha and is still the best)

I even agree with you that the game isn't really that hard. I had everything done 2 hours after the alpha was released. I say its more that its not fun. Before, while yes some builds massively overperformed and were even banned from use in some of the competitive events on the discord by not allowing some skills. There was a swath of skill combination and builds you could put together and just enjoy the game. But instead they pigeonhole you into builds with the new system. I have already decided that I'm not going to play the game until they find a way to fix it. I've already given my feedback directly to the devs.

And side note. You said "everyone just wants the game to be good for themselves even if it means million more wont like it.". Me and you, are the few people while the people complaining ARE the millions. I assume as you said 200 hours that you have everything already completed. Seeing how less than 1% have even gotten a single class to maxed. Which means, balancing the game around people like us, IS ruining it for the millions.

(edit)Anywho, I am done talking with you. As the devs have reverted the update. I really do love this game. Probably a bit too much some of my friends might say. I just want it to be amazing while still being Soulstone Survivors.

there are stuff like exp reduction which sucks but at least we got a revamp of old abilities+new abilities implemented in the game, so even if game might feel different from before I think this new abilities is a nice thing to play and expermient while we adapt to the new game. For some people is better for some is worse, but at least we get variety now and that excitement of finding the new sinergies and builds, that alone is enough for me to keep playing but I understand the frustration of some people