Some feedback

[Bearis]

My biggest gripe with this game so far is how important weapons are for doing damage combined with how random and varied the power level of weapons are. Getting a good weapon can make or break the ease of your run especially since later enemies have massive health pools, while i'm sure you could get by with perfect dodging and trash damage that's not really fun or how most people would want to play. This is combined with how random the power level of weapons feel and how bad the stat screen of weapons is at telling you their power level. I've had multiple runs where i got Morning star in stage 1-3 and could never find another weapon that did more damage than it despite picking up multipe weapons with S scaling in strength like Zweihander, Big chomper, some axe i don't remember They all had S scaling and they all we're weaker than my B scaling morning star i had from the start. Scaling doesn't seem as important as the combination of what stats a weapon has as well as how it actually functions so its just really unclear whats supposed to be a giga rare weapon that owns are whats just op for no reason. I think adding clear rarities as well as balancing those rarities will make it easier to tell whats actually a good weapon or not because it really just feels random right now despite how important having a good weapon is. I don't think I've opened a single dragonslayer chest where I actually ended up using the weapon, they've all been disappointing and weaker than some random weapon I got that's slaughtering everything like morning star or harp. So yeah weapons could definitely use some looking into. I also think it would be nice if gear/levels were a bit more impactful because outside of the ones that give you perma potions/infusions they aren't going to make the difference a good weapon does.

The next issue I have is that Int is useless unless you use a magic weapon and also the best stat. Again doing damage to lower the time you have to dodge the final bosses patterns is way better than say extra dodges or hp its really not comparable so int giving you bonus damage through mana is just really good compared to the other two. On the flip side if you aren't using a magic weapon its a useless stat so feels kind of weird.

Lastly a couple things I noticed. Some bosses are way harder than their counter part on the same stage. Red dragon/succubus are on par with normal death and make the other boss of their stages look like a joke. The sphinx is also pretty pathetic. Some laser attacks can feel a bit cheap because of how fast they come out like the pheonix egg attack. I also had an Arcane modifier laser spawn on the door and instant hit me which isn't fun. Also If you get enough buffs it starts going into your gold and you also can't scroll the buff list to see everything you have.

[RubyDev]

Thanks for the feedback!

I noted down some stuff.

[Bearis]

So after beating mega death at least once with each stat I would like to provide some more feedback. First he just has way too much health, you could have a build that's killing floor 10 rooms before any enemy gets to attack still take 5+ cycles to kill mega death. Second his soul storm attack might as well do nothing its a free dps phase and not an attack.

Next I would like to use my last three runs as an example for the problem of weapon/stat balance in this game. First run I went full strength on adventurer. I had perma tipsy upgrade with 10 stacks, strength proficiency upgrade, 30+ strength as well as Sun Vortex a weapon with S+ strength scaling and the best strength weapon I've seen. my max hit was 9k with a crit and it took me over 5+ cycles to kill mega death. My build was pretty stacked and it still felt pathetic compared to an int build and took a long while to kill the final boss.

Next I did a run as sorcerer to make sure I wasn't going crazy and int is broken like i think and yeah, I ended up with Archon Scepter and my max damage was a 20k crit not to mention my attack speed was higher, I also had more health 13 soul hearts compared to 10 normal (not including armor). I ended up killing mega death half way through his second cycle the damage wasn't even comparable.

Next a Thief run where I got perma infusion and a Storm Cloud. Again it took me over 5+ cycles and my damage was quite poor. The run was still easier though since I could dodge spam.

Killing enemies before they attack/in less cycles (int) > dodging attacks (dex) > armor > soul hearts > health (strength). Health can be reduced by curse. Health doesn't block debuffs. Its easier to restore armor than it is health. There's less strength weapons you could enter a weapon room and have your melee slot taken by a pure dex weapon which feels kind of trash. Strength weapons are pretty trash but so are dex ones. It really just feels like everything is stacked against strength and in the favor of int in this game.

Now I wanna talk about weapons a bit more. The problem with scaling is that it can't make a trash weapon good since enemies also scale. In the run mentioned above I got an Echoying Fury early on and its damage was pathetic despite having a 20 strength. It was so bad that a Bone Wand I got was out performing it despite having 4 int. Scaling/stats just cannot make a bad weapon good in the current version of the game base stats/how the weapon functions are everything. Weapons are also everything, yes gear like paladin armor or kitsune mask are quite good but they will not make the difference of a weapon. Additionally most characters have such good starting gear and gear/weapon drops are so random that there isn't much point risking a room/boss on gear when you could go for weapons since getting a good one is just massive. For example the Sorcerer starting gear might as well be BIS for int offense so you'd rather do everything you can to get a weapon that actually does something instead of minor gear upgrades. And that's another thing this game is just full of useless weapons and a couple good ones so you really need to take every chance you can for a weapon roll.

So yeah nerfs to int buffs to str/dex. Nerf death/mega deaths hp by a lot then nerf the upper limits of damage because as it stands right now you have to obliterate floor 10 to do decent damage against them which feels eh. I would also like to see more/all weapons have alternate skills like archon staff and perhaps have mana play into that instead of damage this would not only be a nerf to int but also make mana useful if you aren't using a magic weapon. Tipsy should also cost more but be permanent without a level ability since it's already limited by hearts and hearts/str already suck and it would add more gold sinks so.

Oh and inferior weapons are awful.

[Stanis23]

I think the point of Int is it being too strong or too weak at the same time. If you play magic chars it's a double dip (you get int weapon value and mana scaling on top), if you don't then int is basically useless as normal weapons don't even use mana so even if you gain 10 int it gives you nothing. Honestly giving other weapons having mana scaling would fix it a bit (even if it's just 1 mana), and make rooms like break to get +mana more useful.

Though yeah melee weapons definitely need some buffs to compensate on how dangerous they are to use.

As for weapon tier I think it's hard to quantify because of preference. Think some people really like the poison bleed snake wand but I find the projectile god awful to use and aim. (unless it's those weapons just are objectively broken like the Amaterasu one)

[Steelz Cloud]

I agree with almost all things Faris has to say if not all. Good feedback.

[RubyDev]

The game actually wants to go a bit into the direction of Souls games and how they balance different archetypes. Melee doesn't need buffs because it is meant to be more difficult than ranged. I will never really try to balance everything super mega even because after all it is a roguelite and you can just go challenge yourself trying different builds and characters, obviously a Ranger run is much much easier than for example a Deprived run, but I have no intentions on changing that.

I read all the feedback too, thanks <3 !

[Bearis]

Well to me the problem is less that melee is bad and int is good but more that it's bothersome to spend 5+ cycles on megadeath and do chip damage to him when I could just pick int and kill him in 1 and a half cycles. Or having less weapon options and having melee slots taken by dex weapons. Or being punished by debuffs for using hearts and also having hearts be harder to restore. It feels frustrating to choose something in a game that has no real benefits. I don't think stats should be part of a self imposed challenge but rather player expression, there should be at least some benefit for focusing on strength. For example I'm not choosing to pick the broken sword gift i'm choosing one of the three main stats to explore with but it's just very lacking and frustrating compared to int it might as well be akin to the broken sword.

The problem is less what's good and bad and more that it leads to a frustrating player experience. There's no reason to pick strength besides you want to it has no benefits or strengths, in fact it comes with many draw backs that can lower enjoyment. The player is essentially being punished for experimenting. The amount of bad weapons that just don't do any dps also leads to a similar feeling of frustration. Finding one of the few weapons in the game that will let you kill mega death in a reasonable time and having it be inferior also frustrating. And the final boss having such a large amount of hp compared to the same enemies on his floor so you need to be killing everything before they can attack to have the dps for him is disappointing. I am pointing these things out less because of imbalance and more because I find they lower my experience with the game and make it feel like the only way to have a reasonable kill time against the final boss is to go int. There's a lot of cool weapons or upgrades that I'd want to use but can't without gimping myself is my point really, I wanna be able to use these things but just know they are so weak it isn't worth the effort. Having a final boss with an extremely bloated health pool and having 90% of the weapons and two of the three main stats be unable to do the dps required to kill that health pool in a reasonable time frame just leads to a frustrating player experience. As a player I want to be able to explore AND enjoy what the game has to offer in terms of weapons, stats, play styles without feeling like I'm gimping myself for doing so,

[BountyHunter(BH)]

I think something to be noted here is that mega death is very deliberately an optional boss. The other note is that there is still plenty of balancing to happen in the future. While strength builds may be objectively worse at this point, the additional challenge to make a strength build work anyway can be fun. And if worse comes to worse you can always skip the pillar on floor 9. I've had a cleaver run take ages to beat mega death, but that's fair considering that the game is currently balanced to not have a damage cap, and the upper limit of damage is very high in the game currently. I've had an int built proc 172k damage a second on mega death. If I were to assume he probably has somewhere between 2-4 million health

[Steelz Cloud]

Originally posted by BountyHunter(BH):

I think something to be noted here is that mega death is very deliberately an optional boss. The other note is that there is still plenty of balancing to happen in the future. While strength builds may be objectively worse at this point, the additional challenge to make a strength build work anyway can be fun. And if worse comes to worse you can always skip the pillar on floor 9. I've had a cleaver run take ages to beat mega death, but that's fair considering that the game is currently balanced to not have a damage cap, and the upper limit of damage is very high in the game currently. I've had an int built proc 172k damage a second on mega death. If I were to assume he probably has somewhere between 2-4 million health

Sadly cleaver getting nerfed apparently

[RubyDev]

It's already nerfed on my local machine, hehe! Don't worry, there are some other big buffs coming and nerfing it opens up design space for maybe more bleed traits in the future.

[Ragna]

Well not every play-style has to be equally balanced, there has to be SOME merit/coolness factor to playing other play-styles. In dark souls something like magic might be better but it isn't 5x better. Melee also has really cool weapons/mechanics/abilities/etc that only they can do. With certain fights being easier in melee vs ranged.

Also death/mega death might just be a taste thing. Your better off adding more bosses like other roguelikes/binding of issac to add to the ceiling of challenging option bosses.

Like death/mega death and then uber death or something. Then you can fight 4 archangels, the holy one, etc.

When the only option for an final boss is drastically harder then the content before it, a lot of players feel like the journey there doesn't really matter. Since you basically have to stomp the game to be able to even win.

[full stamina gaming]

Originally posted by RubyDev:

Melee doesn't need buffs because it is meant to be more difficult than ranged.

Why? What's the point? Melee is already inherently much riskier due to its range limitations. Why also make it weaker than ranged?

[BountyHunter(BH)]

Originally posted by RubyDev:

It's already nerfed on my local machine, hehe! Don't worry, there are some other big buffs coming and nerfing it opens up design space for maybe more bleed traits in the future.

Perfectly fine with it being nerfed in the process of balancing other mechanics appropriately. I happened to stumble across the perk that makes maces and flails bleed, and that led to a pretty fun mega death kill using the S scaling mace that makes enemies explode. Really fun perk. That being said dot builds are easily the strongest in the games current state, I've had an ideal sorcerer run do 172k damage procs every second against mega death.

[McGarnagle]

i think it's great as is
pigeon hat and kimono for the win

[Bearis]

So the issue I have with the game was never something is strong and something is weak. That's unavoidable and in every game. My problem is that the imbalance is so large it lowers my enjoyment of the game to the point where I don't plan on putting anymore time into it. I will try to sum up why I feel this way.

1. The gap between whats weak and whats strong is exceptionally large.
2. The majority of the weapons fall into the weak category.
3. The final boss has a large enough health pool to incentivize using weapons in the strong catagory.
4. The combat is more on the simplistic side so there isn't enough of a game play hook to justify using something bad.

These issues combined create a very unfun player experience at least to me. I open a dragonslayer chest get an echoying fury and think wow what an absolutely useless weapon and don't even pick it up, and that's how I react to most weapons. I don't see the point in using a weapon I know is bad when every weapon in the game just requires you to aim in the general direction of the enemy, there isn't a large difference in gameplay between a good and bad weapon so why bother with the bad ones? All it does is make the already tedious final boss more tedious, I'm sorry but I just do not wanna spend 7 cycles on a single boss that has like 4 moves. To me this game is at it's most fun when I see 2-3 boss cycles and 1-3 enemy attacks. Too many attacks and I get bored because it takes too long, too little and it feels like I'm not playing the game. With the way the game is currently balanced its very likely you will be experiencing one of those two situations. You kill everything instantly because you got a good weapon that can kill the final boss in a reasonable time frame, or you're slugging by with one of the many MANY bad weapons in the game. This is just how I personally feel about the current state of balance and am just trying to express how it makes it unenjoyable for me.

[BountyHunter(BH)]

I can agree that at least with the current balance of the game being built entirely around the end boss, having exceptional single target dps is the meta. That being said, the dev has said that they've got ideas of how they want to balance the game in the future. If I were to assume, while the final boss will still be the final boss, the individual levels and floor bosses will become more appropriately balanced, so that there's a smoother ramp in difficulty, instead of a mountain at the end. Keeping that in mind, I'd assume that weapon nerfs and buffs will happen appropriately, alongside the addition of more weapons, which may help make strength builds more viable/fun, as well as adding variety in general. If rooms become more difficult, it may also give more insentive to use/keep weapons that have better room clearing ability but worse boss dps.