Act 3 feedback

[Gwyn]

Some act 3 feedback

About the negativity.

- darkness for lower acts should be avaliable without the need to beat act3. People need to farm their tier 2 items for act 3 somewhere.
- to start properly farming tier 3 items, you need to be able to beat act3 d30. But it was too hard to do with tier 2 items (idk if patch fixed it yet). So many people just stuck and that's, imo, the main reason for frustration and negative reviews.

And so, out of frustration, some players attempt to rationalize thier dissatisfaction and start to just hate on all new mechanics. I saw some threads talking about "we players want this or that", but in reality it's just one person's opinion and not what all players want. Players are different. I just hope, that devs wouldn't rush to "fix reviews" based on first opinions. For instance, I really liked some things, that were "fixed" in new patch:
1) Dense forest. For character getting stuck in trees, while I agree, that could be annoying, I wish, trees got smaller collision boxes or some of them getting no collision boxes at all, or any other fix. Because I really liked, how dense that forest was. It had it's distinction, compared to other acts, and now it looks a bit more similar to act 1. Also some people were saying, that Darkmoor is too dark, but I really like, how gloomy it is.
2) charm removal. I really liked that mechanic. Instead of completely removing charm, it should be:
- lower time for charm effect and make it a chance % to be charmed with "charm immune" cooldown after charm ended
- your own summons can't deal more, than some (3-5?)% of your max hp per hit (to prevent being one-shoted by your own summons).
- add some blessings, that cleanse debuffs from your characters and summons. For example, Summer's "incineration" (which is still pretty bad blessing) could have in addition - cleanse one debuff from you and your summons every x seconds. And Time could have a blessing, that lowers debuffs duration. It could be interesting, if some shrines also had strong buffs+debuffs, but you could lower/cleanse them with blessings, making it more strategic, if you want to pick those shrines or not.
3) Druid "feast" nerf. It's ok, but I kinda don't get it. Almost all characters had/have op builds/talents, like Kront one-shoting everything at d100 with stomp, while being tanky; or immortal "max" level Avaron. Meris and Lorein are glass cannons, who had range and could cover the whole screen with casts/strikes dealing crazy damage. The only character, who always was "just ok" was Skadi. Druid doesn't have any crazy damage scaling talents, her life regen was probably the only really strong thing for her. Yet just few days Druid is released and people start smirking "oh, that feast will be nerfed". And now devs nerfed it... If any class should have op health regen it should be Druid, isn't it?

About things I liked.

Overall, Act 3 is my favorite update. Really like enemy design and location. The Lady is my favorite boss in the game so far. Water blessings are really fun, but lack of passives. Also, I wish there were more strikes that benefit from strike count, like Time's missiles. I like how Fates was reworked, and "favored god" blessings are really helpful. I like summons having hp bars, but their hp was too low. Also I wish summons tried to stay near character more.

Druid is very fun and here some feedback for her tree:
- Hunger talent hp drain nerfed. I think, previously it was just bugged or something? Because it was very inconsistent, draining like 1hp at the the start of the run, but in the middle of run, draining 1000 hp bear in few seconds and then draining hp rapidly as soon, as character is above hp threshold, leaving my bear with like 30 hp left after "overdrain". But I don't like, how it works after the patch. The main appeal of that talent to me was making consistent "Berserk" status build. And now hp drain is so slow, my druid is almost never at below 30% max hp. Now it's just boring hp regen talent, where you ignore dp drain part. Maybe istead oh flat hp drain it could drain max hp %, to help berserk builds stay under 30% hp?
- "Sanguine indulgence". Feels underwhelming and bugged? Idk, what the point of hp restoration, since bosses drop health items anyway. During act 3 runs in stat screen it shows, as if I got Prime damage boost only once, after defeating tree miniboss. Why it doesn't count the frog? +15% damage for the last boss seems like waay too small benefit for the last talent.
- everything else in talent tree is ok. But I wish there were more "talent lines". For summon build maybe.

I may add something later, but that's all for now, thanks for reading.

[Freddingerz]

Great comment!

[Matthew]

I haven't played with the new feast, but unless they completely gutted it, I wouldn't worry. Druid was like the only class on D100 in A3 on release and if the content has since then been made easier, then a slightly weaker feast is still going to keep them on D100.

But, I agree with the sentiment in general. Melee is weak in this game and the devs acknowledged that in the past. That the druid got a talent making melee viable, even if it was just simply tanking everything, I don't think that is a bad thing.

[Honorable Sir Ricard De Milos]

The trees is something that pretty much everyone agrees with. I can't deny that not everyone agrees about everything else though, but I have no doubt that Ren and the devs are smart enough to evaluate what is asked for by the majority vs what is asked for by 1-2 persons.

The charmed summons = I could tolerate it if it could NOT charm summons that can't spawn more than one (clone, dragons, golem, etc.) but I also am 100% happy that they removed it. I don't even play summon builds but if I did, and did a run with the ice and fire dragon for example, if both get charmed, what am I supposed to do vs the last boss? That would be like... 95% of my damage...

[Shino Myth]

personally i just think they should
1. bring back meaningfull rewards for achievements like in 1.0 where we had to unlock skills by completing achievements. Rn you literally get nothing
2. Leaf achievements are objectively bad. It is not an achievement to farm for a specifc unique item just to then dump 20 min in a run to get the 3 dash achievement. It is not an achievement to fish for Vampirism. It is not an achievement to cope your Clone gets charmed so you can eventually kill it, if its not jumping somewhere 3 screens away from you.
3. Druid feels like a mess in terms of game design. Primairly cause of the fact that you have to get hit to go into your form. persoanlly i play druid completely without any form cause its just the better way to play and thats dumb.

I still like the game, i still play it, but some game design decisions are just kinda weird. Im sure they will fix it

[Honorable Sir Ricard De Milos]

Originally posted by Shino Myth:

personally i just think they should
1. bring back meaningfull rewards for achievements like in 1.0 where we had to unlock skills by completing achievements. Rn you literally get nothing
2. Leaf achievements are objectively bad. It is not an achievement to farm for a specifc unique item just to then dump 20 min in a run to get the 3 dash achievement. It is not an achievement to fish for Vampirism. It is not an achievement to cope your Clone gets charmed so you can eventually kill it, if its not jumping somewhere 3 screens away from you.
3. Druid feels like a mess in terms of game design. Primairly cause of the fact that you have to get hit to go into your form. persoanlly i play druid completely without any form cause its just the better way to play and thats dumb.

I still like the game, i still play it, but some game design decisions are just kinda weird. Im sure they will fix it

Yeah I haven't played druid too much but I certainly agree for the bear form. Maybe it could be when you level up? When you kill an enemy (and panther is when you HIT an enemy I think?) When you heal? When you touch a location? When you crit? When you trigger a strike?

Lots of choices imo.

[Realm Archive]

I think we'll have to find a way to return the charm thing in a less infuriating manner - where maybe an enemy channel-controls your summon and you can kill it to free it or something of that sort.

Regarding the forest thing, we'll try and make the player more "slidy" so at least when you are blocked you naturally move around it more so.

-Ren

[Honorable Sir Ricard De Milos]

Originally posted by Realm Archive:

I think we'll have to find a way to return the charm thing in a less infuriating manner - where maybe an enemy channel-controls your summon and you can kill it to free it or something of that sort.

Regarding the forest thing, we'll try and make the player more "slidy" so at least when you are blocked you naturally move around it more so.

-Ren

If I may, I think that more should be immune to it too... The legendary dragons being allowed to be charmed, that's a bit underwhelming... Same for the big chunky golem (but to be fair, I don't know if it can be charmed) and well, the genie... Even if you CAN fix the 1-hit kill, he still moves SO fast, that he's even more dangerous than the dragons imo...

[Cloudchaser]

I am honestly just glad people who can actually write constructive criticism are not being silent while a few whiny people cry about the game and the devs being horrible because they apparently hate the entire game now because they got stuck in an xddtree.

[Xan]

Originally posted by Realm Archive:

I think we'll have to find a way to return the charm thing in a less infuriating manner - where maybe an enemy channel-controls your summon and you can kill it to free it or something of that sort.

Regarding the forest thing, we'll try and make the player more "slidy" so at least when you are blocked you naturally move around it more so.

-Ren

Just make Charm a debuff like Weaken+Slow that only applies to summons, so they are nerfed but don't result in you being mobbed by them.

This will nerf the power of summon builds without making them completely unplayable.

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

The biggest problem with charm is that BASE stats for higher tier monsters that spawn from equipment or legendary boons can one shot nearly all builds in the game "my highest hp was 1k as a bear with 47% effective DR after armor, gear completely unoptimized, otherwise I'm around 200-300" even if they don't they're so fast that the response time is too short of a window. The weaker tier monsters at BASE STATS don't do enough damage and would allow you an appropriate amount of time to respond. Charm doesn't take BASE STATS unless I am mistaken and therein lies the problem, even the slowest terracotta warrior to the lowly skeleton hit enemies during comabt for 1000s.

Charm should just be a combination of debuffs or just disable the summons outright for the duration, locking them in place. Charm against enemies should just take the current code as it is, theres too few options to have it, thats a decent trade off so the devs don't just lose all the dev time on it.

[MAth996]

I really like the bosses, But the frog feels the hardest of them 3 every single run to me. I wouldnt nerf the frog tho, but maybe just rework a bit the rest. I want the game to become harder as we progress, we already at act 3, but the first boss should be the easiest no?

[Realm Archive]

I got the impression Scarecrow was hardest.
What exact skill do you think makes the Frog King more powerful than the rest?
-Ren

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

Originally posted by Realm Archive:

I got the impression Scarecrow was hardest.
What exact skill do you think makes the Frog King more powerful than the rest?
-Ren

The main difference with frog before any StarCrux mutators is that his slam timing is extremely short "must react as the sprite winds up and not when the red circle is visible." The DPS and aggression is much higher, frog can do multiple slams and hops in a much shorter time frame than a scarecrow dash or swipe. Scarecrow telegraphing is much more forgiving, but he has constant ad spam and some builds don't like the thorn CC . . . I'd say that if you can beat frog, your build is at a point where you should be able to tackle Scarecrow given a few upgrades to existing boons. I don't find scarecrow the hardest either. Lady imo is kind of perfect and is the epitome of a great boss. You can fight her at range and get a different rotation that flows nicely or get in her face and chase her off screen to cancel that ranged combat rotation. Lady is so fun because you can dance with her avoiding the slashes and force her to do that dance or you can play into dodging the projectiles if you aren't a melle build AND sometimes dodge the sword rotation.



I wouldn't nerf anything right now

[👁️⃤Singu ꧅🥲⃤⃞⃟]

Visual clarity in this act is quite poor—it's difficult to see attacks or similar effects. It would help to have options like making skeletons semi-transparent or enabling indicators that glow through all elements.

[Shyhalu]

Originally posted by Realm Archive:

I think we'll have to find a way to return the charm thing in a less infuriating manner - where maybe an enemy channel-controls your summon and you can kill it to free it or something of that sort.
-Ren

How about no??? This literally the game design fighting itself.
You made them killable, that is enough.

Its actually fun to run around with a summoned army, you don't need to stomp it into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ground.