Demo feedback

[AstroAss]

Hi!

This is the following feedback that I have after playing the demo as of now. I've also submitted the same via the Microsoft forms page you guys have (button in-game)

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MAIN FEEDBACK

Runs extremely well on my system at 4K and never misses a beat, it's fun to play - basically an FPS version of Hades - and I like the premise.

The mouse input is very responsive and I have no faults to mention in that regard!

The new FOV 120 setting is perfect, by the way - I could not play this demo before at FOV 100 - thanks!

Precompiling shaders at the start of the game is 100% the right choice, good job! :)

Also - THANK YOU FOR MAKING A DEMO! This is almost a lost art in games, so it's nice to see demos being revived again by Valve and participating developers :)

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Gameplay video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYfsuZl2_DM

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Now for the "bad"/bugs/other comments

1) I wish the gold coins were more obvious (brighter?) and stayed on the ground longer. Is there a reason why they disappear so quickly? Gold is especially annoying when it's nearby a fire, since you can't pick it up before the fire disappears. But I understand it's supposed to be a risk/reward type material, so it would be good to at least make it more visible.
2) The ranged magician and exploding enemies are annoying, but that's mainly because you can sometimes get cheap-shotted by the mages and get surrounded by the exploding skeletons that run, in my opinion, a bit too fast towards you (reload time becomes quite fatal when waiting for a dash to recharge).
3) Sometimes items like chests or material shards spawn in places that are impossible to reach (I have a screenshot of one such occasion)
4) Speaking of #3 above - the level collisions need work. Some rocks I can climb on, but then some have colboxes that are waay too big and/or contain outright invisible walls. I understand that the map boundaries need to be there, but WITHIN the arena - let me jump where it looks like I can reach, don't put massive invisible barriers on what look like easily reachable rocks!
5) Shame the demo doesn't let me farm more well passives past the initial 3 (and their upgrades). Would be fun to have an OP guy in the demo :)
6) Lady Valerie sometimes crosses her arms really weirdly when she's warming her hands (?) by the fire - this is likely an IK/animation glitch and needs fixing.
7) Animated trees in the hub area around the campfire load the unanimated LOD model way too close. I can't see a performance reason for this, considering how good the game runs already, nor do the further animated trees to this so close by. Needs fixing.
8) The chromatic aberration setting should be separate from "post processing". I had to set the global post-processing setting down to "medium" to get rid of that nasty fringing and I feel like I may be missing out on other effects in the set as a result (I don't play at 4K to blur the image again with an effect that photo and video lens manufacturers actively try to REDUCE - chrom aberration is an unwanted defect of glass - why do video game makers insist on putting it everywhere?! It does not make games look any better...)
9) I hope there's more element, skill and weapon variety later on? The demo doesn't show much and I'd love to see an ice element, maybe some different weapons and more passive skills.
10) Dash and movement in general need something to make it more fluid. If you're making an "FPS Hades" then we'll need upgrades to the number of dashes available and maybe something more interesting with them as well.
11) Sometimes the enemy ragdolls cost me a damage upgrade for not missing a shot. By that I mean that I've accidentally shot dead skeleton bodies that have randomly fallen down near me, thinking they're live enemies. That obviously counts as a "miss", so no damage upgrade at the end of that fight.
12) The hub itself will hopefully be more "busy"?
13) The game world is very lacking in color. Everything tends to end up looking gray in the combat arenas, a splash of color wouldn't be a bad idea and probably increase enemy visibility a bit.
14) Would like to jump in the hub area... FPS games that disallow jumping bother me somehow. Let us bunny-hop everywhere, devs! :D

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Weapon system, what could be added?

More weapons?

Maybe a dual-wielding bonus/upgrade? The revolver or the stubby shotgun could have an expensive final upgrade that allows dual-wielding, or maybe as a pickup boost. Shooting in sequence (like a right gun > left gun > right gun > left gun> etc shots) would essentially just make it a magazine upgrade. But if you allow both to be controlled independently (say LMB for right weapon, RMB for the right) and allow to shoot at any time - LMB+RMB would deliver a double shot and so on, which would be a cool damage boost.

Ice element? Always liked ice, not so much poison... Poison is like fire (health burn), just green...

I'd try something interesting with the melee hit. Currently it interrupts reloading and does very little damage, so not very useful (I ended up not using it at all, basically), so it would be great to try adding something to it, like maybe an elemental punch (say, stun for lightning, freeze for ice, damage + burn for fire, etc) or a finisher-like move (say you ship damage away down to 5-10% with guns and then do a melee finisher that heals or adds some sort of a bonus?). Or maybe an ability to turn the melee into a shield or a deflect of some sorts, so that a well-timed melee click would negate or reflect damage. Anything sounds more useful than the current melee attack.

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Abilities?

Poison felt boring, just another fire. I'd much rather see ice instead.

There isn't much of an incentive to farm and explore the abilities, to be honest, because the game kicks you out as soon as you kill the lightning/fire bosses. It looks like you should be able to continue the run and get more materials until you die, but it just kills you and returns you back to the hub. Which is why I can't say I explored that many skills.

The poison dash wouldn't always activate. Felt like it only worked (graphically, anyway) like 80% of the time.

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PC specs

CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X (8C/16T) at 4.5GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition
RAM: 64GB (4x16) DDR4-2400 in quad-channel
Monitor: Acer Predator XB271HU (27" 1440p 165Hz G-Sync IPS)

Peripherals:
Audio: Presonus Eris E8 monitors
Keyboard: Corsair K95 RGB (1000Hz polling)
Mouse: Razer Basilisk V3 Pro (1000Hz polling)

As I said earlier - the game ran extremely well at 4K (though felt a bit blurrier than I'd like it to be) and I have no complaints about the performance or mouse latency.

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Final word

Overall - a great start, runs very well already and I'm curious to see more! Definitely a buy for me once it's in a good shape!

(I don't trust any game releases as of late due to constant bugs and "live service" update models, sadly + roguelikes always need balancing after launch, so I'll have to wait a while. My general rule is 6-18 months, then I check how the game is and wait more if needed. Will buy sooner if the price is right and the game comes out in a very good shape!).

[AstroAss]

Here's the screenshot of the material spawning in an unreachable area[cdn.discordapp.com].

Looking at the screenshot now... the image doesn't look 4K, even though the screenshot is taken at that resolution. Is the game using some sort of upscaling? Or is it just not playing well with DLDSR/DSR? Whatever it is - this is likely why I thought the image looked blurrier than it should have at 4K!

[AstroAss]

Added a gameplay recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYfsuZl2_DM

You can see at the start there are several bugs in there, like the aforementioned tree LOD loading distance being poor and also the character talking being triggered weirdly, which can then be repeated again and again.

Note how at 2:36 - 2:38 my reticle is on the skeleton but BOTH shots somehow miss - what was that about?

[kome360]

1) The story's kind of cringe. Why does a 21st-century yuppie have a deep connection to the wild west and a crippling desire to only use 19th-century guns?
2) The shotgun has this strange tendency to completely miss a target that fills the crosshairs. If this is intentional, please consider adding a double crosshair to represent the level of accuracy at mid-range.
3) Add more tooltips! We don't know what an Ember of Dreams is off the bat, so if someone stares at something have a small text box pop up to explain why it's important. This should also apply to buffs and debuffs.

[Dark Master]

Hey there!
1) How the main character became "the Soulslinger" is one of the biggest mysteries of the game that will be revealed in the full story. Of course you are entitled to your opinion (i.e. that you think it is "cringe") but perhaps judge a story once you know it in its entirety? Just a thought.
2) Noted.
3) There are tooltips for every resource. If you hover over Ember of Dreams in your inventory or on your workshop screen, you get a brief description of what it is (lore) as well as what it is used for (gameplay).

[AstroAss]

Originally posted by kome360:

1) The story's kind of cringe. Why does a 21st-century yuppie have a deep connection to the wild west and a crippling desire to only use 19th-century guns?
2) The shotgun has this strange tendency to completely miss a target that fills the crosshairs. If this is intentional, please consider adding a double crosshair to represent the level of accuracy at mid-range.
3) Add more tooltips! We don't know what an Ember of Dreams is off the bat, so if someone stares at something have a small text box pop up to explain why it's important. This should also apply to buffs and debuffs.

Thanks for hijacking my post? Why are you even posting your ♥♥♥♥ here?

Originally posted by Dark Master:

Hey there!
1) How the main character became "the Soulslinger" is one of the biggest mysteries of the game that will be revealed in the full story. Of course you are entitled to your opinion (i.e. that you think it is "cringe") but perhaps judge a story once you know it in its entirety? Just a thought.
2) Noted.
3) There are tooltips for every resource. If you hover over Ember of Dreams in your inventory or on your workshop screen, you get a brief description of what it is (lore) as well as what it is used for (gameplay).

So you'll respond to the comment of some random dude hijacking the post with his stupid comments, but have ZERO to say about the whole long-ass post I wrote, video, screenshot? Why did I even bother.... This is what I get for trying to be detailed and help the devs, huh...

[Dark Master]

Originally posted by AstroAss:

So you'll respond to the comment of some random dude hijacking the post with his stupid comments, but have ZERO to say about the whole long-ass post I wrote, video, screenshot? Why did I even bother.... This is what I get for trying to be detailed and help the devs, huh...

I am truly sorry, I've already read through your comments twice and was absolutely planning to respond! I was just thinking about exactly how and what to discuss. In contrast, the hijacking comments were fairly simplistic and were easy to respond to, yours is a lot more complex!

First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for your overwhelmingly positive feedback!!! There is nothing better for a developer to read than comments like these! We've worked a LOT on optimizing the game, so we're glad it all worked out!

So with that out of the way, below I'd respond to your "bad"/bugs/other feedback!

1) Making gold coins brighter is an absolutely valid feedback and something we'll definitely look into. However, the coins disappearing fast is designed to keep you in the heat of battle and, as you said, to cause that "risk/reward" feel. To accumulate a sufficient wealth, you need to constantly dash over areas that enemies occupy. OR you can take the less risky sniping approach, but then you miss out on the loot.
2) This is mostly by design -- I recommend using melee to keep enemies at bay (this interrupts reload, therefore is intended as an absolute last resort). But this ties into your later melee feedback, so I'll get to this in a sec.
3) and 4) we are constantly working on improving maps and collisions, so these will definitely be improved upon!
5) Sry :)
6) Yup, we'll fix this too!
7) Noted!
8) Alright, we'll look into setting chromatic aberration separately! Thank you for reporting this!
9) Absolutely! We have more elemental essences planned for the full version, as well as more perks and abilities for the existing essences!
10) Interesting ideas!
11) Not sure if this counts a bug, but it's worth discussing further!
12) Yup! Right away, on your next visit in the full version, you'll be able to talk to the little ghost girl that runs by at the start of the game :)
13) This is by design. Our intended art style was a muted color palette for the environment / background and more saturated colors for what is important.
14) We do not intend to do this at the moment, sry :)

More weapons -- at the moment our plan is to only allow wielding a single weapon, but of course there will be more weapon types.

An ice element might happen, but it's not among the elements we're currently working on.

So, to discuss melee further, we are definitely going to do something interesting with the melee attack -- in fact, we've already teased this on Discord! In the full version, you'll have elemental perks you can use to enhance your melee attacks.

Poison differs from fire in that it can spread like a disease among enemies, causing summoners to instantly infect the creatures they're summoning.
"The poison dash wouldn't always activate." -- it says so in its description, it has a 40% chance to activate. Otherwise it would be brutally OP (but *hint-hint* you'll get the chance to upgrade it in the full version).

Thank you again for the detailed feedback, and likewise we are looking forward to showing more of the game! We read everything and we respond as soon as we can, so don't hesitate to discuss any of these points further!

[Dark Master]

Originally posted by AstroAss:

Is the game using some sort of upscaling? Or is it just not playing well with DLDSR/DSR?

We are using Unreal's built-in Temporal Super Resolution upscaler. A DLSS implementation is coming!

Originally posted by AstroAss:

the character talking being triggered weirdly, which can then be repeated again and again.

This is by design. You can listen to each conversation by approaching the characters, but if you leave that character behind, the conversation stops. At one point, players complained that they can accidentally miss conversations this way, so to make sure that doesn't happen, the convos can be repeated later by approaching the character again.