Why are you skeptical about this game?

[Kernist]

I noticed a lot of people have very negative opinion about this game. I wonder where does it come from?

I played all Dark Souls games and Elden Ring, so I have some ideas why people have mixed feelings on this. I guess it's mainly:
1. Shift from traditional souls-like SP experience.
2. Game being designed purely around multiplayer.
3. Fear that this form will become a new norm.
4. Pretty high price for basically an asset flip.

I didn't expect however such a strong pushback. What was it for you? I think this idea can work personally. Lets have a real conversation, without "this gonna suck, it's Fortnite and not souls-like" and without "cry more haters, everyone loves the idea and the rest is insignificant".

[noisyturtle]

This is the Dark Souls we get in Trump's America

[LT2483]

Point 2 is a problem, since Fromsoft doesn't do multiplayer infrastructure properly. And now they are making a multiplayer focused game, where the multiplayer still doesn't work properly. The game, as it currently stands, doesn't have a rejoin button. 3 months from release, and a multiplayer lobby game doesn't allow for rejoins. That shows very poor priorities in feature creation.

Point 3/4 is a problem for the exact reason you said it is. At release delayed DLC sales locking maps and characters? That's not good. Especially for a co-op game. You don't do that for co-op games with longevity. High price (I know it's not "full price", but it's still laughably high) for a game where 95% of the assets are reused from previous titles with no regard for cohesion? Also not good.

---

But my main point? It's going to get stale, really quick. Now that there have been influencer preview events, we can see how the game actually functions, and it's not good. Anybody who has played roguelikes knows you need variety. Nightreign lacks that. Maps have little variation, weapons are mostly just stat sticks, buffs are (mostly) boring, and levelling up is just a process of "spend runes, get strong" with no player choice.

Sure, the game will probably be fun. But $40 (Or $55 for the intended experience) is way too much for a couple of hours of fun. It's a game built around replayability that lacks replayable elements.

In short: Very few friend groups are going to want to drop a collective $165 for a collective 30-45 hours of fun. And not many solo are going to want to drop the $55 for 10 hours. The game is just too expensive for how poorly designed it is.

[Sylastin]

I want to know more about the grind, what they gonna give me when I finish a game that make me want to play more.

[Kernist]

Originally posted by LT2483:

Point 2 is a problem, since Fromsoft doesn't do multiplayer infrastructure properly. And now they are making a multiplayer focused game, where the multiplayer still doesn't work properly. The game, as it currently stands, doesn't have a rejoin button. 3 months from release, and a multiplayer lobby game doesn't allow for rejoins. That shows very poor priorities in feature creation.

Point 3/4 is a problem for the exact reason you said it is. At release delayed DLC sales locking maps and characters? That's not good. Especially for a co-op game. You don't do that for co-op games with longevity. High price (I know it's not "full price", but it's still laughably high) for a game where 95% of the assets are reused from previous titles with no regard for cohesion? Also not good.

---

But my main point? It's going to get stale, really quick. Now that there have been influencer preview events, we can see how the game actually functions, and it's not good. Anybody who has played roguelikes knows you need variety. Nightreign lacks that. Maps have little variation, weapons are mostly just stat sticks, buffs are (mostly) boring, and levelling up is just a process of "spend runes, get strong" with no player choice.

Sure, the game will probably be fun. But $40 (Or $55 for the intended experience) is way too much for a couple of hours of fun. It's a game built around replayability that lacks replayable elements.

In short: Very few friend groups are going to want to drop a collective $165 for a collective 30-45 hours of fun. And not many solo are going to want to drop the $55 for 10 hours. The game is just too expensive for how poorly designed it is.

Very insightful. So price value aside, how do you think the game can be saved to not get repetitive and to not drop majority of the playerbase in the first month?

[LT2483]

Originally posted by Kernist:

Very insightful. So price value aside, how do you think the game can be saved to not get repetitive and to not drop majority of the playerbase in the first month?

Hm, that's a good question.

Off the top of my head, I think the simplest answer is "more randomisation, and more choice."

In regards to randomisation, the fact that maps seem to be fixed is very bad. Sure, the loot scattered around is different, but if you traverse the same map in the same way every run, it's going to get really boring. While I think having a semi-fixed layout is okay, the locations at each point of interest need to shuffle around, so people don't find a route that works and then only do that.

For more choice, right now, you make very few decisions about your run. You pick a class, you pick your... relics? I think they were called (basically minor meta progression boosts), and then in the run you pick equipment. Except, that since your stats are determined only by your class, your usable equipment is basically already decided from the start. To fix this, I think leveling up actually need to allow for some control over stats, instead of just preset increases. Let us adapt to our gear if we want. Also, for relics and run buffs, many seem to be boring stat boosts (+30% when two-handing, +12% bow damage, you get the idea.) They basically all need to have more interesting effects (an example that I've heard that is currently in the game is causing lightning to strike when rolling, we need more stuff like that.)

Once we have both of those fixed up, runs no longer start to follow a single route, loot becomes more interesting, player choices more meaningful, and the player can adapt loot to their class, or stats to their loot. Suddenly, the game is no longer nearly as repetitive, and I think that would be "good enough" to justify the price tag for a lot more people.

[LT2483]

Originally posted by csand:

The infrastructure is and always has been "just fine". Nothing spectacular, it's just plain old peer 2 peer so it's simple and efficient networking, and no dedicated servers required (servers are not inherently better than p2p). No rejoin is really a minor inconvenience that I hope they will fix, but you will find most p2p games don't have a rejoin option (look at Risk of Rain 2, EDF6, and others). It's a bigger concern is whether they use the new p2p API from Valve on the Steam edition and get rid of their own TCP implementation (which adds a small amount of latency). Granted, for PVE, that little extra latency isn't as big of an issue.

"Acceptable", maybe. But only if you find it not working properly a fairly large amount of the time acceptable. "No rejoin is really a minor inconvenience" is only true for short games and/or stable games. Fromsoft games are neither. Everyone who has tried Fromsoft multiplayer knows this. The devs should know this. And yet, no rejoin (at least currently, I suspect they will at least try to add it).

Originally posted by csand:

Gameplay wise, pretty much everything I have watched or read from the previews has said the game is a lot of fun. From what I have seen, I think it looks fun too. I want to point out that Risk of Rain 2 is a popular and similar game to this, and only really has a handful of enemies. The point is the run itself, the fact you face the same enemies on the same levels is less of a concern in this type of game.

True. And like I said, it DOES look fun. The issue being, that it will stop being fun quite fast due to the repetitive nature of it. And this is from someone who love roguelikes - I know repetitive. What has been shown is bad repetitive. Repetition can be good, but this isn't it.

And you're right, low unique enemy counts can be fine for this type of game. And honestly, I think that's one thing Nightreign will actually excel at - I doubt there will be low enemy diversity, because they've just copied all the enemies from ER across, which is a lot. And so, I think once place it won't be repetitive will be the enemy groups. MAYBE. We haven't got confirmation of that, it's an educated guess.

Originally posted by csand:

I really don't think anyone can make a comment on "how poorly designed it is" until they have played the release version.

Not (completely) true. There are a bunch of game design elements that can't really be fixed this far along in development without massive changes. We can absolutely point at those and say they are badly designed. Because they are.

That said, yes, some people are taking it too far. Some elements are still subject to chance, and others are subjective criticism being stated as fact. That's why I posted in this thread - OP wanted an actual discussion on why people don't think the game will be good, instead of coming out swinging with bad-faith or thoughtless arguments for either side.

[Kernist]

Originally posted by LT2483:

Originally posted by Kernist:

Very insightful. So price value aside, how do you think the game can be saved to not get repetitive and to not drop majority of the playerbase in the first month?

Hm, that's a good question.

Off the top of my head, I think the simplest answer is "more randomisation, and more choice."

In regards to randomisation, the fact that maps seem to be fixed is very bad. Sure, the loot scattered around is different, but if you traverse the same map in the same way every run, it's going to get really boring. While I think having a semi-fixed layout is okay, the locations at each point of interest need to shuffle around, so people don't find a route that works and then only do that.

For more choice, right now, you make very few decisions about your run. You pick a class, you pick your... relics? I think they were called (basically minor meta progression boosts), and then in the run you pick equipment. Except, that since your stats are determined only by your class, your usable equipment is basically already decided from the start. To fix this, I think leveling up actually need to allow for some control over stats, instead of just preset increases. Let us adapt to our gear if we want. Also, for relics and run buffs, many seem to be boring stat boosts (+30% when two-handing, +12% bow damage, you get the idea.) They basically all need to have more interesting effects (an example that I've heard that is currently in the game is causing lightning to strike when rolling, we need more stuff like that.)

Once we have both of those fixed up, runs no longer start to follow a single route, loot becomes more interesting, player choices more meaningful, and the player can adapt loot to their class, or stats to their loot. Suddenly, the game is no longer nearly as repetitive, and I think that would be "good enough" to justify the price tag for a lot more people.

You are right about randomness. In games like this people always go for "meta" strat, if there will be one best route, others will never be used.

[King Kilo]

my guess is because shadow of the erdree was bootycheeks. INB4 "it was a masterpiece hurr durr git gud". sorry to those who like it but the LARGE majority agreed it was cheeks and ALOT of people passed on it as a result. it left a sour taste in alot of peoples mouths and as a result, the trust in fromsoftware was (no pun intended) tarnished.

personally I think more people want to see either dark souls 4, bloodborne remastered or sekiro 2.

[Kernist]

Originally posted by King Kilo:

my guess is because shadow of the erdree was bootycheeks. INB4 "it was a masterpiece hurr durr git gud". sorry to those who like it but the LARGE majority agreed it was cheeks and ALOT of people passed on it as a result. it left a sour taste in alot of peoples mouths and as a result, the trust in fromsoftware was (no pun intended) tarnished.

personally I think more people want to see either dark souls 4, bloodborne remastered or sekiro 2.

About the Erdtree - DLC was average, and it was more about side content being the better part and main bosses the weaker part - in my opinion. As for that people want something else - this one is a spin-off, and I don't think it will impact or even significantly slow down other main releases.

[Critical]

Not so much skeptical... it's just not what anybody was expecting or even wanted from these devs. I mean from the looks of it, it's a pseudo PvE Fortnite game with too many reused assets and forced multiplayer. I buy from these devs for the immersive single player games they put out and it just feels stupid watching them dip their toes into a completely different type of game.

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

I play FromSoft games to get an immersive and unforgiving experience over a fairly lengthy campaign. From Dark Souls to Sekiro to Armored Core 6 and more, I want that.

This game is not that.

It might be fun for a while, but I probably would just beat it once or twice then get bored - I'm not a Roguelite enjoyer even (Roguelikes on the other hand with proper depth...).

Shadow of the Erdtree was great too, but I'm disappointed they announced this before even announcing another mainline game. I wanted Sekiro 2, and I got this instead.

Maybe if this goes on sale for $20 eventually I'll pick it up, but I'm just not excited. But I'm hoping this is just a small diversion from their main projects and won't negatively affect them. Considering most of the assets are ripped from their past games, I'm confident they are making this at a relatively cheap price to hopefully they are actively making other games too and just haven't announced them yet.

[Critical]

Originally posted by LT2483:

Point 2 is a problem, since Fromsoft doesn't do multiplayer infrastructure properly. And now they are making a multiplayer focused game, where the multiplayer still doesn't work properly. The game, as it currently stands, doesn't have a rejoin button. 3 months from release, and a multiplayer lobby game doesn't allow for rejoins. That shows very poor priorities in feature creation.

Point 3/4 is a problem for the exact reason you said it is. At release delayed DLC sales locking maps and characters? That's not good. Especially for a co-op game. You don't do that for co-op games with longevity. High price (I know it's not "full price", but it's still laughably high) for a game where 95% of the assets are reused from previous titles with no regard for cohesion? Also not good.

---

But my main point? It's going to get stale, really quick. Now that there have been influencer preview events, we can see how the game actually functions, and it's not good. Anybody who has played roguelikes knows you need variety. Nightreign lacks that. Maps have little variation, weapons are mostly just stat sticks, buffs are (mostly) boring, and levelling up is just a process of "spend runes, get strong" with no player choice.

Sure, the game will probably be fun. But $40 (Or $55 for the intended experience) is way too much for a couple of hours of fun. It's a game built around replayability that lacks replayable elements.

In short: Very few friend groups are going to want to drop a collective $165 for a collective 30-45 hours of fun. And not many solo are going to want to drop the $55 for 10 hours. The game is just too expensive for how poorly designed it is.

I mean this doesn't even give off the impression that it's a roguelike game. Is there even any meta progression? Is there a single player option or is the game strictly balanced around multiplayer?

Beyond that, the amount of reused assets is egregious with some monsters not even having any tweaks made to them whatsoever. It's cool if they want to experiment making something new but I can't help but look at all of this as extremely low effort, especially for the price attached.

[Phantom Limb]

Honestly, I'm very curious about the whole thing and how it's going to play out.
The souls formula clearly needs some fresh ideas and experimental stuff to evolve. Nightreign could possibly be such experiment to make future games even better.
I bet, even if it fails, Fromsoft is going to learn something out of it.

[Cryogeist]

I just can't say I'm interested in a roguelike with super strict matchmaking (screw duos, I guess) and zero character building with a cast of enemies that were already very boring by the end of ER proper.

[Werdna]

ReusedAssetware at its finest. The Sheep will eat it up day 1 anyway.
I'll buy this game by buying DS5(DS4 was Elden Ring) which will reuse literally ALL the new things from this one except will have the only pleasurable content for a non-ADHDzoomers - PVP.