Game design problems

[Raziel]

Hello.

I have completed recently underground palace and found myself more and more struggling to enjoy the game. There are a lot of problems with the game currently ( EA is not for nothing, I guess).

1. Let start about the underground palace: its far too isolated if you die here to come back later. You have to travel all the way here without some kind of teleport. As you can't take more than 1 mount with you, you can't take a new mount to go here, then take your old mount you have left at the entrance and go back home. So you have to travel on foot which take a while.

2. Unbalance. I am a solo player, and I moved the slider as follow : damage taken halved and damage dealt doubled, well even so, the place was a struggle to end as plunderer are kinda hard even with red, yellow bronze stuff, I died 2 time on the boss as the bleeding is no joke with very short window to use bandages ( cant make other medical stuffs as I didn't have Gypsum or sulfur). Later, I found the birds on the next biome very unbalance again as THEY DON'T STOP ATTACKING YOU AND TRACK YOU UNTIL DEAD dealing obscene amount of damages. (or if you go underwater then aquatic wildlife will take care of you swiftly.)

3. Location: I do not think its normal to struggle so much to find the next CORRECT location. I have found the biome with birds and wolves just after crossing the canyon but the next objective is to beat the frog, and I am pretty sure I should have found a swamp of sorts. Yet, I have found the gorrilla pyramid but not the correct biome even going deep into north ( I guess I will find it in this direction).

4. Followers: as tribe management is one of the main selling points, (and crafting and automation side is pretty good even with some flaws), I cannot understand why you can take only one follower at the time, with many problems it creates. If you attack an NPC village, you can take one captured npc the time with you to go home, conscious or not. (Yes, I know about lama saddle, but it's later in game progression). Problems with mounts was explained before and the resurrection stuff arrives kinda late as followers die pretty easily if multiple foes surprise you.

The game suffers others issues, but those are kinda hard to deal with. So I will stop here. It's an early access game so its kinda ok I guess, but I think developers have a good amount of work ahead of them, as I have great hopes the game will improve over time.

[Mick]

Originally posted by Raziel:

4. Followers: as tribe management is one of the main selling points, (and crafting and automation side is pretty good even with some flaws), I cannot understand why you can take only one follower at the time, with many problems it creates. If you attack an NPC village, you can take one captured npc the time with you to go home, conscious or not.

I was told on another thread that Soul Mask tribal people were better than Thralls from Conan Exiles and I naturally thought that meant that you could have more than one follow your Mask person around.

If that's what your saying, I hope this gets fixed before game comes out of early access...

[Cormac]

The mask system is cumbersome. Immersion is completely ignored here. I just don't want to see myself as just a virus. Why not just transfer the skills to the main character? You're not allowed to take a follower into the underground palace, they're too stupid for boss mechanics. The death package (from Tribesman) is in the boss room and if you don't manage it, everything is gone. You can't get to it. I play on maximum easy, 0.2/5 and I was one-hit by a bear (level 40, mask all skilled). That doesn't work. There just have to be options for players who want to take it easy. Solo play alone would be OK.

[Raziel]

Originally posted by Mick:

Originally posted by Raziel:

4. Followers: as tribe management is one of the main selling points, (and crafting and automation side is pretty good even with some flaws), I cannot understand why you can take only one follower at the time, with many problems it creates. If you attack an NPC village, you can take one captured npc the time with you to go home, conscious or not.

I was told on another thread that Soul Mask tribal people were better than Thralls from Conan Exiles and I naturally thought that meant that you could have more than one follow your Mask person around.

If that's what your saying, I hope this gets fixed before game comes out of early access...

Yeah, it is what I was saying. Just having 1 people following you is immersion breaking as you have to manage a far more complex tribe than your thralls in conan exile (and creates issues as already explained)

[Myrrdinn]

Frog is southwest of the Ape pyramid.

[Rivoth]

I've never liked games with a death loot bag mechanic. This one plays lip service by giving you an option for loot bag at respawn location, but it's a false promise since your creation character is gimped and controlling a clan member does not have a respawn mechanism.

I've also run into the single mount, can't get your stranded mount back to camp without huge travel time wasters. Same with taking a follower with you, then deterring someone on your exploration travels. Carry the new deter body slowly back over a huge distance? How is that an interesting mechanic? Wait and convert them on the spot at 500 recognition? Now you have two followers and no way to get both home. These mechanics are not properly thought through.

[Desh51]

You know you can respawn at a fire yeah?, just build one with cover near the entrance and leave your mount there.

[Dark Exile]

Originally posted by Omega Desh:

You know you can respawn at a fire yeah?, just build one with cover near the entrance and leave your mount there.

^ That.
But in saying that i dont think making some bosses too hard for solo (even as a proper geared tribe member) is a good idea.
Then again i saw someone rant about how hard the panther boss was at the start and i did it without getting hit so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Give it time for them to figure out what they're doing i guess.

Though the more i see the idea of sacrificing tribe members for more power on your main the more i like it, or soft cap 80, 100 with mask upgrades so you're not gimped and others still have a higher stat possibility.

[Raziel]

Originally posted by Dark Exile:

Originally posted by Omega Desh:

You know you can respawn at a fire yeah?, just build one with cover near the entrance and leave your mount there.

^ That.
But in saying that i dont think making some bosses too hard for solo (even as a proper geared tribe member) is a good idea.
Then again i saw someone rant about how hard the panther boss was at the start and i did it without getting hit so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Give it time for them to figure out what they're doing i guess.

Though the more i see the idea of sacrificing tribe members for more power on your main the more i like it, or soft cap 80, 100 with mask upgrades so you're not gimped and others still have a higher stat possibility.

I admit, I forgot about this feature, but this doesn't invalidate my comments. You can die unprepared sometime and have to walk during very long distance. And other points I mentioned still remain, but indeed, this can save time.

[VYM]

1. Mounts must be spawnable/despawnable same in World of Warcraft.
2. Don't go there where you not belong yet. Level up and gear up first.
3. Frog pyramid location make no sense for me. Why it's beyond the third boss's pyramid? It must be located somewhere in the south-south-east from Ape pyramid.
4. Two deployable followers would be nice for single/solo player mode.

[STXNEY]

Originally posted by Rivoth:

I've never liked games with a death loot bag mechanic. This one plays lip service by giving you an option for loot bag at respawn location, but it's a false promise since your creation character is gimped and controlling a clan member does not have a respawn mechanism.

I've also run into the single mount, can't get your stranded mount back to camp without huge travel time wasters. Same with taking a follower with you, then deterring someone on your exploration travels. Carry the new deter body slowly back over a huge distance? How is that an interesting mechanic? Wait and convert them on the spot at 500 recognition? Now you have two followers and no way to get both home. These mechanics are not properly thought through.

I don’t know if anyone else know this, but you can deter them , and wait like 2-5 min and you can make them stand up. Deploy them, and then have them follow you. You can run as far as you want and they’ll keep up. Only 1 at a time with this method tho. If you want more than 1 you’ll have to use the llama

[DaddyLife]

1. SOLVED = 1 floor + 1 wall + 1 roof + 1 campfire + 600wood = 72hr spawn point on official
2. SOLVED(KINDA) I only play official and past the first level 20 Sabertooth you need friends.
3. SOLVED Just search soulmask interactive map shows you everything you need.
4. Agreed. I feel we should be able to take our army with us.