Feedback on Steam Next Fest Demo

[Palandus]

Don't think its for me. Maybe I just don't understand idle games, but after 3.3 hours of playing / idling, I'm not very far into the content. Feels like I'd have to leave the game on, during the night and idle for 8-12 hours a day, to get anywhere, and so I am out. I don't want to leave my computer running all day long to get a tiny bit of progress.

For those that love idle games, its probably great for them, but for me, it doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere, at a reasonable pace. Probably the game I spent the most time in the Next Fest on.

There is lots to like about it like the music, pixel graphics, and some amount of the progression, but for me, feels too slow, too grindy, and require too much time to get to the really enjoyable stuff.

Like I see the trailer and these cool maps, awesome abilities, and I'm stuck with my starter abilities, a level 4 fox summon, and all the first area items levelled up to +9, but that is it.

And I see that leaving it idle isn't actually smart, as items randomly appear that contain lots of resources and you should spend your stats, crafting regularly and complete events as soon as they become available. So you are basically required to babysit the game every 5-10 minutes of game time.

Again, I don't normally play idle games so I might not be the target audience, though I did enjoy at least the first 1.5 hours, before I just left it idle for the next 1.8 hours. But it seems quite fun, just that the time commitment may not be for me.

I'll wishlist/follow for now.

[Ithrenion]

Idle games are typically ones that you spend a lot of time early on to get started going idle then you check it every once and a while to spend your resources. It's something I tend to have on in the background while I'm working and check when I take a break.

The resource pots seem like a really impactful boost early on, though later you'll realize that you can get a lot more resources from other areas. The Void areas are where you go to farm most of your resources in this game.

Hopefully you find a way to play it at your own pace: I don't think anyone should need to play any game in a way they don't prefer. Including leaving your computer on for longer than you think is necessary. You're not losing out by not leaving your computer on, you're not competing against anyone.

[Palandus]

Well I played some more and specific areas feel very tedious and others I could find it to be acceptable grind:

1) Reaching the Void is super time consuming. Waves 30 to 50, have so many enemies to kill that even with good DPS its a time hog.

2) Setting passive skills to higher than level 3, seems to be the ideal as the mana cost increases so much that even with all early items at +9 for spellcasters (ie cloth robes), and 29 points invested in wisdom, you just can't keep up to the mana costs with 4 skills set.

Like I have 69.3 mana per second and 1.79k mana, and my 4 passives drains it to 0 mana constantly. And most of my passives are at level 9+ too, but I can't afford to cast them at that level.

3) It is too easy for you to lose track of your cursor on many maps. We need a custom cursor, as the normal small white one, in the heat of battle is so hard to see. And with those pickups needing to be clicked, if you miss click or don't move the mouse fast enough our guy might wander off before grabbing it.

4) Enemy spellcaster projectiles kills my framerate, so when you have 40+ spellcasters, its a slideshow with my FPS. Otherwise its a solid 60 fps.

5) Some items have such ridiculous material costs its insane.

6) Summons take forever to level up... even when they are +9 xp per second.

7) You take forever to level up, at 75+ level.

8) Passive skill mastery takes forever to level up.

9) Damage over time effects drastically lose performance as the damage doesn't scale and enemies have so much health that having 200 bleed stacks does barely anything.

10) It would be nice if we could buy resources with our gold. Currently it feels only good for raising limits and the occasional devil event purchase.

11) Many items, especially the weapons, should give multipliers rather than fixed numbers. Like the morningstar, only gives fixed damage of like +2.5, with enemies at that tier having like 400+ hp.

12) The intelligence stat doesn't seem worthwhile to grab. Especially considering how much xp you need to gain levels and the few ways to gain extra stat points.

[RogueFireWolf]

Originally posted by Palandus:

3) It is too easy for you to lose track of your cursor on many maps. We need a custom cursor, as the normal small white one, in the heat of battle is so hard to see. And with those pickups needing to be clicked, if you miss click or don't move the mouse fast enough our guy might wander off before grabbing it.

Settings -> Interface -> Custom Mouse Cursor. I haven't lost my cursor once after turning it on.

[Palandus]

Have to try that.

So played more and did first ascension. Some notes:

1) The interface was borked and couldn't use arrow keys or WASD... and moving the mouse operated in the opposite direction; ie move NE and cursor goes SW. Had to task manager the game. Then relaunching the game, the interface worked fine.

2) Many of the tier 1 unlocks are too expensive. 10 points for some, means I'd have to idle for hours and hours in low level voids to accumulate the 1M resources. And right now, I have all the gear I need from those areas so it doesn't feel like an optimal use of time.

3) Why do summons retain their level, but my character level is lost? Also why don't summons retain their stats, as that is the portion of their abilities that takes the longest to recover from.

4) Really feel like Passive Skill Mastery Level should apply these buffs:
-> Reduces Mana costs by -5% (capping at -50% at level 10)
-> Reduces Cooldowns by -2% (capping at -30% at level 15)
-> Increases damage multiplier, multiplication by +1% (capping at +20% at level 20)
=> So if multiplier is currently 3x, it would now be 3.6x at level 20.
=> As it stands, I can't have any skill above rank 10, even though my passive skill mastery level is 14, as the mana costs are too enormous and many of them take too long to cast or do insignificant damage.

5) Really need a farther zoom level. Say to 50%. That way we could see drops farther away when doing Bestiary locking without the character having to move around to see the drops to click on.

6) Might be nice to have a healing option. Click it to restore 50% hp, with a cooldown of 1 minute. Sometimes enemies bunch up so much that dps outpaces regeneration even at 300 hp per second, and so this would help to ensure they don't die, but if dps is still bad it would only be a temporary reprieve.

7) Might be nice to have elite enemies that have a higher chance to drop pickups but also are meatier foes and give more XP.. if they don't slaughter your character of course.

-----

Otherwise having more fun now that I did my first ascension as I unlocked a few tier 1 abiliies and some tier 2, to make early game less tedious.

[CluelessWonder8]

Having played (more than) a few other idle games, currently my biggest complaint is that there appears to be no "offline" progress.

If anything, closing the game loses you progress, as if you were working on Stage 35 of an area, even if you save there and close the game, when you reload, you have to work back up to there from Stage 1.


The inability for current possible mana regen to keep up with any real level of passive skills would be my next biggest complaint. What does it matter that my passive mastery is 23, my passives are currently all level 60, if my mana regen only allows me to use those skills at level 3 or so each?

[Ithrenion]

I have about 80 hours in the demo and have completed everything in the demo except getting to level 250. I like the game and have read most of the issues brought up by Palandus in this thread. The majority of those issues are, quite frankly, a misunderstanding of how idle games work. As an example: Tier 1 are too expensive? That's what Void is for. You get 220 resources per kill there instead of the miniscule amount you get from regular stage grinding. Stage grinding should only be done to obtain Objective/Achievements that require them and to get Bestiary unlocks. In idle games you get incrementally stronger until you start hitting absurd numbers. Eventually you hit a wall, at which point you ascend and get permanently stronger.

The main issues I see with the game are thus:
- Mana regen in the demo is abysmal. I know the dev has said there are better mana regen options in the main game, though I would like to see at least a mana regen multiplier upgrade earlier on in the demo to remedy this if you are planning on keeping the demo after release.
- Lack of mana regen options means a lot of skills don't shine as they should.
- I'd like to see skill upgrades with later levels. i.e. at level 5 Great Divider gets +1 projection every 10 Int, at level 10 it gets +8% chance to poison for every 1 Dex, etc. The actual levels these upgrades come at could be changed around depending on mana regen options and could be purchased with Gold maybe?
- Later stages in Void should drop more resources than earlier stages, not the same amount. There's little reason to go to higher Void stages unless you're pushing for experience, which is temporary.
- More options for Gold usage. Unlocking a shop or passive buffs from a trainer (or something similar) would make Gold more useful than basically sitting in my inventory unused.
- More Exp multipliers and/or Achievements. Right now this area is lacking in the demo. Getting past level 170 on a character is a huge chore. Going for level 250 is not something I'm considering doing because it's basically just sit in Void Area 4 Stage 10 for who knows how many hours.
- I'd like to see an option to view Kills per Second or Kills per Minute for each damage source in the damage log.
- I'd like prefer the game to be better optimized: the title screen lags on my system despite being fairly powerful (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 3060 TI, 64 GB RAM) and I'm sure that systems less powerful than mine, which will likely be a majority of your sales, will have much worse performance in actual gameplay. While I am sitting around 5% CPU usage and 40% GPU usage with only Nomad Idle open and leaving the Particle setting off and setting max enemies to 140, I believe that a weaker system will have much more trouble.

That's about all I can think of for now.

[Palandus]

Few comments:

1) I don't usually play idle games.

2) 220 per kill doesn't sound right, because if you killed 150 a minute, you'd earn 33000 resources and so you'd get 100k every ~3 ish minutes. But I've left it idle for an hour in the void, and so I should have approximately 2M resources, and its usually around 1.2M. I think its 220 per kill, but there is a chance you get 0 resource.

3) I get the point of Ascension. I did it twice in my 21 hours of gametime. Most of that was leaving the game idling for 3-4hr stretches.

4) The lack of Mana Regen isn't the issue. Its the fact that at level 10, many skills cost 800+ mana, and with 2.3k mana, and 200 mana per second, those abilities drain you dry.

5) Better skill upgrades would be good.

6) Not sure what you mean by later stages in the void. Do you mean like wave 5 out of 10?

7) More gold sinks would be good.

8) Yeah I think my highest level was 155.

9) Title stage lags hard for me. And some waves in areas also lag for me, particularly with projectiles.