17hr Feedback :)

[Solid Snack]

Figured I'll do the "20 hour feedback" since everyone else is :)

Quick pointer - game is fantastic, pacing is great, graphics are awesome, engine is already well optimised and there's a myriad of positive awesome stuff that would be too long to list - so I"m just going to focus on what I felt were the main issues / aspects that need some sort of looking at. Most of these are from endless mode as that provides a good cross-section of late game.

* Move ability Keybind:
- Noted issue: currently, the left mouse button selects a target, and right mouse button clears a target, regardless if said mouse buttons are bound to anything else. This unfortunately means that for anyone who bound the right mouse button to dodge / movement ability, will cancel a selected target any time they use it.
- Proposed solution: allow keybinds for selecting / unselecting a target in the keybind option menu.

* Move ability leap with selected target:
- Noted issue: currently, leap move ability will automatically home in onto a selected target, if one is selected, and mouse cursor when no target is selected. This causes notable and obvious problems for gameplay, where your character moves into a location that the player does not wish him to.
- Proposed solution: Always force leap ability to home to mouse cursor location, regardless of whether a target is selected or not.

* UI visibility
- Noted issue: currently, character stats bars are difficult - if not impossible - to keep track off late game with a large swarm of enemies and effects. This can be mitigated to an extent by increasing the size of the bars, though this also increases the size of the enemies bars.
- Proposed solution 1: Allow for separate options of player bars and enemies' bars, without having to turn off enemies' bars altogether to keep players bars visible.
- Proposed solution 2: Toggle option to move player bar to a static hud bar on bottom left / right of screen, as well as / instead of floating over character's portrait

* Visibility and positioning during combat action
- Noted issue: currently, it is nearly impossible to notice projectiles (purple caster balls / arrows) during late game under the swarm of enemies. This results in impossible-to-dodge scenarios where the player dashes into an invisible stack of purple balls instantly loosing several lives. Note, this is not difficulty scaling as it's impossible to see where the projectiles are in relation to the player, thus the player is unable to avoid them
- Proposed solution 1: Invulnerability that currently exists on dash mechanics during their animation, carries on for an additional 0.1 second after the animation is completed.
- Proposed solution 2: Solution 1 introduced as an upgrade to various dash mechanics, possibly balanced via a negative attribute (eg. movement ability recharge - ) if balance is necessary to avoid spam.
- Proposed solution 3: Projectiles are given the same physical hitbox as enemies, that push enemies out of the way, instead of by-passing and clipping through them.

* Character build theorycrafting
- Noted issue: Currently, builds are entirely focused on RNG. This is the core of the game, and should not be changed for obvious purposes - however, players are unable to experiment, trial and error or theorycraft ideal builds to strive for.
- Proposed solution: Create a "proving grounds" endless mode node, with zero permanent rewards (no skull cards / soul gems), but one that allows players unlimited rolls with set bonuses, to theorycraft and test potential builds they would want to try to progress on the rest of the world map. Ideal placement should be towards end of the game once players have unlocked everything else and only have endless modes / challenges left to do.

* Increase rarity for items
- Noted issue: Currently, increasing rarity on an armor set will automatically and simultaneously reroll all the armor set options. While RNG is the core of the game, this limits player involvement and decisionmaking in the character building process too much.
- Proposed solution: Increasing rarity should only increase rarity on previously offered armour sets (eg. increasing rarity on common 'white' 2 staker 1 silver chestplate offers should produce a uncommon 'blue' 2 stalker 1 silver chestplate offers, instead of re-rolling all offers simultaneously). Re-roll should re-roll said offers into same rarity. This would allow player more input and agency into their build development, without compromising the core RNG mechanic of the game

* Skipping re-roll rewards for higher rarity offers
- Noted issue: Currently, skipping a reward will always yield a +1 re-roll, regardless of the rarity of the reward offered. This feels unfair and unbalanced, and overall makes no sense.
- Proposed solution: Skipping a reward should yield a +2 on rare and +3 on legendary offers, to stay in line with the potential for the reward.

* Increased collection range offer
- Noted issue: Currently, the offer to increase your characters' collection range is useless, compared to pretty much every other single offer. Historically in similar games, this offer made sense on large procedurally generated maps if you wanted to keep moving in a single direction. This is not the case in this game where maps are a single screen with the entirety of the gameplay always visible. Simultaneously, the speed at which exp shards "chase" the player at late game, does not allow the player to collect any unless they stop moving or change direction.
- Proposed solution: Add a "exp shard collection speed" attribute to the offer. This would make the offer viable, as it would make the offer a useful option that will allow the exp shards to catch up and affect the character during late game, when your character is forced to always be moving.

* Spawning units blocking character movement
- Noted issue: Currently, enemies coming out of the ground create a collision hitbox while in their emerging animation. This often blocks the character trying to move over the top of their spawn location, before the enemies themselves are visible to the player.
- Proposed solution: Enemies do not gain their collision/hitbox until completing / are 80% through their spawn animation, when they are mostly / fully visible to the player.

* Impossible bosses created with RNG in endless mode
- Noted issue: Currently, bosses in endless mode are randomly generated. This leaves the player's finite amount of waves purely at the mercy of RNG, as rolling a boss that is faster than your character with capped movement speed + teleport + immunity to stun / freeze an impassable obstacle. Your run basically ends when you encounter one of these. This will force one single build (eg. retaliation type build) to be the only viable playable option in the long run, forcing the developer to try and nerf said build (making it non-viable altogether as a result) and be forced into a ping-pong game of balance as a result.
- Proposed solution: Cap bosses to 95% player maximum hard-capped speed, or limit boss scaling to either speed OR stun/slow immunity. Alternatively, allow player to by-pass the hard movement speed cap in some way (admittedly, for all we know, this is already addressed in full release). In essence, players should have the option to have a number of choices and playstyles, to create a variety of viable builds and playstyles, and this is impossible with bosses that hard-counter every single option bar one.

* Bleed mechanic
- Noted issue: Taking this more from the approach of a new player who knows nothing about the game; the first time I noticed the bleed mechanic I thought it was an absolute terrible mechanic that made me not want to start up the game again. After forcing myself to play for a few more hours, I finally realised that bleed stacks directly correlated to the number of lives lost. This made the bleed mechanic just bad but tolerable and I could actually enjoy playing the game. Unless you understand the bleed mechanic, it's a massive turn-off of the game.
- Proposed solution: Tie bleed stats in closer to life in stats screen, which would visually make it obvious that one is tied to the other. Something like 9/10 life 1/10 bleed stacks - next to both titles in the stats screen would go a long way. Furthermore putting a bleed stack number next to your character's life number on the character bar would likewise allow new players to link the two in their mind. Lastly, adding the bleed mechanic to enemy bosses with the same numerical indicator next to their life, would further solidify this correlation and make the bleed mechanic less tedious (even though with the amount of damage bleed does vs. the amount of hp the bosses have, it would have zero impact on the overall difficulty and survivability of bosses)
>> Overall I personally believe it's a terrible mechanic without any way to mitigate it (outside reducing bleed %) - though noticing that there is a bleed invulnerability tag in the stats screen implies there would be some way to mitigate it at a later stage once released, so hopefully creating a more obvious correlation between life X and bleed stacks Y would allow for a higher player retention.

Hope that all made sense, apologies in advance for grammatical errors. Genuinely looking forward to the finished product and the full release - having a blast so far :D

[Irmstoi]

Hey Solid Snack and thanks for taking the time to write this feedback. I went through the post and wrote all of the points up. Some of this stuff is already on my to-do list, but won't necessary make it to the start of EA.

The bleed mechanic is a bit controversial and not very intuitive to understand. In the upcoming updated demo there's a tutorial before your first ritual that goes through it which also explains the importance of defensive stats and how to mitigate bleeding once you have it. In the full version there are multiple other sources to reduce the amount of bleeding and also a limited way to completely become immune to it.