Game Design Review

[AnalBuccaneer]

Love the game. It has so much potential... after reading the dev logs, its obvious they are not afraid to try new things and/or back peddle if those things didnt work out (which is excactly what you want in a developer).

Crafting
RNG is your friend in games like this and CFWF does a decent job at utilizing it in the crafting process. when you craft an item, it has an RNG range of base stats, an RBG range of quality which will give it an RNG range of additional modifiers, which of themselves have an RNG numerical value.

one of the problems is that the RNG is 'weighted'. for example, when you craft an iron chest piece, and you only get one modifier, its almost always going to be health... and if you get 2, its most likely going to be health and mana. when you craft a mana ring, and only get 1 modifier, it's almost always going to be mana.

the actual gameplay of crafting is uninspired, boring and ultimately pointless:
1. grind a bunch of materials.
2. build a bunch of forges.
3. put on magic find armor.
4. eat a demon eye.
5. craft a bunch of chest pieces and hope to get lucky.
6. salvage all the duds.
7. repeat steps 4-6 until you run out of mats.

grind for mats are a necessary evil, and you cant get away from it.... BUT it could be more engaging. currently, to make high level black iron gear you need to spend hours farming high level abominations (or abuse mystical infusers) AND also hours roaming around picking flowers .

if the most efficient crafting room is just a room with a dozen forges in it... the game mechanics could use some creativity.

a player only ever needs 1 piece of armor for that slot and he cannot lose that unless you take it off, or it breaks... so why does the crafting process include making 100 chest pieces? how about you make 1 chest piece and upgrade it with some kind of an RNG element to it... spend 100 black iron to try and improve the armor stat or whatever.

but ultimately, after making 100s of black iron chest pieces, when you finish the phoenix dungeon, it will drop a chest piece better than anything you could make with 100s of tries on the forge...

late game crafting comes down to 2 things: unicorn blood and phoenix feathers... 2 ingredients that are real annoying to farm.

FARMING
mystical infusers are weird... in order to min/max, you find a unicorn spawn, build a base next to them and then make as many mystical infusers as you can. mystical infusers have a pretty good chance of dropping amnesia potions and dark flight potions etc... you then salvage these items and you will have seemingly endless mats to craft just about anything. the only thing you wont get from these are phoenix feathers. so now you have every crafting mat in the game, tons of them... but its pointless to craft anything because whatever you got from the boss dungeons is going to be way better anyways... so why craft? why farm?

TAMING
taming any creature besides dragons is pointless... and the way you tame dragons is to find one that isnt flying, build them into a box and then spend 30 minutes channeling a spell at their head glitched through the walls... not very good game mechanics.

also, tame stats are fixed based off creature type and level.

RAIDING
there is nothing to gain from raiding.

PVP
there is nothing to gain from PVP.

SUGGESTIONS
overhaul the crafting system... add customization options to crafting. add upgrading. make more engaging ways to get end game crafting items. also, make crafted items the best items in the game (after hours of gameplay of course)

get rid of the mystical infusers, they break the game.

building a box around a dragon shouldnt be the best way to tame it. tranq arrows/darts could be a thing. you could add a mini game with their AI where they act differently depending on their tame %. maybe you have to kill them, collect they're mats and then resurrect them later. or maybe instead of resurrecting them, you collect mats to summon your own lvl 1 dragon that you designed and customized special, train up. at first, you cant ride it until it gets to lvl 20. idk...

also, since the core mechanics of the game revolves heavily around tames, i feel like tames should be more useful and also customizable. maybe you can infuse your dragon with frost and make him a frost dragon... change his fireball to a petrify beam... and their stats should also be RNG and you should be able to train them in specific traits that you want to use them for.... wolves should be better at harvesting meat. guardians should yield better crop growth. unicorns should give lucky RNG outcomes. ferry's should give you mana per second.

my point is, this game has an awesome core... with a little bit of creativity, this could be a real gem.

if you made it this far... cookie for you.

[Shaman-Ra]

Interesting points.

[Daniel]

I've gotten Phoenix feathers from mystical conjurer, it's rare though

Taming. Get it down to like 10hp and it takes under a min to tame, just craft a lvl 1 wand with arcane beam it does 6 dmg

[Awakened Gamer]

Originally posted by AnalBuccaneer:

Love the game. It has so much potential... after reading the dev logs, its obvious they are not afraid to try new things and/or back peddle if those things didnt work out (which is excactly what you want in a developer).

Crafting
RNG is your friend in games like this and CFWF does a decent job at utilizing it in the crafting process. when you craft an item, it has an RNG range of base stats, an RBG range of quality which will give it an RNG range of additional modifiers, which of themselves have an RNG numerical value.

one of the problems is that the RNG is 'weighted'. for example, when you craft an iron chest piece, and you only get one modifier, its almost always going to be health... and if you get 2, its most likely going to be health and mana. when you craft a mana ring, and only get 1 modifier, it's almost always going to be mana.

the actual gameplay of crafting is uninspired, boring and ultimately pointless:
1. grind a bunch of materials.
2. build a bunch of forges.
3. put on magic find armor.
4. eat a demon eye.
5. craft a bunch of chest pieces and hope to get lucky.
6. salvage all the duds.
7. repeat steps 4-6 until you run out of mats.

grind for mats are a necessary evil, and you cant get away from it.... BUT it could be more engaging. currently, to make high level black iron gear you need to spend hours farming high level abominations (or abuse mystical infusers) AND also hours roaming around picking flowers .

if the most efficient crafting room is just a room with a dozen forges in it... the game mechanics could use some creativity.

a player only ever needs 1 piece of armor for that slot and he cannot lose that unless you take it off, or it breaks... so why does the crafting process include making 100 chest pieces? how about you make 1 chest piece and upgrade it with some kind of an RNG element to it... spend 100 black iron to try and improve the armor stat or whatever.

but ultimately, after making 100s of black iron chest pieces, when you finish the phoenix dungeon, it will drop a chest piece better than anything you could make with 100s of tries on the forge...

late game crafting comes down to 2 things: unicorn blood and phoenix feathers... 2 ingredients that are real annoying to farm.

FARMING
mystical infusers are weird... in order to min/max, you find a unicorn spawn, build a base next to them and then make as many mystical infusers as you can. mystical infusers have a pretty good chance of dropping amnesia potions and dark flight potions etc... you then salvage these items and you will have seemingly endless mats to craft just about anything. the only thing you wont get from these are phoenix feathers. so now you have every crafting mat in the game, tons of them... but its pointless to craft anything because whatever you got from the boss dungeons is going to be way better anyways... so why craft? why farm?

TAMING
taming any creature besides dragons is pointless... and the way you tame dragons is to find one that isnt flying, build them into a box and then spend 30 minutes channeling a spell at their head glitched through the walls... not very good game mechanics.

also, tame stats are fixed based off creature type and level.

RAIDING
there is nothing to gain from raiding.

PVP
there is nothing to gain from PVP.

SUGGESTIONS
overhaul the crafting system... add customization options to crafting. add upgrading. make more engaging ways to get end game crafting items. also, make crafted items the best items in the game (after hours of gameplay of course)

get rid of the mystical infusers, they break the game.

building a box around a dragon shouldnt be the best way to tame it. tranq arrows/darts could be a thing. you could add a mini game with their AI where they act differently depending on their tame %. maybe you have to kill them, collect they're mats and then resurrect them later. or maybe instead of resurrecting them, you collect mats to summon your own lvl 1 dragon that you designed and customized special, train up. at first, you cant ride it until it gets to lvl 20. idk...

also, since the core mechanics of the game revolves heavily around tames, i feel like tames should be more useful and also customizable. maybe you can infuse your dragon with frost and make him a frost dragon... change his fireball to a petrify beam... and their stats should also be RNG and you should be able to train them in specific traits that you want to use them for.... wolves should be better at harvesting meat. guardians should yield better crop growth. unicorns should give lucky RNG outcomes. ferry's should give you mana per second.

my point is, this game has an awesome core... with a little bit of creativity, this could be a real gem.

if you made it this far... cookie for you.

Devs I am curious what do you think of his feedback? It seems kind of helpful to be honest.