first impressions

[mayrc]

Game core is realy fun and looks very polished. Story is nothing remarkable but well written.
Dialogs between chars are interesting and sometimes even funny!

Different approach to leveling is well done.

Itemisation seems ok. Nice to be able to also craft items and enchant them.
Amount of skills for chars is abit thin (6 each)..... but you can modify each skill in 2 different ways so its decent enough!

Combat:
On one side it feels realy well... tactical, easy to understand, good variance of enemys!
Every battle yields loot so there are not trash fights aktualy.

BUT.... and now the main and only critic:

This is an insane DPS race. The mechanic that enemy come in waves is horrible.
Basicaly fight starts and the first enemys appear and walk towars you. After a preset time more and more are entering fight.
This results in a DPS race, because if you are not fast enough in dispatching enemys then you get overwhelmed.... in fact i found that moving during a fight (except if you are force to get out of a spell) is a bad idea... you loose DPS then. Even switching targets seems to lower dps cause of new attack animations. There are nice skills also for crowdcontrol.... but everything is inferior to DPS here.

While combat feels good at its core, the wave mechanic is killing all the tactics.....
I tried to play around with different approaches (some of them work) but MASS DPS is superior to all other tactics......
The bossfights so far can be either real challenging or you simply DPS him down fast ignoring his guard..... suddenly its easy.

The wave mechanic is a new approach to classic RPG-Genre but its not a good one. At some times it gets so crowded that it feels like a Tower defense game......

Game could be a true jewel.... but this mechanic will ruin fun for many who dont like the DPS race.

[Event Horizon]

Thank you myarc for a good feedback. Balancing combat is the main reason why we decided to release Early Access with the first part of the story.

While extensive testing, we realized that each player plays it differently. For NORMAL difficulty - battles should not be too difficult, when you select the correct upgrades for the skills - e.g. on level 2 - upgrade to blinding arrows in Air Barrage and blind in Taunt - works very well for large groups. Also, the idea for combat is that you do not save mana early, instead using the skills at convenient opportunity, otherwise you will get overwhelmed.

If you played on HARD - observing resistances of the enemies is crucial as well - and re-equipping your party with weapons dealing elemental damage, to which those enemies are weak. A difference between earth and fire weapon, when enemy is either +30% resistant or -30% weak - makes a big difference. If those nasty drain spells give you a problem - you can wall them of, stun them or blind them (again, Maeve's Air Barrage is an excellent problem solver)

Nevertheless, thanks a lot for such feedback - we have a list of changes to how battles work. Most importantly - we will increase threat generation for tanks (also give Kane Taunt skill earlier), so tanks will be able to keep the enemies on them, while your range chars dps them. The idea is, that as long as your tank(s) live - you should be fine, unless you position your dps next to a spawn point.

We will also change the spawn mechanics, decreasing number of enemies in each wave, increasing the time between the waves - but also boosting health of elite enemies, so they remain as challenging as they are now.

This will result in battles being clearer and easier to control (still will remain challenging on hard difficulty)

One comment - since this also came out in few streams that I have observed. Bestiary is a very good way to check what your enemies do and what their stats are. E.g on level 2 - Construct Blademasters have an aura increasing damage to all other enemies in their range, which stacks (you can see the blue circle beneath the enemies affected by aura). So if you allow 2 or 3 guards stand close to each other, boosting other enemies, it becomes a difficult situation.

Also, are you using enchants for your items? In Tower of Time enchants are very powerful and often allowing you a different tactic, depending on the enchant you choose.

[mayrc]

The problem is the numbers of enemys are far too high...... most of them are super weak therefore its all about blasting them as fast as possible.

Would be far more enjoyable if you reduce number of enemy but make them stronger to compensate.

If you get beaten by enemy cause you made some mistakes and need to alter your strategy is realy fine! Getting overwhelmed cause you couldnt dispatch enough in time feels just boring.

Difficulty is also fine and scales well through easy to hard.
Main issue is the preset time where enemys approach. You cant just beat the enemy with a good controling strategy or with a good use of the souroundings (using chokepoints). Because they will overwhelm you if you take too long killing them.

This makes DPS the primary strategy and realy limits you in your tactics.
If someone comes up with a good tanking, or kiting, or slowing or controling or whatever strategy it shouldnt be punished cause they lack DPS.

Also right now meele feels punished cause you need to run to enemys and start swinging. While ranged chars basicaly do permanent-DPS.

The lack of actualy blocking or parry makes meele and Ranged only a tradeoff between ARMOR and DPS.
And because of the Wave mechanic the DPS wins over Armor right now.

If you can get meele chars a sort of block or parry, the extrem advantage of ranged chars would be less impactfull.

In fact a party of only meele (not possible right now) would be torn apart cause they would lack DPS.

[mayrc]

Oh and before i forget... aside from that DPS-Race-thing.....
This is the best take on a tactical RPG since Pillars of eternaty (wich is basicaly best since Baldurs Gate).

Towers feels also better than Tyranny in my opinion. You got some serious Potential there. And i encourage everyone to try it out. For that price its realy awesome!

[Event Horizon]

mayrc - we already started making some adjustments to the threat mechanics. Your tanks will be able to tank the enemies much more effectively. We will change spawn mechanics as well.

Thanks for the positive feedback. We designed this combat from a scratch.

You were playing on which difficulty?

[mayrc]

i play on normal and combat isnt realy hard.... i have no problems with combat so far.
The point is just that every fight is the same strat and it works.... camp at enemy spawnpoints and kill them instantly by mass dps when they appear.

I tried alot of other tactics but this so over-effectiv that it get abit boring.
Suggestion: Make monsters stronger and more durable. Then reduce numbers.
Right now many die in 2 hits..... with dwarfs fireball i sometimes one-hit-kill 3 enemys at once......
But nontheless game fun and i dont regret buying it. Making a good review too

[Samseng Yik]

What loot system this game using ?

[Event Horizon]

it is random loot generation - three tiers of items: Magic (one magic property), Ancient (two magic properties) and Relic (two magic properties + enchant slot)

you can also craft items and enchant them in your blacksmith

[mayrc]

1 more question..... what you supposed to do with all the green crystals? You can craftitems you dont need after lvl2 (you wear blue or better). All the green items can be salvaged into more green crystals..... but you cant sell then you cant use them for enchantments and you cant convert them into better?

[Event Horizon]

When you get the ability to craft Tier 2 items, they might come handy.

We also plan to have a transmute option - converting green to blue to purple - at a ratio (1:3). We did not plan to put it in EA content levels (this is advanced technology), but we need to find a way for the player to use them - so we will add a place where you can do just that, with a steeper ratio penalty (e.g 1:5)

[mayrc]

thank you right now about 70% of loot is useless as green items are obsolete pretty much after you finished lvl2 of the tower. That is abit demotivating. Salvaging those loot is cool.
Would be nice to have several uses for crystals so you have to consider and decide. That way every loot would be useful and motivating.

Something nice would be 1 time buffs bevore a battle that costs crystals.
Or make reskilling of you attributes possible for a steep crystal cost.
Since Leveling is mostly through gold it would not be a good idea to sell them. Would impact balance too much.

but now decending to lvl 5 and it becomes obvious that 6 skills for each char is suffuciant to beat the game as those skills provide everything you need (need mostly DPS at the moment....). But its boring... :(
Also most of the skills are the same.... damage in 4 different elements. Some are realy cool like the wall or totems or cleave..... but most are basicaly the same. Its not that this makes the game bad but it prevents from beeing outstanding.

[Samseng Yik]

Make single bous loot have nearly 160% numerical bonus of those double bonuses.
And make Enchant slot 25% to appear on gear regardless on rarity

[Event Horizon]

ok, that is a good idea. We will diversify loot more - there is loot with pure damage and loot with special bonus - such as stun chance, slow chance (for range) - or one boosting skill damage overall - we will make it more visible.

[Clacker]

use your fighters wall. it can block off a group while you finish another and totem heal your group up.

[Jims9350]

Oprindeligt skrevet af mayrc:

i play on normal and combat isnt realy hard.... i have no problems with combat so far.
The point is just that every fight is the same strat and it works.... camp at enemy spawnpoints and kill them instantly by mass dps when they appear.

I tried alot of other tactics but this so over-effectiv that it get abit boring.
Suggestion: Make monsters stronger and more durable. Then reduce numbers.
Right now many die in 2 hits..... with dwarfs fireball i sometimes one-hit-kill 3 enemys at once......
But nontheless game fun and i dont regret buying it. Making a good review too

Glad I read this post. I am playing on normal and I find the combat super hard just after getting the druid in my party. The orc shaman battle destroyed me 3 times before I rage quit. When I stop raging, I will try the camping strategy. Even if it is cheap.

[Event Horizon]

Hello jims9350. We have started testing our new patch that brings almost complete overhaul of combat mechanics and major re-balancing - with new skills and skill tree. Also - we will add combat description to each battle mode - so you can see which fights are setup to be more difficult - most often they are optional fights. Our current approach with showing the difficulty of combat by different group composition - apparently does not work well.