Stoneshard

Stoneshard

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redacted Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:23pm
Some constructive criticism
I'm going to start by saying this game is very poorly designed, and it could easily be fixed in many departments.

Rather than explain to the developers how to fix these fundamental issues, I'm going to instead present a list of questions:

Why are there so many buffalo?
Why are buffalo so aggressive?
Why are buffalo so powerful while also traveling in groups of 5+ and appearing very early in the game?
Why is it impossible to escape from any wilderness creature encounter?
Why do you lose so much time for extremely tiny mistakes? (Such as accidentally walking into a herd of buffalo after a 2 hour long mission completion)
Why does the character consume so much food?
Why is food so expensive?
Why is food so hard to come by? Doesn't everyone need to eat?
Why is wandering around the plains harvesting berries for fodder the most lucrative activity?
Why can't you enter (most) dungeons when there isn't a quest active?
Why did you remove all the missions from Brynn in the last patch? It took you guys something like 4 years just to develop Brynn and now it's near meaningless to visit, and doesn't even explain to the player that the missions are all gone.
Why does the game disrespect the player's time so much? Last patch claimed to make the tedious travel less tedious, but it certainly didn't.
Why is it so absurdly cost restrictive and tedious to let the player save with a bedroll?
Why do I have to first visit a location on foot before being able to bring my Caravan there?
Why does the caravan require so much fodder that I'm spending 25% of my time just keeping up with it?
Why isn't there a fast travel return from mission?

*Edit 1: Few more forthe list, as they seemed important enough for an edit.
Why is it so restrictive to sell equipment? To the point where I'm quite literally throwing a 10/20 durability Enchanted Gold Ring worth ~150gold on the ground, because it's impossible for me to sell?
Why is it so energy draining to cross a small river? And why do I have to go on a 5+ zone sidetrack to find a bridge if my energy has been drained too low from fatigue from doing my last mission to cross without dying?*

*Edit 2: I'm trying REALLY hard to give this game a fair shake, and I love it's foundations, but the more I play it the more perplexing some design choices become:
Why is the punishment for theft so OUTRAGEOUS?
Why do I have to spend 15 minutes clicking a few extremely tedious things while I wait in jail?
Why do I lose ALL OF MY REPUTATIONS because I spent time in jail? That's one of the few things you actually work toward in this game. The reputation setback for jailtime is so anti-player it hurts. And I guarantee you it hurts your player longevity. Being a thief in an RPG is fun, losing all your time and effort is extremely unfun.
Why even offer theft as a gameplay option if the player suffers so much? The character doesn't suffer, I myself as a player suffer, because I just spent 15 minutes clicking nonsense to wait out my jailtime, before losing 20+ hours of progress on all of my reputations. Hell, I'm now HATED pretty much everywhere. (Because I stole around 1000 crowns worth of items in a completely unrelated town several days journey away).*

*Edit 3: Just making it really hard to enjoy my campaign:
Why are both of the new towns so terrible? Denbrie is a torn down waste of time, not attractive to look at, not pleasant to visit, and the "rotten air" mechanic is just more anti-fun time wastey garbage (can't even sustain the boring harvest fruit for fodder to actually use the caravan grind). Rotten Willow is even worse, I can never get any rest near here even after clearing the missions, the Inn is only open from around 10:30am - 3:30pm as far as I can tell, and the lack of food and goods makes it really suck to do missions and raise your rep there.
Why don't you inform the player about decisions they are making in the caravan? I ended up wasting my first ~234 gold on training, as well as my first Ranger Brew because I didn't realize you had to accept them RIGHT BEFORE a mission.
Why is fatigue so punishing? For the love of god, let the standard Rest action lower fatigue, force me to carry around a pillow for all I care. I can NEVER finish a T3+ on my heavy armor 2H sword character without ending up at 60%+ fatigue or much worse. Even with 2 trips I often end up over 60%+ both times. And yes I prioritize and spend a lot of crowns of -Fatigue food.
Why is the number of items for sale on merchants, the quality of items, and the price of items all directly tied to reputation? It absolutely needs to be a combination of character level + time passed in campaign / progress made in campaign + Reputation. As it stands the system is so awful that even a small amount of jailtime ruins entire games from a practical standpoint. Nobody wants to redo 20+ hours of work for nothing, and it really does take that long to regrind Amnity+ in some of these towns. Because don't forget, I also have to go to other towns, which means gathering fodder for my caravan, then passing more time, spending all my money on food. What a lame grind, guess I shoulda known beforehand that even petty theft would obliterate my progress... Oopsie..*

And most of all:

Why is the early game so slow and unfun? Mid to late game blossoms rather nicely, but boy does it take a long arduous road to get there. Why?

I hate to say it, but I think this game is getting worse in almost every way except "raw content" in each progressive patch. Please try to change the anti-fun anti-player direction of the game.
Last edited by redacted; Dec 31, 2024 @ 10:46am
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Showing 1-15 of 56 comments
Včelí medvídek Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:38pm 
I agree with unnecessary tedium with food lasts patch brought but 99% of wildlife encounters can be solved just by terminate line of sight and/or move away (which on immersion dont explain why there is so much wildlife and so near to settlements while single boar cna probably kill entire city garrison.. not starting on mooses and other:p and buffalos are those least triggered in my experience (Gulons are different story:p

And btw for caravan you just need the area "explored" from map (the one you buy) to be able travel there, you do not need visit the place personally first.
Last edited by Včelí medvídek; Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:40pm
rock Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:40pm 
Most of that isn't constructive or even valid. For example, you don't need to visit a location on foot to travel to it. If you get maps of the the surrounding terrain, which you can purchase from various people, you will be able to send the caravan to unexplored tiles.

There are some legitimate issues with the game (ie, doing lower level dungeons is far more safer and possibly more lucrative than doing higher tier dungeons), but the stuff you listed isn't it.
Wayfinder  [developer] Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:47pm 
4
3
Is it supposed to be a gotcha thread?

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are there so many buffalo?
Because they live in the steppes. It's their natural habitat.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are buffalo so aggressive?
Because they're territorial and don't like intruders.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are buffalo so powerful while also traveling in groups of 5+ and appearing very early in the game?
Because they're herd animals weighting approximately a ton and a half while also being able to reach the max speed of up to 50 km per hour. They can crush a regular car easily sheerly because of the basic physics laws, let alone a lone human.

They also have a very short vision range and a really long threatening phase, granting you about 12 turns to get the hell out. Why do you keep bumping into something clearly dangerous and not meant to be messed with early on?

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is it impossible to escape from any wilderness creature encounter?
Because wilderness creatures are naturally fast and you're no Usain Bolt unless you invest in relevant skills. Or buy a net or a smoke bomb or any other tool for situations like these.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why do you lose so much time for extremely tiny mistakes? (Such as accidentally walking into a herd of buffalo after a 2 hour long mission completion)
So you wouldn't make these tiny mistakes. Also I wouldn't say that walking straight into a bison herd while they give you all kinds of signals to leave is just a silly little hiccup.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the character consume so much food?
Because you're mercenary doing all kinds of heavy fighting, long range walking and loot carrying, so you have to maintain quite a filling diet. Also it's not that bad unless you abuse rest mode to heal your injuries, which you shouldn't really do - there's medicine for that.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is food so expensive?
Because the country is ravaged by war and is not named Tesco.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is food so hard to come by? Doesn't everyone need to eat?
Checking out food vendors and inns usually helps.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is wandering around the plains harvesting berries for fodder the most lucrative activity?
Contracts yield more, but if a player wants to optimize the fun out of the game by doing the most tedious things for minimal gain, we can't really stop them. Though the ability to sell fodder back is an oversight.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why can't you enter (most) dungeons when there isn't a quest active?
They're cleared. Nothing to do there.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why did you remove all the missions from Brynn in the last patch? It took you guys something like 4 years just to develop Brynn and now it's near meaningless to visit, and doesn't even explain to the player that the missions are all gone.
It's literally explained to you by the very former questgiver. Directly.

Brynn is meant to be a commercial hub you come to buy upgrades and sell the goods. The rest is reserved for the main plot and yet to come mechanics.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the game disrespect the player's time so much? Last patch claimed to make the tedious travel less tedious, but it certainly didn't.
It's less time-consuming because of the increased walking speed animation and the caravan.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is it so absurdly cost restrictive and tedious to let the player save with a bedroll?
Short answer - so it wouldn't be easily abusable.

Long asnwer - 100 crowns is quite a cheap price to pay for the convenience if you plan to die a lot, and the inventory space it takes doesn't matter because it's a one time use item that you will you use before getting to the dungeon anyway.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why do I have to first visit a location on foot before being able to bring my Caravan there?
Buy a paper map first so you wouldn't need to.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the caravan require so much fodder that I'm spending 25% of my time just keeping up with it?
Buy fodder if you don't want to gather it. Grabbing a few herbs and berries on a walk back genuinely isn't that much demaning.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why isn't there a fast travel return from mission?
Why should there be? Walking back alive and unscathed is a big part of the gameplay loop.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is the early game so slow and unfun? Mid to late game blossoms rather nicely, but boy does it take a long arduous road to get there. Why?
Because it's subjective, and losing is fun.
Last edited by Wayfinder; Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:53pm
Yuewu★★★ Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:58pm 
In addition, why does distant dungeons have such long reset timer? especially since there's not much end game content.

And why do characters path onto spotted traps? artificial inconvenience ≠ difficult
Mimung Dec 30, 2024 @ 2:09pm 
Originally posted by Wayfinder:
Is it supposed to be a gotcha thread?

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are there so many buffalo?
Because they live in the steppes. It's their natural habitat.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are buffalo so aggressive?
Because they're territorial and don't like intruders.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why are buffalo so powerful while also traveling in groups of 5+ and appearing very early in the game?
Because they're herd animals weighting approximately a ton and a half while also being able to reach the max speed of up to 50 km per hour. They can crush a regular car easily sheerly because of the basic physics laws, let alone a lone human.

They also have a very short vision range and a really long threatening phase, granting you about 12 turns to get the hell out. Why do you keep bumping into something clearly dangerous and not meant to be messed with early on?

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is it impossible to escape from any wilderness creature encounter?
Because wilderness creatures are naturally fast and you're no Usain Bolt unless you invest in relevant skills. Or buy a net or a smoke bomb or any other tool for situations like these.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why do you lose so much time for extremely tiny mistakes? (Such as accidentally walking into a herd of buffalo after a 2 hour long mission completion)
So you wouldn't make these tiny mistakes. Also I wouldn't say that walking straight into a bison herd while they give you all kinds of signals to leave is just a silly little hiccup.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the character consume so much food?
Because you're mercenary doing all kinds of heavy fighting, long range walking and loot carrying, so you have to maintain quite a filling diet. Also it's not that bad unless you abuse rest mode to heal your injuries, which you shouldn't really do - there's medicine for that.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is food so expensive?
Because the country is ravaged by war and is not named Tesco.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is food so hard to come by? Doesn't everyone need to eat?
Checking out food vendors and inns usually helps.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is wandering around the plains harvesting berries for fodder the most lucrative activity?
Contracts yield more, but if a player wants to optimize the fun out of the game by doing the most tedious things for minimal gain, we can't really stop them. Though the ability to sell fodder back is an oversight.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why can't you enter (most) dungeons when there isn't a quest active?
They're cleared. Nothing to do there.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why did you remove all the missions from Brynn in the last patch? It took you guys something like 4 years just to develop Brynn and now it's near meaningless to visit, and doesn't even explain to the player that the missions are all gone.
It's literally explained to you by the very former questgiver. Directly.

Brynn is meant to be a commercial hub you come to buy upgrades and sell the goods. The rest is reserved for the main plot and yet to come mechanics.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the game disrespect the player's time so much? Last patch claimed to make the tedious travel less tedious, but it certainly didn't.
It's less time-consuming because of the increased walking speed animation and the caravan.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is it so absurdly cost restrictive and tedious to let the player save with a bedroll?
Short answer - so it wouldn't be easily abusable.

Long asnwer - 100 crowns is quite a cheap price to pay for the convenience if you plan to die a lot, and the inventory space it takes doesn't matter because it's a one time use item that you will you use before getting to the dungeon anyway.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why do I have to first visit a location on foot before being able to bring my Caravan there?
Buy a paper map first so you wouldn't need to.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why does the caravan require so much fodder that I'm spending 25% of my time just keeping up with it?
Buy fodder if you don't want to gather it. Grabbing a few herbs and berries on a walk back genuinely isn't that much demaning.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why isn't there a fast travel return from mission?
Why should there be? Walking back alive and unscathed is a big part of the gameplay loop.

Originally posted by redacted:
Why is the early game so slow and unfun? Mid to late game blossoms rather nicely, but boy does it take a long arduous road to get there. Why?
Because it's subjective, and losing is fun.

I lold so hard at many of these and of cause every single one was answered correctly.

Op has no clue about the game, doesnt know the first thing about it, but maybe was educated in "game design".

The same studies that brought us into this mess of the millionth mobile game that "catch the player where he is at" and treats adults like children and warmwashes any spark of true creativity into the gutter.

I say eff them, give them no quarter!
Vendetta Dec 30, 2024 @ 2:36pm 
I am amazed that the dev took time to answer this one. Respect for the patience. I was about to rant... now I dont need to. When I read "Fast Travel" I knew it was hopeless...
Wayfinder  [developer] Dec 30, 2024 @ 2:51pm 
Originally posted by Yuewu★★★:
In addition, why does distant dungeons have such long reset timer? especially since there's not much end game content.
Lore wise, because they're distant, not exactly in the thick of things and thus take longer to repopulate.

Gameplay wise, to prevent the player from grinding out the same dungeon over and over again, which would be quite easily achievable with a weekly reset akin to regular dungeons.

There are currently 6 remote dungeons on the map, if you spend 2 days clearing each of them (which is roughly the average time it takes to do so), then by the end of the 6th dungeon you'll have the first one reset already. That way it's more interesting because you actually travel around the world instead of focusing same two dungeons.

Originally posted by Yuewu★★★:
And why do characters path onto spotted traps? artificial inconvenience ≠ difficult
Because traps are spotted with a single press of the button, and them being excluded from the pathfinding would mean you'll literally never step into them unless you decide to manually walk into one.

Pathfinding which ignores traps, however, creates tension by requiring player to keep close attention of their surroundings and pathing, and encourages disarming traps to not step into them accidentally. If you can forget about the traps you discovered while autopathing, then your character could also do the same.
Last edited by Wayfinder; Dec 30, 2024 @ 2:57pm
Mimung Dec 30, 2024 @ 2:59pm 
Originally posted by Wayfinder:
Originally posted by Yuewu★★★:
In addition, why does distant dungeons have such long reset timer? especially since there's not much end game content.
Lore wise, because they're distant, not exactly in the thick of things and thus take longer to repopulate.

Gameplay wise, to prevent the player from grinding out the same dungeon over and over again, which would be quite easily achievable with a weekly reset akin to regular dungeons.

There are currently 6 remote dungeons on the map, if you spend 2 days clearing each of them (which is roughly the average time it takes to do so), then by the end of the 6th dungeon you'll have the first one reset already.

Originally posted by Yuewu★★★:
And why do characters path onto spotted traps? artificial inconvenience ≠ difficult
Because traps are spotted with a single press of the button, and them being excluded from the pathfinding would mean you'll literally never step into one unless you manually walk into one.

Pathfinding which ignores traps, however, creates tension by requiring player to keep close attention of their surroundings and pathing, and encourages disarming traps to not step into them accidentally. If you can forget about the traps you discovered while autopathing, then your character could also do the same.

specifically the traps part I also absolutely agree upon too.

it creates a connection between me the player being careless and the toon I play to be careless and maybe that leads to some bleeding legs in a dangerous dungeon
Last edited by Mimung; Dec 30, 2024 @ 3:00pm
Vendetta Dec 30, 2024 @ 3:37pm 
Dual Wielding Crowbars FTW... Traps? What are traps :)
Mimung Dec 30, 2024 @ 4:12pm 
Im also going to leave this here:

After 200h playing with several parallel chars one through endgame in this patch,

none of them were ever killed by a buffalo or a bear.

You can simply step away from them, it is that easy.

The times a toon was killed by wolves, a boar or gulons I was cocky
Last edited by Mimung; Dec 30, 2024 @ 4:13pm
Včelí medvídek Dec 30, 2024 @ 4:54pm 
Originally posted by Mimung:
After 200h playing with several parallel chars one through endgame in this patch,

none of them were ever killed by a buffalo or a bear.

ky
Right now I am having strange situation - not triggered (questions mark above his head) buffalo is pursuing me over whole map .. starting to believe something is going on here:p

PS: Actually I may finaly get bison horns for quest when one volunteerily left the herd:p
Vendetta Dec 30, 2024 @ 5:04pm 
Did you save scum while he was cautious?
Včelí medvídek Dec 30, 2024 @ 5:10pm 
Originally posted by Vendetta:
Did you save scum while he was cautious?
nope.. anyway he is already safely packed in my bag, not much for investigation left.
Last edited by Včelí medvídek; Dec 30, 2024 @ 5:12pm
goplayingbertoo Dec 30, 2024 @ 5:11pm 
i love abusing rest mode
smokauweeds Dec 30, 2024 @ 5:16pm 
the food thing is a bit extreme. my character ate a whole loaf of bread and it barely helped with hunger. My job is physical, and I can tell you right now, If I ate a whole loaf of bread, that would carry my through the day. I mean at least 6-8 hours.

As the Op is describing as far as food goes, the early game sucks. all the food items that meant anything seem to be gone (im not that far in) or severely diminished. I heard and its a valid point you shouldnt be able to sustain yourself on berries. in a pinch a handful would surely fill you up more then the game is now doing.

I like that there is now cooking. but the early recipes suck. also can you not remove the food item from the pots and put them in the pack?
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Date Posted: Dec 30, 2024 @ 1:23pm
Posts: 56