Thoughts after completing MS

[Butt Sheriff]

Hello everyone, I just completed the game for the first time, I was also nuzlocking for the fun of it ( Nuzlocke is a certain set of rules, where you only use the first monster you catch, name it, and any faints count as permanent deaths) and thought I'd share some of my suggestions and thoughts. A post made by mundoNYnumber1 covers almost everything I'd recommend and I recommend you check it out ( Suggestions after two full clears) :

1) I don't think the Koi should return to life, Alchemists are evil and if you want the Seekers to fear them they need to have to have a kill count or show they are capable of being dangerous, also I don't think the fish flying up into the sun to purify it -somewhat?- is ideal :P, also it's nice and friendly even though it was dark shifted,supposedly making it more aggressive and hostile? Let the Koi die after the fight, have the sun permanently shifted, thus instantly establish the Alchemists as dangerous badasses who don't screw around, and I will want to kick their behinds twice as much.

2)The latter half of the game, snowy peaks and sun mountain, were excellent, I'd say both in music quality and level design with the puzzles and tricky platforming, more of that please! I am already listening to the snowy theme on repeat.

3)Signature moves, I think each monster should have just one extra trait to differentiate them from the rest, a buff or attack only available to them, this might be appealing just to me, since I nuzlocked I grew way too close to my peeps and want some extra flavor for them

4)Clearing a boss with 5 stars should reward you with a piece of equipment dropped from it, Steam golem's screw, minotaur's hord etc., for added flavor,

5) Moar evolutions !!!!!!11!!

6) The Oracle mentioned something about shaman monsters? Since they appear to be important to the world (not the story) they should be more relevant, if not at least mentioned once or twice before. Helps with world building.

7)The doors puzzle in the temple of the sun, the one with the 6 doors and the 6 levers got me dizzy because of the camera movement jolting back and forth, perhaps some lights above the levers to indicate which ones close and which ones open up instead?

8) Rocky needs an evolution where they grow really buff and constantly flex because its the bestest monster obvs

9) It would be neat if monsters liked a certain type of food more than others, for added personality

10) I don't find the instantly refilling hp bars after every fight to be needed, if you ask me I'd have monsters be able to refill back to full without potions only a certain amount of times, then use an item (like setting up camp ) to refill it or go back to the castle. Setting up a tent to rest, while surrounded by goblins would get my blood boiling.

That's all, if anyone wants to check out how the Nuzlocke went here's a link :https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL74L85kAxa1unS0pXZg5tlTCEON8phZyH
and if you want more info for your nuzlocke feel free to ask.

[mudofNYnumber1]

#4, I think they actually all have a specific item drop at 4 star rating. 5 star rating gives you their egg (as well as the sum of all prior star rewards). The drops aren't specifically named for the monster, but it is a piece of gear. Someone can probably elaborate more, as I didn't take exact notes.

#7 I completely agree.

#8 Also agree. Or they could just make that his world ability. Forget activating floor switches or flying. There needs to be a few that are just for show.

[Conan The Librarian]

Gamer70s-

1. For the sun / koi situation, things aren't 100% fixed. It's stated that while a pretty large level of catastrophe was avoided, what happened still caused the shifting in the monsters across sanctuary. That is some real consequences right there, so it's not like nothing important happened. So, there is still plenty of reason why the Alchemists are bad because they did something which had a major effect across the sanctuary.

3. There isn't a need for specific "signature moves" for monsters because the talent trees already exist. Especially since the plan is to have "around 100 monsters" (likely a few more than 100--we'll see) having signature moves would not only be a lot of work, but a bit redundant with the design philosophy of the game. The talent trees are designed to where you grab your actives and passives and go from there. If each monster had some sort of "signature move", things would have to be completely rebalanced to account for that. Granted, some monsters have more-unique things, and some don't. When I say "more-unique", it means a certain power which is seen on only a couple of monsters. Certain levels of overlap between the monsters is the general plan for Moi Rai.

4. Like MundoNYnumber1 said above, there is already rewards (including cool pieces of equipment) which drop from champions. I see your point in terms of "there could be added flavor by making these equipment pieces match the champion in terms of their name / design", but really, that's just flavor and kind of secondary. Perhaps you didn't notice this, but there are some instances where that DOES ring true, actually, such as the [Fin] dropping from Akhlut. Overall, I wouldn't be concerned about such a thing, as cool gear drops from champs, and I say "Just let Moi Rai call the gear what they think is best". Sometimes it will "match" more (thematically / flavor wise), sometimes it won't.

5. Unlike games like Pokemon / Digimon, this isn't an evolution-based game. In fact, earlier / original versions of this game didn't include evolution at all. Part of the goal is that they want to make sure that all monsters are good and viable to use as opposed to following some sort of progression with "you need to evolve your monster to make it better". So, not that I know the precise number of evolutions which will make it into the game, but in the live version of the game there are 5, with a 6th one which is in the current testing build. Yes, there WILL be more evolutions--No, they won't be anywhere near as common as Pokemon / Digimon.

8. See dev's reply here: https://ibb.co/2Ybr9HX

Sersch: But we have plans for an evolution for Rocky

Who knows when this will happen, but, they've stated it.

9. The whole point of food is to add stats to monsters. They want players to feel free to choose whatever kind of food they want for whatever strategy the player has in mind. Having some sort of "likes / dislikes" on food wouldn't make sense as that would just limit player choice.

10. I actually quite disagree here--having HP / mana refill after every battle is AMAZING. Having to micromanage health / potions / tents / resting (etc) is merely just a time-waster for players. If the game was designed to have more of a "survival" aspect, then yeah, having some sort of attrition on your monsters' health would make sense--but it's not. Besides, given the high prevalence of healers in the game, it would still be pretty easy to stay healthy. Essentially, no, the game is designed with auto-heal in mind, and changing that would require a lot of retuning--and overall be not worth it.

[Reiker]

Responding to Conan's post above:


"There isn't a need for specific "signature moves" for monsters because the talent trees already exist."

I disagree. Also, your comment doesn't make any sense. What does the existence of talent trees have to do with whether signature abilities are good or not? All that the OP is asking is for monsters to have greater variety and a stronger identity, and I completely agree with that. It's one of the things I've noticed the game is lacking a bit.

Most monsters follow a similar formula. You have a defensive spec line that probably has a buff and probably something like a heal or shield. You have a couple offensive spec lines that have an assortment of offensive abilities and enhancements, which are the same abilities and enhancements that other monsters have access to, but this one has them rearranged slightly differently. After playing the game for a few hours you can probably guess pretty closely to what a monster's talent tree is going to look like before you even hatch it.

Early in the game I was like, "Okay, this is a defensive monster that gets a shield ability it can put up on its allies. Cool!"

But then as I played more of the game I started to realize that just about EVERY defensive monster gets Shield. And almost every monster gets a buff line. And offensive lines across the monsters are just pretty similar in general.

When you have a unique game mechanic like "Shield" then it should probably be limited to about 5 monsters if we're planning on having 100 total.

So let's say that out of these 5 monsters that have access to the standard Shield spell, one of them is the master of Shields. Let's say this monster is also very magic-oriented, and gains bonuses from stacking a large Mana pool. The standard Shield spell uses Defense as part of the calculation, which this monster isn't very good at, but in a later skill tier they receive their signature ability - Crystal Shield. Instead of calculating the strength of the shield with Base(Defense(%)), this ability uses Base(Mana(%)). Additionally, this shield can extend past the shield cap by 20% (which could be visually represented by a purple bar).

Now if you want a strategy that maximizes shields, you have an incentive to bring along the one monster that's definitively best at shields, instead of just choosing from maybe 15-20 monsters who can all apply the same Lvl 3 Shield.

Then one or two of the other shielding monsters can get a unique version as well, maybe something a bit more offensively-oriented.

And what do you know, the developers have already done exactly this with Magmapillar and Fire Shield - at least I haven't seen any other monsters with Fire Shield yet but I haven't quite finished the game.

It's awesome that Magmapillar has this strong identity, I just wish the other monsters were designed in a similar fashion.

This is also why Magmapillar became one of my favorite monsters early on, even though its design is pretty boring (as bugs often are). I was drawn to it simply because it had a strong identity with a clear combat purpose and a signature ability that tied everything together. I took a look at its talent tree and knew exactly what it was about. I'd love to see more monsters like that. Most of the other monsters feel more like a random assortment of abilities, like less time was spent on fleshing out their design.

There's lots of mechanics in the game already, and a lot more could be added. You could have a big beefy wall monster that tanks and sets up barriers. Now we've created the monster's identity, and from that we can create a signature ability that is unique and flavorful: 50% chance to redirect a single-target attack against a friendly Monster with Barrier to this Monster. It's twice as effective as your standard Taunt, but requires your allies to have a specific buff on them, which this monster can also provide. I just came up with that on the spot, but it's just an example of how these types of abilities can add flavor and identity to the different monsters.

You could do the same thing with Healing monsters. Or maybe there's a hybrid monster that has pretty strong offense and healing, they could get a signature ability that heals all allies while also damaging all enemies (something like an AoE Bite). Or similarly, something that applies bleed stacks to all enemy monsters while simultaneously buffing the party with Regeneration. The possibilities are endless.


"Especially since the plan is to have "around 100 monsters" (likely a few more than 100--we'll see) having signature moves would not only be a lot of work, but a bit redundant with the design philosophy of the game."

I don't understand this comment even slightly. How does increasing the variety of types of abilities and monsters also increase redundancy? Obviously the exact opposite is the case.

Creating some more unique abilities and monsters is only difficult if the developers lack the creativity to design cool abilities and monsters. Since this game is very specifically about exactly that, I'm hoping that the developers don't find this to be a challenge. Because then we're going to run into some serious problems once we start getting to the 50th monster that can cast Shield.


"The talent trees are designed to where you grab your actives and passives and go from there."

What does this even mean? You're just stating what a talent tree is. The signature abilities would be those same active and passive abilities, but unique and themed to a specific monster.


"If each monster had some sort of "signature move", things would have to be completely rebalanced to account for that. "

Wait, what? Why? Like I mentioned above, some monsters already have what I would consider a "signature move." For example, Magmapillar's Fire Shield is a great example of what a signature move would be. Did the whole game have to be intensely rebalanced when Fire Shield was first introduced? I don't think so.

[Conan The Librarian]

Reiker-

I mean no offense, but it sounds like you haven't played that far into the game and are completely mis-understanding what I wrote.

[Fire Shield] is actually found on multiple monsters, not just Magmapillar.. That's what I'm saying when some "more-unique moves" are generally not 100% unique.

Regarding "Signature Moves", to begin with, my apologies for confusion on this, as the wording which OP used was "Signature moves, I think each monster should have just one extra trait to differentiate them from the rest, a buff or attack only available to them" -- since they said trait, it sounded like adding to the various "traits" of a monster, such as weakness / resistance / shift powers, as opposed to adding it to their talent tree.

But, in terms of "redundant", I'm saying that there already exists various movesets for the monsters, and trying to shoehorn in a bunch of signature moves isn't fitting with the game's philosophy. Since Moi Rai wants to make things more "balanced" in nature, and have overlap between the monsters to help accomplish this, that's why there aren't as many "signature moves" like in Pokemon. Essentially, the higher level of uniqueness you add, the more balancing efforts that takes, especially when you multiply that by 100. That being said, it's still early access and the last tier of abilities haven't been released yet, so perhaps there might be a few "more-unique" moves in that last tier, and some reworks of monsters is always liable to happen.

You're complaining about shields being present on multiple defensive monsters, but shields are a core mechanic. If they weren't, this would be a bit of a problem. It's in the same way that multiple monsters have some of the same healing spells.

Also in terms of uniqueness, I somehow guess you haven't seen the "Shifting" mechanic yet? That too, adds a lot of extra dimension to the monsters.

Because it would take awhile to go into detail on every point, it sounds like you need to play the game more to get a better vision of what things ACTUALLY look like. Go check out the other monsters (especially the new ones from today's patch) and I think you might be pleasantly surprised at the additional variety of the monsters' capabilities. Spoiler the new champion, Elderjel, has a unique heal + shield move by the way .

[Butt Sheriff]

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

Gamer70s-

1. For the sun / koi situation, things aren't 100% fixed. It's stated that while a pretty large level of catastrophe was avoided, what happened still caused the shifting in the monsters across sanctuary. That is some real consequences right there, so it's not like nothing important happened. So, there is still plenty of reason why the Alchemists are bad because they did something which had a major effect across the sanctuary.

3. There isn't a need for specific "signature moves" for monsters because the talent trees already exist. Especially since the plan is to have "around 100 monsters" (likely a few more than 100--we'll see) having signature moves would not only be a lot of work, but a bit redundant with the design philosophy of the game. The talent trees are designed to where you grab your actives and passives and go from there. If each monster had some sort of "signature move", things would have to be completely rebalanced to account for that. Granted, some monsters have more-unique things, and some don't. When I say "more-unique", it means a certain power which is seen on only a couple of monsters. Certain levels of overlap between the monsters is the general plan for Moi Rai.

4. Like MundoNYnumber1 said above, there is already rewards (including cool pieces of equipment) which drop from champions. I see your point in terms of "there could be added flavor by making these equipment pieces match the champion in terms of their name / design", but really, that's just flavor and kind of secondary. Perhaps you didn't notice this, but there are some instances where that DOES ring true, actually, such as the [Fin] dropping from Akhlut. Overall, I wouldn't be concerned about such a thing, as cool gear drops from champs, and I say "Just let Moi Rai call the gear what they think is best". Sometimes it will "match" more (thematically / flavor wise), sometimes it won't.

5. Unlike games like Pokemon / Digimon, this isn't an evolution-based game. In fact, earlier / original versions of this game didn't include evolution at all. Part of the goal is that they want to make sure that all monsters are good and viable to use as opposed to following some sort of progression with "you need to evolve your monster to make it better". So, not that I know the precise number of evolutions which will make it into the game, but in the live version of the game there are 5, with a 6th one which is in the current testing build. Yes, there WILL be more evolutions--No, they won't be anywhere near as common as Pokemon / Digimon.

8. See dev's reply here: https://ibb.co/2Ybr9HX

Sersch: But we have plans for an evolution for Rocky

Who knows when this will happen, but, they've stated it.

9. The whole point of food is to add stats to monsters. They want players to feel free to choose whatever kind of food they want for whatever strategy the player has in mind. Having some sort of "likes / dislikes" on food wouldn't make sense as that would just limit player choice.

10. I actually quite disagree here--having HP / mana refill after every battle is AMAZING. Having to micromanage health / potions / tents / resting (etc) is merely just a time-waster for players. If the game was designed to have more of a "survival" aspect, then yeah, having some sort of attrition on your monsters' health would make sense--but it's not. Besides, given the high prevalence of healers in the game, it would still be pretty easy to stay healthy. Essentially, no, the game is designed with auto-heal in mind, and changing that would require a lot of retuning--and overall be not worth it.

Excuse me if I misunderstand a few things, just came back from the hospital,still hazy :

1)Yeah monsters are shifted, but they are the same essentially, no change in their behaviour in game or refferenced yet, and while their stats change they are beneficial if anything
3) You're absolutely right about that, it would make certain monsters more picked than others without a second thought
4) Eh, I've been playing games religiouly for about 16 years now, and I have...ahem...invested... a lot of hours, so many that I care a lot about such things, it's where a team shows me that they wanted to do more than they had to
5_ Evolutions tend to bring you closer to your buddies, it's the only one I know that has worked so far, if euipment was visible on your allies and more unique I think it would work the same building a stronger bond.
9) I was thinking of a 10% boost / de-boost if the food is liked or not, not to crazy for normal people, important for those that want to make the most out of their team
10) I agree, however I find that system makes potions/ items obsolete, never found a use for all my potions and such, maybe some adjustments?

Thank you for your reply and insight Conan!