Extended Thoughts and Suggestions

[Prof. Peppy]

So I’ve been playing this game for a while now and have really enjoyed it so far. Despite the occasional bugs and weird English, I’ve really taken an interest in the general concept and gameplay loop. It’s by no means perfect yet, but there’s a lot of potential considering it’s still early in development. Like others here, I’ve noticed a few of the same problems and wanted to share some thoughts on a few issues, as well as give my overall thoughts on the game. Just a word of warning that this is quite a long post and I’ve tried to make it as dense as I could to cut down on length.

There are a lot of complaints right now about how often the player is left waiting around with nothing to do while waiting for a chance to make money. I feel like a lot of the problems of this game can be solved and the general gameplay could be improved by adding a catalogue/jobs list.

Simply put, the game has too much downtime and needs something to give consistent work for the player. No matter how much you increase the rate that customers come or increase the RNG that they want one of your swords, there will always be times where you’ll have to wait around doing nothing. At the moment you can only sell your swords if you just happen to have the right kind of sword lying around. I suggest adding something like a catalogue where you can instantly sell your finished swords for a slightly lower price if you’re in desperate need of cash.

Additionally the way you make and sell swords is not very reactive. Right now you kind of just make whatever the hell you want and hope someone might want it. It would be nice if customers sometimes placed orders for custom swords which you could then make within a certain time frame. For instance a customer could ask for a sword made out a specific metal with a specific enchantment or specific blade shape, and then you can go make something with that specific goal in mind. You could either have that customer come back after a couple of door knocks to collect it, or have some kind of shelf for custom orders to be placed in and shipped out. It could then make a hierarchy where players can decide what to do with their swords, for instance:
Selling to the catalogue would be quick but cheap, while having the perfect sword lying around for a customer that walks in (like in the current version of the game) would give more. Fulfilling a custom order would provide money based on the materials cost, and perhaps an overall higher sell price if you make custom orders a rare event.

I see people on these forums also asking for a higher frequency of customers wanting you to sharpen their blades. This mainly comes from the problem of players waiting around for a chance to make money, however I feel like there is a better solution. Rather than having these people use up a door knock event, you could have a separate jobs list of people asking for smaller odd jobs such as sword sharpening. It could just be a list of 5 or so people which updates/refreshes every 15 minutes that you can work on whenever you have a spare moment. This helps with the issue of there being too much downtime in the game and needing to wait around for more money. If you end up adding in custom orders for swords (or any other types of jobs for that matter), you could also add those customers to this jobs list on a separate tab so you can check it at any time.

I would also like to say that I’ve seen comments asking for a way to test out the swords you’ve made. For whatever help it is to the developer, I personally don’t have much of an interest in that. I’m more interested in the blacksmithing itself and the aspect of simulating the life of a fantasy blacksmith. My love of this game comes from the joy of making swords, not using them. I’d be far more interested in seeing adventurers come by carrying swords I’ve made and wanting me to resharpen them. I want that feeling of making some goofy looking sword and naming it something stupid like “♥♥♥♥♥ Slayer 12000”. I want that feeling where I look at the list of odd jobs and I see someone asking me to sharpen their ♥♥♥♥♥ Slayer 12000, and I sit down in front of the grindstone and look at its familiar shape while thinking to myself “Ah, it’s good to see you again my child. ” I want that feeling of seeing a newbie adventurer grow stronger with each new sword I make. Even just giving customers randomized names where some persist and others come and go would be amazing. Little things like seeing the same customer’s name come by every so often, or the same adventurer coming in asking for an upgrade from the old sword I gave them. I know these ideas may be kind of abstract, difficult to incorporate, or not high on the priority list, but I really want something that adds flavour and makes me feel like a hotshot blacksmith.

On that note it would be nice if the swords we made had stats and properties that you could examine once complete. At the moment it would nice to just see the approximate sell price of your swords, but it would be great if there was a breakdown of all your sword’s stats such as overall sharpness, Damascus quality, grip quality, enchantments etc. In the future it would be nice for more stats to be added such as strength, speed, weight and enchantment strength, which could be determined by the metal you used/blueprint you chose. As a quality of life feature it would also be nice if you could give blueprints a name and save them so you can quickly choose between templates of your favourite designs during the planning section.

Another quality of life feature I feel is needed is a good way of storing your unused goods. When smithing I found that I like to stock up on things like coal, metal plates, HCl, H2O2 and ferrum. The shelf on the top floor is fine for things like crystals and potion ingredients, but it’s not really enough. Right now I kind of just have to throw all my blacksmithing supplies on the floor and organise them into haphazard piles while hoping they don’t get lost somewhere (H2O2 in particular is very bouncy and I’ve lost a couple of bottles after accidentally knocking them around). I also tend to work on multiple swords at a time while waiting for things like Damascus to soak, so it would be nice if we had some kind of stand or something to put our unfinished works on rather than just throwing them on the floor like some kind of animal. It would be a huge improvement if we could get access to shelves and/or some sort of store room where we can keep all our extra junk lying around.

In general I feel like the door knocking mechanic is really nice and has a lot of potential for future development. It would be nice if there were more events that could happen other than just an adventurer looking for a specific type of sword. For instance someone could knock on your door asking for a quest, and you could give them a list of possible alchemy ingredients to collect in exchange for a sword that’s better than theirs. Adventurers capable of collecting rarer/more expensive ingredients would require a high value sword as a reward, while newbie adventurers could be sent out for more common stuff for lower value swords. That would then give players an incentive for making swords out of cheaper metals, rather than just using whatever's most expensive.

In terms of future development, do you have any plans to add smelting to the game? I’d love it if you could buy raw ore and melt them down into ingots yourself. The dream would be to be able to create custom alloys by mixing different metals together, and maybe even ingredients that adventurers trade you (dragon scales/demon bones/gremloblin claws/other weird and silly ingredients) for an extra boost in quality.

Also do you plan on adding the ability to make other weapons, such as axes, daggers, spears etc?

I understand this game is still in very early development, but I’m really happy to be able to support you as you work on it. I love the concept so much and even in this early, buggy state it’s just so chill and satisfying hammering away in the workshop. There are a couple other blacksmith simulator type games out there, but they just don’t feel the same. I love that in this game you kind of actually morph the metal and watch it shape based on where you’re hitting. It feels so much better than just clicking on a bar while a hammer animation plays until it suddenly just turns into a sword. I’m just so in love with the concept as a whole and I think it can really turn into something special with enough time, attention and effort. I know this was a long post and I’m sure some of the suggestions I made are probably not that feasible, but I’m really looking forward to seeing this project evolve over time and I wish you the best of luck in your development!

[Sir Kepi]

I seriously love these suggestions and would love to see them implemented into the game somehow. Great ideas! Hope the devs see it!

[Heaven Brotherhood]

Thanks so much for such a long and useful post. Our goal is to make players satisfy playing the game. And every opinion is important.

Well, let's see what we can...
1) Custom orders - yes we have in plans to add this function
2) List of jobs - fresh idea, we will think about the possibility to make it come true. (any ideas what tasks can be???)
3) Names - we will add possibility soon to name your blacksmith and your swords.
4) Storage - chest near the stairs not only decor, soon you will be able to put some things into it.
5) Quests - may be in future, it can take a lot of time to realize but it possible.
6) Melting\mixing ore - many people want it, so I guess it will happen.

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about English texts : it is not our strong side, so if you can help us with this, remove some , add some, or rewrite just say.

[Prof. Peppy]

It's really great to hear that. I played a bit of the new update and I love the new stats panel on finished swords. Being able to sell swords instantly now feels great too and was a much needed change, although I'm still sometimes stuck doing nothing and waiting around for deliveries to come. Thanks a bunch for putting those additions in!

As for possible jobs, maybe you could have a few people wanting their grips repaired/replaced? I'd imagine it wouldn't be as often as people wanting their sword sharpened, but it's really the only thing I think of at the moment considering the current content in the game. If the storage chest becomes available, it would be cool if you would need to pick out a combination of parts from your storage that tries to best match the client's desires. I just wish you could order handle parts separately, rather than having to buy them with the sword every time. Like I said before I like to stock up on things, and I'd love it if I could just have a bunch of different parts lying around that I can mix and match on a whim.

If you ever add more options to the alchemy table, it would be interesting if there were some other processes you could do where you mix chemicals onto a finished sword to give it extra properties, such as making it stronger/more flexible/keeping it sharper for longer. If you had the chemicals ready, you could accept requests to add those properties to their swords, or just do it on your own swords to increase their value. It doesn't even necessarily need to be something visual, just a list of extra tags at the bottom of the stat panel. Even just something to clean and polish the sword would be nice, with rarer fantasy metals needing special chemicals to polish.

If custom orders get added to the game, you could also have people just wanting you to add enchantments (magic table and cauldron) to the swords they already have. This is probably biased because I love always having spare things in stock, but it would be nice to give players an incentive to have a few spare supplies on hand. It would really help give that feeling of being a master craftsman who always has the right tools for the job. Other than that, it would also give players an incentive to use the magic cauldron since right now it's just not that profitable and takes too much time to be worth the effort.

That's just my two cents anyway. I'm sure other people would have better ideas than me, and you'd have a better idea than me of hard these kinds of things are to implement. In any case I hope that helps.

As for the English I might give some suggestions on things to replace another time, but it seems like the kind of thing where you would want someone to specifically go through and check every on every line of dialogue you add in. From what I understand this was a kickstarter game so I'm not sure how much funds you have to work with, but if you're tight on money it's the kind of thing where you probably don't need to have someone constantly on staff checking everything. Just someone to give everything a check every once in a while after enough content is added.

Do you have an official email or something? There's not a whole lot of text in the game right now, but I might write up some grammar corrections some time in the future. It would be easier if I could just email you the text rather than make a gigantic forum post about it though.

[Geredis]

Originally posted by Heaven Brotherhood:

about English texts : it is not our strong side, so if you can help us with this, remove some , add some, or rewrite just say.

And if I were interested in taking on this task of a dialogue/text overhaul in the game, where would be the best place to reach you to discuss this?

[Heaven Brotherhood]

our diccord https://discordapp.com/invite/KegQHev

[Geredis]

Originally posted by Heaven Brotherhood:

our diccord/quote]

Awesome. Thanks, reaching out now, then.