First Impressions and Feedback

[Gladiator]

Henlo!

I played the game since the open alpha started and put in a couple dozen of hours to make sure I can give a good review, right now I'm lvl12 so I think I played long enough to know the ups and downs of it. So yeah this is kinda my first impressions of the game, some things that I really like, and things that I think need improvements. Now I know the game is still in alpha so everything I say is subject to change, this is a first impression after all. It might be a wordy review but that's how you know someone has spent quiet some time to play and review amiright? So let's get into it!

 

First of all, general opinion:

It's good. In fact it's really good, I'm pleasantly surprised by how distinct and unique it actually feels compared to Warspear. Tbh, I was skeptical that it'd be especially that I saw the game in the first alpha test and it was no where near what it is now, there is definitely a big improvement. There are new systems and concepts that I really enjoyed like leveling up gear and combining them, but more on that later. It has also a certain level complexity in skills and stats that can only get better and better over time. I like the aesthetics and the feels of the game, and I think the game generally looks very pretty. The UI is also really nice and simple to use and understand.

 

Now let's get into more details:

Positives:

• Auto-walk: This makes questing way more enjoyable and it makes it feel less like a chore. Very small but important feature!
• As mentioned above, gear system. It's a good idea that will only get better (hopefully). Right now it does feel like it takes a long time to improve gear, but who knows in the future. Either way, it's rewarding to do so and the feature in general is really cool.
• Adamantine Grotto: Absolutely my favorite place in the game! Very fun and addictive, I really hope to see more of it, in particular, I hope there will be an end-game version of it. I love the questing that goes on there, and that they are tied to PvP and PvE at the same time. The idea of collecting shards is cool too. Not only that, it's a great place for farming.
  • One little suggestion: I would love to see some addition to collecting Soul Shards from players, like when you're done with quests but still feel like killing enemies. You collect shards and maybe for every 5 or 10 shards you get a nice little animation or some visual effect on the character or near your name that will warn enemies that you have that many kills.  You know, just bragging rights nothing too crazy. 😄 
• Character skills/shards/passives: I made sure to take a look at all classes skills, but I mainly played only Mage, since I wanted to see how it is to progress to late levels of the game. And what I saw is that (at least for Mage) skills, passives, and skill improvements through Chaos Shards are very well designed. They are nicely interconnected and certain decisions that you have to make as a player in using shards will heavily change the way you play mage. I can (and very well might) make a whole separate topic about Mage skills and builds. But all in all, abilities do feel complex, especially that extra effects from Chaos Shards interact with active abilities as well as passives to make really nice combos.
• Dailies System: Nothing much to say here, I just like it more than the regular dailies. I like how they are like a mini event that pops up every few hours.
• Activities and Seasonal Rewards (SkyPass): Yeah this is also very good, nothing bad can come from extra activities and rewards! I only wish that there were more activities so that they don't get repetitive, but I'm pretty sure they'll come. The rewards seem nice, and I see that we can earn Diamonds with the free-to-play version. If that stays on release, that would be great!

 

Now onto the negatives. Actually I'm not gonna call them negatives, because the ideas are originally good, I just think in my opinion they could be improved. For this, I made different categories, each with different priority levels: Starting with Least important, then the more important, and most important to be addressed:

Room For Improvement:

• PvP and Battle:
  • Long fights: Some people would argue because Alchemists just heal way too much! I don't know maybe it's still too early to judge class balance.
  • Players can get away very easily: Which makes a lot of the fights pointless. The fights can already get slow and can be long, and then when one player is about to die, he can just walk away from the fight (without really controlling the enemy) and so will get away. I see this as a problem mainly in Adamantine Grotto. I don't know what can be done to change this. And I don't know if devs are considering making normal hits stutter the movements, but maybe that could be a solution. I don't think characters need more control abilities though. Or maybe we just have to get used to it and adapt to it. So we'll see.
  • Equipment break fast / cost too much to repair: Especially in mid- to late-game. Also in my opinion I don't think that gears should break in Arena and PvP fights.
  • Damage range: I don't know yet, if there is a system behind that, or just RNG, but I'm personally not a big fan of hits that can deal a range of damage instead of a fixed amount depending on the stats and so. It just adds more randomness to the fights. Not game-breaking or anything. That's why it's in green.

 

• Battlefield: Fun idea, not-so-well executed.
  • Random spawn of Sparks of Life: I'm not a fan of the randomness here, mainly because it usually goes like this: First team to get the sparks from the Lifebloomers will probably win, very low chance of comeback for the second team. And usually most people of each of the teams go to a different Lifebloomer, so basically, it's random which team is gonna have more people at the Lifebloomer that gets activated, and thus, has a higher chance to win.
  • Show time left for a Lifebloomer activation and for the next Exterminator summon: Just a quality of life addition that would guide players to make better decisions in the battle.

 

• Targeting issues: I don't if I'm the only one who experienced these things, but they have been really bugging me.
  • Auto-Targeting: This is another unusual feature in this game, but I don't know if I like it. Sure it comes in handy that the character auto targets enemies in battle, but I'd like to have more control over my character, as it is annoying to be trying to run away or step back but my character just going back to fight. This is another thing that we might get used to it in the future, but I personally prefer not to have it.
  • Unnecessarily targeting allies: This happens a lot in dungeons or a bit more crowded areas. When you try to hit an enemy target but instead you target an ally standing on top then you can't use skills because it's an 'invalid target'. It just delays the flow of the battle and it can also get very frustrating. So I think it'd be better to be not able to target allies at all unless you are a healer and you already have marked a heal/shield skill. And for player interaction there could be some other menu or something that we'd need to tap on before tapping on allies to interact with them.
  • This I think is more important: It is that sometimes it's hard to find the right target that you want to click/tap on, I think mainly because the characters/mobs/objects have a big hit box, I don't think that the hit box should be as big as the object itself. It becomes really annoying when you want to collect a chest or hit a mob that is standing behind a big object like a tree or so. What I find happens is that instead, I keep targeting the tree instead and it can get frustrating because you can't collect drops. So maybe just make the hit box only 1 square at the bottom of the object/mob no matter how big it is.

 

• Dungeons: Right now I'm not really playing dungeon due to these reasons, unless I have to for an activity.
  • Overall dungeon design: I'm really not a big fan of the current dungeon design. That's unless I'm missing something, of course. I don't like that we blindly walk through it and hope we find the boss and sometimes just run into mobs that will lead to a dead end, I hope future dungeons would have a bit more thought to them than just luck. I mean we already see cool ideas in the main story-line quests and side quests, so I'm pretty sure devs can come up with better and unique ideas for the dungeon.
  • Team composition balance: The dungeon can be a bit tough, especially in early levels, and without a healer it is nearly impossible, but that's ok. The problem is that sometimes we don't get a healer if we are just randomly searching for a party. And when you see your team doesn't have healer or just in a bad composition in general, you can't back out before teleporting in without getting the deserter's mark. So I think it would be really important to have role-based matchmaking, where a player assigns his role and then can apply for matchmaking. Or the system will automatically choose 1 healer and 1 tank in every party.
  • Can't retreat when player is offline: I don't know if this is a bug, but it is almost a game-ruining experience. If there is a player that goes offline we can't complete the 4/4 vote to retreat. In such case we have to flee and then get punished for 10 minutes. I'm not against the deserter's mark, don't get me wrong, in fact I like that it exists and I'd argue it should be longer. But we shouldn't get it in this case! Just exclude the offline player out of voting.

 

Yeah so I think that's it (for now at least), if I remember or come across anything else, I'll make sure to add them below this line to make it easier to notice.

Peace!

Изменено 3 мая, 2020 пользователем Gladiator

[Ollie]

Oh god it's great!

Thanks for the thoughts and detailed feedback, I will definitely pass it on to the developers!