The Feedback Thread

[Destro*]

I finally got to check my list on my other computer to find the last 'issues' with the game. First, sometimes a marker isn't added to the full map when you get a rumor for a monsters location. Second, It would be really nice if potion effects persisted when you log out. I played the game in a 9 hour run and had like 2-3 crashes. It's just really annoying when potion effects get wasted (especially magic find potions) from a crash.

One last thing. I finally checked the death recap for my level 100 character. I'm 99% confident that a damage bug happened to kill me off. Instead of dying to lightning (which actually did like 2 damage to me), I know that a massive AoE spell was cast on me and that killed me instead. I missed it because it happened so fast after the lightning and because there was no animation. I think it was the nearby Illusionist that cast the spell, but I can't be sure. Anyway, rather than focus on if there is a potential damage bug, it would be nice if one can get a message saying what kills you and how much you were hit for (even just for debugging purposes since I'm really confident that there are a lot of wonky one-shot bugs in the game right now, even more than just the ones pointed out by Tuidjy recently).

With that, I end my feedback for the game (unless the damage debug thing happens and I can point out a weird 1-shots). Thanks for the fun conversations everybody. I'll be back after release, unless the game is so amazing that I don't need to say anything! (very likely!)

Edit: I lied. Here is more feedback. I didn't expect to be playing another character until release, but this game is too addicting to me.

Feedback about difficulty modifiers:
- When loner or family is selected, toggle off the other option. (Reason: When you have both, you start with clan members, which goes against the entire purpose of 'loner')
- Give a score multiplier for family/loner.
- Would be nice to have 'harder monsters' as a difficulty option. (More damage, health, harder mods, etc.)
- Diable use of waypoints with the Lost difficulty modifier.

Misc Feedback:
- Nerf Pain Delay.
- Make it so that relogging doesn't refresh cds or remove buffs/debuffs.
- Most leech tooltips need fixed still. (Evil Pool version for mana/life and Life Leech ability (maybe Mana Leech should be checked too)
- Monsters summoned with turret siege waves attack the turrets.
- Make it possible to loot items that are pushed way off of the screen. Currently, you attempt to move to the location of the item's tooltip, rather than the item when it's very far away.
- Reduce item tooltip jitter during earthquakes. (If possible)
- Holy Fire is bugged when NPCs cast it. There is no animation or damage.

Edit 2: Even more feedback

- When you kick a person out of your clan, any quests relating to them will be completed. (Kidnapped, cure curse/blight, etc.). You can go to higher level areas and kick people out of your clan repeatedly to amass large amounts of experience. (700-12k experience per quest, which is nuts).
- Clear scavanger buffs when you die.
- (Maybe suggestions *shrug*) If you already have a 'win', don't show lose time, even if you lose hearthstone/clan members. Perhaps, instead, show 'win time' and force a victory after the 'win time' expires.
- (Maybe) Perhaps put levels on relics? I say maybe because, perhaps it's pointless to try to balance non-hardcore and non-loner.
- Also, small bug, tower guards can spawn underground. (Other guards have spawned underground in the past, but I have no picture.)

http://i.imgur.com/Vmwrkhs.jpg

Edit 3: Yup, more.

Gonna describe two bugs here. First, the ambush bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajs0...ature=youtu.be

So, basically, whenever you get ambushed in the game, sometimes it procs multiple ambushes at once. I don't know what determines how many ambushes occur, or why it happens, but multiple ambushes can occur at once. The video demonstrates this on a modded version of the game where monster rarities are set to be above normal by default. In the modded version, it's easy to force this issue to occur with orcs. However, in the vanilla game, the ambush bug is rather rare. Regardless, it's a bug that can cause completely unfair deaths due to masses of monsters spawning on top of you.

I'd also like to note that Sand Amorph always spawn full sized sand amorphs upon death in the modded version of the game. This leads to them duplicating infinitely.

Next, the Crash Bug - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDT...ature=youtu.be

The video is straightforward. On my character xX_Nub_Xx, I can't play for 5 minutes without a crash. It's actually unplayable. I can speculate on why this happens (areas aren't loading fast enough, using menus quickly causes the game to bug out, etc.), but I don't have a definiate explanation.

I have uploaded my 'modded version of the game' file and my 'user' folder to mediafire so that they can be downloaded and additional testing can be conducted if needed. Here are the download links: Mod = https://www.mediafire.com/?2aypba3d7itgwgc / User Folder = https://www.mediafire.com/?067n5o513c16eui

[Destro*]

Just bumping the thread to draw attention to the fact that I added a lot of stuff to my feedback post above. It's been 14 days since I posted it, and I added quite a lot of content, so I think this bump should be fine. I think I've covered everything that I wanted to for now until the next patch hits. Can't wait for the next update!

[fab]

I've been playing the demo up to level 6 so far.

First off, I was pleasantly surprised that this is in some ways, a Depth of Peril successor I've always wanted to play.

The engine is much better optimized, while being improved overall at the same time. I can finally play native 2560x1440 and the UI scaling works reasonably well. And finally... I can toggle windows with the same shortcut.

I might post a longer impressions later.

To super summarize my feeling / first impressions right now:

WHAT I LIKE : is that the variety of systems that seem t have been brought from the earlier titles along with the randomness is what makes these games so much fun and brilliant.

WHAT I DONT LIKE : unfortunately now that there are so many systems, I feel like there is too much complexity. But the thing that is holding back the game the most, in my opinion, is the inventory system. There is far, far too many insignificant upgrades, and this causes a lot of paralysis of choice. This along with the item descriptions that lack contrast (font size, font family in particular) makes it so long to compare items to know what to keep and what to drop. Does the game also need so many item tiers? I think the game would benefit overall from reduced item drops, a simplification of the stats so that there are either less insignificant stats, or that the rate at which they appear are more meaningful. edit: it might benefit the game for example that you only see a very small subset of the stats in the first ten levels, as well as seeing only one additional stat both on magic and rares so that you can compare items more easily and not feel overwhelmed by all this info.

Of course the rate at which item drops is also tied into the economy but it seems less important than in Depths of Peril. In fact my home town doesn't even seem to have a merchant, which is a bit frustrating.

I would really not add the system of "this is an upgrade" colour coding to item descriptions as the main solution because that is a workaround at best. Right now the item description really needs contrast. For example price, and weight, and level required.. could be in a much smaller font. The whole item description is very "monochromatic" in design terms, in that all the text is more or less the same size, the same colour, the same font... it makes it very slow to read and parse.

A possible improvement here would be to add an option for short item descriptions and when you press the Alt key or some other key, to display the extra text.

Anyways maybe I'm missing some pieces that I haven't figured out, as a new player for me right now the inventory management is frustrating and the only part that put me off playing. I'm swapping betwen Grim Dawn and this atm, and the fact I actually want to play this over G.D. says a lot about how fun this game can be. However right now the potential, in my opinion is significantly affected by the way that itemization is watered down by the sheer amount of insignificant item upgrades, too many drops to sort through, the seemingly missing town merchants or difficulty to find them, this is all compounded also by the fact that you may want to manage recruit's equipment as well.

If you can find a way to simplify the item management somehow, I think the game would be more fun to play.


WHAT I DONT LIKE (part 2) : oh.. this is my pet peeve also since Depths of Peril. I really don't like how I feel pressured all the time by the in game clock, and the way that events keep piling up. Whenever I stare at the inventory I want to press Pause but then it becomes annoying because you can't ID items when it is paused. Since the time it takes to ID items here seems mostly a feedback thing and have not much of a gameplay impact, perhaps a workaround would be to allow it to happen outside of the main game clock, while the game is paused. And once that works, you could have an option to always pause the game while the inventory is open. I don't know if this is a good idea, but it may reduce that sense of pressure. Going back to my previous point of course, if the inventory management was less cumbersome, the pressure from the real time events may also be less of an issue.

Other than that I'm really enjoying the game so far. I have to admit that I don't really care for the Zombie system and I'm mostly seeing the game as a Depths of Peril successor atm. Maybe I will figure out the zombie thing later and it will make more sense to me.

[MindDefect]

Fab, I urge you and others to check out this mod http://www.soldak.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37042 and maybe give feedback on it. He's putting a lot work to it, but it alreadly improves the UI a lot.

I agree about the interface, in that something has to be done.. I think the lack of merchants and zombie apocalypse stuff, are the kind of stuff that goes together in this theme. There are also quests to save and bring a merchant to town (for some time). The more you play, the more that stuff will probably make sense, as getting/trading for resources in this game is going for a different style than typical ARPGs. Salvaging is more encouraged to do with your extra items, and as you play, crafting materials become more valuable to specify your character's build (and then there is NPCs equipment, that you need to find for them)

What you said about having an option to simplify descriptions would be nice. Also having less typical weapon/basic equipment drops could help and be one way to go about it (currently someone can super easily make a mod for that) I personally have rambled on in the past here about the need to make interface management simpler, on various posts on this thread. I do think we, us players, need to do a better job at throwing some more ideas out there to possibly improve it more.

Here's one little suggestion, to have identfied items on the ground show their retail value, instead of just saying (identified) This font is from the UI mod, but this money value thing is done with my crappy edit/copy/paste job, so keep this in mind if it looks weird



EDIT: One reason I just thought of, of why it can be so confusing for new players, is that when playing on lower level worlds, a rare Yellow item found in a level 1 area can be SO much worse, than say a Green or even regular item found in a level 3-4 area. So early on, the colors can be more deceiving than helpful, so you really can only look at the retail value as a quick guide. Only as you get to higher levels, the issue starts to minimize considerably.

[ScrObot]

Originally Posted by fab

Whenever I stare at the inventory I want to press Pause but then it becomes annoying because you can't ID items when it is paused. Since the time it takes to ID items here seems mostly a feedback thing and have not much of a gameplay impact, perhaps a workaround would be to allow it to happen outside of the main game clock, while the game is paused.

http://www.soldak.com/forums/showpos...80&postcount=5

I use a mod to make identifying/opening things really fast, along with making "Identify All" free at the crafting table and vendors (which is typically all I do). To me, the identifying aspect doesn't add anything other than frustration, so this lets me skip all of that.

That same post has a couple other convenience mods that I always use -- the "all backpacks are large backpacks" one is invaluable with the typical rarity of backpack drops and the small sizes until you get to the higher levels. And that obviously helps with filling up your inventory too quickly.

Regarding vendors (and the general rarity thereof), gold is much less important here than in prior Soldak games. Stash the top tier stuff, throw everything else through your Clan Armory from the crafting table to equip all your clan members automatically, trade to clans (use the "Anything you would like" button), and scrap the rest at the crafting table. Gold is always in short supply in the early levels, but you'll be rolling in it soon enough, with nothing worth spending it on.

[MindDefect]

Originally Posted by ScrObot

http://www.soldak.com/forums/showpos...80&postcount=5

Now that there is a modding forum, you should probably also stick those in there now

[fab]

Thanks.

A suggestion that comes to mind would be to speed up the "loot drop" animation, so that the item labels appear sooner and the items can be picked up more readily after defeating a creature. It seems a bit slow given the general fast pace of the game.

[ScrObot]

Originally Posted by MindDefect

Now that there is a modding forum, you should probably also stick those in there now

Thanks for the heads up, I've copied them over there.

Modding Forum: http://www.soldak.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=39

[fab]

The backpacks mod is handy.

Although I would like to suggest a convenient feature available in some RPGs and MMOs : allow to drop a large bag on a smaller bag which is currently equipped, and automatically move over the items, and then place the smaller bag (now replaced) into the larger one. (And I guess if you actually wanted to drop a large bag in a small bag, you can do so in the bag window instead of dropping it onto the bag slot.)

[Professor Paul1290]

I'm starting to think Victory Conditions should be more up-front in the UI.
As it is now it's a bit easy for players to miss and forget about, which is a problem because then they wander around aimlessly until the quest count victory gets triggered.

Also it would be nice if asking a clan what they would like to buy would put all the items you have that they'd like to purchase into the trade. Right now you can only really sell items to other clans one at a time.