First of all thanks for a great game. Had a nice time playing it, and generally it left a quite positive impression.
Second, since there is this feedback subforum, my thought was indeed why not to leave one?
After lots of fiddling around, plus two completionist play-throughts (one 'normal' run with 4-man-party on hard, and one solo on potd); strong and weak points of this game become more or less apparent.
The positive stuff includes:
- creative spellcrafting system
- non-cliche story
- conquest
- decent replay-ability via forking decisions / alliances
- the nutshell of reputation system
- and so on
Tbh, there are many points to list, and I bet that as devs you already know all the points-forte of your game.
That's why I'd especially like to enumerate things that I personally found as flawed or askew, something that can be improved on or at least serve as food for thought:
- problem 1: inequality between armor type options
- problem 2: inequality between weapon type choices
- problem 3: heavy inequality between spells resultant from the same expression sigil used with different cores
- problem 4: imbalanced spells
- problem 5: imbalanced abilities
- problem 6: imbalance of some in-game items
- problem 7: obscure tooltips
- problem 8: askew difficulty between acts
- problem 9: attributes
- problem 10: attack resolution
- problem 11: two-sided reputations
Second, since there is this feedback subforum, my thought was indeed why not to leave one?
After lots of fiddling around, plus two completionist play-throughts (one 'normal' run with 4-man-party on hard, and one solo on potd); strong and weak points of this game become more or less apparent.
The positive stuff includes:
- creative spellcrafting system
- non-cliche story
- conquest
- decent replay-ability via forking decisions / alliances
- the nutshell of reputation system
- and so on
Tbh, there are many points to list, and I bet that as devs you already know all the points-forte of your game.
That's why I'd especially like to enumerate things that I personally found as flawed or askew, something that can be improved on or at least serve as food for thought:
- problem 1: inequality between armor type options
There are several armor types:
1. light
a). cloth
b). leather light
c). leather heavy
d). leather 'scarlet' (with irregular DR)
2. heavy
a). with equal DR
b). with irregular DR
- Due to the way deflection and attack resolution was implemented, plus the DR vs average incoming damage ratio, there is really no reason to go for other armor than leather, as it is the most optimal choice.
- Heavy armor with equal DR is just straight up worse, even if it would have the same recovery penalty, as hit quality downgrade is more precious for tanking.
- Heavy armor with irregualar DR, could have it's uses for experienced players who are solo'ing the game, and who could equip the one with 'right DR' before every encounter. Unfortunately leather is still better, and it also doesn't require constant switching.
- Cloth armor was probably intended for spellcasters and bow specialists. The problem is that a very decent portion of damage comes from spells and special abilities, which happen to have a long cd, so even if a wizard can fire all his spell arsenal 2s earlier, he will still have to way n seconds before he can cast that 1st spell again.
1. light
a). cloth
b). leather light
c). leather heavy
d). leather 'scarlet' (with irregular DR)
2. heavy
a). with equal DR
b). with irregular DR
- Due to the way deflection and attack resolution was implemented, plus the DR vs average incoming damage ratio, there is really no reason to go for other armor than leather, as it is the most optimal choice.
- Heavy armor with equal DR is just straight up worse, even if it would have the same recovery penalty, as hit quality downgrade is more precious for tanking.
- Heavy armor with irregualar DR, could have it's uses for experienced players who are solo'ing the game, and who could equip the one with 'right DR' before every encounter. Unfortunately leather is still better, and it also doesn't require constant switching.
- Cloth armor was probably intended for spellcasters and bow specialists. The problem is that a very decent portion of damage comes from spells and special abilities, which happen to have a long cd, so even if a wizard can fire all his spell arsenal 2s earlier, he will still have to way n seconds before he can cast that 1st spell again.
The existence of such things like Riposte, Haste and Spell Surge, greatly askews the balance in favor of heavy and slow two-handers.
Long-cd special abilities whose damage is an increment of main-hand weapon attack, make it even worse. Why dual-wield daggers (with volcanic buff) when you can swing a great-axe with the same speed, and get more from Skull-Cracker, Shadow Strike or Hunder of Fists?
Long-cd special abilities whose damage is an increment of main-hand weapon attack, make it even worse. Why dual-wield daggers (with volcanic buff) when you can swing a great-axe with the same speed, and get more from Skull-Cracker, Shadow Strike or Hunder of Fists?
- Sigil of Focused Intent is straight up better with Sigil of Life (resulting in Restouring Touch spell)
- Sigil of Distant Impact is straight up better with Sigil of Frost (resulting in Rimespike spell)
- Out of 7 spells resulting from Sigil of Guarded Form only 2 are good. And both OP in terms of relative gain.
- Sigils of Stone, Terratus and Vigor are significantly weaker than those of Frost and Illusion. Not to mention sigils of Atrophy and Emotion.
- There are 9 fire-based spells, 5 Atrophy/Emotion/Terratus/Vigor and only 4 Force based ones. Looks like a discrimination.
- Sigil of Distant Impact is straight up better with Sigil of Frost (resulting in Rimespike spell)
- Out of 7 spells resulting from Sigil of Guarded Form only 2 are good. And both OP in terms of relative gain.
- Sigils of Stone, Terratus and Vigor are significantly weaker than those of Frost and Illusion. Not to mention sigils of Atrophy and Emotion.
- There are 9 fire-based spells, 5 Atrophy/Emotion/Terratus/Vigor and only 4 Force based ones. Looks like a discrimination.
- Mirror Image (especially with riposte and high deflection; plus it has nice interaction with Vampiric Weapons: make a circle around enemy group, and heal up from all the disengagement attacks)
- Haste (especially with slow two-handers, when you can swing once per 1-1.2s, with two-handed mastery and multistrike gloves it happens to deal even 3+ hits under 1 second)
- Stacking of Material Force spells
- Volcanic Weapons
- Haste (especially with slow two-handers, when you can swing once per 1-1.2s, with two-handed mastery and multistrike gloves it happens to deal even 3+ hits under 1 second)
- Stacking of Material Force spells
- Volcanic Weapons
Many special abilities, use a multiplier and the primary weapon. This heavy reduces the incentive to use fast but low-hitting weapons.
- Scales of Mercy - allow you to increase your precision to 100% during the pre-combat buffing stage, and after that permanently benefit from the multi-striking, massive-blow talent and all the crit passive procs. Not to mention that you no longer have to worry about enemy DR, as you are just hitting way to hard.
- Banner of Ardent - minus 75% incoming damage in the first 8s of combat? I.e. right when enemies use all their active abilities, and than sit on cd?
- Face of Judgment - paralyze + 580% damage increase debuff, is just way too good for boss fights.
- Banner of Ardent - minus 75% incoming damage in the first 8s of combat? I.e. right when enemies use all their active abilities, and than sit on cd?
- Face of Judgment - paralyze + 580% damage increase debuff, is just way too good for boss fights.
Ok, you've got a level-up, opened the talents tree and want to invest that point. Mouseoverring over Heart Shot, Slice and any other ability that causes bleed or burn, doesn't bring enough information to make a conclusion if they are worth or not, as you don't know how much damage that DoT will deal; nor if there are any status effects attached, like frost increasing recovery duration.
Self-explanatory. Difficulty peaks in act 1, in Hall of Ascension, while some of end-bosses (i.e. archons) can be literally one-shotted.
- Finesse is way to good, due to how valuable deflection in this game is. And partially due to existance of Mirror Image and Prideful Magic.
- Resolve is too weak. As you cannot build a reliable cc-specialist who would be able to keep at least two enemies permanently controlled, due to the spell cd values.
- Vitality is strange. You need it the most in act 1, because that's the hardest part of the game plus you use your healing spells the most. Yet you cannot afford putting points here, because you need finesse first, might or quickness second; plus vitality is useless for your starting skills.
- The necessity in gating attributes' usual growth at 20, denotes that imbalanced gain from different stats cannot be balanced with intrinsic diminishing returns alone, and is the first symptom of askewness of such a system.
- When asking about attributes balancing, I was linked to Sawyer's Tuning presentation. Well, Josh indeed has made many good points; it's interesting why they were not reflected in Tyranny.
- Resolve is too weak. As you cannot build a reliable cc-specialist who would be able to keep at least two enemies permanently controlled, due to the spell cd values.
- Vitality is strange. You need it the most in act 1, because that's the hardest part of the game plus you use your healing spells the most. Yet you cannot afford putting points here, because you need finesse first, might or quickness second; plus vitality is useless for your starting skills.
- The necessity in gating attributes' usual growth at 20, denotes that imbalanced gain from different stats cannot be balanced with intrinsic diminishing returns alone, and is the first symptom of askewness of such a system.
- When asking about attributes balancing, I was linked to Sawyer's Tuning presentation. Well, Josh indeed has made many good points; it's interesting why they were not reflected in Tyranny.
Pillars of Eternity had a simple and elegant attack resolution. In Tyranny it's quite different.
- The introduction of minimum miss and crit chance would potentially increase the save-reloading, if the game was harder. Because missing a crucial Scull Cracker could lead to a defeat on higher difficulties. Also it could lead to cheesing some boss fights. Even if Voices of Nerat would have 1000 dodge and accuracy and would hit for 1000 per swing, he would still be defeatable, even in solo. You have a 5% minimum chance to land a critical cc, e.g. archon's judgement, and then just decimate him to pieces.
- Crit threshold range. Imho, having hardcoded, magical coefficients feels very unnatural. If a player cannot calculate in his mind his chance to crit, from just knowing the difference between his effective accuracy and defender's effective defense, something is not right.
- The introduction of minimum miss and crit chance would potentially increase the save-reloading, if the game was harder. Because missing a crucial Scull Cracker could lead to a defeat on higher difficulties. Also it could lead to cheesing some boss fights. Even if Voices of Nerat would have 1000 dodge and accuracy and would hit for 1000 per swing, he would still be defeatable, even in solo. You have a 5% minimum chance to land a critical cc, e.g. archon's judgement, and then just decimate him to pieces.
- Crit threshold range. Imho, having hardcoded, magical coefficients feels very unnatural. If a player cannot calculate in his mind his chance to crit, from just knowing the difference between his effective accuracy and defender's effective defense, something is not right.
The fact that you gain special bonuses from both Favor and Wrath with a single faction, pushes you to behave like an ***hole in some situations, even if from RP point of view you would like to have only positive reputation. It would make more sense to get only one type of benefits, Favor OR Wrath (depending on which has a greater value). As an example, think of Blood or Tears in Heroes of Might and Magic 6.
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