Since I feel no longer compelled to play for the rest of this beta, I’ve decided to put up my conclusions so they can be read by others as well as IMC for game improvement purposes.
Keep in mind that this is merely a subjective thread designed to give feedback about how I felt about and around the game during the testing, so this is by no means a definitive opinion about the game.
I haven’t reached the “high-end” the game offers for now nor I have played all classes, so I can’t ascertain if some things that I point out change later on or not. If some issues presented here are solved on later levels please point it out.
And if anyone bothers to answer this thread, please, KEEP IT CIVIL.
-Feedback starts here-
Starting with classes, I’ll point out what I’ve felt about those I’ve played, which are the following:
-Classes-
-Swordsman-
Swordsman The basic one for “warrior”, felt simple and nice, and offers nice things for future circles. I deemed worthy to run more circles for the sole purpose of Gung Ho and Concentrate.
Hoplite Looks nice, feels lackluster, great skills with extremely long CD that make them not all that worth, leaving it in a less reliable autoattacker than other routes with some burst skills (Synchro & Pierce) or just a Stabbing spam machine until you get into new circles and get more skills to rotate with which also have impressive CDs (lowest being 24s iirc). Stands it’s ground while buffs are on (Gung Ho, Concentrate & Finestra) and packs a punch on many monsters and bosses, but compared to what other routes can do, the Hoplite still gives a feel of being a lower tier.
Peltasta A tanky route, tanking at the moment feels underwhelming and unrewarding compared to being simply a sword with a body attached to it, and felt that if I wanted to advance at a decent pace I had to turn off Guardian and / or High Guard due to abyssal damage reductions. Being aware that dungeons exist, it’s still a fair decent jump until 50 to start to prove to be of some value, and unless someone felt generous, I got the impression that parties don’t need peltastas / tanks out of dungeons and for that they often don’t accept them, becoming a problem in maps cramped with people with lots of quests with limited objective (kill monster spirits, scribble on summoning portals…).
No problems with the tanking part itself though, felt nice and safe. It’s just a shame that it takes 50 levels to start doing it and I’m pretty sure that some have been disheartened along the way just because they didn’t reach the point where their utility shined.
Barbarian A complete cakewalk. This class is what killed the fun for me. Strong. Sturdy. Fast. Reliable.
It has everything, and built in dex is a force of nature: constant crits, constant dodges, never fails, has enough base HP to withstand many hits (when not negated by dodge) and grinds like a baws with god-tier speed clearing. Either nerf this route of buff the rest to prevent the feeling I mentioned in Hoplite section.
-Wizard-
Wizard The basic one for “Mage”, got me wondering about the reason behind giving it a “Reflect Shield” skill that works party-wide on such low levels. Lethargy is quite useful and skills good enough to carry on during this small portion on your way to powerful wizardry. Perhaps I’d have switched Reflect Shield with Surespell as basic skills.
Pyromancer Nothing out of the ordinary except for the Enchant Fire skill that it’s counterpart doesn’t own (Cryomancer). I demand justice!
Jokes aside, the typical pyromaniac wizard with strong, strong damage. But felt unnerving that some spells don’t hit flying monsters (as much as other classes ground spells, but since this is the first I mention…)
Cryomancer Ice counterpart of the dude above, for some reason people thinks that Cryomancer is some sort of “tanky” mage. As far as I know, there AREN’T magic tanks since Arcane Warrior mages in Dragon Age >_>
Less damage than Pyro but more utility, this is another class I’d switch skills: Hail should be in hands of 2-3 Cryomancer circles and Frost Pillar in the hands of Elementalists.
-Archer-
(Here I only played until Quarrel Shooter, not a big fan of archers in this game and the other compelling class for me, Schwarzer Reiter, is too far beyond)
Archer The basic one for “Ranged”, I feel the move-while-you-shoot is a complete atrocity and should either be removed or apply a slight penalty, since Swift Step reduces the slow movement while moving and shooting at the same time. Starting skills are good, but I’d say Oblique Shot outperforms the others.
Quarrel Shooter Enjoyed it despite being an archer class ( >_> ) but I don’t get why Quarrel Shooters get their hands on pick stone / shoot stone skills (A tribute to pick stone / throw stone machine guns from RO, perhaps? For those that don’t know what I mean, consisted on Thieves/Assassins/Rogues picking stones and spamming them inside a Bragi with absurd amounts of AS / after cast delay reductions to achieve a ranged thief class with damage and permanent stun).
I honestly stopped playing it because I felt it was dirty cheap to move around the pavise half the time and mobile-kite the other half. Aside from my personal hatred for archer mechanics, I don’t have complains about them. Maybe, MAYBE give pavises some sort of aura/defensive buff for those around it.
-Cleric-
Cleric The basic one for… Goddess worshippers (?). I consider this the best starting class out of all 4:
heal with damage on enemies, status cleanse with damage on enemies, defense-wrecking debuff and… an invulnerability bubble (Hello Safety Wall!). Absolutely amazing starting skillset
With this one I learned what is to be unable to hit flying enemies… since all spells are ground ones based on tiles and don’t proc on flying targets.
With this one I also had an incredible urge to kill party members who ignored / actualy dodged heals and forced me to chase them with a sliver of HP to cast heal ON THEM or at least Protective Zone…
On behalf of fellow Clerics, please raise awareness of… map awareness. LOOK YOUR SURROUNDINGS GUYS! If you see a robed fellow casting spells near you, they often are good, don’t dodge them or ignore them… Clerics don’t have an infinite amount of Heals / Protective Zones, nor can always come near to cast them at your feet.
Further circles add Divine Might, which looks nice but haven’t found to be all that important depending on what party member you’re going with (Hoplite, given the case, with it’s 30s CD Pierce, could benefit from 1 use, or 2 if perfectly timed, which means is a nice thing to have but kind of futile to max due to the stable 60s duration on all levels).
Priest Cleric 2.0 with more utility. Feels nice and useful even if not in a party, but I think Blessing is a bit out of hand and needs a tweak since it’s too effective and it’s effect alone allows the Priest to go bludgeoning the living hell of everyone regardless of stats (this will be mentioned next). Aspersio brings back memories despite not resembling the “original”.
Also, Ressurection.
Krivis What seemed a nice buffing class ended up being Zaibas and nothing else… while checking numbers / reading forums, I noticed that the best lightning-type spell considering damage, scaling and such turns out to be Zaibas… why give the best lightning damaging spell to such a class? I can understand giving Krivis some tools for self-defense, but not of such caliber.
Despite this, Aukuras is completely unreliable: both the accuracy debuff and hp regen are not noticeable during encounters, and the aoe isn’t that wide which conditions the encounter to it’s proximity… something unaffordable in some fights. Perhaps a more noticeable effect and adding a SP recovery (much like an active campfire) would adress this.
Zalciai lasts too few seconds to result all that effective and recieves the same judgement as Aukuras: small radius skills are unreliable on encounters where they are used.
Daino is nice, but I’ve never been in a point where I need to extend the buff cap.
Honestly I felt useless playing as Krivis, since my buff skills were either ignored or left away because bosses forced the encounter to move away from it’s effect. At the moment I see no point in playing Krivis.
Dievdirby Can’t tell how it feels to play it since by the time I reached Dievdirby, I leveled up skills and they didn’t work. None of them.
Aproximately only 1/10 casted statue spells worked, and I had materials for all of them and charged the skill accordingly to how it’s supposed to work. No opinion on it since I haven’t “played” it. A Dievdirby without statues is just a Cleric with other robes.
This is as far as I’ve experienced with classes and my opinion about them.
Now, for the game itself, I’ll point out what I felt about it:
-Gameplay-
(I’ll remark key words to locate my main points amidst this sea of letters)
The game follows a straight forward line with little to no variation: Go there, clear quests, move to the next map, clear quests, move to the following one, more quests. Railroad gameplay ill befits this game (I strongly feel that this needs to be remarked), and lack of alternative maps or the difference it makes to get those exp cards compared to plain grind is noticeable.
Classes with hard time clearing get stuck in the same route as godspeed mobbers and have no alternate paths where their skillset/weapon effect can hasten things up. This could be partialy solved if there were more maps to level from certain levels onward or to make quest objectives more easily attainable (or by simply bringing all classes on par with Barbarian, but that’s anothe story and would take too long to elaborate).
A common acknowledged troublesome quest is the one where the player must scribble on summoning portals. The quest objective is located on a small part of the map (which can be seen almost completely on screen) with a total of around 10-12 portals. For everyone. And the player needs 8. And scribbled portals don’t dissapear but also don’t work if another player interacts. And for at the very least 15-20 minutes (the time I wasted interacting with it) they don’t turn back to “available mode”.
These clusters of 20-30 players waiting for 12 quests objectives when they need 8 are a glorious pain. I assumed it was bugged during the beta, but even if they were operative, 12 portals seem too few for such a requirement and the flow of people passing by on all channels.
Another one is a quest where players need to bring monsters to half HP, and then activate an altar to rip the monster’s soul from the body and kill it. Here we encounter the following problems:
A: The area around the altar is a complete, absolute clusterfuck of monsters continuously brought in and out of the radius, which makes activating the altar without being hit by them quite a feat.
B: By royal decree (or so it seems) the area is a slaughterhouse and all able-bodied characters must go there and kill anything that moves wether or not they have the quest active or the target is a soul or an actual monster. Since it’s a clusterfuck of monsters with high spawn rate as depicted in A, it seems that those fast-clearing classes must go there and kill everything on sight, ruining the quest progress of those unable to kill as fast as him. This wouldn’t be such a problem if not for.
C: There are no other altars.
Situations like these happen on many maps, and the only alternative is grinding, which not all classes excel at, and since the ones that do so do it on quest clearing areas, there’s a big problem.
Fast clearing classes: Fast Quest + Grind when quests run out
Not-so-fast classes: Slow quests due to fast clearing classes wrecking the place and beg for grind parties when running out of quests since they can’t do it on their own at an acceptable pace.
Which brings up parties: those without the ability to swiftly deal with enemies should gather and join forces for the greater good, but that’s not always the given case: not always you can find a party near you, or on your channel, and you have to browse wishing that they have the magnificent grace of accepting you, which doesn’t always happen as fast clearers seem not to give a dievdirby’s statue about your predicament.
Basicaly, utility classes are cast aside because their utility doesn’t outperform the sheer power of clearing speed and are only requested in some niche situations. This needs to be solved in the future unless IMC wants this to become Tree of Barbarian and dungeons/cities looking like a viking raid.
Now:
-Stats-
Mixed feelings on this subject: while on the big picture stats are not that noticed as the game progresses, I must point out some things.
DEX feels broken. Accuracy, Crit Chance and Dodge are too much for a single stat on such “critical” (pun intended) stadistics. This is one of the reasons Barbarian can be crowned King of ToS: A machine of destruction that never misses, crits for more damage than actual strenght builds, and avoids (not reduces) incoming melee damage all with a single stat.
Since damage contribution comes mostly from items (weapon), strenght value isn’t all that noticeable (and even less as you progress) compared to the increase in damage output of getting a new weapon or upgrading it.
As of now, weapon damage > strenght damage, which can favor turning those strenght points, which wouldn’t be that noticeable as raw damage, into crit/accuracy/dodge.
Why favor raw damage and crit damage with a smaller crit chance and hit chances when you can get almost the same result pouring it all to critical chance, hit chance AND the fabulousness of avoiding damage altogether?
Either pumping up strenght contributions or lowering the impact of gear compared to stat contribution would lessen this issue, but still wouldn’t change my opinion that DEX needs a nerf.
Perhaps, for the sake of a less-flawed system, move that dodge into constitution? I know it barely makes sense, but would centralize stats for tanking classes, giving them more tools to prevent/reduce damage, and less stat dispersion.
Another point (for which I don’t have a reasonable alternative, sorry) is the measly contribution of INT. Magical damage. That’s it. The most capital stat for mages has the sole contributing effect of dealing more damage.
All I could thinkg about is to change what stats contribute for your character depending on your class, or amplify / diminish those contributions.
For this, I could bring 2 models (with tweaked numbers/values for the purpose of easier understanding):
1º All classes have the same stats (STR,CON,INT,SPR,DEX) but depending if you’re one class or another they would contribute in different ways.
1 DEX point for Swordsman: gives crit chance, accuracy and decreased weight for equipment (example, let’s assume that more dexterity makes weapons easier to wield and don’t feel as sluggish, ok?)
1 DEX point for Archer: gives crit chance, accuracy and dodge.
1 SPR point for Mages: gives magical resistance, SP.
1 SPR point for Clerics: give SP, Magical damage, Magic Resist.
These are obviously wrong, flawed contributions, but I think the point is given, to make stats have a different value depending on class and to diversify their effects on the classes that most benefit of them.
In this case I gave Clerics a slight upper hand compared to Mages because they aren’t remarked magic damage dealers (based on their most prominent role as healers and supports, but could/should be tweaked for those able to dish out huge numbers) but would still need magic damage to amplify heals and other utility spells which are not as devastating as Mage ones, all while needing a wider mana pool than them.
2º All classes have the same stats (STR,CON,INT,SPR,DEX) but depending if you’re one class or another they would contribute in different values.
1 DEX point for Swordsman: gives 0.5% crit chance, 0.5% accuracy and 0,5% dodge.
1 DEX point for Archer: gives 0,7% crit chance, 0,6 accuracy and 1% dodge.
1 INT point for Mages: Gives +3 magical damage.
1 INT point for Clerics: Give +1 magical damage.
As you can see, different classes get different values of the same stats, so everyone can go around the same builds as they were before, but without the same brutal effectiveness that some had, while boosting some that required a little help given the poor performance of their main stats.
(Again, I remark that these are fake numbers changed for an easier grasp of the idea I had.)
As a last point, I consider the level gap between gears a mistake.
Take the point of being a Swordsman and being level 18. You won’t get another weapon / gear upgrade until lvl 40. Even if there are “tiers” (or simply better versions of the same level gear) I consider that gap kind of unnecessary. Instead of such 25 levels with a lvl 15 sword, why not separate those tiered gears into lvl 10-20-30?
I don’t remember the exact names for weapons<, but let’s assume Falchion is the lowest 1h sword you can get (based on damage) and Dio’s Sword the highest one with Bastard sword in the middle. So it ends up like this:
Falchion(15)<Bastard sword(15)<Dio’s sword(15) - Better weapon(40)
Why not make it like this?
Falchion(10)- Bastard sword(20)- Dio’s Sword(30)- Better weapon(40)
Same with all weapons and armors, to make the later levels of gear less punishing. Upgrading gear is nice but can be expensive to reach noticeable results, and personaly I prefer this system. Also, would help to have more flow of items in the market instead of 20 rows of quilted armors of different prices.
EDIT: I’ve noticed that by mistake I’ve ended up working on this thread on two tabs, if it appears somewhere that isn’t “Discussion/Feedback”, is duplicated or is missing some words, please excuse the mistake and point it out.
So far this is my opinion / feedback of my play during the beta. I hope it’s been useful / enlightening.
(If you managed to read all of this, you deserve a rest…)
having a defensive skill or two that reflect damage or freeze won’t validate any Cryomancer to tank any content beyond mobs.