Hello,
First played, and currently playing, the second iCBT and having a blast, but have seen many corners left unpolished with either bugs or weird design choices, with special attention to UI and UX. My concerns about bugs is minimal compared to those weird design choices, so I’ll be focusing on the latter while mentioning certain bugs that, well, bugged me, as well as giving my own personal opinion (as both software developer and long time gamer).
For reference, I currently play with a level 67 Hoplite (Swordman C2), so maybe my views are somewhat biased, but I’ll try to remain neutral.
Stats
Gameplay
My primary concern with stats is that they don’t seem to properly reflect what they do or there are some “super stats” that give bonuses to many things, but maybe not amazing or “balanced across classes” bonuses. Is this intended or have I misunderstood the info?
For example, both STR and CON give +MaxCarryWeight, giving the STR-based, close to combat characters the Backpacker tag. It may sound reasonable and realistic, but this is a game, and while it may work for Archers or some Priests, it gives STR classes (namely Swordman) an edge against other classes, like Wizard.
My proposition for this particular case is to either give a constant or stat-agnostic scalable MaxCarryWeight for all classes, or base it off CON (a way more general stat).
UI and UX
Regarding the UI, decouple the stats (Base Stats and Equipment), so you can think of what stat to upgrade regardless of equipment bonuses, and regarding the UX, either have the Upgrade (+) button in a static place, or have all stats (numbers included) remain static (that is, not going higher or lower depending on your other stat values). Here’s a crude example.
Skills & Attributes
Gameplay
I am very concerned about the dynamics of the game, and this is a personal preference, but why are cooldowns so big? Couldn’t skill effects and cooldowns be lowered to offer a more dynamic and active gameplay? Not implying all cooldowns should be minimal, but add at least one “CD-less” skill for each C1 class (Hoplite has 30s CD on it’s lowest CD skill) for greater dynamism.
Attributes are a fun way to modify a class gameplay without altering their stats, but there are some generic +% with at least 100 attribute levels.
To combat this, trim the level and buff the +% of the generic attributes, have them with greater cost and/or learning duration and (ab)use the toggeable attributes to add game-changing attributes to certain classes without cluttering the skills (Non-damaging Heal is a good example, INT Finestra is another, which needs tweaking, imho).
UI and UX
I am really pleased with the UI of the Skill & Attributes window, but I would like a better “sorting” when it comes to attributes. This could be done with a better naming scheme (Skill Name: Upgrade). Biggest offenders are “Armor Mastery” and “Weapon Mastery”. Unless you plan to add different attributes to the same type (two Blunt weapon masteries), this naming scheme will work.
There’s some bugs going on, namely the scrolling will bug when changing from a Class with less Skills and Attributes than another, and a workaround is closing and opening the Skill window after selecting the desired class.
Items, Equipment & Inventory
Gameplay
Items lack personality in some regards. Weapons are pigeonholed too strictly to classes or roles. For example, the only Strike weapon that deals physical damage is the hammer, which has the lowest physical damage but gives some, maybe non-relevant, buffs to magic attacks.
Armor is too generic unless you get a Blue or rarer item.
Durability is too low and the effects are not as drastic as they could be.
Potential is a noble stat (letting you share old equipment) but I feel it could use some tweaking (decoupling gemming from sharing, for example)
And by far --worst–, most Material seem “junk” items but can’t be easily differentiated.
In my opinion, weapons shouldn’t be too tied to classes. Let the regular Swordman wield a TH sword or a OH spear but add a “Mastery” attribute to Highlanders and Hoplites that enhances their game with those weapons. Add a TH mace that provides full physical Strike damage and have, say, Barbarian, have a Mastery attribute for those.
Meanwhile, enhance even the most common armor piece with smaller buffs to HP or SP, have them have more benefits that decrease with durability.
UI and UX
Many consumable items don’t explain what they do, and I feel a List view of the Inventory is needed when you have too many items. Other than that, I feel the Inventory just needs some more refining, like real-time search and shadowing filtered items rather than hiding them altogether, but it’s on a rather good spot.
Combat, Questing & Leveling
Gameplay
The combat is great, it feels like an old school 2D brawler with hints of shiny magic and loads of mobs like in Diablo-like games but, as already said, skill CDs water down this experience making it way slower than it should be. It should not be a spam-fest, but that also means you need to spam less Z (regular attack) and more skills.
Some offenders are “bullet sponge” enemies. Quest bosses have this problem to heart. They usually have way too much health for solo players, and almost none for 4 or 5-man parties. Fixing (or implementing) Health scaling for “cinematic combat” (the one in the quests cutscenes) would solve this.
Questing in general feels a bit lackluster. Most quests are kill this, kill that, press space on that. I’d say drop some quests in general, and give repeating quests more weight to kill time. Also, add some kind of voice acting to slow the dialogue, either fully Voice Acted or algorithm-generated (similar to games like Animal Crossing).
Leveling is an integral part of the game experience but it feels boring and tedious in certain points of the game, especially regarding to those weird EXP points in certain levels. The rewards are minimal most of the time (“Oh, great, another stat point!”), but this is accepted seeing the max level is way over the hundred levels.
In my opinion, leveling should feel smother, with less bumpy levels, and that should be a high priority.
UI and UX
Combat numbers feel awful most of the time as a Swordman-archtype character. I hit with a regular attack which is weak to my weapon damage type (Pierce to Leather) and while I have Concentrate active, and I feel my screen is swarmed by numbers. Not a bad thing by itself, but the presentation should be refined, like inlining bonuses. Here’s another crude example. This would work because the damage number lasts way less than the modifiers. Also, critical hits are not properly represented by the Red, flashy effect they should have. Because everyone likes crits.
Questing, as already said, needs more immersion measures, like some kind of voice acting.
Leveling, and EXP in general, should be represented better. Display a number of EXP gained when using an EXP card or killing a mob. Yellow for regular EXP, green for Class EXP.
Adventure Journal
The Adventure Journal in the game makes my heart go soft. This is great for completionists and gives players other goals, aside of leveling and killing everything that moves. But the current execution is kind of poor, seemingly rushed for completeness sake. Please, focus more on this feature, but do so with care. If need be, decouple it from the client and have it somewhere on the web, so players can see other players journals.
Chat & Socialization
Chat should include some more customization options, like font size and chat lines decorations, but otherwise is pretty nice. One thing I’d like to see is a cooldown on Megaphone uses, to ease it on the Shout tab, and maybe the inclusion of a Zone chat, which requires no megaphones and is only zone/channel specific.
The friend list should be fixed ASAP, because the game is best played with friends and I’ve “lost” on some friends that still have my friend request pending.
That is a big list of things that I dislike of the game, feel they are not great in their current status.
Thanks for reading,
Alex.
