Various Things
With my first post here being focused on a singular matter and already being too long, I decided to give the other things that came to mind some breathing room. Here they are, divided into rough categories and otherwise no particular order.
The Forum
1: Typical forum etiquette is not to necro threads. This is an issue with the suggestion category of this board I think. Having read through a variety of other people's ideas for absolver, I found myself reluctant to post my own thoughts in those threads, as I would quickly bring a bunch of old discussions to the front page of the category, completely disordering things. The ability to upvote and downvote a post, or maybe even attach a comment in the manner of google docs would be helpful. Of course, upvotes and downvotes are things that can lead to unpleasant behaviour among users. If there are concerns about this, perhaps the votes could be viewable by developers only. As a sidenote of sorts, the ability to attach comments would be very good for posts such as this very one, which cover a variety of things, as opposed to those about one singular matter which can be more easily answered with a yes/no system.
Player Interaction
1: Groups dissolving when a player respawns instead of being revived is rather unpleasant at times. Those times being when a revive cannot occur or when respawning is simply a lot faster. It may be a good addition to give a player who was in a group a prompt to rejoin the group on respawn.
2: Not being able to revive players who fall off ledges into water or bottomless pits leads to groups dissolving (see above) and makes certain areas unappealing for duels, as the enviromental hazard becomes a nuisance that prevents quick rematches. It even somewhat applies to the larger falls of the game due to the time investment of running down to the impact location, which may sometimes even make the would be rescuer arrive too late.
2a: Bottomless drops would definitely profit from having a revive opportunity.
2b: Long drops are more iffy. Either the ledge that the player fell off, or the ground that they hit with a bit of a crunch seem like fitting spots to place the revive location. Perhaps it could be in both locations, with the one location disappearing when reviving is attempted in the other. It sounds like it could cause sync issues, having two different revives available, but the gains of being able to fluidly bring someone back into the fight seem like a worthy tradeoff.
3: The lack of a chat can make it hard to find people to duel or group up with in the open world. To keep the atmosphere of the game while improving this aspect, I propose a ping functionality, wherein the propose coop and duel buttons, when not "aiming" at another player, cause the player to pulse green or red respectively, visible through objects in the region. Perhaps with a cooldown to prevent spamming that might bother others.
4: It can also be rather hard to notice that someone has proposed a group/duel if not looking at the lower right due to some other distraction. Some other indicators might be pleasant, like the challenger gaining a red glow/inviter gaining a green glow (which would also help connect the invite to someone when multiple players are around).
4a: Audio cues are another thing. Both for recieving invites and for acting hostile. The latter especially can sneak up on you while heroically ganging up on a marked one or what have you.
Items and Customization
1: So far I have been quite happy regarding clipping. The couple cases I have found have been subtle enough to be easily ignored, if noticed to begin with. The exception to this are masks, which I find surprising and sad considering their central nature to the game. A lot of hairstyles will clip through the masks. This is noticeable even on the prospect mask, which makes for a rather iffy first impression when creating your character as you see hairlines starting inside of the mask etc. It is perhaps a rather minor thing, but I would suggest revisiting how hairstyles and masks interact, at least in the case of the prospect mask.
2: Certain items, I personally noticed the forest caller armbands, seem to have no dye equivalent of the colour scheme used in the preview. This can be rather disappointing and should probably be fixed. I am also unsure of using different dyes as the preview instead of simply default, but I think that is only momentarily confusing and after that probably just a matter of preference instead of one of clarity.
3: From what I can tell, when sorting according to anything except Newest (I shall take Name as an example going forward), the items still "subsort" within that sorting system according to Newest. So if I have two towerpoint shirts, they will be in order of newest. Alternatively it is arbitrary, I am somewhat guessing here. This is rather unhelpful in my opinion, as newest is not much of a help as a "subsort". Instead I propose that items be ordered according to repair state and dye. To give two ways of doing this:
3a: Normal Repaired, Normal Broken, Brighter Repaired, etc.
3b: Normal Repaired, Brighter Repaired, Darker Repaired, etc.
4: Instead of repairing a broken item, it may be better to instead pay fragments to unlock the ability to switch an item back and forth between the two states, as otherwise one requires duplicates to have both options available, which leads down the road of a cluttered inventory, though this will be less bothersome to me personally if 2 is implemented and repaired/broken items are reliably in the same order.
5: Previewing the effects of dyes and repairs should not be bound to actually having the fragments to affect that change. Currently it is necessary to maintain a float of 300 fragments or so to be able to simply see what options are available to a piece of gear.
6: Speaking of fragments, a player's fragment income is bound to the quantity and quality of drops they receive and is thus rather... Jumpy. It is possible to rapidly reach 1k with a few high rarity drops that one is not interested in for whatever reason, but similarly one may struggle to even reach 100 at times. This can be rather unsatisfactory for people who are customization/dye happy. Proposition to ease this: add a fragment income for victories alongside XP, perhaps at a ratio of ~1/100?
7: Duel intros (and other aspects) could be spiced up a little with a short musical theme. I would propose emulation of the intros, with class specific ones + a whole slew of independent ones to pick up. Maybe let schools choose a musical theme for their students to use? To kind of latch on to the upcoming PvE expansion, being able to get drops of boss inspired jingles to equip for duels would be cool as well beyond the masks the marked ones already hand out.
Continued in next post due to character limit.
The Forum
1: Typical forum etiquette is not to necro threads. This is an issue with the suggestion category of this board I think. Having read through a variety of other people's ideas for absolver, I found myself reluctant to post my own thoughts in those threads, as I would quickly bring a bunch of old discussions to the front page of the category, completely disordering things. The ability to upvote and downvote a post, or maybe even attach a comment in the manner of google docs would be helpful. Of course, upvotes and downvotes are things that can lead to unpleasant behaviour among users. If there are concerns about this, perhaps the votes could be viewable by developers only. As a sidenote of sorts, the ability to attach comments would be very good for posts such as this very one, which cover a variety of things, as opposed to those about one singular matter which can be more easily answered with a yes/no system.
Player Interaction
1: Groups dissolving when a player respawns instead of being revived is rather unpleasant at times. Those times being when a revive cannot occur or when respawning is simply a lot faster. It may be a good addition to give a player who was in a group a prompt to rejoin the group on respawn.
2: Not being able to revive players who fall off ledges into water or bottomless pits leads to groups dissolving (see above) and makes certain areas unappealing for duels, as the enviromental hazard becomes a nuisance that prevents quick rematches. It even somewhat applies to the larger falls of the game due to the time investment of running down to the impact location, which may sometimes even make the would be rescuer arrive too late.
2a: Bottomless drops would definitely profit from having a revive opportunity.
2b: Long drops are more iffy. Either the ledge that the player fell off, or the ground that they hit with a bit of a crunch seem like fitting spots to place the revive location. Perhaps it could be in both locations, with the one location disappearing when reviving is attempted in the other. It sounds like it could cause sync issues, having two different revives available, but the gains of being able to fluidly bring someone back into the fight seem like a worthy tradeoff.
3: The lack of a chat can make it hard to find people to duel or group up with in the open world. To keep the atmosphere of the game while improving this aspect, I propose a ping functionality, wherein the propose coop and duel buttons, when not "aiming" at another player, cause the player to pulse green or red respectively, visible through objects in the region. Perhaps with a cooldown to prevent spamming that might bother others.
4: It can also be rather hard to notice that someone has proposed a group/duel if not looking at the lower right due to some other distraction. Some other indicators might be pleasant, like the challenger gaining a red glow/inviter gaining a green glow (which would also help connect the invite to someone when multiple players are around).
4a: Audio cues are another thing. Both for recieving invites and for acting hostile. The latter especially can sneak up on you while heroically ganging up on a marked one or what have you.
Items and Customization
1: So far I have been quite happy regarding clipping. The couple cases I have found have been subtle enough to be easily ignored, if noticed to begin with. The exception to this are masks, which I find surprising and sad considering their central nature to the game. A lot of hairstyles will clip through the masks. This is noticeable even on the prospect mask, which makes for a rather iffy first impression when creating your character as you see hairlines starting inside of the mask etc. It is perhaps a rather minor thing, but I would suggest revisiting how hairstyles and masks interact, at least in the case of the prospect mask.
2: Certain items, I personally noticed the forest caller armbands, seem to have no dye equivalent of the colour scheme used in the preview. This can be rather disappointing and should probably be fixed. I am also unsure of using different dyes as the preview instead of simply default, but I think that is only momentarily confusing and after that probably just a matter of preference instead of one of clarity.
3: From what I can tell, when sorting according to anything except Newest (I shall take Name as an example going forward), the items still "subsort" within that sorting system according to Newest. So if I have two towerpoint shirts, they will be in order of newest. Alternatively it is arbitrary, I am somewhat guessing here. This is rather unhelpful in my opinion, as newest is not much of a help as a "subsort". Instead I propose that items be ordered according to repair state and dye. To give two ways of doing this:
3a: Normal Repaired, Normal Broken, Brighter Repaired, etc.
3b: Normal Repaired, Brighter Repaired, Darker Repaired, etc.
4: Instead of repairing a broken item, it may be better to instead pay fragments to unlock the ability to switch an item back and forth between the two states, as otherwise one requires duplicates to have both options available, which leads down the road of a cluttered inventory, though this will be less bothersome to me personally if 2 is implemented and repaired/broken items are reliably in the same order.
5: Previewing the effects of dyes and repairs should not be bound to actually having the fragments to affect that change. Currently it is necessary to maintain a float of 300 fragments or so to be able to simply see what options are available to a piece of gear.
6: Speaking of fragments, a player's fragment income is bound to the quantity and quality of drops they receive and is thus rather... Jumpy. It is possible to rapidly reach 1k with a few high rarity drops that one is not interested in for whatever reason, but similarly one may struggle to even reach 100 at times. This can be rather unsatisfactory for people who are customization/dye happy. Proposition to ease this: add a fragment income for victories alongside XP, perhaps at a ratio of ~1/100?
7: Duel intros (and other aspects) could be spiced up a little with a short musical theme. I would propose emulation of the intros, with class specific ones + a whole slew of independent ones to pick up. Maybe let schools choose a musical theme for their students to use? To kind of latch on to the upcoming PvE expansion, being able to get drops of boss inspired jingles to equip for duels would be cool as well beyond the masks the marked ones already hand out.
Continued in next post due to character limit.
Comments
1: Being guardbroken gives one rapid, almost instant stamina regeneration. This in turn means it is the smarter option to be guardbroken than to drop one's guard and take a few hits (ignoring the defensive abilities for a moment). I feel this to be a tad counterintuitive and would thus think it best changed or better explained to new players.
2: The pier area has been somewhat unloved by me in terms of fights due to the ledge revive absence mentioned above, however if this were fixed, I would in fact like a T-shaped pier to be added, so that people duelling may do so with both having their backs to the water instead of one having the advantage of being able to back down onto solid ground. In general I think the drops should be player with a little more in regards to level design. The reserves are of course a great example of this done well.
3: To carry on about wishes for enviroments, so far they are rather empty, perfect for a clean fight, but perhaps a bit dry. An interior area with furniture to smash and be smashed through would be a good addition. Leaving a teahouse or what have you in utter ruin is something many martial arts movies are fond of and the satisfying nature of smashing vases in absolver makes me feel that the developers would not disappoint if they were to attempt this.
3a: I did think about adding more destructable objects to the areas already present, but decided that this would likely not be kind to their feel, both in gameplay and atmospheric terms.
4: It is my experience that while the AI tends to multiply at a pace fitting the playercount in the area, idle players can easily upset this. 2-3 people sitting around the altar lead to one player attempting to manage 4-5 AI at a time. Perhaps some kind of idle state could be implemented if a player remains at an altar for five minutes or so, removing them from the calculation regarding how many AI are running around or just simply removing them from the matchmaking in general till they leave the altar.
And with that I am finished with all my ideas for now, apart from the ones that others on this forum already posted or put in my head to begin with. Thanks for reading and thanks to the developers for this fun game.
Thank you for such detailed feedback and suggestions on the game and even forum organization. I'm passing along all these to the team. Though we can't guarantee that your suggestions will be implemented in the game, we really appreciate your solid approach and structured exposition. Thank you so much and continue sharing your thoughts!