Various Things v2
With the update hitting this month, absolver has been on my mind a little more prominently again. So here we are once more with another of my lengthy suggestion/feedback posts. This time around we have two "serious" categories, followed by a rather more lighthearted/inconsequential one.
Information Clarity
1: Hidden. Digits. When comparing gear it is clear there are more digits beyond what is visible to the player. In some cases, Gear A with 0,2 weight is not equal to Gear B with 0,2 weight. I can only assume this applies to other numbers ingame as well. Either way, it is aggravating to see that, because especially at the borders of mobility levels, those extra digits are relevant to the player. It is, in my eyes, pointless obfuscation. Please display all numbers in the exact way they apply to us.
1a: Certain weight interactions make me suspect that the number shown may actually be rounded to the closest tenth instead of merely being undisplayed digits. In which case my suggestion remains similar. Either round to that number in terms of mechanics as well, or do not round the displayed number.
2: The doubletap moves or however you want to call them are a strange anomaly in that they do not have their own symbol in the overview window. This means one has to watch the animation to notice this trait in a move, which is unnecessary and should be amended.
2a: The damage in the detail window needs to be clearer for these moves. Do the hits deal the damage listed combined or independently? "10 (2x)" or "10 / 10" or other such variations should be clearer.
3: Some moves are not clear on which side lands the blow, this pertains primarily to thrusts and verticals, needless to say. This creates a larger learning curve of sorts surrounding forsaken parries. The forsaken having trouble figuring out which way to parry is good, it is a challenge to them. However this increased curve works the other way around as well. Not being able to properly tell which side the hit lands on makes it difficult for the uninitiated to build left/right mixups with certain moves. Changing the notation to something along the lines of "Vertical (Left)" would help immensely.
3a: I may be wrong about this but I believe doubletap moves can have different properties regarding this? In that case I would suggest having a notation along the lines of "Low -> Mid" in the respective category.
4: The range of a move is shown quite helpfully, but it is not shown how much of that range is created via the character stepping forward. In the vast emptiness of the meditation space especially it can be hard to tell if the character is moving at all. Clarifying this with a notation along the lines of "2m (+0.5m movement)" would help to isolate moves, both for closing in and gaining breathing space.
Movement
1: The stamina bar only appears during combat, but stamina is drained while sprinting as well. It would be helpful to be able to see it as otherwise it can be easy to forget just how long you have been on the move this way and enter a fight already exhausted.
1a: Alternatively, one could remove the stamina cost of sprinting outside of combat to permit travel to be smoother.
2: Further on the topic of smooth, comfortable travel, I feel the need to adress the effect the mobility stat has on out of combat movement speed, be it the standard jog or the sprint. Most people will probably agree that being slow when travelling in a game is rarely fun. It extends the time spent doing "nothing" instead of getting to what the game is really about, in this case combat. Low mobility not only causes slower movement speed, but also slower stamina regen, meaning less sprinting. While I understand that this is only logical, it runs counter to game enjoyment for most, meaning there will be people who ignore low mobility and maybe even normal mobility because they want to get around the map at a decent pace. I would propose that only locked on movement be affected by mobility level to make low mobility more appealing.
2a: The matter of low mobility's lower stamina regen is something that cannot easily be fixed via differentiating between combat and noncombat movement, so regarding that I can only point toward considering the removal of the cost once more.
PvP Cosmetics
1: The postbattle screen where one waits for the next (re)match is a bit lackluster. The character is superimposed on a shot of the arena that the past fight took place in. It feels somewhat like an afterthought, so here are some of my ideas to improve upon it. I stick with freezeframes/still images due to the fact that a lot of people just want to get a move on after a match, jump into the next one while the magic is still there. A lengthy animation would be wasted compared to a single, effective shot.
1a: A panning view of a freezeframe of the final hit that ended the fight. A classic option in my opinion. It is more visually tantalizing than what we currently have and with all the fancy moves in this game, should lead to some good shots.
1b: Fight outros. Perhaps the more simple and obvious answer. In this case I would argue for a still images of the winner in a variety of poses to choose from, just please not superimposed. A simple example would be raising a glass/cup/flask for a stagger user.
1c: Simplest option of all, still an improvement though: shot of the winner reviving the loser in the center of the arena (to prevent awkward stuff related to cliffs and walls).
2: Stagespecific fight intros/intros that interact with the stage. Waking up from a nap under the tree in the forest map, gazing into the abyss of the library or that pillar in the middle of nowhere before stepping back from the edge and looking at the opponent, that kind of thing. Could provide so many more examples. The bossfights have shown that your animators do more than a decent job when characters interact with the stage/terrain in cutscenes. The intros would be much improved if you made use of that.
2a: Personally, I would prefer if we could buy the stage specific intros individually for a lower price and then arrange them into a set of our own, but I would totally understand if it is simpler to just put them into premade sets with overall moods like "contemplative" or what have you.
3: The more intros we unlock, the more of a pity it is that we need to leave the trials and navigate the menus to set the intro to something different. Let us set intros per stage or let us set a pool of intros for the game to choose from.
I know there are some points in this post where I am giving feedback based on things I believe to have figured out, but have not gone out of my way to fully test before this writeup. I hope this does not cause any confusion. Regardless, I greatly look forward to playing the downfall update and then likely forcing another textwall on poor Waterfall.
Information Clarity
1: Hidden. Digits. When comparing gear it is clear there are more digits beyond what is visible to the player. In some cases, Gear A with 0,2 weight is not equal to Gear B with 0,2 weight. I can only assume this applies to other numbers ingame as well. Either way, it is aggravating to see that, because especially at the borders of mobility levels, those extra digits are relevant to the player. It is, in my eyes, pointless obfuscation. Please display all numbers in the exact way they apply to us.
1a: Certain weight interactions make me suspect that the number shown may actually be rounded to the closest tenth instead of merely being undisplayed digits. In which case my suggestion remains similar. Either round to that number in terms of mechanics as well, or do not round the displayed number.
2: The doubletap moves or however you want to call them are a strange anomaly in that they do not have their own symbol in the overview window. This means one has to watch the animation to notice this trait in a move, which is unnecessary and should be amended.
2a: The damage in the detail window needs to be clearer for these moves. Do the hits deal the damage listed combined or independently? "10 (2x)" or "10 / 10" or other such variations should be clearer.
3: Some moves are not clear on which side lands the blow, this pertains primarily to thrusts and verticals, needless to say. This creates a larger learning curve of sorts surrounding forsaken parries. The forsaken having trouble figuring out which way to parry is good, it is a challenge to them. However this increased curve works the other way around as well. Not being able to properly tell which side the hit lands on makes it difficult for the uninitiated to build left/right mixups with certain moves. Changing the notation to something along the lines of "Vertical (Left)" would help immensely.
3a: I may be wrong about this but I believe doubletap moves can have different properties regarding this? In that case I would suggest having a notation along the lines of "Low -> Mid" in the respective category.
4: The range of a move is shown quite helpfully, but it is not shown how much of that range is created via the character stepping forward. In the vast emptiness of the meditation space especially it can be hard to tell if the character is moving at all. Clarifying this with a notation along the lines of "2m (+0.5m movement)" would help to isolate moves, both for closing in and gaining breathing space.
Movement
1: The stamina bar only appears during combat, but stamina is drained while sprinting as well. It would be helpful to be able to see it as otherwise it can be easy to forget just how long you have been on the move this way and enter a fight already exhausted.
1a: Alternatively, one could remove the stamina cost of sprinting outside of combat to permit travel to be smoother.
2: Further on the topic of smooth, comfortable travel, I feel the need to adress the effect the mobility stat has on out of combat movement speed, be it the standard jog or the sprint. Most people will probably agree that being slow when travelling in a game is rarely fun. It extends the time spent doing "nothing" instead of getting to what the game is really about, in this case combat. Low mobility not only causes slower movement speed, but also slower stamina regen, meaning less sprinting. While I understand that this is only logical, it runs counter to game enjoyment for most, meaning there will be people who ignore low mobility and maybe even normal mobility because they want to get around the map at a decent pace. I would propose that only locked on movement be affected by mobility level to make low mobility more appealing.
2a: The matter of low mobility's lower stamina regen is something that cannot easily be fixed via differentiating between combat and noncombat movement, so regarding that I can only point toward considering the removal of the cost once more.
PvP Cosmetics
1: The postbattle screen where one waits for the next (re)match is a bit lackluster. The character is superimposed on a shot of the arena that the past fight took place in. It feels somewhat like an afterthought, so here are some of my ideas to improve upon it. I stick with freezeframes/still images due to the fact that a lot of people just want to get a move on after a match, jump into the next one while the magic is still there. A lengthy animation would be wasted compared to a single, effective shot.
1a: A panning view of a freezeframe of the final hit that ended the fight. A classic option in my opinion. It is more visually tantalizing than what we currently have and with all the fancy moves in this game, should lead to some good shots.
1b: Fight outros. Perhaps the more simple and obvious answer. In this case I would argue for a still images of the winner in a variety of poses to choose from, just please not superimposed. A simple example would be raising a glass/cup/flask for a stagger user.
1c: Simplest option of all, still an improvement though: shot of the winner reviving the loser in the center of the arena (to prevent awkward stuff related to cliffs and walls).
2: Stagespecific fight intros/intros that interact with the stage. Waking up from a nap under the tree in the forest map, gazing into the abyss of the library or that pillar in the middle of nowhere before stepping back from the edge and looking at the opponent, that kind of thing. Could provide so many more examples. The bossfights have shown that your animators do more than a decent job when characters interact with the stage/terrain in cutscenes. The intros would be much improved if you made use of that.
2a: Personally, I would prefer if we could buy the stage specific intros individually for a lower price and then arrange them into a set of our own, but I would totally understand if it is simpler to just put them into premade sets with overall moods like "contemplative" or what have you.
3: The more intros we unlock, the more of a pity it is that we need to leave the trials and navigate the menus to set the intro to something different. Let us set intros per stage or let us set a pool of intros for the game to choose from.
I know there are some points in this post where I am giving feedback based on things I believe to have figured out, but have not gone out of my way to fully test before this writeup. I hope this does not cause any confusion. Regardless, I greatly look forward to playing the downfall update and then likely forcing another textwall on poor Waterfall.
Comments
Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll pass these along to the rest of the team. While I can't promise any of it will make it into the game, we do want to make sure we review all player feedback and suggestions to stay focused on adding/change things to the game that the community wants.
Thank you once again for your support & patience!