A BloB of Feedback

[GoG_the_BloB]

warning long post ahead

First, let me briefly introduce myself:
IGN: Griffith
started playing about a week ago and am totally hooked.
as I am kinda reaching the skill-tree-caps (80-100-92), I believe its a good time to give some fb.

General playing experience:
From the get-go I was in love.
(chicken quest, the dialogues, the sheer amount of “chickens”, the splatter effects=pure awesomeness)

The combat system is fast, engaging, challenging.
it also rewards “skill/tactic” (a player who tries to study the behaviour of enemies can
defeat enemies not in his league).
The different “AI” of enemies left me in awe. I mean we are talking pre alpha here but nearly every enemy behaves slightly differently which is just impressive and showed me that behind this game are people who care and work with passion.
sheeps try to straight forward head-butt one to death.
falcons moving more in a circular/zigzag pattern.
ghost warriors even try to back-step/evade your attack.
archer goblins trying to keep their distance from you.
hornets got a army of wasps guarding them.
and the cherry on top is they even use skills.

The crafting is ok. get x mats for recipe y. nothing new. I like blueprints tho.
Well it does its job.

The construction system is great (oh rmk2k the nostalgia mhh) so far and I am looking forward to the
“Custom trigger system”.
I really like that its possible to “fix” items (whoever thought of it=genius).

Ideas & Critique:

The Obvious (just to emphasize the importance of these):
->more Content
probably the 1. reason why there are not many players playing the pre-alpha: Noob Island not enough

->party modus / exp sharing when fighting near friend
many players that try out a new mmo-game do so with 1-2+ friends or recruiting their best buds to join them after their solo exploring was satisfying.
without grouping (shared exp from mobs) they won’t stay long.

these are the 2 plain obvious things to focus on if you want to increase the playerbase.

The Holy-grail of sandboxing:
as of now, one can build himself a “house”, with apart from storage functions,
has merely a decorative function. Lets call this, the Tier 1 of sandboxing.

Custom trigger system (switch x moves block y, block x moved onto tile y opens door z, ect) what you already have planned would be tier 2.

with these 2 alone, players would have the tools to create actual content with “play”-value.

adding in custom quests (tier 2.5… or so) enhances this further but really great would be

custom spawner points for mobs, basically allowing players to place enemies into maps.
tier 3 is reached. players would be able to create “real” content, multileveled dungeons ect.
adding in a reward system for “popular worlds” and the holy grail of sandboxing is found:

players playing player-created content to create content.

the small things:
-> increase the “uses” of higher tiered “tools”
for now there is little to no sense in using a t2 pickaxe to mine (the speed bonus doesn’t outweigh the higher costs)

-> added container functions
besides locked/unlocked it would be great to be able to set containers to “input only/output only”.

-> transparency for skill runes
I would love to be able to read/see how much more runes I need for the next skill tree level.

-> transparency for exp
let us see how much exp we have/need and get after killing/doing something (the numbers).

the ugly things
-> gating of gear via skillpoints
first don’t misunderstand: having to invest skillpoints to craft higher tiered gear is fine
but to wear them is imho a nogo.
I do understand the importance of gating things but I really dislike it done in this fashion.
a better way for example is:
to track the progression of the item type the player is using and if some tresholds are reached the next tier is unlocked for use.
player uses daggers long enough thus enabling him to use the stilleto.

well the simplest way is probably just gating it via the combat skill tree level but not costing any skill points.(basically adding it as passive bonus from the combat trees at specific tree levels.)

ok I admit this is more of a balancing issue and shouldn’t be high priority now.
moving on.

-> synchronisation is a b….
as far as i know any multiplayer game has to dance with this one.
iirc someone once told me: desync issues are everywhere in any game the only reason that players feel that one game runs less asynchronous over another is because some hide them better.

I don’t know how to hide them better tho…

the dreamy:
-> placeable interactive customizeable trader-npcs
-> enchantment system (player choice specific gear enhancement)
-> alchemy system (combine item x with item y to create item z)
-> automation systems (player can create things that create/transmute things over time even when offline)

Balancing
this is too strong, this is too weak…
pre alpha… we shouldn’t even talk about this…
well ok, jump attack is clearly too strong…
jokes aside you got this imho under control and did a great job so far.

moving on

Bugs

client crashing

-> stone tablet despawn crash
placeing down a stone tablet (or any “text” object, I guess) without “fixing” it and entering the “edit” menue. pressing “done” after it despawned leads to a client crash.

minor

-> the invisible wasp
sometimes while fighting against hornets with their wasps it happens that after I killed “all”
I am still in combat and losing hp seemingly due to a “invisible enemy”.
My guess is that the wasps “charge” skill leads to a desync issue of the wasp:
client based wasp is either “not near player” or “dead”, server based wasp is near player and attacking him. trying to hit invisible wasp does nothing.
sources for it could be: (on the premise that a player hits wasps while using charge)
-evade mechanic of enemies (client side: wasp got hit and died; server side: wasp evaded the attack)
-damage multipliers (client side: player crit kills wasp; server side: no crit wasp survived)
-knockback gets overriden from charge repositioning
these are just wild guesses and I am probably completly wrong but maybe it helps.

sidenote:
I apologize for any grammar mistakes, broken english ect.
If theres anything unclear just ask and I will gladly elaborate.

ending words:

I can only commend you guys and girls (haha…) for this wonderful game.
You are on the way to create the game I always dreamed of.
May you never lose your drive and be always in good health.
Thanks for your hard work so far.

your addicted Fan,
Griffith.

[Rammy]

Great feedback, thanks a lot!
Detailed observations about some bugs and false behaviours, too. Many of your suggestions are already planned features, but there were some good ideas as well, that we might incorporate. Just give us some more time and it’ll be great.

[Tigerlime]

Wow, nice feedback and such. Good job on all of that with good ideas, finding bugs and what not. I also hope a lot more is to come to this game.

PS: I haven’t been around for some time now, maybe you noticed. Things got kinda busy with me, among preparing for moving (didn’t move yet, but soon). But the main reason was my PC… And still kinda is… I should have never redone my pc. It was good the way it was before. But after clean install everything seems so sluggish and what not. Specially after all the windows updates. Still don’t know what the problem is. It’s probably attempt number 8 or so. lol But I will leave it once I’m done this round. Can’t seem to make it any better. I’ll check out the game again once I got all that sorted out. I saw it’s been a month since the last update. I hope everything is ok on your end and that you’re doing something bigger.

Good luck with all and keep up the good job!

[Rammy]

I moved as well and have a job in “the industry” now. 😉 I’ll keep working on Gonzo nonetheless!

[Author]

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