[2022] Gameplay and mechanics

Hello,

I like this game a lot and want it to succeed and release when it's complete, but there are some things that leave a bad taste in my mouth when playing.

I'm not bashing the game, nor trying to compare it with others so please keep it friendly, as these are my thoughts and nothing more.

I might not remember all of the things that I want to point out:

• Monsters

- Ice Elementals and other ranged enemies: there is a lot of "shooting offscreen" and it's a bit annoying when these kinds of mobs group up and stun you every second or so, and sometimes die because you just didn't see/know;

- Scalebane Saboteur: his spear attack is dangerous and spamable and combined with other monsters it can be overwhelming sometimes; and when there are more than 2 of these, oh boy...;

- Imperial Watcher: is really tanky and kind of annoying to kill, sometimes the projectiles can be difficult to avoid when you're already avoiding other mobs, and when there are more than 2 of these, oh boy again...;

- Osprix mage/archmage/lightmage/others: when it's one or two it's okay, but when there's a group of them plus other monsters, their meteor is really painful to avoid sometimes;

- Winged Fire: they spawn nearly offscreen and shoot as well from offscreen; sometimes you don't even know they are on your map and die;

- I don't know the name of these ones, but there are assassins like humans and Osprix, that have this dash skill which they spam and constantly waltz around you which makes it a chore to target them sometimes;

- Jumping rats/dogs/others: it is annoying to do 0 damage while they are in the air; they are like the vultures in Diablo 2, where you had to wait an eternity for them to land so you could hit them;

• Mechanics

- Stun: I have read threads here, on their forums, and on Steam, and I would like to say that for every enemy in the game to have the possibility to stun you with attacks is really punishing. I know one can bypass this with high HP, endurance threshold, and ward, but I still think it's not a good mechanic.

Stun should be a specific skill or an effect of the skill, but not tied to any attack a monster can have. This would go for players as well, to be fair. It's not nice to be stunned by everything with everything, but it wouldn't be fair for players to stun everything with everything.

- One-shot: I would agree to a degree that bosses should be able to one-shot you, 'cause they're the boss and it feels right. I would be fine if this were applied to some, but not to all of them. I would also lie for this one-shot mechanic to not apply to almost every monster; maybe to some few elite ones.

- Min/Max: while some live for this and others could barely care, I think that the game shouldn't "hint" that you have to go one way or the other, just to survive some maps/mobs/bosses. I don't really know how to explain this, but I would like to feel good if I only go for defense, or only offense, or a mixup of the two.

Currently, I have read that it's either good to max out your resistance or to go full HP and Ward. While this might be a thing, the game should make all players (from 1% pro, to the rest) feel like they belong, and not be elitist towards a category of players or another.

- Monolith Spires: I've read that in the past they were kind of bad and that now they only attack when you're engaged in combat however, some maps are really tiresome to clear when you have to dodge the Spires and the monsters, and sometimes fail to teleport because something stunned you then the Spire hits and kills you.

- Bosses: I would like, for most of the bosses, to be able to survive (with a cost of course) their AOE attacks and not just in 2-3 seconds. There should be a difficulty in this (Queen Rashalga from Grim Dawn comes to mind) but you shouldn't die that easy. There shouldn't be 3-5 builds especially for killing bosses, when players have joy in creating their own vision of a build.

- This is more of an aesthetic opinion, but why do half of the monsters have to spawn from the ground, why not just be spawned there?

- It would've been nice to right-click to sell/buy stuff from vendors;

- It would be good to speed up the gambling item identification;

- Pause: I wish it was possible for offline mode; sometimes you just need to do something else quick;

I like the fact that the game is difficult at some point, but I wish it to be fair when it wants to kill me. :D

I guess that 90% of what I wrote would not have been said here if stun-locking and one-shotting were not in the game. There were a few who said exactly what I feel, and that is "not everyone wants to play Souls-like" in every game.

I am having fun, am I trying to build up defenses and I read about Builds on the forum/youtube, but when you die because your screen froze for 1s or you got stunned/one-shotted and you lose that MoF reward, it's really displeasing.

Looking forward to the game's release and to the other Masteries left. :)

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