Alright, I am going to expand on combat analysis skills more in depth once I have messed around with them some more. (I need to do a bit more fletching, archery, pig, wolf, sword, alchemy and blacksmithing still)
Until then, this is going to be a general list of concerns I have with the game. Feel free to discuss or add more.
Affix Issues
+Aggro and -Aggro, first off, is simply not potent enough. +Aggro especially needs to be a highly inflated stat. +Aggro is useless in its current form. It takes up an attribute (which lowers dps, thus lower aggro). The highest +aggro stat hardly competes with the lowest +damage stats. In addition, +Aggro really only has a benefit when other players run -aggro. This is simply because, as I just stated, it takes up a stat on gear. This entire concept needs looked at again.
In addition to the above, there is a serious flaw with -Rage. You generate less rage, but it also means you kill stuff slower because once again, you sacrifice a dps stat to get it. The end result is.. pretty pointless.
These both stem from the same problem. The affix system doesn't seem that well developed. There needs to be a well through out process in how items gain these affixes. Ideally, suffixes and prefixes should be exclusive. Each item can only get 1 of each, and one should be dedicated to offense/skills and one to defense/mitigation.
As it stands right now, you have all sorts of stats competing with each other without any clear cut categories, and -aggro/+aggro as well as -rage is pointless under this system. Now, if these stats were fighting against defense, health, etc rather than damage, heals, proc effects, etc then it makes much more sense as a mechanic.
This is a huge issue, and until this problem is resolved balancing affixes is going to be a nigh impossible task.
First Impression
The thing any new player is going to encounter in this game, the very first mob, is a mob that stuns. Stuns are the most frustrating mechanic in any game. Introducing a stun from mobs at the very beginning is a horrible financial decision, as this will cost you a lot of people.
You can address this in one of two ways.
Redefine what "stun" means in an MMORPG, or give these mobs a different Rage attack.
To use an example from a Roguelike that I thought was brilliant, they defined "stun" as the following:
-Stopped cooldowns from coming back during stun duration
-Put random skills on cooldown (but not all of them)
-Reduce outgoing healing by 50%
-Reduce damage dealt by 75%
-Snares by 75%
What this does is that it severely cripples you, but you still have control over your character. You are backed into a corner, but you can still react a little bit. This option for stuns, to me, is FAR less frustrating of a mechanic and allows for much more strategy within the combat system itself. You can actually do something about it.
Skinning needs to be moved
This just doesn't make sense from a design perspective. You have to get strong enough to get past 2 tiers of skinning (shoddy and rough) before you can learn skinning, which forces you to backtrack to trivial content just to level skinning. This is just flat out boring. Rough I don't even mind much because those mobs give decent enough experience to level up a new skill with, but the shoddy part is one of the few parts in the game that just dragged on and on.
I suggest putting a skinning teacher in Serbule. Keep leatherworking where it's at, but allow players to find skinning sooner!
Also, there are skinning bonuses for spiders, yet we can't skin them. This seems odd.
Battle Alchemy Has So Much Wrong With It
Battle Alchemy is a concept I love, but it's hilarious how unbalanced it is. It is both useless AND overpowered at the same time.
There are 2 issues with it. Golems and the fact it require an implement to use properly.
Battle Alchemy, as it is currently designed, is meant to be a secondary skill. I know this because the cooldowns are simply too long for it to be anything but. This would be fine, except it requires an implement to use, so you have to supplement it with Mentalism, Psychology, or a gimped Unarmed to use. Forcing us to do something like this completely defeats the purpose of the game being a sandbox. Either address the cooldowns, or let us use the implement in the offhand.
Now, golems in a solo situation are not that overpowered. They are a little bit, but nothing ludicrous. In a group scenario however, they are broken, broken, broken. Let me compare to Mentalism so make my point clear.
Mentalism has awesome aura buffs. It is obviously meant to be a primary support skillset, and it does an awesome job at it. Mentalism is possibly one of the most balanced skill lines in the game. It has a clear defined purpose, and fills that purpose with flying colors. It also cannot be too overpowered, since you can only stack 3 auras of the same type at once. You can't abuse it to create an infinite healing chain with multiple people running it! Perfect!
Now imagine the same scene with golems. You have 4 people, all with golems spamming healing potions. That is 160 health being healed, per person, every 2 seconds or so. This is LUDICROUS.
Likewise, consider it with power potions, or damage potions. It just gets to obscene levels once multiple people get involved.
The only fix for this that I can think of, without nerfing the solo aspect of it too much, is to make all the golem skills occur over a period of time, cap the number of effects that can exist at once (like mentalism).
Then, you need to balance it around the fact that the golem does not use a cooldown like mentalism does. Golem skills need nerfed slightly, and mentalism needs buffed. (The +damage is honestly fine, but the heals don't even come close to the Golem. Not even close. A golem throws 1 potion every 2 seconds roughly, so you are looking at 80 heal per 4 vs mentalists 24 per 4. (Or worse 120/6 vs 24/6 for power).
There are some serious issues here that need looked at. Mentalism heals need a bit more of a buff, Golem needs brought WAY down (again, because golem doesn't use a cooldown).
Did I mention BC has an ae heal as well? Well it does, so that makes the issue even worse.
I said this before, I'll say it again. Golems need to be their own, seperate skill tree. They need more skills, and add a module mechanic to them so you can add gears or chemicals to do things like add +damage, +speed, etc. (perhaps as a player skill) Golems are far too powerful to be combined with anything else in the same tree.
Storage Space limitations limit creativity and hamper the sandbox feel
This is a sandbox game. You are limiting inventory spaces. This doesn't make sense. It limits creativity. You seem to plan to have stats to counter elements, to counter creature types, you need gear for each possible build. Don't get me started on the fact EVERY ITEM has a purpose in this game.
There simply isn't enough storage space. At all. I don't care if it is alpha, this is a game breaking, experience ruining issue. Storage space needs DRAMATICALLY expanded. (I am talking on the order of 10's, not 1's)
Archery and Saws
The main reason Archery isn't used right now is bag space issues. If you plan to have ammo, you better make ammo stack to ludicrous amounts or give us a way to store the ammo outside of the inventory. In addition to this, being unable to harvest wood while using archery (since bows and saws share the same slot) you are forcing us to make an additional 4 keystrokes (open bag, (possibly scroll down because the inventory has a scroll bar for some reason), click saw, click wood, click bow, close bag) every time we want to harvest a single log. This is a huge usability issue that needs addressed.
Energy in its current form is stupid, pointless, and dumb
You are already aware of this, I know. The goal you seem to have in mind needs to have a rage/momentum mechanic where basic attacks build up to more powerful attacks. This adds a lot more strategy, choice, and overall flow to combat without making it over-complicated. MMO's should NOT be combat-focused (in my opinion, which I believe you share), but they should have something more complex than "spam buttons until resource goes dry". Changing to this system would also solve a lot of issues the exist within the skill system itself, as it requires more basic attacks to be added, and more finishing attacks.
An example:
Sword Slash: Generates X momentum
Parry: Consumes Y momentum
Many Cuts: Consumes Y + Z momentum
The above illustrates what I'm trying to say. Certain utility skills wouldn't cost much as you want to encourage people to use them rather than dish out damage which will consume a little bit more momentum (Many Cuts) where applicable. You don't want to punish people for using strategy under this system.
Skill Involvement is minimal
The skill system you are working on it great, to a point. There are a lot of combinations, but skills are pretty cut and dry themselves. You use them, they level up, you do more damage.
That's it.
IMO, it would help the game a lot to implement a system where each skill tree has a mini talent tree system, where you can do stuff like reduce costs of skills, increase damage, add effects, etc.
Skills leveling up needs to do more than +damage, simply. It's just an exceptionally boring and bland system that is only hidden due to the fact that there are a lot of skills in the game right now to mix and match. Over time, this issue will become more and more apparent. (Gear helps hide this a lot as well)
As I come accross more I will add them.
Until then, this is going to be a general list of concerns I have with the game. Feel free to discuss or add more.
Affix Issues
+Aggro and -Aggro, first off, is simply not potent enough. +Aggro especially needs to be a highly inflated stat. +Aggro is useless in its current form. It takes up an attribute (which lowers dps, thus lower aggro). The highest +aggro stat hardly competes with the lowest +damage stats. In addition, +Aggro really only has a benefit when other players run -aggro. This is simply because, as I just stated, it takes up a stat on gear. This entire concept needs looked at again.
In addition to the above, there is a serious flaw with -Rage. You generate less rage, but it also means you kill stuff slower because once again, you sacrifice a dps stat to get it. The end result is.. pretty pointless.
These both stem from the same problem. The affix system doesn't seem that well developed. There needs to be a well through out process in how items gain these affixes. Ideally, suffixes and prefixes should be exclusive. Each item can only get 1 of each, and one should be dedicated to offense/skills and one to defense/mitigation.
As it stands right now, you have all sorts of stats competing with each other without any clear cut categories, and -aggro/+aggro as well as -rage is pointless under this system. Now, if these stats were fighting against defense, health, etc rather than damage, heals, proc effects, etc then it makes much more sense as a mechanic.
This is a huge issue, and until this problem is resolved balancing affixes is going to be a nigh impossible task.
First Impression
The thing any new player is going to encounter in this game, the very first mob, is a mob that stuns. Stuns are the most frustrating mechanic in any game. Introducing a stun from mobs at the very beginning is a horrible financial decision, as this will cost you a lot of people.
You can address this in one of two ways.
Redefine what "stun" means in an MMORPG, or give these mobs a different Rage attack.
To use an example from a Roguelike that I thought was brilliant, they defined "stun" as the following:
-Stopped cooldowns from coming back during stun duration
-Put random skills on cooldown (but not all of them)
-Reduce outgoing healing by 50%
-Reduce damage dealt by 75%
-Snares by 75%
What this does is that it severely cripples you, but you still have control over your character. You are backed into a corner, but you can still react a little bit. This option for stuns, to me, is FAR less frustrating of a mechanic and allows for much more strategy within the combat system itself. You can actually do something about it.
Skinning needs to be moved
This just doesn't make sense from a design perspective. You have to get strong enough to get past 2 tiers of skinning (shoddy and rough) before you can learn skinning, which forces you to backtrack to trivial content just to level skinning. This is just flat out boring. Rough I don't even mind much because those mobs give decent enough experience to level up a new skill with, but the shoddy part is one of the few parts in the game that just dragged on and on.
I suggest putting a skinning teacher in Serbule. Keep leatherworking where it's at, but allow players to find skinning sooner!
Also, there are skinning bonuses for spiders, yet we can't skin them. This seems odd.
Battle Alchemy Has So Much Wrong With It
Battle Alchemy is a concept I love, but it's hilarious how unbalanced it is. It is both useless AND overpowered at the same time.
There are 2 issues with it. Golems and the fact it require an implement to use properly.
Battle Alchemy, as it is currently designed, is meant to be a secondary skill. I know this because the cooldowns are simply too long for it to be anything but. This would be fine, except it requires an implement to use, so you have to supplement it with Mentalism, Psychology, or a gimped Unarmed to use. Forcing us to do something like this completely defeats the purpose of the game being a sandbox. Either address the cooldowns, or let us use the implement in the offhand.
Now, golems in a solo situation are not that overpowered. They are a little bit, but nothing ludicrous. In a group scenario however, they are broken, broken, broken. Let me compare to Mentalism so make my point clear.
Mentalism has awesome aura buffs. It is obviously meant to be a primary support skillset, and it does an awesome job at it. Mentalism is possibly one of the most balanced skill lines in the game. It has a clear defined purpose, and fills that purpose with flying colors. It also cannot be too overpowered, since you can only stack 3 auras of the same type at once. You can't abuse it to create an infinite healing chain with multiple people running it! Perfect!
Now imagine the same scene with golems. You have 4 people, all with golems spamming healing potions. That is 160 health being healed, per person, every 2 seconds or so. This is LUDICROUS.
Likewise, consider it with power potions, or damage potions. It just gets to obscene levels once multiple people get involved.
The only fix for this that I can think of, without nerfing the solo aspect of it too much, is to make all the golem skills occur over a period of time, cap the number of effects that can exist at once (like mentalism).
Then, you need to balance it around the fact that the golem does not use a cooldown like mentalism does. Golem skills need nerfed slightly, and mentalism needs buffed. (The +damage is honestly fine, but the heals don't even come close to the Golem. Not even close. A golem throws 1 potion every 2 seconds roughly, so you are looking at 80 heal per 4 vs mentalists 24 per 4. (Or worse 120/6 vs 24/6 for power).
There are some serious issues here that need looked at. Mentalism heals need a bit more of a buff, Golem needs brought WAY down (again, because golem doesn't use a cooldown).
Did I mention BC has an ae heal as well? Well it does, so that makes the issue even worse.
I said this before, I'll say it again. Golems need to be their own, seperate skill tree. They need more skills, and add a module mechanic to them so you can add gears or chemicals to do things like add +damage, +speed, etc. (perhaps as a player skill) Golems are far too powerful to be combined with anything else in the same tree.
Storage Space limitations limit creativity and hamper the sandbox feel
This is a sandbox game. You are limiting inventory spaces. This doesn't make sense. It limits creativity. You seem to plan to have stats to counter elements, to counter creature types, you need gear for each possible build. Don't get me started on the fact EVERY ITEM has a purpose in this game.
There simply isn't enough storage space. At all. I don't care if it is alpha, this is a game breaking, experience ruining issue. Storage space needs DRAMATICALLY expanded. (I am talking on the order of 10's, not 1's)
Archery and Saws
The main reason Archery isn't used right now is bag space issues. If you plan to have ammo, you better make ammo stack to ludicrous amounts or give us a way to store the ammo outside of the inventory. In addition to this, being unable to harvest wood while using archery (since bows and saws share the same slot) you are forcing us to make an additional 4 keystrokes (open bag, (possibly scroll down because the inventory has a scroll bar for some reason), click saw, click wood, click bow, close bag) every time we want to harvest a single log. This is a huge usability issue that needs addressed.
Energy in its current form is stupid, pointless, and dumb
You are already aware of this, I know. The goal you seem to have in mind needs to have a rage/momentum mechanic where basic attacks build up to more powerful attacks. This adds a lot more strategy, choice, and overall flow to combat without making it over-complicated. MMO's should NOT be combat-focused (in my opinion, which I believe you share), but they should have something more complex than "spam buttons until resource goes dry". Changing to this system would also solve a lot of issues the exist within the skill system itself, as it requires more basic attacks to be added, and more finishing attacks.
An example:
Sword Slash: Generates X momentum
Parry: Consumes Y momentum
Many Cuts: Consumes Y + Z momentum
The above illustrates what I'm trying to say. Certain utility skills wouldn't cost much as you want to encourage people to use them rather than dish out damage which will consume a little bit more momentum (Many Cuts) where applicable. You don't want to punish people for using strategy under this system.
Skill Involvement is minimal
The skill system you are working on it great, to a point. There are a lot of combinations, but skills are pretty cut and dry themselves. You use them, they level up, you do more damage.
That's it.
IMO, it would help the game a lot to implement a system where each skill tree has a mini talent tree system, where you can do stuff like reduce costs of skills, increase damage, add effects, etc.
Skills leveling up needs to do more than +damage, simply. It's just an exceptionally boring and bland system that is only hidden due to the fact that there are a lot of skills in the game right now to mix and match. Over time, this issue will become more and more apparent. (Gear helps hide this a lot as well)
As I come accross more I will add them.
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