Search the Community

I'm a huge fan of this project and unfortunately discovered it after Kickstarter was finished. The games that inspired the creation of this game are among my favorites. I'm a 40 year old professional senior designer with game design experience, and I'm not asking how I can sneak into the beta or anything I do not deserve. Based on things I'm seeing in beta videos and designer/developer videos, I have some concerns that hopefully the team may consider? 1 - I thought I saw that there was no fight experience, just quest experience. With exploration and leveling up games like this, a lot of fun comes from users "outsmarting the developers" and getting advanced levels ahead of where they "should be" in relation to the quest. It can be fun for a lot of people to "farm up" and then blow through a few extra levels of your super dungeon before they should be able to. Getting experience from random encounters or clearing every room and "getting ahead" caters to a certain play style and other gamers do not HAVE to do this. They can proceed through the quests in order as quickly as possible. 2 - If combat is challenging and difficult, it is dangerous to make combat a waste of time. (no experience) 3 - D&D 4.0 balanced all their classes... essentially, there was no return for level of effort... the time required to make a good wizard was the same time required to make a good fighter, and both classes had special abilities that did some level of target or area damage for roughly the same amount. This was a huge failure. People still figured out how to NOVA certain character classes, but if you didn't, combat was long and boring. Gamers switched to Pathfinder in droves because people want to be able to make a class that is potentially game breaking at high levels. Pathfinder still protects the GM and has rules in place, but all the classes are NOT perfectly balanced. In this typical old school 3.5 D&D system, you can still make an effective Monk or Fighter if you want that challenge, and you can choose to put in the homework needed to make an uber powerful Cleric or Mage or Barbarian. As a GM and former indy game designer, I have players who don't want complicated class concepts and are happy playing a slightly less min/max concept. I also have players who want to play a min/max concept. Allowing players to min/max without breaking the game... but making it "easier for them to be godlike" than players who don't do that research... this is something people enjoy. What I'm saying is that some of the old school experience did not need to be fixed. When a fireball became so lame it couldn't clear a room in D&D 4.0, there was no joy in casting a fireball or grabbing a handful of D6 dice with a wicked smile. If I'm stuck only advancing through quests, and combat is not a means to advance, and I can't build world-beating characters (balanced but not perfectly balanced), it takes away a big incentive and enjoyment for me. You'll find players working very hard to share "best builds" online and "how to maximize their weapons and spells" and as long as there are ways to max out most of the classes in different strengths, the game will have a lot of legs. You guys seem great, and I'm eagerly awaiting dropping my money on this game and trying to recruit friends to buy it. Please consider the things I've said above, and best of luck clearing the bugs and issues in your beta. Had I been aware of your Kickstarter, I'd be in at about the $200 range. I'm now on your email list so I'll be aware of future stuff. Best of luck!

So, as stated in the "Known Issues" post they are looking for ways to make Resolve and Perception more useful. I figured we could brain storm to come up with some ideas to assist the Devs in this regard. Currently, they aren't useless, but they are far less useful than the other four stats. This is of course from a Combat Perspective, and the solutions need to come from a Combat angle. Adding more dialogue options or scripted interactions won't fix this, and will create other issues. Something akin to PST where people get a certain amount of Cha, Wis, and Int to get all the dialgogue options isn't what we need. We need Combat solutions. This is in my opinion of course. When the stats were changed up Perception had Armor Piercing attatched to it as well as Interrupt, and I do believe prior to the stat switch a while back it governed Critical Damage. I don't know the viability of bringing either of those bonuses back, but it is something to look at. Resolve is completely reactive. It only has an effect if the character gets hit, and there is enough control in the game to allow a ranged PC to stay at the back and avoid being hit most of the time thus not requiring a high Resolve. I am not sure if you can get away with a severe dump in either of these stats. I have kept them both at around 10, and did not noticed being interrupted much on the resolve side. If anyone has tried a complete dump (3-5 points in the stat) how did you fair? Was it noticeable? Perception at a low level wouldn't be noticeable, if it is dumped I would guess. So, what would you do with Perception? What about Resolve?