Quest Experience - Combat - No Bad Builds

[yrm_dm]

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!