Hi,
I’ve lost interest and will be quitting for now. Normally you wouldn’t get feedback from someone who’s hit this point, but I do have (some) hope for this game to improve - hence I wanted to post before I leave - probs return if the game gets more interesting and my friends are still playing.
Some context for my feedback:
I’m from OCE, dropped dollas to jump into this game with my friends at pre-launch, played a support paladin and reached item level 1345 about a week ago before I lost interest in honing (aka the “dead zone”). Especially when the rumours say 1370+ is more of the same with Argos. I’m admittedly not a hardcore player (have yet to powerpass an alt, nor have I been scalping the markets), but neither am I fully casual (I completed almost all dailies and weeklies since launch, if I continued playing I’d be getting the Astray in 5 days with upgrade mats ready to go), I’ve also been purchasing mats (from time to time) from Mari’s shop to progress my gear score too. I believe this puts me around the middle of the bell curve between hardcore and casual players.
Things I’ve loved about this game:
- The combat systems: satisfying (from a UX perspective), responsive, deep enough and customizeable (can only speak for pally - but my friends’ skills also have good visual readability)
- Guardian Raids and Abyss Raids: challenging but manageable, but more importantly - satisfying to conquer. (except Vertus’ grab. Get that mechanic out of here.)
- The schedule of islands/gates/etc.: it makes the world feel alive and it’s really fun to see a bunch of strangers waiting in an area wearing lion-dance costumes, emoting and generally goofing around as they wait.
- Visuals: It’s a really pretty game.
- The amount of content: There’s a good quantity of things to do. (I want to emphasize that I’m not mentioning quality here).
Things I haven’t enjoyed:
- The quality of content: This is the big killer for me. I never ran out of things to do, but the things I’m asked to do are not only given to me like chores, they ARE chores to complete. This is especially true for Chaos Dungeons, weeklies and Una’s Tasks. All these activities chew up time but are not engaging. You just want to be done with them and move on. These tasks are the bread-and-butter of progression but I want to do something engaging. (Hence powerpassing an alt to do MORE chaos dungeons and una’s sounds like doubling my chores … fun /s) (((ESPECIALLY when support players take twice as long to complete a chaos dungeon without our friends - but we prefer doing stuff with our friends anyways so this isn’t really an issue))). I think you can fix this by adding some way of breaking up the chaos dungeon grind. The chance encounter boss rooms/treasure rooms are a good start. I suggest puzzle rooms.
- Main Story Questline: others have explained this already.
- Combat System Skill balance: while testing out different builds, customization options felt limited because half of the skills available are underperforming when fully upgraded (Executioner’s Justice, Flash Thrust… to name a few). This is especially apparent to me because I tried to make my own build based on play-testing, and found myself using the same skills as the online “meta” builds. I get that some skills should be better than others, but I think there’s room to open up other builds to become viable (I suggest giving the tripod enhancement on early-level skills a huge boost so they can compete with late-level skills when players reach T3)
Some Nitpicks:
- Ghost Ship: being permanently slowed for the entire fight is not fun. It increases the challenge, but it does not increase the fun. You need to add something else unique to ghost ship that makes this worth my time. Eibern’s Wound is not that (thankyou Una’s pass).
- Aurion: I quite literally cannot see anything this boss does because of the crowding even with player skills turned off (I don’t even know what she (?) looks like even though I’ve fought her multiple times), we’re stuck on a tiny island, and she hits like a truck. Horrible experience. Increase her visibility.
- Twilight Chapel Dungeon on Twilight Isle: had to repeat this dungeon 6 times for the island soul. I loathe this dungeon specifically because of the infiltration/stealth beginning of the quest. The movement speed is frustratingly sluggish, I have 0 skills to use, it’s a press “G” only quest, you die in 1 hit just coz (why? none of my friends find it fun). It’s fine the first time, just make the island soul 100% drop - why make us repeat this? Otherwise give us at least a dash skill.
Finally,
I’m not sure if you have the metrics to measure this, but I theorize that there’s a correlation between the number of Una’s Tickets people are using and the likelyhood of them quitting. Might be worth looking into for analysis. (I know I’ve been spending them a lot this past week hahaha).
Thanks for the fun while it lasted.