Thoughts for Release 51

Hello again,
I'm quite amazed that SotA kept my attention during whole R51 and I played a bunch (level 56 or so, still coop and PvE only; so no PvP feedback from me, sorry; it's too much stress). So SotA definitely does many things right for me

My main gripes are still the UI, which needs to be streamlined and modernized (that doesn't mean simplified!). I don't get it: during Kickstarter Lord British emphasized several times how important the first look and the first 15 minutes are.

But this UI without controller support, the many windows, insufficient filters, etc. is deterrent as hell. I only got my brother into the game, but most of my friends can't get over the UI. And that's a shame, since many parts of the game look stunning and beautiful :-(

The combat is still spongy and overly hectic (but I already wrote enough about that in my last Release feedback ) and the presentation of text is still a pain for my very bad eyes.

But now to my thoughts on the latest release:

Community:

- First thing first, a big thumbs up to the nice and friendly community. I had no unpleasant encounter so far and everyone I encountered was helpful and awesome!

Quests:

positive: I played the path of Truth this week and liked the final part a lot (no spoilers ;-) ).

negative:

- the quest log book is bugged as hell. I still see the quests for highvale and the bloodriver outskirts on the map, that I finished a long time ago. It's good, that there's a "quests available" text for every town, but when the log is bugged, so is the text...

ideas:

- some more non combat, non fetch-quests would be fine

Enemies:

positive:

- I like the special enemies in specific regions like the ghosts in the Highvale outskirts a lot. It gives the areas a unique feature

negative:

- The standard enemies (bandits, skeletons, kobolds, satyrs) get boring fast; why do most of them have the same equipment, weapons and armor?

ideas:

- please please please add some standard enemy variety here!
- the group behavior of intelligent enemies could be better (fighters shielding mages and archers, etc.) instead of stupidly running into or away from you
- and please add some more enemy variety for encounters on the map!

Combat:

Negative:

- I'm not a big fan of sudden difficulty spikes, that appear from time to time. The balancing in some of the areas is quite off, when most of the enemies are really easy and then suddenly you get swarmed by hardened skeleton archers.

idea:

- since many combat skills look exactly like the standard attack, why not getting rid of that standard attack and that powered attack altogether?

skills and trees:

- I can't say anything about the specializations so far, since I got none of the relevant skills on 80 (I'm experimenting a lot and like playing a character of many talents)

- but I don't get some of the trees: For example why is Offhand-Attack in the Tactics-tree? How is that tactical?

ideas:

- how about skill trees for tamed animals with special skills for different sorts of animals?
- give summons a bit of personality (different skins, colors and renaming) with own branches in the skill tree, for example.
- make some of the boring, but important long time buffs (strength, intelligence, etc.) toggle skills

Crafting:

positive:

- love the variety!

Negative:

- the UI is horrible! If you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you'll search forever...

ideas:

- since I always forget something (coal, wax, etc.) and have to run several times between chests and stations, how about letting players use crafting materials from chests, when crafting on the same property or in vicinity? This would save me so much time...
- how about letting some crafting merchants visit towns and walk through the streets offering their goods
- Crafting assignments and orders: to make crafting less of a pain, how about adding crafting orders (in a new and less confusing crafting UI), maybe let the character even walk to other crafting stations in vicinity automatically?
- agriculture could need some love ;-)
- when something is damaged, I get this nice yellow or red icon on the top. But how about showing a little text with the damaged items, too, when hovering the mouse over it?

Companions:

- I get why they are offline only, but I still like my captain characters from other games with one or two companions and would like to see something like that online, too. As an idea why not including them like animals with big penalties for your character, attached to a military leader skill tree with auras and group buffs to compensate the penalties a bit?

Sorry for the wall of text,
looking forward to the release,
Andi

 

Now that was a colorful post!

 

yeah, from time to time the teacher in me gets the upper hand (green for positive, red for negative, yellow for ideas )

 

Technicolor for hurting the eyes?

 

I am in agreement on many things you posted.

I put my different crafting chests next to their relevant tables. I pick the relevant one up before starting, and the table pulls from it. Then I can just set it back down. A few things, like ingot molds, may be in my inventory now and need to get put back in the chest, but generally it is so much easier.

Advanced mode, position the chests so you can see them when using other tables.

So say you suddenly run out of raw wood at the carpentry table, but have a bunch in milling. If you can see the milling chest, you don't even have to leave the carpentry table, just drag the chest to inventory from across the room.

 

May be we are dreamer, dreaming the UI away?

Entering R52 on launch date and surprized by a more efficient and nice UI...

Keep the view focused and clear, showing on screen, what we need - yet.

- Dialogue "window" when talking (without showing chat window "misc" messages)
- no more distracting underlined words, Keywords are good enough
- Health/Focus stats auto fading, showing immediately when be attacked
- Quests sorted in Chapters for each path
- map only showing places we explored
- receiving XP while exploring the lands
- receiving crafting XP while exploring new crafting sources

... okay, may be not all can be done until launch, at least until 30.06. ??? 30.09. ?? 31.12. ?

And last but not least after that:
- receiving a huge amount of cotos for finding Bugs older than 4 years

 

Two other things:

- Is there another way to level your tamed pets (through the passive ability) other than the pet heal? (I'd rather see the passives level through the damage your pet is doing to enemies on the same or a higher level)
- Please include another way to get recipes other than the very rare supply bundles. For example bring some high level recipe vendors like the carpentry one in Ardoris to the other cities and sell the better recipes for a higher price. I have no problem with loot only recipes, for example for rare and strange items, but not for component recipes, that are rather basic on a higher level (like bow strings).

 

and another thing, that's still bugging me:

I love, that you can enter some scenes from different directions now. Please expand this feature to all scenes!

and one more thing

idea: let the raining spell help with agriculture ;-) (fertilized rain)

and another one: leave the chat window open during loading screens (works in Vermintide) ;-)