Feedback for the Devs
Howdy! How's it going? i bought this game 5 days ago and this is probably the best horde shooter i've played to this date. Comparing it to Risk of Rain 2 for example, it has a much MUCH better loadout system and the gameplay and progression is much MUCH more intuitive.
i wanted to make this post to express my gratitude for making this awesome game but also to help however i can.
For reference, im the guy from this previous post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FarFarWest/comments/1wvpmsy/this_frost_build_is_broken/
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Things that are perfect:
- In general, the visuals are top-notch, especially the lightning and colors.
- The music is top-notch. Whoever is making these songs needs a raise, holy bangers!
- The vibes are awesome! i love that you can do stuff like press B to battlecry and throw a hat. i love every single line of text i read like "i deserve it" or the descriptions of skins and weapons. The jokes are immaculate hahaha Also the emotes are GREAT i'm surprised you managed to make the songs keep playing whent he emotes have stopped to then retake back to where the song should be playing at. Having fun with the piano: https://youtu.be/6uyTu-S3C8A
- The movement feels GREAT! it reminds me of Borderlands, well, the whole game reminds me of it but it's in a good way lol. i love sliding with Cube or Brigde, but the base dash + jump is also great. The momentum physics the devs achieved is impressive for how good it feels! You can even air strafe! 10/10!
- The loadouts system is one of my top 3 favorite things about this game and the main reason i stuck through the progression grind.
- The spells variety is awesome, i love how you can combine spells and i like how most of them are viable. My favorite so far is the ice bridge, with enough CDR you can make funny stuff like flying https://youtu.be/sataHKY6ptw or encapsulating someone https://youtu.be/1D507y1Jd-8 hahaha it's so fun!
- The Frost spell school and the Banjo specifically are perfect additions to the game. It creates a support role, and yes there was already voodoo but having a healing WEAPON without a cooldown (just the chords management) is so good to make a support build.
- i love how there's so many little mechanical tricks. Like getting on the horse then off then shift jump to get a higher jump. Or the Sniper swap speed tech that rewards a higher effort on mechanical skill during combat for what's basically higher attack speed. These make the player feel like they've progressed in skill, like that a lot.
- The map, OMG THE MAPPING. It's so great having an objective up north, and traversing one of those hallways mid canyon that divides into the perfect road to the point of interest. Idk how to express it in writing, but like, the pathing of the maps are well made, i never felt like i was in a maze, every road leads to where it needs to lead, other games have not acheived this and i really appreciate how well the maps are designed in that front!
- And finally i really appreciate the transparency with which you guys are communicating with us. i fully trust this dev team and it's because of the little i've seen already like the roadmap or the dev logs.
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Things to improve:
(Ok, so, i don't want to sound nitpicky, i'm here to give feedback so i'm completely honest just like last section).
- Spells are a great addition to the gameplay loop, i LOVE them, and i LOVE the fact that you can mix spells together, but compared to the weapon and hero system it feels lacklusting. There needs to be Jokers for spells or something similar. i believe you guys already noticed this i think i saw a discord comment from an admin about this and i'm glad you noticed it but as a player, let me tell you, yeah it's a bit lacklusting. i like this game majorly because of the loadout system and i have to point this out. It doesn't need to be Jokers for spells, but some way of tuning them, which i know it's hard codewise (i know basic programming and modeling, just the basics) but it's a big thing i'd love to see.
- Skins are great but because of the West cowboy and Robot themes, they kind of all feel similar? Like, of course some of their silhouettes change but they are all either gray and brown with robot or skeleton parts. What i mean here is, the color department on the skins feel a bit short. Not the modeling, not the designs, the colors all feel the same from skin to skin.
- Enemy variety: i understand the game has still not officially released, and i've heard of a new army coming up, but just as confirmation, yes, it'd be nice to have more enemies to fight.
- Progression system: It's a great way to keep us engaged, and i love that the first levels you get points much faster than one very 5 levels which is what i thought it'd be, and then go into unique jokers, and then go into trying to finish the joker slots, it's a good progression system for both Weapons and Hero. But some weapons feel like HELL to progress. i'm mainly gonna talk about the banjo but this equates for some other specialized weapons. i understand that this is a secondary, but does the game not count healing for EXP? The main reason to pick the banjo for most players is the healing and i feel like i'm only getting EXP from damage dealt. I don't think it even counts damage from element combinations, like if i use Breeze to freeze someone and then i hit it with the banjo on acid element i don't feel like the game recognizes the acid explosion for EXP, i could be wrong. It's also not taking that acid explosion for things like Frost Bite (on melee kill against a frozen enemy, get 2 shield points). it'd be nice if these things are looked at and tell us if this is either intentional or just that, well, the game is still in progress which i could totatlly understand either way.
- i don't know if this is a good idea as it was fun having the surprise of reading the unique jokers as i was unlocking every weapon, but i mean, you could just go to an online wiki to read the unique jokers, why can't we read the unique jokers of weapons before unlocking them? i have zero idea if a weapon is gonna be good or not before spending my blueprints on it because i can't try it out or even read their jokers! It'd be nice to be able to try out the weapons on the shooting range even before buying them so that you can have a better idea of where to spend your blueprints. if you don't want to allow players to use the weapon even on the shooting range before buying them, then AT LEAST let us read the jokers that weapon can use. i already have everything but that was a big annoyance i had when progressing.
- Talking about the shooting range. There's a bunch of room to grow that NEEDS growing. We need ways of triggering "on kill" effects such as Frost Bite. We need a way to move the targets or at least have 2 close to each other to test the Ricochet Joker. We need a way to reduce our HP so we can test healing and lifesteal. We need a way to clear spells such as portal, if you throw two portals and you change spells the portals stay there, it's annoying. We need a target dummy with an easier to hit weakspot cause the target boards are not realistic compared to the size of weakspots you see in games. We need a clearer way of displaying damage numbers in the shooting range alone, not in runs, i mean like a number above the target that says the current total damage it took and maybe even the DPS if you feel fancy when coding it.
- The bestiary should tell us the stats of the monster, mainly their HP.
- Difficulties feel like they don't match their names right now. Hard and Very Hard are actually pretty easy. Very Hard is where i assume most players will stay on, i only play on Nightmare with missions being completed: 1 Easy, 7 Normal, 4 Hard, 17 Very Hard and 25 Nightmare. The jump between Very Hard and Nightmare is insane, but otherwise Hard and Very Hard barely feel like "Hard" and "Very Hard". This is a nitpick tho, and might not need changing cause it *can* vary from player to player skill but nevertheless i give my personal feedback.
- Very little thing but i noticed the piano on the bar, and as a pianist (just a hobby) i wanted to show off to my friends but the keys can't be played fast enough, they have like a cooldown. Please, it's such a cool little thing in the bar, get rid of the cooldown so i can play faster songs lmao
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Things i want to suggest adding:
- A quips wheel like Vermintide 2. i'm currently having to write while i fight to communicate with my team, the voice chat is proximity based so it's not reliable at all and so i don't even bother using it cause i can't guarantee my teammates heard the message. But this all can be fixed with some generic quips on a wheel like the emotes wheel with quips such as: "Yes!", "No!", "Come Here!", "Spell 1/2/3 on X cooldown", "Go to the ping". Some way of communicating quickly through buttons. It doesn't have to be as complex as the game Smite has it, just something simple so we can communicate and coordinate mid fights. Also, why is the voice chat by default turned off? That made no sense to me.
- Of course, more jokers, but especifically i would like more Unique jokers, i feel like 3 instead of 2 for each weapon would be ideal. And then also maybe some way of adding Unique Jokers for heros that could kind of emulate hero classes? Only being able to choose one unique hero joker or something, it could even be aside the joker system and be like an amulet or sth. This is a highball throw here but mainly it'd be nice to have more jokers to play with. ESPECIALLY normal weapon jokers. Right now none feel viable except Panic Attack and Quick Draw. Heavy Weapon is insane value for 1 joker slot but 30% extra gravity makes it really really really hard to pick which i like (don't need to change that one it's a great drawback for a 10% dmg 1 joker slot joker). But yeah i feel like there are basically no good Normal jokers for weapons, feedback here is to just keep adding jokers as the game approaches official release basically.
- Active Jokers: I think there's room to design jokers that activate on certain triggers that can simulate spells. [CTRL] isn't a key currently being used to crouch but if it were you could do something like if you crouch on the air you get a slam on the floor that deals low damage but high knockdown, maybe even with a small cooldown to not spam it. Just pointing out that there's room for active Jokers somehow i'm sure of it. Not that they are needed but there's that path if the devs eventually run out of ideas for jokers.
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Things i'm exited to see from the things the devs have confirmed being worked on:
- The distress system is exactly what the matches need! You guys are awesome it's such a good idea and i can totally see my matches improving from that. Right now the early game is the hardest part of every run, not the late game. Especially with scaling jokers like Stonks or Hoarder. So making it harder and harder as the run progresses would be nice. Or at least more interesting. Once you kill everything on the map you can pretty much traverse it without being stopped by mobs. Cause there aren't any no more, and they don't respawn, so the ambient at lategame feels empty sometimes.
- Weapon Skins: i'm really exited for this one, in the future i hope the devs add weapon skins with glowing effects but i'm expecting the first ones to just change the silhouettes mostly, and i'd love that cause weapons like the Sniper or the Minigun feel too bland on their default skin imo (which is not a bad thing as it entices people to get a skin for them).
- LOADOUTS!!! FOR THE LOVE OF ROBOT JESUS THANK YOU!!!
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Bugs/crashes to report:
- The performance has been very very good, i have barely had any issues in the 70 hours i've been playing the game. These are just some pointers since i want to give the best feedback i can.
- Currently the game crashed only once at the end of a run when loading the Saloon.
- The game (when i'm hosting) suffers frame issues for a little bit when a new player joins.
- i had 5 Stonks jokers from printing some, and it wasn't guaranteeing a joker on every chest. 20% times 5 is 100%, it felt like 4 Stonks was giving me way more jokers so maybe it like restarted to 0% when it got to 100%? idk, and if this is intentional it's not intuitive, it'd be nice if the game can inform you of this somehow, either a way to see the exact chance of getting a joker in this specific instance in the TAB menu or by explaining if this is intentional somewhere idk this felt like a bug to me but i don't think the devs are dumb, this scenario was probably outlied as too OP i just don't understand what my chances are if it's intentional so i'm reporting it as a bug from my perspective.
- There was a time where the songs from the piano and guitar emotes were off sync, the problem was solved after re-emoting the piano but yeah i mean, it happened lol.
- A few times, like 4 or 5 total, i have used a spell like Bridge or Breeze and also tried to do something else like switch my weapon and the spell wouldn't come out but the cooldown would trigger locking me from trying to cast it again. i'm now on cooldown with no spell having been cast :(
- i haven't gotten stuck anywhere or gone below the map, just pointing that out. Or seen anyone.
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OK AND THAT'S ALL!
I tried being as throughout as possible, i don't think i missed anything. This game is SO FUN i highly recommend it, in fact i already recommended it to my friends, i found about it on the Steam page by pure luck and the trailer convinced me to buy it from the vibes alone. Thank you for reading and may the gods bless you with less deadeyes in your next run! Peace!
Edit: This is the piano i was talking about, please get rid of the cooldown on the keys, i can play faster but the piano doesn't let me: https://youtu.be/w9IIi-sIU5Q
Edit Edit: For comparison on the piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnj31ZwkyNc
