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Official Feedback Thread for State of the Game #1 & #2
yavieydev
Posts: 187 Community Manager
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yavieydev
Posts: 187 Community Manager
Comments
There's some good changes and its fantastic to see developers being transparent and giving their reasoning for what they do.
My only real complaint is one I'm sure you guys have heard a lot which is the aether cap. It would be nice to hear its at least been talked about because I'm worried it will be a reason a lot of people drop the game.
For instance the double aether event is nice but it doesn't incentivize me to play more since I have nearly a weeks worth of unrefined aether already
A few things need to be said in the first place:
Comparing the first week to the last 2 days it's a difference as night and day.
The communication towards us got way better than it was.
We do get statements on sensitive topics as the exploit one or the lootbox topic.
Things like that are much appreciated that's great communication. There are a few topics which would still need some attention but I am sure once you talked about certain things internally you'll provide us the outcome too.
Keep frequent updates on what you are working as the state of the game announcements going and don't ever stop that. It's a great way to let us know what you are actually working on. And which kind of issues you are already aware of.
Also we got serious patch notes for the first time!
_____________________________________________________
Monetization:
Adding Dimir was a great way to stop the Pay2Win discussion even though it never was. This way we can either gamble to get the class earlier or being patient and put some effort in to unlock it for almost nothing within the battlepass. So it became more accessible for players with a lower income also for players which don't like lootboxes in general. By adding Dimir to the battlepass we also got some kind of long term reason to login frequently. I think the dimir/lootbox topic is an example for great decission making in general and also shows that you listen to your customers. Much appreciated!
I am finally able to spend more than 100 € with a single purchase without having to queue up multiple ones thanks for that one too! However right now I am in a position where I would say the game deserves support if things keep going like that. That's the issue there is nothing in the Shop we can buy right now except of lootboxes which I don't like in general. Adding Skins would solve this. No complaints could be made by players which can't or don't want to spend money as skins are no advantage in any way.
Performance:
On game release the framrate for me was working perfectly fine though I had 4 crashes at releaseday on this rig. I7 4700k, 16GB Ram, GTX1070. As I can say in the past week it got worse than it was.
However on my 2nd system 64GB Ram RTX3080 it is way better now than it was at the start. Shadows seem to work way smoother and less ressource intensive. I guess you are still working on the performance improvements so these will probably balance out at some point.
Tutorial:
In the first place I thought the Idea of just doubling the card drop rate is a bad decission. Seemed to be fine as it was to me. After reading lots of posts in this forum and also on reddit about that I changed my mind. I didn't consider I got plenty of bonuses from the actual dimir packs so my progression is boosted and can't act as an average.There was also good reasoning behind that. Getting players faster into deckbuilding and the more fun parts of the game it also acts as a fast and early response to complains about the progression curve in the early stage is way to slow.
There are lots of (really good) questions about game mechanics from players that never heard of MTG before which could've been implemented into the tutorial without much of an effort. IS there a disadvantage by sticking a "Help" Icon at the minimap and provide essential informations which aren't explained in the Tutorial yet in there. To me it seems like a good early solution similar to doubling the drop rate. Annoying Pop-up windows could be a way to go for too but I personally don't like them.
Balancing and the fix of exploits:
Right now we are no where near developing a "meta" yet so balancing in general will be hard until most of the players get to the point where they are able to test different color combinations and cards. We had extremely overperforming cards which took quite some time to fix. I am glad that these got fixed at all.
I am no developer at least no game dev. I neither know how this game is coded and how the networking and the server/client works in detail.. But applying hotfixes to things like that in time seems to be essential to me. Due to the greenwarden one everyone who was aware of that was able to rush through the difficulties for a week without any limitations. If things like that would've beend adressed and fixed earlier a lot of players wouldn't be "done with the game" by now.
Endgame
I know it is early, it's week one/two. No one was forced to rush through the content like that, being left with no new content. It's apparently not an issue on your side. But because of the obviously fixed cards way to many players got to that point. This could lead to a serious decrease of active players. If there is nothing coming in the near future I suppose I will lose interest in waiting for new stuff at some point.
A few suggestions to that. We already have world and area modifiers which are a great way to actually make new endgame content in arpgs as many other arpgs have proven with the exact same mechanic. Stack modifiers why not going crazy on these? It's called master difficulty, for now it feels like a cakewalk, with a very bad deck on my side. Add exclusive loot to master diff missions or ordeals. So we can get certain things only from that mission/ordeal. Should be seriously really rare to keep us playing. This would also give us a reason to stop staring at the forbidden vaults (I admit well designed) assets for 5 hours (and more) a day because there is no reason to do something else. Just a few thoughts.
Probs to the changes made in the short amount of time you had while also listening to the player feedback.
As always sorry for typos/bad grammar.
What Khajiit said here ^
I am loving this game and love seeing you guys are making changes. The only IMPORTANT change I want to see is removing the cap of everything in this game. Players want to feel like they can put in as much time as they want and dont feel its wasted time. Not allowing players to farm as much Planar or Rep.. (so on) is a big slap in our faces. I never understood this kind of model in a game. Dont you want your players to play your game, or only login for 1 day and have maxed out everything and stop. I really hope this is taken serious as i have had friends leave the game already over this and others will not even try when I tell them there is a cap on farming. Its sad to think companys still do this kind of thing.
thanks,
Bashnir
On the good side: The devs seem to care about making this a great game, they are taking community feedback, filtering out the trolls and working to make a better product.
On the bad side: The lead developer thinks that leveling our meditation buildings to lvl 10 and our spells to level 10 is "endgame" content.
Leveling our core mechanic to the max level is not end game, it isn't in this game, it isn't in any other game ever. End game is what happens once your character gets their core mechanics to their max level. This can be unlocking a mechanic, or just be a competitive bracket, or a variety of things. There is essentially 2 phases of every ARPG, the leveling to max phase and the end game phase. We get our spells at lvl 1 and start upgrading them, so upgrading our spells is phase 1. We need to be given something else once our spells are max level.
Personally, I would love to see some kind of ranked pvp with a parallel ranked pve. There are some people that enjoy one over the other and many people who enjoy both. One or both of these ranked systems could have it's own reputation/honor/resource to farm that helps improve our character's power in some way. Obviously both of these systems could see a large variety of formats, I personally would like to see both a 1v1 ranked arena as well as some sort of 3v3 battlefield, preferably in a MOBA setting. On the pve side a couple of styles I think would work well is an arena survival wave system where we fight harder and harder waves of monster till we die or something similar to greater rifts from D3 where we keep pumping up the difficulty and trying to clear a procedurally generated level in a certain time limit, ranking is based on waves cleared and highest level respectively.
However, even without ranked systems, you could also just give something else for us to farm once we're max level. We want to do something after our avatars have maximized their spells, maximizing our spells shouldn't be the end goal.
Cross Platform / Consoles
I've played enough to know that I like this game but without cross progression spending more time is a waste. My friends are on console and with the announcements that this won't be currently crossplay or cross progression spending more time on PC doesn't make sense.
Gameplay
I'll repost what I wrote before about gameplay from a different section.
IMHO there is a fun core mechanic in the gameplay. I really like the deck building and the way it's used as your actions.
The movement in combat though is very sluggish and slow. It feels like I'm meant to be standing still while attacking, which makes dodging clunky. Which for a melee class that needs to be in close combat, dodging is very necessary. As is smooth combat movement.
Compared to other ARPG's that this game is like which have very smooth movement. All of the actions there feel fluid and blend together.
Here the spells and their interactions feel that way but not movement and melee combat. I haven't gotten a chance to try out other classes but have seen feedback that felt similar.
I'm coming at this from the perspective of usually using a controller, not mouse and keyboard. Though this game does support controller I was not able to test that due to it not (yet?) supporting the PS4 controller.
Monetization
To be honest, I'd rather pay for the game then have to deal with the FOMO of battle passes and seasons passes. Working to get new cards is fun but when it's trapped behind a free to play (pay) monetization system you know up front that it's going to be a long grind. Everything is built around incentivizing the player to spend money on the cash shop. To be fair, sadly people have incentivized companies to do so by their willingness to spend tons of money on random loot.
Adding the Class to the Battlepass is great but only if you can dedicate enough time to clear the pass. It's still a time gated feature designed to create artificial sense of urgency. Those who put in the time should absolutely get more out of it. Hands down. But I'm sure many of us would also like to work threw stuff at our own pace, earning things at a slow but steady rate. Though I'd much rather buy many things directly from the shop but then you wouldn't make nearly as much money. This will definitely cause many to spend less time in the game or just not at all.
The game is clearly not as bad as many potential former players tend to pretend, it's a good surprise for me and I hope you'll support the game wisely, as smart wizards would do.
What I like in the game :
What I dislike about the game :
I would like to see option in party where you can hide other players pets and effects as most of the time can`t see what is going on screen.
ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE.
Frame Rate issues with most of the games content. Eg: Every Teleport requires multiple loads screens, frame rate is jumping from 10-60fps all the time, graphics often glitch out during the teleport. Many interactions with npc's cause huge frame rate issues. The loads screens are so often in this game you cant even read them. Its faster to run to an area than teleport because of the delays and loads screens.
Stuck in Combat Bugs / Barriers in Game eg: World Bosses, Missions, Reliquaries and other events you need to click on to progress. Please remove these barriers or make them usable in combat. There is no need for a countdown timer or a click hold bar.
Movable UI. Or at least the quest objectives and the Party health bars. I have accidently reported people because of the player health bar layout being on top of the quests objectives that I cant read and accidently click over all the time during combat.
Random Mini Map Compass turn around after teleporting. Allow us to make the map static please.
Aether Cap / Planar Mana Cap / World Boss Cap. Just Caps in general. They are way too low for the average player.
These issues should be first priority and patched asap. Even if there's 10+hrs of down time. They are essential to this games longevity and if you want to keep us playing.
First things first, great job on the communication you are providing everyone paying attention is appreciating it.
I will not be going through the positives but that does not mean they do not exist. Game's core idea is solid and has a lot of potential. I really hope for the future of the game.
Performance: Well game right now seems unoptimized , i can see though that this is being adressed and i am very optimistic it is going to better before launch .Lag on the other hand is something that i can see the community, including myself, worries about. Although it is clear that you have taken notice of the myriad of comments, we just do not get why there are no non-American servers and why the problem isn't adressed exactly like that. Please correct me if i am wrong.
Endgame: So i had a friend join in, long time arpg player, his last comment was " i will check this game out again when there is endgame". I can relate. Right now the incentive to play more, towards a goal just isnt't there. The problem is that this is a core concept of arpgs.I The ideas are out there, endless mode, randomized maps, rifts, maybe even raids. By all means we need some kind of ladder and achievements. How are we going to brag to our friends?
Equipment: Currently equipment feels a little bit boring. I am not 100% sure where this comes from but it is probably because of the fixed effects and similarity.
Resource Caps: Thinking out loud, caps do exist for two reasons ; to support the microtransactions and to provide some form of replayability. Let me be direct, noone likes that. People want to feel free to progress as much as they can even if they only farm for that exact amount each day. This is not a problem to be addressed alone , it should go hand by hand with store and game activities.
Microtransactions: Well, i am not sure how to put it but the shop needs a complete revamp imho. If the game stayed as it is forever i would not mind the shop. The problem though is far more deep. You can never have anything that hits the psychology of the gamer when someone just can buy his way. Imagine adding a ladder and someone always being on top cause of money spent. No ladder? Imagine adding guilds and raids and one always being behind due to paid options. Right now the shop is targeted to those who just like to spend, but these types will just move forward and spend their money elsewhere. Gamers will always play a good game and lets be realistic it is 2021 gamers support good products. A good example would be buying expensive cosmetics. That being said what would be optimal in my personal opinion is to have a shop that includes cosmetics (skins, creature skins, realm skins) , pets (cosmetics), services (character slot, loadout,costume slot), emotes and a battlepass (that contains a series of the afformentioned). Booster packs in an arpg just don't feel right.
Fast Travel: the way fast travel is right now feels that it disrupts the gameplay experience instead of enhancing it. It it way too much.
Interactable objects: I really believe it would add to the game to have items to destroy and chests to open.
First leveling to 30: I really enjoyed the missions. That being said the loop mission/skirmish/mission all the time is not very desirable right now.
The notices were great! Glad to see the team being transparent with where the game is heading.
Me and mah friends were glad with the focus on optimization/performance as crashes, fps drops and stuff are constant. The assassin move to battlepass was a huge surprise (and a welcome one), although we are still very concerned with the quests STILL not reseting.
Im more concerned with the endgame...the notice says leveling stuctures is endgame? When we can already do master without difficult grinding for weeks due to limited mana cap to raise a single structure from lv8 to 9 really doesnt feel very exciting and I bet many ppl will leave at that point unless a real end game comes into place, like the map system that was previously planned.
I second this. Fantastic idea.
As someone who never plays an MMO long enough to dive in to "EndGame" content, I may not be the best person to comment,
but I will say that I agree with people that simply having maxed out facilities is "not" end-game content. End Game Content is stuff like difficult Raid dungeons with exclusive rewards, Towers with waves of enemies and increasing difficulty per floor that nets unique rewards for completing every 5th wave, access to some sort of new Stat Distribution system which gaining Planeswalker levels after you hit the cap now lets you augment your stats in unique ways such as the ability to add passive effects with special points you get from gaining levels beyond 320, etc. Stuff like that.
If you want a game with a lot of replay value that keeps people playing, I suggest looking into that sort of thing.
As for me, I'll never play a game to end-game because the Return on Time Investment is so low that it loses all its fun for me. When you're starting out, or mid game, playing for 2 hours might net you a level, a new spell, and some gear. By end game, playing for 2 hours nets you jack shit, and then it stops being fun. The best way to combat this is to frequently roll out new story missions, new classes, new spells, and lots of shiny new stuff to keep people like me playing in spite of having steep walls of ROI.
the game bug fixing was great and for the first time i really feel like devs listening our opinions, the only thing still make me scary is what you consider "endgame" is just afk farming master diff stuff. that's not an endgame goal for me and for the most part of players from what i read around discord/forum/reddit. we need challenges: endless survival mode, big bosses where we really need to play as team with maybe some support roles, maybe some sort of "draft" event , or at least in the meanwhile just easy do do: make a reward for winning some games in PvP. actually is just " ok there is the pvp" with no reason at all to play it. last thing but : localize drops pls, ppl righyt now just seach the best spot to farm, and keeeeep going fovever in that place, if u localize the drops ppls must roaming around and do different stuff, not just the same boring rotation.
I posted this separately, but I think the biggest issue with this game is having an engaging, challenging endgame. Right now I'm done with my first class and I'm saving to unlock the next one. I feel like it is just going to be a lot of the same thing so I'm not super motivated to keep going. That's the problem with this re-using old missions for harder versions. It feels like more of the same.
The solution? Make separate content made ONLY for higher levels. Where you can't turn down the difficulty. Something you can attempt at lower levels and may eek through it, but it is very challenging. Maybe even make penalties for death, so that you get weaker every time you die. You want something that people have to actually plan for, or they will fail.
One thing that would be really fun is some kind of "draft mode" where a team creates temporary decks out of a random assortment of cards, and then runs through a dungeon. You could use the artifacts and equipment you have collected, but it would all be a fixed level. That way the only progression is horizontal (giving yourself more choices). Then you have to actually know your way around the game to make a good deck with what you get. And it would be completely different everytime you play, so it would never get old. And you couldn't just grind to a higher level and make it a cakewalk, which would make it get boring. You could unlock it once you get through all the story missions, so that it feels like something to work up to.
Probably make one of the dungeons some kind of very, very difficult challenge where it gets harder the deeper you go. Like so hard that you would need a team of extremely prepared, experienced teammates. And then reward people for how deep they can go. Give them one or two lives so that you don't just spend your time hitting a wall and not getting anywhere. And then give them specific exclusive items or spells they can't get anywhere else as a reward.
Another idea is making an overworld that also scales up difficulty the farther you go. Even something procedurally generated. One that you can change permanently and actually affect the story and landscape. You could make the overworld in the meditation realm, and make it instanced only for you.
You could also use this overworld to have mining sites where you can capture them, defend them, etc. See my other post for details. Bring a little tower defense gameplay into it.
Overall, I'm psyched about the core of this game. The variety of how to build a deck is sweet, and will get even better as new spells and mechanics are added. This an awesome way to be creative, but the problem now is that I don't have enough problems to solve using that creativity.
Oh and I know people don't necessarily care for this, but puzzle elements in games are really good. They have to be really challenging to mean anything, but done right they can be really satisfying. Just look at a game like "The Witness". Epic puzzle elements, despite being simple. Or take a cue from The Secret World and add deep "escape room" like elements. Like "go get a piece of paper and write this down" type puzzles. Like "I wrote an excel spreadsheet to crack this cypher" kind of stuff.
You want to add exclusivity. A feeling like you solved something that not too many other people could solve. And you got an appropriate, very creative reward. And then you want to change it up weekly or monthly or something to keep it fresh.
I think one of the biggest issues with modern games is trying to make all of the content accessible to all of the players. So you dumb it down until the majority doesn't get frustrated. Which is fair in the early game because you want players to get into the game. But adding optional end game content that is actively frustrating is borderline necessary to keep people engaged. People don't quit games because they are frustrated with endgame optional content. That's what keeps them playing. And you would be surprised how the most savvy players will influence the rest of the playerbase by making guides, exploring shortcuts, etc, making it more accessible to those who are dedicated and willing to learn something new.
Hi everyone,
First of all I want to say that I just did a little further than tutorial, so I will only speak of ergonomics. As in all Action-RPG I think you should implement an "attack-only" option and not just a toggle to do so, some people really love to move with a button and attack with the other while standing, not using a combination of two keys. It takes me to my second point: make right click and all other mouse buttons bindable. Many players use a gaming mouse and side buttons are really useful to cast spells for example. Part of the same issue, we need an option to change the key to move the camera, right click is not convenient for me and I'd prefer to be able to choose another one.
Thanks for reading !
NB: This does not come in combat section, but please make so that we can disable chat, using a command to whitelist is not the solution.
There is definite potential in this game and the existing combat gameplay is already satsifying (at times and when not affected by lag and performance issues). It's refreshing to see an arpg that incorporates moment-to-moment decision making into its ability rotations. I'll focus on a few points where change is needed imo:
Overworld loot: Please reconsider the way overworld loot works for ungrouped players. That another player constitutes undesired competition rather than welcome assistance is early 2000s mmo design that should stay in the past. Everyone who tags a mob/elite/boss should get full loot.
Auto-loot: Just do it. Having to collect loot is tedious (especially when spread over large areas such as certain special skirmishes) and causes issues in random groups at the end of missions. I also imagine removing all the ground clutter can only help with performance.
Daily design: Dailies are bite-sized content that create an incentive to log in even if one only has time for a short session. The one thing they must not be is frustrating to complete when you don't have a huge amount of time. Spending 1h+ hopping between difficulties to complete a special skirmish is not appropriate for a daily quest. The "kill x with y spell" don't work well and killing blow mechanics in a arpg with many different damage sources is not a brilliant idea in my book.
Mob/elite density: Is generally too low. Simply look at what missions people are actually running and buff everything that is being ignored to that level. Then double density (at least of specials) across the board.
I'd like to see the auto-loot range expanded and maybe turns off once the game flags you as inactive or something atleast until you rezone? frustrating trying to keep up with loot drops while fighting a horde of mobs
Someone explain to me why you call this endgame?
Upgrading and having more drops is not endgame thats just convience
The overworld is empty, Doing Missions is just a pain in the ass because it's freaking empty and you just run true it.
This is supposed to be a ARPG then where are all the mobs?
Give us something like diablo rifts or endless dungeons
The overworld is just there to do daily's and so are the missions no one is spamming missions only if they need to do a daily
There has been a lot of discussion as to what constitutes the current End Game system for Magic: Legends in Open Beta. Since the game is very new and we haven’t really addressed it officially I’d like to discuss what we consider End Game now. The full depth of the Realm system may have been understated in the Realm blogs we had on the run up to launch. This player progression system features 4 work stations each with 10 levels, 5 land colors with 10 levels of attunement each, and the main overall ‘Aetheric Core’ structure with 10 levels of progression. Each station will provide you new benefits such as higher quality artifact drops, the ability to craft world enchantments, significant reductions to spell page costs to level spells, unique artifacts, and roughly 30% of all spell unlocks come from this system. This system is driven completely by earned in-game currencies - Aether, and Planar Mana.
The difficulty levels that we’ve implemented synergize with the realm system by not only providing more challenge for players that have progressed, but also providing significantly more drops and more rewards out of those drops. You’ll have a higher chance of Spell, Artifact, and Equipment drops in order to maximize your loadout-building options. You’ll also earn more XP to level classes more quickly, in addition to higher quantities of Gold, Aether, spell pages, artifact fragments, and upgrade materials to level your equipment.
This is not a mobile game, This is exactly what mobile games do let you upgrade stuff and have you capped at resources.
very unlikely that this game in it's current state would run well or at all on a console
Some more feedback for you:
1- I'm sure you've heard this already but the UI for equipment needs a major overhaul. It requires vastly too many clicks and scrolling to look through the gear. You have a good UI for the library so something more akin to that would be welcome.
2- It would be fantastic to have the main combat HUD be moddable. At a minimum the ability to move and reshape different elements. For example, for some builds I like to know the status of my creatures, so I would like to move it to a more central location.
3- The current power and toughness should be shown on the creature icons. There's plenty of room and it is both useful information and it creates a sense of cool. E.g., ooooo I got that 1/1 up to a 5/5!
4- Hallowed Sanctuary as a presumably white focused artifact is extremely underwhelming. The buff simply does not last remotely long enough. It is far too difficult to arrange the death of your creatures in 10 seconds or less. I've been trying to use it for two days in a mono-white deck, and I have a grand total of ... 1 divine wrath proc. Yup, 1. The buff duration should be 30 seconds. This puts it in line with the typical length of the enchantments that fuel the buff. E.g. Glorious Anthem. If I had my way, I would completely change this artifact such that one creature gets a buff that when times runs sets off a divine wrath (upgrading the artifact would lower this timer). The level 20 ability should then cause additional creatures to get the buff based on some effect (# of enchantments or something). THAT would feel like a strong white artifact.
5- Buffs, in general, are too short. When you factor in the amount of walking around creatures do, and delays between swings buffs might be effecting a single swing. maybe two at the outside.
6- Cursor. It is too small. That is all.
7- Rather than an explicit cap on materials, e.g., mana, how about diminishing returns? For example, at 15,000 you start earning 50% of the normal mana. At 25,000 you earn, 25% and so on. Having a hard cap seems like a good way to encourage people to not play the game once they've hit the cap, which seems counterproductive.
8- 30 seconds tokens seem pretty good from powerful effects. It feels about right. 10 seconds tokens from gear also feel ok given how repeatable they are, but I would like to see it rise to 15 seconds as with the buffs often they only do one, maybe two, hits.
9- Black has a good feel to it. It plays like you would expect black to play. As does blue. This is according to my friends.
10- White, which I've played the most and play the most in MTG, feels okish. It is interesting to me that for the first (I'm assuming there will be more) the identity you choose to focus on is white's life gain as opposed to battlefield manipulation. Perhaps that aspect is harder to get into an ARPG (although there are some elements of it in the game). Life gain is tricky because if it is too high then you're immortal, if it is too low, then it is irrelevant. The secondary and utility demonstrate this aptly. They barely heal for anything when at higher difficulty levels, and at lower difficulty levels they heal for too much. White also has this taunt/retritbution/reflect thing going on but it doesn't work particularly well mainly because as mentioned above, none of the supporting elements last long enough. For example, if you use unwavering passage to taunt, and then try to combo this with chain the wicked, well, you'll be lucky to get two mobs. The damage from chain the wicked is pretty good; however, it is matched by spells like judgement (that requires no setup) and phalanx charge (that requires no setup... and in fact will outdamage chains if you can get a status effect on the enemy). Overall, white works, and is funish, but there are some systemic design issues that seem counter to the goals for the color (e.g., hallowed sanctuary in a deck focused on healing and protection).
4- Re: Hallowed Sanctuary. The artifact works better in a multi-color deck where you can arrange the death of your creatures. I forgot to mention that. An alternative redesign, would be to have it summon some tokens (say 3) and if the tokens are still alive at the end of the summon then they fire the divine wrath.
Hello MTGL people. So far I have am having a good experience with the game. there are some things i wouldn't mind seeing changed though.
I would say that some of the things in the actual overworld are kinda annoying. like having a respawn point being in a cul-du-sac that you constantly have to run around. makes it just take longer, as a person used to just jumping off cliffs in other games i would like to see some sort of short cut option to get over terrain like this. or making the map just easier to transition around. i have one green spell that gives me lesser swiftness and it feels bad that it lasts so little. when i have to run across the whole map to get to the mythic boss cause i haven't gotten to the respawn point there yet, or cause there just isn't one close. things like this just take away from the experience for me of staying in the action.
One thing i would like to bring up, is while in a Mission, its hard to tell when to move on sometimes. i like that there is constant enemies, but when grouping with others over the last few days, they are just sprinting to the end and dragging everything with them. and here i am near the start still fighting things. cause i can't tell that i should be moving on. it should be either the mobs stop spawning after a time or they start walking to the furthest person inside the dungeon or something. i feel like this needs to be looked at.
Looting: while in missions or even open world i feel like all i'm doing most of the time is worrying about picking everything up. i think it would be great if either the vacuum for loot was extended more, or that summons also had their own vacuum around them. since they can't just stay away from you for too long i don't see this as being a huge balance issue, i wouldnt suggest this correlate to Mana orbs or Health orbs unless there was some smart way to pick them up, like only if you actually need the resource. but that may be getting too complicated programing wise/auto botting the game, no idea.
Another idea for loot would be in missions if you are also in the end arena or some other factor, then you get all the drops on the ground from the instance. so if you missed gold or some rare card pages, your not out that loot cause it was around a corner or the group pushed on ahead and you didn't want to miss out on other things.
i really do like this game and can't wait for the many years of fun this game looks to bring us the community. Keep up the great work, and thanks.
Some more feedback for you:
1. I'm sure you've heard this already but the UI for equipment needs a major overhaul. It requires vastly too many clicks and scrolling to look through the gear. You have a good UI for the library so something more akin to that would be welcome.
2. It would be fantastic to have the main combat HUD be moddable. At a minimum the ability to move and reshape different elements. For example, for some builds I like to know the status of my creatures, so I would like to move it to a more central location.
3. The current power and toughness should be shown on the creature icons. There's plenty of room and it is both useful information and it creates a sense of cool. E.g., ooooo I got that 1/1 up to a 5/5!
4. Hallowed Sanctuary as a presumably white focused artifact is extremely underwhelming. The buff simply does not last remotely long enough. It is far too difficult to arrange the death of your creatures in 10 seconds or less. I've been trying to use it for two days in a mono-white deck, and I have a grand total of ... 1 divine wrath proc. Yup, 1. The buff duration should be 30 seconds. This puts it in line with the typical length of the enchantments that fuel the buff. E.g. Glorious Anthem.
5. Buffs, in general, are too short. When you factor in the amount of walking around creatures do, and delays between swings buffs might be effecting a single swing. maybe two at the outside.
to be continued
6. Cursor. It is too small. That is all.
7. Rather than an explicit cap on materials, e.g., mana, how about diminishing returns? For example, at 15,000 you start earning 50% of the normal mana. At 25,000 you earn, 25% and so on. Having a hard cap seems like a good way to encourage people to not play the game once they've hit the cap, which seems counterproductive.
8. 30 seconds tokens seem pretty good from powerful effects. It feels about right. 10 seconds tokens from gear also feel ok given how repeatable they are, but I would like to see it rise to 15 seconds as with the buffs often they only do one, maybe two, hits.
9. Black has a good feel to it. It plays like you would expect black to play. As does blue. This is according to my friends.
10. White, which I've played the most and play the most in MTG, feels okish. It is interesting to me that for the first (I'm assuming there will be more) the identity you choose to focus on is white's life gain as opposed to battlefield manipulation. Perhaps that aspect is harder to get into an ARPG (although there are some elements of it in the game). Life gain is tricky because if it is too high then you're immortal, if it is too low, then it is irrelevant. The secondary and utility demonstrate this aptly. They barely heal for anything when at higher difficulty levels, and at lower difficulty levels they heal for too much. White also has this taunt/retritbution/reflect thing going on but it doesn't work particularly well mainly because as mentioned above, none of the supporting elements last long enough. For example, if you use unwavering passage to taunt, and then try to combo this with chain the wicked, well, you'll be lucky to get two mobs. The damage from chain the wicked is pretty good; however, it is matched by spells like judgement (that requires not setup) and phalanx charge (that requires not setup... and in fact will outdamage chains if you can get a status effect on the enemy). Overall, white works, and is funish, but there are some systemic design issues that seem counter to the goals for the color (e.g., hallowed sanctuary in a deck focused on healing and protection).
For some reason the long version would disappear.
Great communication so far guys and it is nice to feel listened to, feedback specific to the state of the games below.
Performance
While this was never an issue for me after the first day or two, I'm glad other people can now enjoy a smoother gameplay experience.
Monetization
Credit where credit is due, it was a good move to put the Dimir Assassin in the Battlepass, though I have been vocal from the moment it was announced that classes would be in booster packs it was a terrible idea and never should have happened in the first place. You might also consider moving the unlock earlier up the premium tree and replacing the other unlock node with a booster pack if you already have him.
Chat
Non-issue for me, immersion breaking for some. More work necessary here, eventually full blown whisper/block/report functionality and a global channel.
Tutorial Duration
Great idea to trim it down, realistically should never have been that long in the first place. Spell drop rate now feels about right.
Player to Player Collision
Laughable that the issue of players blocking important NPCs was missed in testing or discussions, should be zero player collision in hub areas.
End Game
This is easily the weakest part of the game. I don't know what had to happen for you to think grinding up an endless amount of planar mana to check some boxes was a passable idea for end-game content. There's a reason every other skinnerbox game has randomly generated maps and large amounts of random mobs that spew out satisfying lootsplosions. That's what people want.
Battlepass
A weeks worth of progress was a nice gift, but if I'm doing the math right, without that you'd need to complete every single weekly quest and 86/90 dailies to complete the pass. This is completely untenable for a large amount of players. Time to complete needs to be dropped by an additional two weeks at least imo.
And now my general feedback:
-still not publishing any details on the booster pack drop rates and pity timer is incredibly damning. There is no good reason to be hiding this information and I can't recommend this game to anybody unless this is addressed.
-overall the game feels very slow. I may have the attention span of the noble walnut but I think movement speed, attack animations and spell cooldowns could be sped up by about 25% and it'd feel a lot nicer. I'd even go as high as 50% for some of the boss fights, especially the Shiv ones.
I still think this can be a great game but a lot more work needs to be done, please keep up the transparency.
My Thoughts
• Performance - I don't have a top of the line PC, I use an Acer Nitro laptop. This laptop is capable of running every other game out right now fairly well on medium/high settings, but M:L I have to reduce everything as close to 0 as I can just to get 30 FPS max. Sometimes when turning the camera I lag and drop to a couple FPS. Some Ordeals I can't get above 10 FPS. This is after both optimization patches.
•Monetization - I've made replies to other posts on this before. I think having set values for Aether-to-Zen would be better than player controlled markets. This is especially true for the broker which is now controlled by a couple of players who have hundreds of millions of gold. I think putting the class in the battlepass was the best decision, and I would like to see this same level 50 reward going forward. You can get the class in the booster pack early or wait until you get to the end of the battlepass in a few months.
• Chat - I kinda miss world chat. I get that it had to happen because of the spam and trolls, but now the world feels so lonely. I am hoping we might eventually get guilds to help combat this.
• Tutorial Duration - Yes! I think most people give up on the game early because they don't get to experience the most fun parts of the game until they are several hours into the game.
• End Game - I posted this in the End Game thread that was popular a week ago. I think there is a disconnect between what Cryptic thinks end game should be and what players think end game should be. Upgrading buildings is not end game, that should be mid-game. We should be upgrading structures to get equipment/artifacts/spells to help prepare us for end game. I had a couple ideas for end game that I had in that post including infinite modes such as a draft mode like the mobile game Archerio, where we start with no spells but then as we continue we can choose spells from 3 randomly selected spells to add to our deck.
Hey, I watch a ton of the youtube channel "extra credits" and the cap on loot per day is ACTUALLY psychologically a good idea, but it has to be disguised or players will HATE it. WoW did this with the "Rest" system, but basically instead of putting hard caps on the amount of loot we get, add increasing diminishing returns (that reset when the next day starts). It's also a good idea to disguise these diminishing returns as a bonus that goes away after a certain amount of time or loot is obtained (like 2x or 3x xp/aetherium/ mana).
I understand that we want to encourage players to enjoy the game at leisurely pace for their mental benefit so that they don't get burnt out grinding. I also think it's a good idea to not have end game characters after a week, because again people will pump and dump the game or bots (though lack of endgame kinda discourages bot accounts). That being, said, this is the beta and I'm sure you have plenty of content planned, and I know you have a ton of lore to draw from. I'm really excited to see the eldrazi, but I know that's a way off.
Some more feedback for you:
1- I'm sure you've heard this already but the UI for equipment needs a major overhaul. It requires vastly too many clicks and scrolling to look through the gear. You have a good UI for the library so something more akin to that would be welcome.
2- It would be fantastic to have the main combat HUD be moddable. At a minimum the ability to move and reshape different elements. For example, for some builds I like to know the status of my creatures, so I would like to move it to a more central location.
3- The current power and toughness should be shown on the creature icons. There's plenty of room and it is both useful information and it creates a sense of cool. E.g., ooooo I got that 1/1 up to a 5/5!
4- Hallowed Sanctuary as a presumably white focused artifact is extremely underwhelming. The buff simply does not last remotely long enough. It is far too difficult to arrange the death of your creatures in 10 seconds or less. I've been trying to use it for two days in a mono-white deck, and I have a grand total of ... 1 divine wrath proc. Yup, 1. The buff duration should be 30 seconds. This puts it in line with the typical length of the enchantments that fuel the buff. E.g. Glorious Anthem. If I had my way, I would completely change this artifact such that one creature gets a buff that when times runs sets off a divine wrath (upgrading the artifact would lower this timer). The level 20 ability should then cause additional creatures to get the buff based on some effect (# of enchantments or something). THAT would feel like a strong white artifact.
5- Buffs, in general, are too short. When you factor in the amount of walking around creatures do, and delays between swings buffs might be effecting a single swing. maybe two at the outside.
6- Cursor. It is too small. That is all.
7- Rather than an explicit cap on materials, e.g., mana, how about diminishing returns? For example, at 15,000 you start earning 50% of the normal mana. At 25,000 you earn, 25% and so on. Having a hard cap seems like a good way to encourage people to not play the game once they've hit the cap, which seems counterproductive.
8- 30 seconds tokens seem pretty good from powerful effects. It feels about right. 10 seconds tokens from gear also feel ok given how repeatable they are, but I would like to see it rise to 15 seconds as with the buffs often they only do one, maybe two, hits.
9- Black has a good feel to it. It plays like you would expect black to play. As does blue. This is according to my friends.
10- White, which I've played the most and play the most in MTG, feels okish. It is interesting to me that for the first (I'm assuming there will be more) the identity you choose to focus on is white's life gain as opposed to battlefield manipulation. Perhaps that aspect is harder to get into an ARPG (although there are some elements of it in the game). Life gain is tricky because if it is too high then you're immortal, if it is too low, then it is irrelevant. The secondary and utility demonstrate this aptly. They barely heal for anything when at higher difficulty levels, and at lower difficulty levels they heal for too much. White also has this taunt/retritbution/reflect thing going on but it doesn't work particularly well mainly because as mentioned above, none of the supporting elements last long enough. For example, if you use unwavering passage to taunt, and then try to combo this with chain the wicked, well, you'll be lucky to get two mobs. The damage from chain the wicked is pretty good; however, it is matched by spells like judgement (that requires not setup) and phalanx charge (that requires not setup... and in fact will outdamage chains if you can get a status effect on the enemy). Overall, white works, and is funish, but there are some systemic design issues that seem counter to the goals for the color (e.g., hallowed sanctuary in a deck focused on healing and protection).