- Posts: 2
- Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 5:33 am
Mon Oct 21, 2013 6:49 am
Note: This is reasonably wordy, grab a coffee! 
Hey there, I'm one of the steam guys that gave this game a run through over the weekend stress test; after something of a rough night I found myself with this morning to collect my thoughts and make a feedback post here!
Balance
First off I have a bit of feedback about game balance; while the overall game balance is reasonable and faction balance is pretty good, some units are to weak/to expensive/to strong for the AP they cost, and some strategies have the potential of immediately killing an opponent on the first (but more frequently second) turn!
An example of this is are the Wolfen, by having a passive double strike the offensive stance command becomes very, VERY strong on them; as all units have 40hp by default, they can quickly shred an entire army by themselves using pursuit movements. Especially if the units in question were whittled down by anything beforehand (such as counterattacks). While it feels totally cool to have a single Wolfen Fang Warrior charge 2 necromancers, 2 skeleton warriors and 2 skeleton archers and slaughter them all by itself, it must feel infinitely frustrating for the poor person commanding all those units.
(Defensive stance > Sprint next to archers > let them attack, counterattack, offensive stance, wipe them ALL out)
What I'd like to suggest for this particular issue alone is to limit pursuit movements, this stomps your entire army being mulched by one unit with the right talents to keep on repeating pursuit movements.
(NOTE: There are some others, its' just one particular example I came across playing primarily The Baronies of Acheron faction.
Another suggestion for dealing with this would be to add in a defensive buff or change the HP values of units from the default of 40 (the only unit I've never seen with 40hp by default are Morbid Puppet summons, and my guess is that's something to do with them losing health per turn). For example, Likeness of the Chimera doesn't quite feel right at 40hp, its' a legendary unit and should be much tougher, likewise, some units should be less than 40hp (Looking at Necromancers, Archers of Alehan and other very potent support). Some of the middle of the line units such as Crane Warrior (apologies, not sure how to type the accent) - should also be much more tanky, but not overkill tanky (60hp? (example)). By increasing the tankiness of units there will be some that can't be instantly killed or severely crippled at the start of the game.
Another balance suggestion I'd like to add is about mobility, on some maps its' possible to activate defensive stance and immediately sprint to the backline of your party (usually Gargoyle, War Lion or Wolfen) - this has two outcomes; you move your squishy Archers/Casters away from the offending unit and take disengage roll (probably taking a 10-15 damage hit or worse if you're unlucky). Or you go all in on the unit (which equally can backfire due to offensive stance and pursuit movements.) There's little/no counterplay to such strategies (ESPECIALLY if they play it intelligently and use "Wait" for you to move your larger units before they do anything)
(NOTE: The Baronies of Archeron faction are particularly prone to this due to almost never moving first)
(Just to make it clear, I have no issues with the commands themselves as they're limited number, just the way in which they can be abused to make one unit almost unstoppable - which when you're starting out can be very frustrating until you learn to deal with it)
Injuries and Fate Cards
Another thing I'd like to bring up is the injuries system, while it is a really cool system, there is no way to patch up your units outside of the fate cards at current. What I'd like to suggest here is the following.
A healer be introduced that can cure a units physical injuries for a cost depending on the following.
-The level of the troop (Higher level units costing more)
-The type of troop (Regular being less to heal up than elite for example)
-The type of injury and how it affects the class in question (For example, anything that affects WIL on a caster is obviously more critical than other injuries, so it would cost more for the injury in relation to the units stats.)
-So lets create an example, lets say we have a lvl3 Archer of Alehan with a crushed hand (example numbers to show how the idea works)
+50 Ducats per level (150)
+100 for regular (250)
+200 for Crushed Hand (450)
So in this example it would cost 450 Ducats to cure this particular injury, it can be cured when the players wallet allows instead of the player sitting there frantically worrying about one of their best units being crippled (a problem I often had not having had any time to amass any amount of gold to fix my units up).
As for Fate Cards, I'd leave them exactly as they are, as you can't heal the dead and of course it might be more expensive to take a unit to the healer instead of use a Fate Card on the spot to avoid it (consequences are better avoided rather than dealt with - the point of the suggestion is to add a "deal with it" button in the game).
Other Suggestions
More missions to send your spare troops at! (The ones that are already currently in game, perhaps some with alternate rewards too such as artefacts/relics or perhaps even other units)
Some challenging solo content outside of the tutorials, maybe some miscellaneous missions that pop up on a missions board (clear out the undead style missions, or delivery/protection missions - fits the whole mercenary theme and could add a nice cash/experience/item reward for yourself and your units.)
Larger variety of items; (not sure if implemented yet, could only get so far on the stress test weekend alone). Perhaps this could be how a health increase is granted to units?
The option to take your soldiers to an academy to retrain them (talent point reset, perhaps put the soldier back to lvl1? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than having to buy a new unit).
That's all folks!
*Phew* that's about it from me, lots to go through, but thanks for reading if you got to this point, I've already had a look at the bug report section and all of the bugs I encountered have been covered by other people (some English tooltips missing, random crashes, little else for me)
And to reiterate you guys have done a good job creating a pretty solid game, keep at it! I hope you found the feedback useful, now, I'm going to have some crumpets and tea, cheerio!
-Jaldren
(Edit: Clarification, spelling, etc.)
Hey there, I'm one of the steam guys that gave this game a run through over the weekend stress test; after something of a rough night I found myself with this morning to collect my thoughts and make a feedback post here!
Balance
First off I have a bit of feedback about game balance; while the overall game balance is reasonable and faction balance is pretty good, some units are to weak/to expensive/to strong for the AP they cost, and some strategies have the potential of immediately killing an opponent on the first (but more frequently second) turn!
An example of this is are the Wolfen, by having a passive double strike the offensive stance command becomes very, VERY strong on them; as all units have 40hp by default, they can quickly shred an entire army by themselves using pursuit movements. Especially if the units in question were whittled down by anything beforehand (such as counterattacks). While it feels totally cool to have a single Wolfen Fang Warrior charge 2 necromancers, 2 skeleton warriors and 2 skeleton archers and slaughter them all by itself, it must feel infinitely frustrating for the poor person commanding all those units.
(Defensive stance > Sprint next to archers > let them attack, counterattack, offensive stance, wipe them ALL out)What I'd like to suggest for this particular issue alone is to limit pursuit movements, this stomps your entire army being mulched by one unit with the right talents to keep on repeating pursuit movements.
(NOTE: There are some others, its' just one particular example I came across playing primarily The Baronies of Acheron faction.
Another suggestion for dealing with this would be to add in a defensive buff or change the HP values of units from the default of 40 (the only unit I've never seen with 40hp by default are Morbid Puppet summons, and my guess is that's something to do with them losing health per turn). For example, Likeness of the Chimera doesn't quite feel right at 40hp, its' a legendary unit and should be much tougher, likewise, some units should be less than 40hp (Looking at Necromancers, Archers of Alehan and other very potent support). Some of the middle of the line units such as Crane Warrior (apologies, not sure how to type the accent) - should also be much more tanky, but not overkill tanky (60hp? (example)). By increasing the tankiness of units there will be some that can't be instantly killed or severely crippled at the start of the game.
Another balance suggestion I'd like to add is about mobility, on some maps its' possible to activate defensive stance and immediately sprint to the backline of your party (usually Gargoyle, War Lion or Wolfen) - this has two outcomes; you move your squishy Archers/Casters away from the offending unit and take disengage roll (probably taking a 10-15 damage hit or worse if you're unlucky). Or you go all in on the unit (which equally can backfire due to offensive stance and pursuit movements.) There's little/no counterplay to such strategies (ESPECIALLY if they play it intelligently and use "Wait" for you to move your larger units before they do anything)
(NOTE: The Baronies of Archeron faction are particularly prone to this due to almost never moving first)
(Just to make it clear, I have no issues with the commands themselves as they're limited number, just the way in which they can be abused to make one unit almost unstoppable - which when you're starting out can be very frustrating until you learn to deal with it)
Injuries and Fate Cards
Another thing I'd like to bring up is the injuries system, while it is a really cool system, there is no way to patch up your units outside of the fate cards at current. What I'd like to suggest here is the following.
A healer be introduced that can cure a units physical injuries for a cost depending on the following.
-The level of the troop (Higher level units costing more)
-The type of troop (Regular being less to heal up than elite for example)
-The type of injury and how it affects the class in question (For example, anything that affects WIL on a caster is obviously more critical than other injuries, so it would cost more for the injury in relation to the units stats.)
-So lets create an example, lets say we have a lvl3 Archer of Alehan with a crushed hand (example numbers to show how the idea works)
+50 Ducats per level (150)
+100 for regular (250)
+200 for Crushed Hand (450)
So in this example it would cost 450 Ducats to cure this particular injury, it can be cured when the players wallet allows instead of the player sitting there frantically worrying about one of their best units being crippled (a problem I often had not having had any time to amass any amount of gold to fix my units up).
As for Fate Cards, I'd leave them exactly as they are, as you can't heal the dead
and of course it might be more expensive to take a unit to the healer instead of use a Fate Card on the spot to avoid it (consequences are better avoided rather than dealt with - the point of the suggestion is to add a "deal with it" button in the game).Other Suggestions
More missions to send your spare troops at! (The ones that are already currently in game, perhaps some with alternate rewards too such as artefacts/relics or perhaps even other units)
Some challenging solo content outside of the tutorials, maybe some miscellaneous missions that pop up on a missions board (clear out the undead style missions, or delivery/protection missions - fits the whole mercenary theme and could add a nice cash/experience/item reward for yourself and your units.)
Larger variety of items; (not sure if implemented yet, could only get so far on the stress test weekend alone). Perhaps this could be how a health increase is granted to units?
The option to take your soldiers to an academy to retrain them (talent point reset, perhaps put the soldier back to lvl1? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than having to buy a new unit).
That's all folks!
*Phew* that's about it from me, lots to go through, but thanks for reading if you got to this point, I've already had a look at the bug report section and all of the bugs I encountered have been covered by other people (some English tooltips missing, random crashes, little else for me)
And to reiterate you guys have done a good job creating a pretty solid game, keep at it! I hope you found the feedback useful, now, I'm going to have some crumpets and tea, cheerio!
-Jaldren
(Edit: Clarification, spelling, etc.)
