IV. Things to do last:
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Balance careers. (Career balance should undoubtedly be done at some point, because so much of the game content is underpowered right now and needs buffing; few things also need nerfing. But firstly, balancing this stuff might take a lot of time, and there is a lot of more important things to do. Secondly, balancing characters can actually make things WORSE, and since the game is not in a perfect state, a large balance mistake can potentially be fatal.
While this paragraph is clearly a game changer, I did not put it in Big changes section, because it lacks any precise suggestions on the changes. Career balance is a very big topic, and can’t be fit in here. It requires a separate topic, probably 5 topics - one for each career.)
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and much more. -
Balance weapons. (Everything that is said about career balance, is also true for weapon balance, but there is more to say. Let’s start with melee weapons Any melee weapon (except 1h axe) can be more or less successfully used on any difficulty up to Champion. But on Legend one can only use weapons, that are both good against a group of enemies and against an armored target. It’s because there is so many enemies, that often times you can rely only on yourself at dealing with both armored and unarmored threats. Also time to kill is higher at Legend, and your teammates can’t always clear all the armored foes for you, even if they wanted to.
As a result, imho, only 8 of 26 weapons are playbale at Legend (31%), 10 of 32 if we ignore duplicate weapons, with the rest being far inferior. Some of them can be used with mixed success, but that doesn’t help the fact, that the balance is off.
As for ranged weapons, they’re much more balanced, and EVERY weapon has its usage. I’d say 12 out of 19 weapons are playable (63%). That’s a good number, but still some weapons are noticeably weaker and are being used much less often, thus need buffing. And even some of the more decent weapons, like bolt staff, need some improvements.
Important note: Some might not agree on the exact number of good/bad weapons, but I think everyone will agree, that most weapons in the game are significantly inferior to the few decent ones, and need buffing. And there is 1 or 2 weapons that probably deserve a nerf.).
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and more. -
Make deeds’ rewards fair. (Completing most deeds is harder, or at least as hard, as completing a level with 3 tomes and 2 grims, yet most time they don’t even offer the top tier chest. Yes, you get a deed reward and a level reward, but deeds, that provide more or less decent rewards, make getting all the grims and tomes suicidal. Thus, you get a decent reward from a deed, (the same you would get for completing a level with books), but a negligible reward for level completion. And you spend more time and effort doing this, which makes deeds completely worthless. There is also easier deeds, but the reward for them is so not worth any extra efforts.
Imho deeds should give next difficulty chests, except for the easiest ones, which should give decent chests, not commoners. As for Legend deeds, I wrote my thoughts on that one in paragraph 8 of “Big changes” section.)
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and more. -
Add deed achievements. (This could be a non-item stimulation/pleasant bonus for completing deeds. The achievements should be worked on, though. Not just generic “complete 50 deeds”.)
Links: no links. -
Make weapon illusions equippable as 5 power weapons. (I’ve already listed a fast workaround fix for illusion preview in paragraph 15 of “Easy important fixes” section. But it is very slow, since a simple illusion switch requires so much actions from a player: putting a weapon in inventory, removing illusion, adding illusion and reequipping the item. If there was a separate tab with illusions, and if you could equip them straight away as 5 power weapons, it would be so much faster.)
Links: same as paragraph 15 of “Easy important fixes” section. -
Give players XP when host leaves. (Lots of hosts leave on wipe, or disconnects happen cause of bugs, and not only it feels bad to lose and not to get endlevel chest, but it feels even worse when you eve don’t get any XP for your efforts.)
Links: 1, 2. -
Fixed in 1.0.8. Make all attacks work on dummies, even dots. Or there is an even better option - make separate dummies for dots. This way dots numbers won’t mess with hit numbers on regular dummies. (As I mentioned before, numbers are super important in these types of games. So if weapons have no stats on them, players should at least be able to find them out this way. Also, because so many things do not work on dummies, it is impossible to tell, whether they don’t work at all, or just on dummies.)
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4. -
Fix Predator’s Draich longsword skin. Kerillian holds it so the blunt side is pointed outside, while the edge is pointed at her body. (no comments)
Links: 1, 2. -
Make an enemy pushed of a precipice count as a kill. (no comments)
Links: no links. -
Let players rename items and/or create item sets. (Different traits and stats are often needed for different difficulties and different careers. If a player likes to switch between different careers and different weapons, they might find it hard remembering which weapon/jewelery belongs to which career/difficulty. Item sets would solve this problem, but a simple renaming would help a lot too. This problem is not that important right now, because people in general don’t have much items yet, but it will be soon.)
Links: no links. -
Make bombs explode after being lit, even if a player gets grabbed or downed afterwards. (If a player lights a grenade, but the throw gets interrupted, then the grenade does not explode. Firstly, this behavior seems rather unnatural. Secondly, this kind of stuff usually happens with a last resort grenade you REALLY want to go off. While this change is a rather minor one, addressing a situation that does not happen very often, it would be nice to have it, since it would create some more cool critical situation moments, which we all love this game for. P.S. Rarely in the above situation you don’t want a grenade to go off, and you’re glade that its behavior was programmed the way it is. But you can only choose one behavior.)
Links: no links. -
Add host migration (non-deed). (Losing progression when a host leaves or disconnects feels bad. Please fix, if possible.)
Links: 1. -
Add an interface for bot loadouts. (Although this game is multiplayer, not single player, and bots is not the major part of it, still they’re being used quite a lot, just because some players might leave during a game. And bots need some specific items to be effective. Thus, you have to constantly switch careers and items just to choose a loadout for bots. And you always forget doing this, after playing a character. And that’s a little bit of annoying and inconvenient.)
Links: no links. -
Rework the inventory (including deeds tab). (Right now the inventory does it job more or less effectively, but as players will get more items, its going to be more and more clear, that it needs a rework. Better do it in advance, before it causes lots of frustration.)
Links: 1, 2. -
Fix bugs. (It is important to fix bugs, but it is very resource-consuming. The hardest part is reproducing bugs and finding them in code. The game is rather stable now, and there is only a couple of bugs that need fixing asap. So I thinks bugs should be a low priority for now, since there is so many urgent things that need to be fixed or changed. There might be serious bugs, that I am not aware of, or other significant bugs might appear later. But generally speaking, imho, as little time as possible should be spent on fixing bugs.)
Links: 1. -
Allow joining to deeds, at least for friends. (When doing deeds sometimes someone might disconnect or has its game crushed. And all the time spent playing becomes waisted. Moreover, if playing with friends, you also end up having a moral dilemma: either continue playing without a friend, or start over and lose progress too. And that’s very annoying. This change is of very low priority, because deeds are worthless now.)
Links: 1.