I got curious after 5 years and came back, had fun looking through all the new styles and character power mechanics. And eventually subbed this month to play for a while.Looking through updates, I saw that the new director seems to want to do a lot of overdue housekeeping. (at least talks like it’s a priority) And maybe the new movie can breathe a bit of new life into the game. Who knows?
So, I wanted to give feedback to the devs on problems I ran into, that made me not want to invest my time into the game. I believe these should be prioritized.This is from the perspective of a returning player who raised a new character to 30, while also playing pre-existing characters.
The list:
1. Lack of search options. Lack of search function for inventory and searching other characters on my roster without going into them. Searching base items. Searching feats and deeds. Lack of encyclopedia of styles or collection items within the game. For example, having to google collection items and rewards for collection to be able to estimate their value is always worse than having the function in-game. The lack of a sort button, or lack of any division for different types of items. This needs addressing. The only searching you can do of your items is manually going through each items. This is stupid to leave as is for a video game. Especially when it has gone through 10+ years of item bloat.2. Lack of preview options from inventory/item itself
Previews exist for all items that can provide one, but they don’t exist consistently. You can’t preview from simply your inventory. If there is a way, it doesn’t tell you how to. Yet you can preview in the market if there is a listing.
a. Lack of preview for equipment boxes as well. E.g. in quark vendors. (This is a premium currency for premium styles, and yet you have to gamble to see if it’ll work with your style sets. There are no proper ways to see what these sets look like in-game that there were youtube channels that solely did this.)
Again, anything I have to do outside the game, is a worse experience than being able to do it in game.3. Cutscenes. Why can’t we skip them fully? Why is there a long animation lock for every little thing you need to do? Opening items, talking to npc, finishing talking to npcs, quest completion, leveling up. It’s annoying and wasting my time. Stop disrupting the player experience with stupid things like this. You’re not even selling anything by doing this.
4. Conflicting game directions need sorting.
a. With all the character power systems piling on and how difficult it is for fresh characters to get everything: artifacts, gear, base-related powers, allies, etc the game seems to push you to focus on one character. But powers are limited to 2 roles out of 4 and one is always dps. You don’t have access to other roles and power play styles unless you make a new character. It seems like deeds and feat points being character bound, the game seems to definitely want one dedicated character. However you limited the rewards so that one character is usually done doing everything within 15 minutes (excluding raids). But I read somewhere that they’re looking to make feats and styles account wide. Does the game want a roster full of many different characters or one(few) dedicated character(s)?
b. Character progression-The way gearing works, it wants to boost you faster towards current content level, but artifacts and exobytes don’t seem to follow the same pace as equipment. Do you want players to enter into current content or do you want them to go through all your content one by one? Why is the leveling of a new character to 30 so damn long, especially when you’ve already done it once? It’s old and outdated compared to new content, make it shorter or make it less repetitive (actually teach a lot of the mechanics and tools).
c. Collectibles- there are so many you can’t possibly keep track of everything you have. Almost everything is not applied account-wide. Since there are feats tied to collecting styles and what not, and feats are tied to character power, you want everything on one character at least until the first feat clear. Yet, the way styles load out and base decoration mode ui pretty much punishes you the more things you have. There are no search options for base items in decoration mode, nor is it in the style menu. You can’t even scroll through the pages of styles you’d end up getting-you have to click the stupid arrows. There is even a nomenclature issue with some items where things of the same type or set don’t start with the same letter or word. (e.g. “beyond enhanced high-tech" vs. "enhanced quicksuit” or "dynasty couch" vs. "royal dynasty bed")
d. Monetization- do you want to sell cosmetics or character power? Seems like currently it is a poor model of both (from company’s perspective, not player). You have a gacha system but there’s not much incentive to open them now from what I remember them to be. And opening them is a terrible experience, having to choose out of 4?5? with a ticking timer, when you shouldn’t really know the value of those things inside. In terms of character power, there’s not much incentive to buy anything, because you can play the current episode through the event, and once a new system drops or new episode drops, there is a soft reset, or a possible meta change. The mods being sold on the shop seem like such a stupid item preying on people going through the very system you’ve created. My argument is not something is costs too much money or you’re making very greedy choices. You can get away with doing those things as a business. I’m saying you’re splitting the limited amounts of money people have to spend on your game into different sections of the game and giving little value for it. There may be a better future if you focus that spending into one area. Most of the other financially successful games seem to herd their customers into one.
5. This one I’m not too sure about. The gameplay experience of getting source marks drip fed to you while having to spend it in 5 different directions all at once when you hit 30 feels a bit too close to reality. It feels like you might need to use other currencies than source marks. Maybe make allies buyable with ally favors, or make a different currency for the older style shops. 10~70 source marks for each piece of armor style is a bit ridiculous. Or make untradeable artifact upgrade mats buyable with event currencies. I don’t know, there are many different ways to go about it.
6. Lastly, I wish there were solo/duo options for alerts and raids. Playing solo in an online world is also unique part of the mmo experience. Probably not going to happen.
Hope these changes make it to the game.
