itch.io

But as you already clearly recognized, nobody is going to read through your itch Page, it should be either intuitive on where to click to unlock, or explained somewhere in Game, ideally not in some submenu on how to play, or a textdump at the beginning, but along the Way.

>it's good enough for now.

If even you yourself get confused sometimes wether its a H or an M, it clearly isn't good enough.

> granular attribute output

How you handle Statgrowths or anything doesn't matter, you can give +0.01 for the first level and +2.5 for the second or whatever, if I need to level strength only to increase pAtk, just remove strength alltogether and let me directly click on pAtk to increase it.

As for Skilltrees, just include the Diagram you posted in your Reply in the Game, no need for all the subtrees. Use Icons instead of Text, and display the Name of the hovered class on top of the Skilltree Window when hovering, and you don't need any submenu navigation.

>Trial & Error Synergy

Thats fine to have, if your Game encourages or supports trying out different Things. With 1 Skillpoint per Level and continously scaling difficulty, it doesn't.

>I'll let you edit skills in the middle of the zone, while you get dogpiled by mobs.

Noone does that, you can't attack with the skill menu open, so you'd just get pummeled down.

>Prime and Sub Attributes

Again, I'm talking about Strength as an Example. It serves no purpose being there, it doesn't add anything. Just apply all your modifiers, all the Levels I can spent etc. directly to pAtk. Or let strength affect more then one Stat.

Sub Attributes displayed in your Attribute Window, I never said anything about a spells attributes there. There is no Block or RedDmg there or anything, nothing to see how my Stats would affect those. Which they probably aren't anyway, see above.

>diminishing returns, channeling

You don't need diminishing returns. You have a constant increase in difficulty with a set amount of Enemies per Level. If I defeat every Enemy in every Level I should be right on curve. If I rush past Enemies, I'll naturally fall off due to missing out on experience. You should have just the Amount of Enemies per Zone thats intended so I keep on curve if I defeat all, it shouldn't be possible to overlevel with that layout.

If I channel in the beginning of a Zone, the buffs run out by the Time I hit the first Enemy. If I channel when I start combat, I loose multiple seconds where I just get pummeled and could counterhit them.

>Skill Synergy logic

Why doesn't Poison Bolt allow to increase its radius with Poison Orb? It clearly explodes when hitting an Enemy, it'd allow the Skill to be turned into an AoE by leveling the AoE skill and combining those. I'm on board with skills needing the same Type like Poison to be matched together, but then all Poison should be able to be matched together, or at least all support into all Actives, and no active+active or something coherent. Just allowing all same types to be mashed together until you as the dev feel like it wouldn't make Sense is stupid. If you only allow specific Skills to be matched with each other, without any global underlying logic, or with exceptions like Bolt+Orb, you need to indicate that in your UI somewhere. And it makes even less sense if Bolt+Orb isn't allowed but Orb+Bolt.

And stop trying to sell me your early Level build, if you talk about wanting People to trial and Error, and then try to give them a fixed built for the first 8 Levels or so, so they can actually survive, you're disencouraging trial and error even more then your Game itself does, and are basically telling everyone they need a very specific build to actually be able to get further then 20-30 Levels. At that Point, you might aswell just remove the first 10 Levels the Player gains automatically, and lock it behind a tutorial. So on level up, it goes to the status screen and tells you: You can spent points to increase Attributes. Try it and level Health 5 times this level. If you go to the Skilltree, you can click on the lock to unlock a skill. Here, try and unlock this Priests buffskill, etc. That way you avoid your UI being unclear, as you explain everything, 'and' force every Player to use your early Game build, which according to you is apparently required. Of course, its not going to be Fun, and People are just going to use the exact same build every run, since they're forced to do it, but thats a different Issue then.