Hey there everyone! I wanna start by saying this is a long one, maybe I'll put a tldr at the end. I just thought I'd share my thoughts on what I really love and what could be improved (in my opinion)

I have more than 300 hours of play time (RF3) on steam, and I've been playing this new version of the game almost every day since I found out about the release. Goes without saying I really love this game lol it's great

With that out of the way, I think I'll start with the more broad observations about the game in general, and later on go in more specifics. 

I've been thinking about the races from RF3, since they are missing so far in RF4, and I think reworking some of them and adding a few more would go a long way in build-making and replayability. I've broken down the races in two categories, skill-based (strenght/dex/int) and playstyle-based (ex: vampire passive, troll regen etc) 

So I thought the races could go up to 12 (which maybe is a lot) with 6 races being skill-based and 6 being playstyle-based. 

Take the ogre(strenght), the fairy (dex), the gnome (int) and maybe add like ''fusion'' races, that combines two skills. Maybe like dwarf(strenght+int), elf(dex+int) and halfling(strenght+dex) 

that way we can have races for dual build-making. Often I wanted to make (for example) a warrior-ice mage, to abuse the close range abilities and the tankiness of the class with like heavy hitting melee attacks, but most often than not it's kinda impossible to pull off. That's why I think having the option of choosing more skill-based races can be a great addition, with maybe passive abilities specific to each. Imagine (as another example) a barbarian halfling, heavy hitting and highly mobile, lots of fun. Just an idea. 

Now for the playstyle-based races, we have the human(neutral), the vampire(blood lust+hp), the troll(hp regen/hunger), as well as the mummy and gargoyles, which I personally think are outdated and needs a rework to fit in with RF4. I imagine maybe giving gargoyle a 20% resistance passive to all magic and like a +4 protection, but lowering all dmg output, making them very tanky but weaker. And doing the opposite for the mummy, making them basically ''glass cannons'', mummy having like a 20% weakness to all magic and like a -2(or -4) protection, but with overall higher dmg/ability power or whatever. The goal of these races would be to give more options in build making, and at the same time reworking these lesser races into something more unique/interesting. I have another idea for a playstyle-race, bringing the total to 6 : the shadowbeast (or darkbeast), being a steatlh race, with less hp, more sp, and 15% crit dmg passive or something, just a race for those stealth loving players that isn't fairy. 

With all that, the total of races would be 12, with vastly varied and unique build potential. Hope my ideas are any good lol 

The classes are great, though the mages classes are always a lot more fun (to me) than the others, since magic allows for more varied gameplay than simply relying on melee attacks or ranged attacks. Though I have noticed a few balancing issues, making some classes feel a bit underpowered compared to others. I played fire-mage the other day, and the dmg output is sort of underwhelming. Hitting fireballs feels like a wet fart, if you pardon my french, and I spent talents into the summon fire-orb, only to find out its been super nerfed from RF3, making it absolutely worthless even at tier2, which is a shame. I loved to play fire mage and use the fire-orb to bait agro and output consistent dmg, but now that playstyle is dead. That's just an example of how some of the new balancing is a bit jarring. Just like the nerfs to staff dmg... Also the cost of domination and confusion being so high. Also comes to mind the nerfs to ranged abilities like freeze and domination again, to name a few. I get that balancing the game is a headache and a half, but I feel like nerfing core abilities like that ruins the fun a bit. 

I also think the option to have like ''super-spells''/''super abilities'' would a be a great addition. Imagine casting fire-storm, that huge aoe massive dmg ability some fire mage enemies cast. Or even like an aoe discord, or a flash freeze of one turn or something, abilities that cost a lot more mana points/speed points but are more powerful. That or maybe a new ''supercharge'' mechanic, where the player can invest ressources to make an ability much stronger (like additional mp/sp/and even hp) I'm not going to lie I love nuking a bunch of enemies and it doesnt happen often enough. 

Though I must say, I am not a fan of the new mechanic on certain spells, the one being the need to level up/drink an energy potion or something to refresh the ability. I find I just don't bother investing in these sort of abilities, since using them is always such a commitment, and its annoying to not be able to use it afterward. I also think that in the later game, once leveling up no longer happens/is far between, such abilities become kind of a waste. That's my take on that, I'm sure some would disagree but like I said maybe a different way of balancing such abilities would work better. 

I've also noticed a much lower dmg on dex characters, like rogue or ranger, where each attack deals a ridiculously low amount of dmg. It just doesn't feel good, I remember playing rogue and arriving in the desert section, trying to fight a scorpion and doing 0dmg since their protection was so high. It's kinda silly lol, maybe it's just a skill issue but hey. 

I also find it a bit unfortunate that sometimes, I won't have the opportunity to find a better weapon until so long into the run, making me fight high level enemies with my silly starter weapon. Once I played warrior and didn't find a single melee weapon, nor did the merchant have one. It's just how procedural generation works sometimes but I thought I'd point it out. 

I'm a big fan of the crystal chests, of giving the player a choice between different loot, I think it should be implemented more in my opinion. I even thought maybe we could start the game and on the very first level there would always be a crystal chest, with like choices of weapons for early build-making. Imagine different staffs for mages, melee weapons for warrior/barb and range for the rest or something. Choosing between cleave dmg, burst or a spear for example, early on could make each run feel even more unique. Even just a choice of shields or armour or rings etc would go a long way in early build making

I say that cause I find that most early runs are sort of repetitive. I love the upper-dungeon but it's pretty much always the same every time, especially early on when we don't have any abilities unlocked. Perhaps adding more variety in enemy types early on could shake things up, like maybe elemental buffs or just different types of early-on enemies than bats, rats and goblins. Early, weaker slimes is an idea, introducing the concept before they appear later on in a more difficult way.

I love the swarm-type enemies, and maybe they should be used a bit more, along with the new design concepts (being of teams of enemies, with tanks and buffers) I imagine elite monsters buffing their swarms, giving them more dmg or hasting them or even allowing them to multiply out of control or something. This could work well with many of the swarm enemies like the rats, slimes, clockwork rats and vampire bats etc, I just love the sort of panic of being surrounded by weak enemies, and finding a way to exterminate them before they chew you out. 

This is getting so long lol maybe I'll just throw in a few quick comments to wrap it up

Oftentimes in RF4 I find myself going through the game pretty easily, but once I enter the vault the game gets insanely harder, same as when I face off with yendor. It's like the difficulty curve gets hellbent lol my last two runs I was maxed out at lvl 16, with great builds and equipment, and I would just die. I get that the final part should be harder, but at times I find the steep difficuly increase to be too much/unfair. Again, maybe just a skill issue/not perpared enough, but still.

I love the new map generations, it's tighter and more efficient, no more empty space and less dead ends, good job on that

The new style and artworks are perfect, very charming, and the new enemies are really cool, the ones that come to mind are the new swamp enemies, and also the fire/core lizard enemies, its great stuff, hopefuly just a glimpse at what is to come

Like I said before, more mechanics like the crystal chests, scroll/well of acquirment, stuff like that, to give the player more choice in what loot they can get, instead of relying so much on the merchant/rng. 

I've love the new mechanics with the different mushrooms, I especially like the protection and power shrooms, allowing you to get in position and abuse them to quickly clear out difficult enemies. I've had enemies use blink shrooms a few times and it got me thinking, should enemies be able to use the terrain/shrooms to their advantage? Like going to healing shrooms, melee enemies actually going for power shrooms and tanks going for blink etc (instead of accidentaly stepping on them) and should purple shrooms buff enemies as well, punishing the player for bad positioning? 

I think the change to self hp regen is good, and the healing shrooms are a nice mechanic, but I find it a bit silly at times. Some times I would get low on health and just backtrack a few levels to heal up, only to go back down again. Maybe experimenting with a sort of ''heal the player for half hp'' when going down new stairs or something, just an idea to counter backtracking just to heal. 

I think a more intelligent/strategic ai could greatly enhance the game (but also possibly ruin it lol), what I mean by that is having the melee enemies actually attack with coordination, the casters actually kiting, and the tanks actually trying to get in the way and absorb agro etc

Imagine rarer, different shrooms that gives different effects, like levitation or crits dmg or even dispel (to cleanse negative effects) these could even have new mechanics to them, maybe have like weak trap-enemies that drop these powerups or something, just to be a bit different than the multi-colored shrooms. 

All right! Thanks a lot for reading my novel of a comment, I hope I brought interesting topics and ideas, I'd love to discuss with others on stuff I brought up here. 

I understand that the game will still be developped for many years, and I can't wait to discover all the new additions. Good luck with the game and thanks for making such an addictive and fun roguelike.

Wow... just finished reading this and congratulations on the time this must have taken. first of all I think abetter enemy AI is not called for except in "Commanders" (though perhaps they could command their allies to take advantage of your points?) . I also love the idea of different rarer effects (though I think these are already in the plan for Dev) and crystal chests being more prevalent. I think that wells of wishing & scrolls of acquirement are already buffed enough as rare.  Additionally I love the shadow beast and I have a couple of suggestions: 1. incorporeal, less HP less melee damage, and +10% evasion. 2.  +dex covers SP points. and 3. Sil  (i'll workshop the name) lose agro the second all enemies lose line of sight.

Races will definitely be coming back, and hopefully, they will be a lot more impactful than +/- an attribute here or there. The more they impact gameplay to be unique and different, the better.

I agree that fire mage needs a little something, in particular, the fire orb is too weak. It went from being wayyy too tanky to having no hp. I don't think the orb being a tank really fits fire mage,  perhaps an interesting tweak (on top of giving it a little more hp), would be having it leave a flaming cloud when it dies. This will give the fire mage a lot of tactical options. That may be too strong though, burst of flame is incredibly powerful.

Confusion got over-nerfed in the duration, there has been a lot of discussion about how to balance that spell. If the duration is too high, it stunlocks enemies. If it's too low, it feels useless. Dominate/freeze I personally feel are still, absolutely, 100% game breakingly OP. 

About the level-up cooldown spells: I highly recommend investing in some of them, they are worth it! Throughout the game, they function as a reusable, consumable level effect. That's the key part of those abilities, they save the non-reusable resources for later in the game. The abilities are also amazing late game, in particular, in the Yendor fight. Each of the three rooms has an energy well, that means at a minimum you get to use them once per room. Combine that with a few energy or power pots, giving you even more casts, and they are super valuable.

The changes to protection did impact rogue and ranger a lot. It is now important to strategize around enemies having protection, and I think that's great. Use elemental damage, or get crits to burst through. A crossbow is very valuable, or it is worth keeping a staff around to swap in if required. I do think there should be a few changes - turrets shouldn't have as high protection as they do, they were already nasty enough - and a few more options to give melee/ranged elemental damage (such as through an elemental buff to weapons talent or the like) would be nice.

If you could select a melee weapon or staff at the beginning of the run, imo that would reduce the variability. Every melee class should take the spear, no question. For mages, ice staff. The starting weapons are part of the class identity to me, and while there should be plenty of gear choices for the player to make, having it so early I disagree with.

I agree that UD gets repetitive, all zones do really. With more development time, I think the idea in Justin's development plan is to add more terrain generators, more vaults, and more enemy types. Each zone will have multiple different sub-zone types. Adding early versions of enemies is something that should be done a lot more, to introduce the player to various mechanics.

There are a lot of opinions about the hp shrooms and backtracking, some players like it, others hate it. I like the lack of natural hp regen, but would probably dislike backtracking if I had to do it much. Well, it's a work in progress, none of these mechanics are set yet.

If enemies specifically aimed to use shrooms, it would change a lot. Not only would a lot of shrooms get used by enemies, but the player would have to destroy shrooms just to prevent the enemy from using them. Purple shrooms do buff the enemies, it gives them their CDs back immediately. Not always that impactful, but multiple summons, or a 2nd healing totem, some enemies it really makes a difference.

A more intelligent AI would be amazing, but also so much work to design and implement. We can dream though haha.

Its great to hear from other players who love the game, I highly recommend you come join the discord :D