Dreadholm

An early-access isometric MMO set in a dark fantasy world. Explore, fight, and survive together. · By backwardsdirty

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A topic by backwardsdirty created 9 days ago Views: 46 Replies: 3

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backwardsdirtyDeveloper9 days ago

Any and all suggestions, you can let me know here!

AnActualHumanProbably5 days ago

First impressions. Will sound like nitpicks but I assure you when a player first loads up a game they'll look for these small accessibility/qol things. In my personal opinion quality of life and accessibility are the polish that never gets praised, but is always noticed when it's missing. My initial impressions are pretty good, though. Anyway, I hope you take no offense, i know this has to sound like a list of nitpicks, but they feel appropriate to me.

UI scaling would be nice, I have grown into my old man eyes and find I'm squinting to read the text
Borderless fullscreen. It's not the most important thing but I'm sure others out there are like me and just don't like seeing the borders
Alternate movement options. Click to move is fine, no problem, it's popular and has worked, but it would be nice to get some wasd as well, or even hold click to move radial style
It'd be super helpful if the player character auto retaliated when attacked with the basic attack. This is beneficial from an accessibility standpoint. My eyes aren't the only thing getting old, so are my wrists.
It'd be nice if when you left click an enemy to attack them with a melee attack, but are too far away, the player character would auto approach
Shortcut keys! Simple things like a quick "Loot all" keys are appreciated. That way I could finish an enemy, press a button collect the loot, and be on to the next. I couldn't find one, at any rate.

And then somethings maybe a little outside the scope of just qol and accessibility

On the topic of context sensitive mouse I have some thoughts of ways to improve
- Make both buttons context sensitive. Regardless of if the player uses the left or right mouse button and clicks on the floor, they'll move, click on an interactive (npc) they'll interact, click on an enemy they'll attack
- Allowing both the right and left mouse button to be context sensitive frees them both up to also be assigned their own actions/attacks by the player. The idea being, hopefully, allowing the player more combat options outside of the number row.
- This does provide a bit of an issue with trying to click between things, like enemies, and wanting to move but the context sensitivity forcing interaction. I'd recommend button toggles for this, such as holding ctrl over-rides the context sensitivity, and forces movement instead. However if you opt to add wasd movement, this is another way to sidestep any potential issue.
Warriors using mana feels a little odd, especially for attacks like "Cleave" which just don't feel mana related. I'd consider adding an independent system for it. Stamina is always a go to, but there are other ways to go about it. Mana attacks can exist for warriors but I tend to think they should be reserved for things that feel mildly magical, like perhaps temporarily imbuing weapons with elemental buffs (just the first thing that popped into my head).

That's all for now. I think it's certainly a very strong start for your game. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it. I'd love to make other bigger suggestions but I also don't want to go to out there with how early along this is. Maybe another thread for specifically "Improvement Suggestions" would be helpful for long term sorting.

Name in game: LaunchpadMcquack.

backwardsdirtyDeveloper5 days ago (1 edit)

Wow! Thank you so much for the extreme detail. Most of these are entirely probable and/or already planned! Shortly warrior will use their own resource called “Rage”, but that will come with the addition of new abilities!

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this all out.

AnActualHumanProbably4 days ago(+1)

So I'm currently working on a traditional roguelike that I'll probably never release because of anxiety BUT I wanted to pass on a few things I'm using that, obviously because i'm using, think are solid simple mechanics.

Have enemies only drop things that make sense.
- This means no gold, instead have creatures drop "parts" that the player can go sell.
  - This create a basic game loop where, once the inventory has limits (weight or otherwise) the player fills up their inventory, must go to town and sell stuff off, rinse and repeat. It slows down progression a bit but it's important to throw these obstacles in so players have choices to make even if that choice is "Grab loot for money and run to town, or ignore loot so I can grind."
  - Just because a part starts out as just an item for making money doesn't mean it has to stay this way. You will have a comprehensive set of of potential ingredients for other systems you my add later, an example being alchemy
  - Based on enemies I've run into so far you could add: Slime goop/puddle/residue, Antlion fur, Antlion pincers, Antlion stinger, Goblin ears, Skulls/Bones.
  - Similarly, but not necessarily exclusively, try to keep only enemies that use gear to dropping gear. Devs want their harder enemies, like dragons, to drop rare loot that the player can farm for. Totally understandable, it's fun getting rare drops. However I'll propose an alternative way to accomplish this. Keep up the parts system and add in rare parts that can be crafted into good equipment, or modify equipment to upgrade it.
    - Example: Dragons drop teeth, scales, and potentially fire glands (the rare drop). Scales and teeth can be made into what would already be considered decent gear, but the fire glands can upgrade those armor and weapons into higher stats with fire resistant armor and fire damage dealing weapons
- This also means moving things like herbs to nodes. that the player can gather. I have a feeling you intend to have resource nodes eventually, but if not I'll just say I personally like them, it adds more things for the player to do while out exploring. How I've got it implemented:
  - I created a spawn overlay that I can just paint over an area then set rules to.
    - It contains all relevant spawns for that area
    - It also contains spawn rules like weighting what spawns if I want the area to have rarer nodes or enemies that spawn less frequently
    - Another thing it adds is respawn frequency and caps, so it makes sure to limit the areas total
  - Then set it up that they could randomly spawn in that area so locations change and gives a nice scattered look, filling out the scenery a bit while also serving a purpose.
    - A nice byproduct of this is it make sure the player can't easily sit in a single spot and wait for a node to respawn as the nodes randomly spawn within that area. This is particularly nice for mmos in the event they get a botting issue. It's also just a dash more engaging helping to avoid an idling experience (Idle games are fine, depends on what you're going for).

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