Feedback on new testlive patch

Some of that is reheated and rewritten from different topics. All been polished and updated tho, no copy+paste here.

PERKS:
Strength
10 - Thuggery
20 - Salting the wound
30 - Rage - +5% damage in heavy armor, +10% damage in medium armor, +15% damage in light armor
40 - Brutal strikes
50 - Blood-mad Berserker
Only change I would make is moving slice and dice into grit, in its place = the less armor the more damage.

Agility
10 - Iron Endurance - as it is
20 - Effortless leap
30 - Nimble Tumbler
40 - Artful dodger
50 - Extended Leap
Keep similar bonuses to a single attribute - in this case jumps and dodges. If such bonuses are spread out then one won’t be able to use them efficiently without loosing too much attribute points.

Vitality
10 - Deep breath
20 - Healing items last 50% longer
30 - Deflection
40 - Bronzed Physique
50 - Healing items give 30% more hp
Keep vitality simple and focused - more hp, better heals. (20x+50x=current 40X-5% (added xs and Xs so you dont pick on that equation :smiley: )

Accuracy
10 - Steady hands
20 - Trick shot
30 - Eye for Injury
40 - Power Shot - +25% damage to heavy shot
50 - Shafted
Archery is for wimps.

Grit
10 - Strong grip
20 - Barbaric Tenacity
30 - Slice and Dice - and on top of it +10% damage to quick shot
40 - Fluid Swings
50 - Sprinting consumes 75% less stamina
Favoring movement and quick attacks. All in 1 stat line.

Encumberance
10 - Balance and Counterbalance
20 - Sure-footed
30 - Falling damage is halved
40 - Hard worker
50 - Momentum
Encumberance gets universal bonuses early on and favors gathering at higher levels.

Survival
10 - Imprevious
20 - Conservation - all spoil durations are doubled
30 - Raw and Bloody + Efficient Butchery
40 - Gluttonous Gains
50 - Antidote of one
Early gives bonuses to surviving temperatures and general quality of life improvements. Later boosts defence.

ARMOR:
I really like how the standard armors work out now. I don’t like how powerfull (armor-wise) the EPIC armors are.
It would be better to lower stat gain (magical property) on standard armors to +2/3/4 (normal/exceptional/flawless) while lowering epic armors down to be only slightly better in armor (basic armor property) but increasing attribute gains to the current +5/+7/+9. Agility top +100 armor is nothing on 800-900ar heavies otherwise.
Crafting standard armors should require lining and 1-2 additional ingredients to keep them easy to repair with the ingredients themselves.
All epic armors should require basic armor, epic lining, 1 rare ingredient and 1 additional standard ingredient. The base set requiring alone makes is very hard to repair using anything but the repair kits.
Armors should focus on a single attribute. It is easier to comprehend, memorise and play around with to customize to players desire. (silent legion might be excused for the sheer power of attribute gain).

WEAPONS:
Bring the tiers closer together. Even the smallest upgrade is an upgrade and players will go for maxed equipment anyway. Iron needs to be no more than half as bad as top tier.
If a tier is better than the other then keep it across weapon types - it is confusing as hell that different weapons are affected by different tiers differently. Make different top materials excell in different fields (damage, armor penetration, durability)
Star metal is super rare and hard to obtain, it should have the best craftable stats (unless you plan on giving them ability to banish/extra damage vs Man-serpents :wink: ).

Spear
Heavy opener needs a windup time similar to sword, have hyper armor and slightly more range.
2nd and 3rd strikes are fine as they are without hyper armor.
Heavy finisher needs hyper armor.
Light opener is fine the way it is.
2nd strike almost always miss, you need to be super close negating spears range or you will be hit by unstaggered enemy before landing 3rd hit. Increase range or speed here.
3rd strike and light finishers are ok. Light finisher does not require hyper armor for what range and cover it offers.

Sword
Heavy opener needs to be slightly faster in excange for some range. Also hyper armor needs to apply here.
2nd and 3rd strikes are fine, finisher needs hyper armor.
Light strikes are good enough here including finisher and dont require hyper armor.

Axe
Heavy opener always had and needs hyper armor.
2nd, 3rd and finisher dont need hyper - those are really fast.
Light opener needs either speed or range. Rest of the light combo is ok and doesn’t need hyper armor.

Daggers
These are good the way they are - fast, nimble and no hyper armor at all.

Hammer
All heavy attacks need hyper armor, no hyper armor on baiting phase (hyper initiaded as soon as heavy swing starts tho).
Light opener, 2nd and 3rd strike are good without hyper, light finisher needs it tho.

Greatsword
Heavy opener and finisher need hyper, 2nd and 3rd swings dont.
2nd and 3rd light are ok, finisher needs hyper armor.
Light opener… pls pls pls avoid the “almost cutting my head off but ah ha I am striking you instead!” beginning of this animation. Either speed it up, give it range, hyper armor, wipe the overhead swing part or change the animation entirely to a quick stab (last one is probably only a wet fencer dream I’m going to assume).

Mace
All heavies need hyper armor.
Lights are good without hyper.

UPGRADES
Need to be % based instead of hard value (like weigth, stamina reduction are currently)

DODGES
Making everyone use same ammount of stamina for rolling almost negates the use of grit. Costs here need to be higher but not % based. Make heavy armor dodge almost like medium now and improve the medium a bit. Focus on recovery time from roll as a penalty rather than making them unusable (in heavy armor you strafe without sprint faster than the actual dodge).

THRALLS
Make them loose everything including weapons after conversion. Make them drop only equipment and food after killed before conversion. And generally human NPCs need some buffing damage wise. Combat needs to be fast, fluent and deadly - don’t let it feel like a grind straight away.

Did alot of combat, both PvP and PvE, since the new-new combat system.

Before changes both spear and sword were dominant. But the combat itself using them was super fun. I really, really enjoyed fighting, duels and murdering. It is gone now. PvP is non-existent versus anyone who has minimal experience in it:

  • I strafe walking away, you can’t hit me most of the times (minor, lucky exceptions).
  • I sprint strafing away, you will never hit me.
  • I initiate roll anytime, anywhere (very few exceptions on moves I never use currently) and I get a “get out of jail free” card.
  • I dont stand still like an idiot in epic heavy armor and use exotic feast with 40 vit - you won’t kill me, ever.
  • I run away - you won’t catch me becouse I recover almost full stamina during a fall that barely takes any of my hp.
  • I do an attack that has a longer animation - I recover stamina even before I straighten back up.

Player damage in compare to armor is now fine but:

What needs to be done:

  • remove hyper armor completely from humanoid weapons
  • all strikes need to be faster with longer recovery time
  • some attacks don’t allow for rolling away straight after using them (heavy spear finisher f.e.) all attacks need this mechanic
  • stamina regen timer should trigger after the attack is done not on the beginning of it
  • stamina regen starts faster now which is good (previously was too late) but regenerates way too much (I run with 0 grit build and never have any stamina issues) this can easily get halved
  • same thing with healing items (and I already proposed how to change 40 vit perk additionally) healing ammount for potions/feasts can easily get halved (and healing ammount for certain items needs another look - yes I am mainly looking at exotic feast)
  • epic armor gives too much of an advantage (it essentially gives you 40 agility perk)
  • most attacks need more range (even if it will have to be phantom for now, better this than the silly range)
  • shield break moves need to last longer on the shieldbearer to allow capitalising on its success
  • every AI enemy in the game needs AT LEAST doubling their damage power
  • animal power attacks need less windup time (same issue as weapons now - seriously even animals will try to not let you know they are about to attack)
  • larger animals need to attack only when having target in front (along with faster power attacks, or just faster turning) to avoid this:

TL:DR
The combat needs to be quicker and far, far deadlier. You either make a game that takes time and practice to master and players joining in for a challenge and to prove themselves, or you make a game that a decent player can finish within a single day and regret spending money on. Currently on testlive even on x1 xp and x1 harvest it takes about 12-16h to reach max lvl, finish all dungeons and kill all meaningful bosses solo.