This is primarily meant for the developers of the game as feedback from a fairly new player.
My character is level 60 and believe that i have been in and completed most dungeons. Nonetheless i think it is enough to give some useful feedback and opinions about the game. Mostly I have done pve stuff, since pvp is not all that active on the server im playing on. And the pvp i have done, its mostly being 1 shotted by a level 60 while level 20 or something.
First impressions
As a survival game it does a very good job at sucking you into the game straight away. Except when you join one of the official servers which are old as there are houses all over the place, which ruins the impression. The environment is nice and the tutorial of doing various things is a good way to give the player something to aim for.
Im not really sure if there is a deep story in the game or not, im trying to figure it out and love that you are not guided through it, like go here, then there etc. It encourage exploring which is good.
Combat
As i haven’t done a lot of pvp, this will mainly be for pve.
Combat is quite funny, however I think most enemies could benefit from more different tactics, especially the world bosses are very easy to trick and take down.
Building
I love building in the game and in general it works well. However one thing, I really don’t like is how the building system also in ways encourage you to just build a big box. Which is basically the worse thing about it in my opinion, so understand why people does it. But i think it’s sad that you run around in a very interesting environment and constantly running into sandstone boxes, because people have to lock everything in.
So maybe some more server settings, which would allow the admin to set which workbenches and which boxes can be looted or not. It feels very strange that you have to build a box around your stables, animal pen and wheel of pain.
Fences are a huge problem as well, these should be possible to build on sloped walls as well, as it often seems to end up with people having to build huge walls because of how the environment, might change from one part of the base to the others, but since you can’t build sloped fences the easiest way to protect yourself is to make the wall the same size all around the base.
Another useful thing, would be to add a directional arrow when you build so you can easily see which face is out, as it can be quite difficult to see as it is now, especially if you have to build something above you and it is all white in white due to the sky, clouds etc. So maybe make it an option to be able to turn it on/off and also add an option to change the default color outline from white to whatever you want.
It should be possible to downgrade buildings as well. As it is now, if you build something in blackice, but later regret it, then you can’t easily change it.
In regards to stability of the blocks you ought to half the stability cost of any wedge ceilings, they don’t make sense as it is now.
Also make it possible to make windows or impossible to loot through them, again you have a good building system, but you encourage people to build boring boxes, because of the lack of these things, which is just sad.
Purges
I love the idea of these, but there should be a setting for making them a lot more difficult than they are now. If im not mistaken they are set to 6 as default now. But for PvE it would be fun if these could be set a lot higher and to even control the amount of enemies as well.
Also purges, should use a system where the difficulty is based on an evaluation of the clan/player they are attacking. So that each material, gear, thralls etc. in a giving clan is calculated into how strong the purge is going to be, so not only the area where the purge occur, but all the areas the clan owns. So if you have build a massive castle of blackice and have 40 thralls, lots of legendaries. All of these are included in calculating how strong the purge army is going to be. This might help reduce the amount of buildings people build just to claim land as they will require thralls to help defend against the attack.
Areas
Most of the areas in the game are very interesting, however i think there is a huge lack of interesting things in the jungle dome. Its a beautiful area, but doesn’t really seem to be a lot to do there, compared to the other areas.
Equipment
Personally I think there should be more use for light and medium armor, it doesn’t really seem that there is a lot of benefits from wearing them.
They should impact how well you can climb, how fast you can run, maybe have a reduced stamina use when swinging your weapon or something like that. There should be a balance in regards to horses as well. A person in light armor should slow down a horse less than one in heavy armor.
Also armors in general makes very little sense in regards to temperature. Some are all fur and looks like something you would wear in a cold environment, but give bonus to warm temperature. Then you have some that are basically shorts which gives bonus against cold?
Being able to craft armors for your pets would also be a good idea.
Attributes
This is going to be a bit messy, but hope it makes sense in the end.
Strength
Think there is an issue with shields and just keeping up blocks. It should cost stamina each time you block an attack. And there should be bonuses in the strength tree that reduce the stamina cost of these. And some of the current ones should be moved to the agility tree.
Agility
Especially the last bonus with double jump, should be changed to something else. So double jump is no longer possible. Instead maybe change it, so you get a 10% armor penetration for all attacks. it would then work as an alternative to strength, and maybe move the second one from strength to the agility as well. The double jump in my opinion seem to cause issues with base building, which again encourage people to just build huge boxes, because that is the easiest thing to do.
Accuracy
Haven’t used bow a lot or even specced into them, so have nothing to add here.
Encumbrance
I think this should have an overhaul, most of them doesn’t seem all that useful, except from the very last one, which really need to be changed. As it ruins the idea of pack animals, bearers etc. Running around with 40k stone and 15k wood and thousands of other materials is great, but it ruins to much in regards to gathering materials and having animals with packs etc. Its way to good in that regard.
Maybe make it so encumbrance is good for boosting armor, so it reduce the weight of the armor by 15%, maybe make an armor type work as a level lower. So heavy armor would count as medium and so forth. So for people that want to be more focused on being tanky, would go encumbrance and vitality.
Survival
The last bonus which makes you take 10% reduced damage, seems very bad and can’t see why anyone would go so deep in survival for that.
So I would change this whole attribute tree to be more focused on building in general, so for instant the last benefit you get in the tree could increase crafting speed by 25 or 30% or something. So it will be useful for respeccing to it when you want to build and gather materials.
Thralls, pets and horses
I love the idea of these.
However an option to set how close these should follow you would be great, as it is now you occasionally get stuck in them as they walk so close to you and sometimes on top of you or they block the only way out of a room which makes it very difficult to get passed them.
So making an option for you to walk through them for 2-3 seconds with a 1-2 minute cooldown or something would be helpful for solving this, without it ruining the game or being possible to exploit.
Returning home
It should be possible to set a timer for when an npc will return home. It very annoying when you suddenly run into a bug and have to relog and then when you enter again the horse or thrall have decided to go home.
Suggestion for end game
You should add some areas with some really nasty monsters that will be hard even for very good geared level 60.
Loot
There should be a greater chance of finding weapons etc, except from the world bosses and dungeons. Even if they are poor, it would make it more exciting for new players to find these things, even though they might just be minor upgrades.
Food
These seem to make little sense as well. So you have a stove where you can make some fancy dishes, having to add several ingredients etc. But when you have made them they are low quality…? However if you just throw some easy to catch fish or roasted exotic meat in the fireplace, you get high quality meals? that makes no sense at all. The more complicated the food is to make the higher and better it should be.
Also food ought to work with the thralls and pets as well, so for instant a thrall from level 0 to 10 will be happy getting just gruel and other low quality foods. But if you want to level them to 15 for instant, you would have to give them better food, like medium quality, like the flavored gruel and so forth.
I tried making some of the flavored gruel for my level 19 thrall, which seems to make no sense, in fact it seemed a lot worse than the normal one.
Repairing items
The idea of an item being completely broken so you can’t repair them with a repair kit is really annoying and makes little sense. Maybe just make it so if it completely break, you need 1 repair kit to make it unbroken and then another to repair it. It would still make you care not to waste to many repair kits, but it wouldn’t make it so you have to run back to fix it, when you are in the middle of a dungeon and didn’t notice that your armor were about to break.
Bugs
There seem to be a lot of bugs in the game, especially with the thralls suddenly not wanting to attack as they get stuck in some of the environment or what other reason they might have.
To you suddenly not being able to run anymore etc.
Think that covers most of my impressions with the game so far. All in all, I think it is a very good game and could add a lot more suggestions. But will stop here.