Reply To: World Map Update( 29/02/2016).Discussion

[spidaminkey]

Usually a lurker but I love this game so much I wanted to give my 2 cents…

• When taking a contract I wish I could toggle the contract dialogue to view the map. When I take my first couple of contracts I’m not 100% familiar with the map so I may agree to a contract that’s cross country. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it would certainly help at the start of the game and not break immersion.
• Cities for factions are very spread out and not grouped. Not sure if this is intended but I would figure a particular faction would occupy one area of the map, rather than being scattered out across it. It makes picking a faction to work for easier and could possibly lead to some cool future mechanics. For example, becoming friendly with Faction A and unfriendly with Faction B may make the fog of war appear on Faction B’s land.
• Adjusting the height levels during a battle does not adjust the tree height. Rotating the map helps sometimes but a battle in the forest makes it very hard to gauge where paths are.
• Read a lot of discussion on stats gained from leveling. Is it true mercenaries with lower character traits, such as Gravedigger or Tailor, will have a lower ceiling than mercenaries with high character traits, such as Retired Soldier? If so, I think this is a bad idea. Why couldn’t the tailor become a better soldier than the retired soldier? A tailor could be a great fighter but he chose to live his life a tailor. A soldier could be a terrible fighter that simply had no options in life other than joining the army. Let each brother decide their own fate through battles and RNG! :)
• Along similar lines, I read people complaining about the randomness of stat distribution. Not all mercenary groups are started with their best leaders. Sometimes the best member of a group is someone who joined in the middle of the group’s history. The founding members just happened to survive the last battle with their old comrades. That doesn’t mean they’re any better than the dead they left behind :)
• Lastly, I saw someone mention the unknown difficulty of contracts when signing up for them. I love how the player is forced to determine difficult enemies based on equipment and appearance rather than some stats that show up. In order to keep this same level of immersion, maybe in the contract reference some equipment the enemies had. “A group of bandits in mail…”, “Bandits slayed peasants with bolts…” If there were no survivors or witnesses of bandit attack, that may prove the enemy is quite difficult. Just some ideas that I think are better than simply color coding contracts based on difficulty or some other cheap trick.

And that’s all I can think of for now. Thank you very much for making such an amazing game. I cannot wait to see what comes next!