Current patch feedback

[Dethcord]

I decided to share some feedback and breathe some life into this part of the forum.
I've been playing exanima as soon as it's been possible, where there were only 3 or 4 levels IIRC, coming back once in a while to run the game through with newer patches. So my last runs were before crossroads were implemented.

Since this time the game improved massively. I didn't get into details much, but it seems like AI and combat feel better now, the new encrumbrance system actually makes encrumbered character feel like a walking tin can that barely moves and so on.

Lore and atmosphere
+New levels and lore in them create an even better atmosphere, giving the game some Lovecraftian vibes that I like alot.
Devs do a very good job at telling the story without actually telling the story (as through dialogues or obvious stating), which brings exploration aspect of the game even further as at times you feel like a part-time detective making your own assumptions on what's been happening inside this dungeon in the past. This evolved into pretty much creating the game's community, so people now make share assumptions on the game's lore.
Game's visuals seem to be better than they used to be in the past which makes the game even more immersive. Improved animations help alot in this regard aswell. And a "cherry on the cake" for me personally is the diviner's deck. I've even stole one of the cards to use as my telegram avatar. And my discord posts about making it a physical diviners' deck to buy as merch were not a joke. This thing kinda completes the dark and occult vibe that the game has.
-The downside in this regard is probably early levels don't quite match the atmosphere of the later ones. It's probably due to different lighting or different shaders used, not sure, but at times earlier levels look way less detailed. Not even in different props and objects, but big things like floor and/or walls. Maybe some lighting work and decals on the walls/floor could help, not sure.

Combat
+Shields now feel good, they're not broken as they were before. Shielded enemies seem easier to defeat now and shields are still a viable option both for story mode and arena. New animations and combat flow feels way better than it used to be, somehow it just feel much more natural for me personally, even if I can't pinpoint what changes were exactly made. New encumbrance system is good, atleast I feel that it kinda matters now. New sir is now stronger than a skeleton, which is also a plus.
-What I personally dislike tho is that big twohanders are still the way to go in story mode, as it doesn't feel quite like they're uncomfortable to use in tight rooms and corridors. It's felt especially well on lvl 5 where golems can be quite a threat, but if you're armed with a twohander you can bash away while remaining in almost complete safety.
Also, this time I decided to go with dual wielding slashing weapons, and I noticed that everything armored is a hard target to beat for slashing weapons, while crushing ones annhilate pretty much everything with equal ease. Plus, dual wielding anything is almost equal to fighting with a shield from my experience, since you have no way to perform double attacks or any other maneuvers, maybe like swinging with your left sword before your right swing is complete or something of sorts. To put simple: I think that fighting with 1h/shield, dual wield and 2h weapons whould differ more, but I know that titanic amout of work it would require to make any specialised moves for every type.

Visuals
+Simply put, everything new in the game looks great and atmospheric. New monsters look cool and threatening and they behave just like you expect from their looks, new items look fashionable and cool as hell, blue BM set being my favorite by far, new maps look good, at the same time telling the story well.
-Early levels now look bland in comparsion to the new ones.

Items
+New 1h sword looks quite well, and the idea behind it is interesting, new armor sets look amazing and differ in their "heavyness" which is nice so you can make a choice if you want to go heavier or lighter armor, etc.
-New unique 1h blade seems quite underwhelming at fighting anything remotely armored, while the shiny murder mace is good against everything, and it require different crystals which are plenty to be found and are easily obtainable. New items of dagger and sword type (the ones I was looking at the most) don't bring nothing new, they're pretty much just a raw power increase and that's it. Atleast they look cool. The new set at lvl 5 seems way too good for me personally and the new encrumbrance system while it seems good atm, when leveled to lvl 3 just removes encrumbrance completely no matter what set you're wearing, so the new fancy set from lvl 5 is the set to go every single time, and it's not even located in the hardest place currently in the game, even more, it's basically free access to take. I know this type of balancing is not something to complain about in exanima, but for the time being it would be nice to have different "best options" to pick depending on your playstyle. Like for example - a set of armor with a big spaulder on the left/right shoulder respectively which would fit more into more defencive/offencive type of play respectively. And even if there is the best set to go at all times, it'd be nice to have it either hidden better with subtle hints around the level to find it, or it should be protected by something big and scary.

Traumaturgy
+Happy to see the mind tree finished, as it's probably the hardest one to finish, taking into consideration all the AI fiddling it requires. But now when this system is done, it's pretty much the basis for making future trees like force and others, which is very promising, and I think community can expect more frequent updates on this part. As when you have your engine done, making things like "force push" should be piss easy to make. Even if unfinished and kinda unbalanced for exanima (everyone sees that playing with a horde of undead by your side is pretty much playing on cruise control), it's still very interesting.
-Why is crouch and spell use bound to the same button by deafult?

UI/UX
+New traumaturgy menu looks well, interesting, modern and fits well into exanima.
-Hp/"mana" bars, meny, inventory windows, cursors and basically everything else looks dated, obviously.

Not quite game-related - community management
- - - It's clearly evident that exanima community grows constantly, but even tho exanima has very lively discord, the main site, twitter and all other platform seem half dead. While discord is a very good platform for community to develop, it makes a very bad landing page. IMHO exanima should have a proper landing page with nice visuals, all the latest patch info, some feed with community made masterpieces (like this wrestling video from YT, coffee diaries (which are great) and so on. Maybe there is an option to release weekly/monthly content pills like guys developing Fractured currently do. Small things like "here is a sword we made", "here is a wonky testing stuff with an older AI version", etc. All of the above will make people think that the game is alive and is being developed, since even many backers from kickstarter think that Madoc & the boys stole all the bux and flew to mars instead of developing the game or something.

Misc. whining/"IWANNA"
1). For a game that's so reliant on physics interativity seems to be lacking. By this I mean that it's possible to make the game have more situations and places where player can used the map to his advantage. For example, imagine a pile of logs that's held together by a rope of some kind. So you can cut it to release the ropes and make the logs crash into foes. On early levels you can push foes into burning cages, on later levels you can push them into holes, but for now you pretty much have to do so with your own bodyweight, with no tools to help you.
2). As Derrin is our human companion it would be nice to be able to tell him to go back/attack, etc. Maybe it would prevent him from jumping into various holes.
3). All the weapons are too much alike. Armor too, but much less so. I know that's currently being addressed.

Sorry for all the typos in advance.

 

[Broface]

Hello! I saw some points on here that caught my eye, I’ll list them here!
Spoiler Warning for late game content!

1. Mind Thaumaturgy
I have noticed that when using

Spoiler

command dead, there are bugs related to how your undead companions react with each other, and the effects they have on your blue bar. While running around trying to gang up on Sir, my companions would become hostile towards each other at the slightest provocation, forcing me to use calm on all three of them, pretty taxing when 3 bone boys are taking up so much space in my blue bar. Also, after they expired after my seemingly futile attempt at taking on that beast, the darker blue part of my blue bar was still being taken up as if I was still controlling them. Experimenting with command dead again, I resurrected my former bone homie, and with dismay, witnessed it take another chunk off my bar for continuous use. I had continuity 3 and sustain, if that matters.

this might also be intended, as I did not stick around for fear of being stomped on my Sir all by my lonesome.
2. Derrin
I have also had various issues with Derrin jumping off cliffs/ into holes. Lost a fair bit of progress mid game because of his suicidal tendencies and my unwillingness to continue without my friend.
3. Landing page
As I am VERY inexperienced in forums, I was happy to have a good experience with a moderator within 20 minutes of my first post on here. However, I do agree that discord does not make a very good place for people like me to experience the “landing page” side of game development.
Cheers, and shoutout to Parco for good moderation-ing!
(P.S.- let me know if even this response is inappropriately placed and needs to me moved to its own area, I just want to be a good forum boy)

 

[Gsprfdude]

I'd agree with you on your feedback, I feel its all well written. I'm having a few problems of my own though outside of what you mentioned.

Main thing is that there are basically 4 enemies in this new level and sewer. Ghoul-thing, Bigger Ghoul, Hungry Ghoul, and Giga-Ghoul. None of these are really problematic on their own, but they all use a style of combat very similar to Sir. They are all obviously weaker than Sir but numbers are their strength and even when I've used the ability that continuously hides my mind I get detected very easily. This really comes to a head in the bulk of level 7 as they seem to notice you too easily and then I get jumped by a bunch of them. If I have my count right I walked into an open plaza area and 5 big ghouls and a giga-ghoul came out of the shadows and alcoves to push my shit in.

Issue is that they use the Sir combat style. So they'll all repeatedly use large left and right sweeps to knock you over (which to be fair seems random as I've seen ghouls trip on their own feet in a blank room) and then they will proceed to do 2 or 3 slam attacks on you as you stand up, if you even manage to get up. When you have 1 ghoul doing this its survivable, though still very punishing, if its 3+ big ghouls giving you the a-town stomp while you're stuck prone on the ground it feels pretty cheap. I know its reasonable that since these things are monsters they probably wouldn't let up on someone when they're stuck on the ground but there's no guarantee it wouldn't happen even to an experienced player since their claws have a way of going around weapons or shields.

As it is now it's a bit of a death sentence if you can't properly backpedal while being mobbed by these guys, one of them will usually get a swipe in that goes around my shield or sword and flips me over, his two friends proceed to join the ghoul in beating me while I'm down, I go unconscious, and then they linger around my body to knock me out again when I wake up, rinse and repeat and dead.

Idk. Not really mad or anything but I hope either their behavior gets changed or their numbers get adjusted in level 7, cause right now it's very frustrating in some areas. Essentially feels like I'm playing against the game rather than the monsters.

 

[dentistguba]

The Ghouls might feel more fair if thew weren't so friendly towards each other, their fighting style looks like blind rage so would make sense if infighting could be triggered, maybe the Fael could scare away the small ones too. I did manage to cheese a whole pack through a waist high hole in a wall with two hander thrusts haha.

Also didn't seem like mind powers work on ghouls, fair enough to have some enemies have 'guarded' minds but would be good to have a skill to counter that (could make a Thaum only build more practical).

 

[Gsprfdude]

The Ghouls might feel more fair if thew weren't so friendly towards each other, their fighting style looks like blind rage so would make sense if infighting could be triggered, maybe the Fael could scare away the small ones too. I did manage to cheese a whole pack through a waist high hole in a wall with two hander thrusts haha.

Also didn't seem like mind powers work on ghouls, fair enough to have some enemies have 'guarded' minds but would be good to have a skill to counter that (could make a Thaum only build more practical).

They do luckily manage to swipe eachother, Fael's especially hit smaller ghouls because of their long arms. Still its a bit much for me to deal with personally.

 

[Bluhman]

I feel like the ghouls show a nice degree of enemy variety challenges at this point. The previous area was loaded with extremely long-ranged, high-armor golems that were tough. Now it's inverted into extremely close-ranged, low-armor demons that are tough. Perhaps the most reliable way to force one off that's in point-blank is with thrusts.

Thaumaturgy UI kind of confused me when I first started creating a character. I click a circle, it lights up, ok what does that mean? This is just feedback from a player that first started playing right now by the way, so take that with a grain of salt. I'd say a bigger concern is how you can get stuck in skill layouts where you might have capacity to learn new thaumaturgy, but then not have any new valid thaumaturgy powers to learn from there and then you're just stuck with a blue-plus-symbol constantly flashing next to your concentration bar.

I find it funny to introduce the thaumaturgy mechanic, only to then also introduce a new area populated exclusively with thaumaturgy-immune enemies. Seems likely that non-mind thaumaturgy can be effective, but right now there isn't much alternatives to dealing with demonspawn aside from using sword-and-board - it really feels like the most effective combination for range, point-blank defenses, and slashing damage.

The latest map is gorgeous. I love the verticality on it, gives a nice feeling of space versus all the tight confines I was stuck in in the first half. That said I've had some balancing/camera position issues with it, and also some apparent frame drops because of the sheer amount of map that can be visible at once. As for camera issues, might want to consider hiding some higher-elevation structures if it's in the way of the player character - the stone bridge when you're on the lower level, for example, gets super in the way of the camera. I'd expect it to fade out when it blocks my view. Enemies also seem liable to fall off the map often here and there's some staircases and platforms over cave-entrances where both my character and enemies have a really hard time walking and navigating.

Also the final puzzle to get into the next castle area is rude as hell. Don't know if it was intentionally engineered like this currently just to dissuade reaching the 'end' of the current content a bit harder, but having

Spoiler

a bridge-crossing physics puzzle where the penalty for your character's balance failing is losing all your progress over the last 3-4 areas

is pretty insane expectations to pile on the player. Hopefully something gets added to make the consequences a bit less in the future... Like more floor so that you can at least survive the fall maybe.

Overall, really like it, great first-impression for a new player.

 

[Ganthor]

Just adding this here because it's not enough to warrant it's own thread:


Loyalty is kinda broken. You can basically just turn any enemy (that loyalty works on) into an ally, strip them naked, steal their weapon, then slaughter them. I think as you remove ally's equipment they should start to distrust you and they should trust you more when you equip them with items (That way they don't distrust you just for giving them a better set of armor, which would remove the old set). Maybe this could be worked around still using trust, just remove a couple items, use trust, remove their weapon, use trust, etc. That would make it feel more like a feature and not an exploit. And it should be determined by what they are wielding, not what's in their inventory. They should still distrust you if even if you're taking their sword and putting it in their inventory. Maybe as your Loyalty skill increases they will trust you more and eventually you can just do the strip exploit without consequence because you're a skilled enough mage.