Feedback Feedback on return to Drakensang

Hi guys,
A while ago when I decided to give Drakensang a break for other RPGs I gave quite a long list of feedback and possible improvements. Now that I have more points of comparison with other games (the good, the bad, etc.) and after seeing how the game has evolved while playing over the past month and a half I figure I'd do the same thing.
This is my point of view, so anyone can feel free to agree or disagree with me. I will try to be as impartial as possible.

Some mentions:
- My main character is a spellweaver and it's the only character I have played with significantly. Can't say anything about the other classes.
- I don't play PVP and I don't intend to start playing PVP. It's frustrating and an extremely rude environment from me, so I wish to avoid the toxicity of it! Just not for me. (not a plus, not a minus, just my approach to the game)

So let's go with the things I like:
1. Events are what make Drakensang interesting - without events this game would be very repetitive and boring. If there is something to focus on here, I believe it's the events. Why?
+ They give timeframe-wise limited content, hence even though there is repetitiveness in grinding for progress, this is for a short period of time. So players will try to take the best out of them and it's much more enjoyable than the endless rounds in farming in the parallel world.
+ The rewards are indeed great and give the players a sense of closure and accomplishment, while also keeping things fair and outside the hands of the RNG gods. You put work in it while having fun, you get rewarded! Big plus here!
+ I can intuitively imagine they take less time to implement and create kind of a pool you can then cycle through and reuse. You don't need as much content as for a completely new set of maps, you can pretty much reuse a lot of things you already have in the game engine so... it's also time well invested for you guys.

2. Speaking of the parallel world, I see you guys finally decided to add levels of difficulty to it. Couldn't have been happier. This both gives the players a challenge as well as the potential of getting even better loot. This also applies to events - you have a powerful character, you can swim through it faster, but it's then do-able for newer characters to start incrementally benefiting from the rewards.
I am still not convinced of the drop being improved, and I actually started a spreadsheet to run some feasible statistics and come up with the results. Now I can do both mode 1 and mode 2 so I am experimenting with Q1 and Q3 drops. Until I have some relevant data there is no point in making assumptions so that's feedback to follow.

3. Also for the parallel world, I found it extremely fun with my Steam Mechanicus (new character low level). It gives an alternative to grow without having to churn through the boring and slow quests - providing good drops and a means of growing and accommodating with the character farm-style. Because it's an alternative, it only adds to the fun. The drop of course is also improved so it's easier for me to setup my character properly while also having a challenge...

4. Good job on removing the drop of items higher than the character level - no more block characters benefiting from level 50 parties. That was annoying and it brings no value outside PVP anyway. I don't play PVP so nothing to add there.

5. Let's talk a bit new skill system pluses (I am going to focus on the Spellweaver as it's the only character I have).
- Being able to put points into various upgrades onto skills is certainly a big plus. There is still plenty of room to further develop on this and I hope we end up seeing even more possible alternatives with more upgrades.
- Level 45 Frozen Sphere skill for SW is great! Finally we get some crowd control in PVE via a mana spender that requires some skill to use. Because it's passing through enemies you have to do quite some positioning and sometimes choose your aim carefully (maybe even take advantage of the environment, such as slamming into a nearby wall). Very happy with it and very satisfying to master it.
- You added some very very interesting upgrades to skills that give incredible synergy. Here I can include:
-- Destruction reduction of cooldown based on the number of enemies hit
-- Singularity reduction of cooldown while sitting in it - makes for very interesting plays and requires some skill. Do you put the singularity on the group of monsters and stay next to it or far away, or do you simply stay far away and put it on yourself to benefit from this effect? Very many situations and I must say this is great.
-- The spam of Frozen Sphere possible with large groups of monsters via the mana regeneration - nothing more satisfying than spamming it into Q1 Ritual Circle. Adds a unique twist to the skill and requires good positioning. I use it in alternate with Lightning Strike and I've been very happy with the results (Frozen for groups, Strike for singular bosses).
-- Guardian with no cost is a great addition as running out of mana is a real possibility. Overall I think all Guardian upgrades allow spellweavers to somehow tank, even though you can't pull it off that efficiently on bosses who are immune to the taunt (maybe it's better this way).
-- Magic Missile gives the option to regenerate life if you must - finally Spellweavers can heal up a bit if they choose to.
-- Mana regen via Frost Wind - again very synergistic with groups of enemies and gives quite a bit of crowd control.
-- Regenerating mana with Teleport is just icing on the cake. Don't know what I would do without this (allowing me to spam Lightning Strike big-time!).
-- I'm glad you left the no-cooldowns for one second on Mind Control. I think it requires some skill to be able to quickly sequence your skills to take advantage of it but the reward is great. Took me a bit to pull off the "infinite singularity/guardian" combo, and it finally lets Spellweavers take care of themselves without requiring constant babysitting from a tank.

6. Finally reworking some sets and adding new alternatives for even more builds. I am glad to see unique effects on sets such as New Karabossa, Darkness Armor, Untouchables, Parallel World and others. Again, I am not debating here the usefulness of these sets but the importance of unique effects and synergy with specific skills (which is very healthy because it encourages players to diversify). Great direction, keep it up with respect to this!

7. Finally you no longer need a special map to go visit the Gnob - that was pointless seeing as how Drakens are hard to obtain anyway and having to fish for a map via specific quests only created frustrations with respect to this.

8. New crafting system finally adds some predictability. Now I haven't played with it in depth and I am not a heavy top player, so I am sure there is still room to improve and more experienced players will definitely share that with you. But for me it at least makes more sense now rather than the whole "random-stats-out-of-nowhere" approach. Thumbs up!

9. New wisdom tree is great! It rewards experienced players who got the chance to upgrade in wisdom (or oh well, heavy payers, I am okay with that). It also gives the option to spend in so many alternatives.
The abilities, I think everyone is up to use Behemoth and I personally enjoy Mana Crystal (another means to up my mana pool is just great!).
And finally everyone can take advantage of their mounts without having to wait for weeks to d so.

10. The new daily quests give great rewards and require quite a bit of work. That's nice!

11. Yay on new Grimmag Starry Robe (my top favorite item). Will be hard to get, but I certainly love the fact that I can now get a level 50 one without having to upgrade my level 35 from Sigri.

And now to go a bit on the to-improve part...
1. There are still some skills that are close to useless for me (again, PVE player).
- I see no point to use Ice Missile as it is incredibly underpowered.
- Fireball is net inferior to both Lightning Strike and Frozen Sphere (again, I might be missing something here) because it neither has the damage of the Strike or the spam potential of Frozen Sphere.
- I don't use Destruction or Meteor anymore, but simply because I prefer to spam Frozen Sphere or Lightning Strike (the latter has more synergy with certain sets - ahem, for instance the new Bearach set, while Frozen Sphere has spam potential and no cooldown).
- Chain Lightning still feels incredibly underpowered and I prefer to use it strictly to electrify enemies, though because it increases the potential of me messing up my combos I've stopped using it in favor of Magic Missile.

2. There are skill upgrades which I feel are close to useless in PVE.
- Frost Nova [Ice Age] - 80% is so little damage there's no point in investing a full 5 POINTS in it. Too expensive for the effect.
- Teleport [Aftermath] - Increased movement speed ain't that effective and for 1 second boost it's really not worth it. I can imagine this is more useful in PVP...
- Lightning Strike [Shock Charge] - Again, humour me, but I fail to see the value of it for 5 POINTS. Taunting is much more efficient (didn't try this on bosses though, I admit).
- Singularity [Distorted Reality] - Using this more as an utilitary tool that damage output, I can't see the point in investing a full 3 POINTS in so little damage. I understand though that the skill is incredibly useful already as it is, so maybe it's better this way - In all fairness I would make this one cost 2, and make [Alignment] cost 3.

3. Speaking of the new wisdom tree... Don't see much value for Mobile Fortress and maybe some people use the Cyanite Shield though I haven't seen anyone get enveloped in it since I rejoined the game. Maybe it's because most wizards I see now are two-handed or use a book for critical hit value. Really don't see the point of using an Orb right now - maybe because there are no interesting unique orbs and because the guardian does all the tanking for me.

4. On the daily quests I have two remarks:
- Since I am not a PVP player, I really don't want to forced to play PVP to get the chance to obtain those great Golden Clovers. Call me picky, but since the decision to not let PVP interfere with PVE-players only (reason why you keep the Fame-Tree skills separate from PVE), I am kind of expecting it in the direction of daily quests as well.
- For the second tree in daily quests, you are never able to choose alternatives on the first quest. I expect this is a bug and not something expected - it forced me to defeat some Full Moon boss on the last day of the event, and I could not replace it with the classical "Defeat 5 worthy Leaders" option.

5. Let's talk a bit about unique items and sets. While I enjoy what has been done here, the directions of improvement in the direction.

- For diversity, I think the sets are starting to exclude each other quite significantly. While this is of course part of the decision of the players to pick a set or another, part-sets can be fun and bring some interesting builds as well.
To give an example, while I am probably one of the few players who found the new Wolf Slayer book and weapon an improvement, I could get no benefit from the set without getting rid of the Witch Hunter set (ain't gonna happen!).
An alternative to this would be to give incremental bonuses depending on the number of set items one equips, like you did with the Roshan for instance. While the full Roshan set and full Twin Queen set exclude each-other (because of the boots), it is possible to do a full Twin Queen with Roshan belt & gloves (+500 health) or the other way around (+200 critical hit chance). Similarly Twin Queen and Dragan set can be combined by stripping the Cloak from one of them.

- The tier system is great and I think it could be a successful de-facto for other non-event uniques. You know people have been complaining a lot about the drop rate of uniques - well, if you up it a little and instead of giving the maximum tier unique you make it a 3 tiers system it will still require heavy farming while also giving the possibility to more players to benefit from them. (here I definitely include the Roshan which in 3 years I still haven't completed...)
Now I know some have said that the uniques should be really rare so that players can truly benefit from them, but increasing the drop rate gives more users the chance to benefit from them. To give an example, I got up to 5 old Vargulf uniques in the last Full Moon event and I can tell you I enjoyed every single one of them. Sure, they weren't that useful, but seeing a unique every now and then still felt better to me, than seeing one every other month, which is truly frustrating especially when you are farming big time...

I am definitely including the cube uniques here which are close to non-existent for me, and fully non-existent for my boyfriend, who for instance, ever since cubes were introduced in the game got ZERO uniques. It's a matter of luck, I get it, but the drop rate is so small it leaves too much in the hands of the RNG gods. Funny thing is that he even farms more than me and opened much more cubes than me.

- Speaking of ridiculous drop rate, I see Gorga drops a gazillion of Atlantis set uniques. I also noticed this on the new Splendid Durian set. This kind of also comes in contradiction with the statement "unique items should feel really unique". Maybe someone can explain this decision better, because right now the contradiction is quite disappointing and a bit frustrating.

6. The new "New Moon" event was incredibly grindy and slow and I stopped playing it after a few runs. The drop rate and tempo was just too underwhelming. Full Moon didn't have this problem for instance. I totally get that events should be difficult, and I support that, but difficult and grindy are two different concepts - I am up for difficult, not that happy with extreme grinding.

7. The Gold Premium package is not something I will invest in anytime soon. The rewards are not that significant as compared to the regular Premium.
And on the same subject, I was extremely disappointed on the adjustments you made to the cubes. Back in the old days when they were introduced I actually dropped a significant number every parallel world run. Now I am lucky if I see ONE cube every other run, rarely TWO.
This leads me to believe that you took the drop rate from regular premium and moved it to the Gold Premium. With the cost having been upped in the meantime for Regular Premium, it really feels like you took from the package rather than add above it for the other Premium. Not very nice.
As for the contents of the cube... dear lord! I opened 57 cubes that I had gathered thorough my journey from level 47 to level 50 and guess what? I got ZERO Legendary items out of them. Bad luck? Maybe, but with such a large pool statistics start to kick in to show a trend. The trend was horrific!
I think this is the point I am mostly disappointed with ever since I rejoined and made me feel ripped off a bit.
Uniques in cubes? I am almost certain I can say bye-bye to that pretty wand that actually had some interesting potential in my builds.

8. More premium uniques? The current ones are pretty neat though severely underwhelming and unadjusted to the new level 50 world. I hope there is work being done in this department in the future too.

9. The full focus on two handed spellweavers shows a skew - this is expected of course since in most RPGs one "best build" will arise. However, I think a reason for this is the lack of attack speed on the Frozen Sphere. This means attack speed is no longer that prioritary, so two-handed staves are of course simply better. I know some people will hate me for saying this, but I think introducing an attack speed factor in the Frozen Sphere would balance the situation out

10. Minimap indicators on legendaries and uniques would be great. You have no idea how paranoid I am on uniques or legendaries dropping in groups when I am not around and missing them. Doesn't seem like something complicated to implement (you did it with the bosses on some maps and with the position of the players) and would definitely help players out a lot in the usability chapter!

11. Parallel world bosses killed next to exit arrows are frustrating - I missed my loot a few times because of misclicks, and it's really easy to miss!!!
How to improve this? Either move the arrow in an area where the boss will never go or add a confirmation message (possibly with check that there is still loot in the map that needs to be taken or at least the treasure chest). Would really help players a lot!

12. The Mind Control-Singularity bug is annoying me big time. It breaks my combo unexpectedly and leads to me dying almost every time it happens. In case it's an unknown bug, basically sometimes when I Mind Control then immediately Singularity (to avoid triggering cooldown), it puts the vortex, and a second later it's gone. Please do something about this!

13. Alternative trees for skill bonuses could be complemented with alternative hotkey selection for skills as well - using a different skill tree usually involves changing skills as well.

14. I noticed an idea somewhere of an option to auto-identify items (based on a user setting) when they are picked up. I fully support this with the proper priority of course (when there's time for such small improvements).

15. Oh yeah, I forgot how annoying it is to fish for health potions and having to rely on health globes for healing. The price of it is absurd (as it cannot be bought with normal gold and requires andermant). While I can understand the "price to pay" for various items, I think the potion is something so elementary that should be affordable with non-andermant.
If you truly want to give an extra advantage to payers, make a separate type of potion more powerful and allow buying only that one with andermant. That should still give an incentive to players who really want to pay to get the better up-tier variant.


And that's about it for now. Thanks for being patient enough to read all this.
Cheers!

 

I like a lot of what you wrote, so I won't comment on most of it.

Unless you are extremely lucky, you will probably be able to farm the 10m gops to upgrade the level 35 robe to level 50 before you get a Tier 3 robe. Also, the new robe has less armor. And unless the new sets released while I was on hiatus for a few months have a lot of +mana stats, the new robe will give you less mana overall than the old one if it's upgraded.

Also probably a bug... the new robe on Tier 2 has no gem slots.

If you take the talent for resetting destructor beam through mobs, you can round up huge mobs and just mow them down. The talent's a bit buggy, but not the end of the world.

As for meteor, well, I never liked it, so nothing good to say. xD

I haven't checked since I came back to the game, but it used to cost 3 ess to cast the spell even when you have no damage on it. So when I have spare skill points, I will put it into that talent.

Kind of funny how you champion diversity but don't want a spammable skill that doesn't depends on attack speed. (All the other SW spam-skills already depend on attack speed). It's actually nice this way because it allows the creation of fully speed-independent SWs, but the other skills don't.

I would also point out there are skills in the game that are independent of crit. Seems fair to me that there's a variety of skills that depend or don't depend on various stats.


Anyways, that is too much typing for me... I'm done here.

 

Yes and no.
In the past, if you had a map, you could get his stuff anytime, providing you saved up the draken. Now, you have access to him all the time, but with less than half of what was worth buying from him. Now you need to wait for special sales (which also only brings one category of items) which are more rare than his old visits or being able to acquire a map.

Between gambling and farming, there are very few old players with problems here. I actually sell anywhere from 20-40 in a day of heavy farming and still have two full stacks. Give it some time and some non-solo runs and you will build up your supply in no time.

I won't comment on the rest of your other points. I know you have been gone a while, but many of them have been thoroughly discussed.

 

Well, first of all, wishing you a warm (though late, 'cause I only found this thread now, randomly, while using the searchbox up top xD) welcome back on here too! I too selected a few of your points in regard to which I felt I can comment; all others left out I agree with and/or have nothing new to add. Also, sorry if I wrote anything you already knew.

#1 While they did remove the possibility of low-levels to get cap-level items for melting and so becoming uber-twinks for PvP, the problem's not all over and done with still. Now, they get items their level, that they can use... then farm for more extraordinary/legendary items to better themselves by various means... so you'll still see lower-levels asking for help and XP block in there.

#2 Fireball is still a popular choice in PvP as it's easier to maneuver in hitting people... since, unlike most mobs, others players don't sit still and wait for you to terminate them xD. But other than that, it is still an ignorable skill, among the others you mentioned.

#3 Oh, the PvP dailies... this has been discussed quite hotly... the bottom line is that you're not forced to do them, but if you want more rewards from the challenges, you can work on the last row too. What makes this reasonable is that you don't need to be a PvP professional in order to complete them - actually, almost not at all, since player kills can easily be gotten in 3v3, 5v5, 6v6 even if you're not the one who killed all of them (all your team's kills go towards the count, with the usual maximum of 5 times of the same person per day) and the one requiring to simply fight battles to the end are even easier, leaving only the win-requiring option as more effort + skill-demanding. This is even better for Prem. users who can shuffle at ease (even non-Prem. have it better now, as it costs half of what it used to, but you shuffle one at a time, not all of them - and you will never get the same one if you do want to shuffle a certain task - big plus).

As for the middle row's first task not being able to be changed... not sure if intended or not, but nobody can't and this didn't change so far, nor have I seen comments on it being non/intended. However, this is the only one to behave so and it always asks you to defeat 5 mini-bosses (Leader or Champion)... unless it's in events when it might be something related to a particular one. I say it's a good point and I'd like to see more like that (diversity + helpfulness) but in the case you mentioned, if it couldn't be shuffled, that's a problem.

#4 I recently posted about the tier system (+ the new tier 3 crafting recipe) in the Dunes of Disappointment thread, so I will not repeat, but all in all, they started both those ideas from nice things and managed to make them annoying (see said thread for detailed view - but think you already saw xD).

Some sets (including Deep Sea, Splendid Durian..., Robust Norse... and the reworked Myrdosch Mechanical and Automated sets - the latter used to be a buy-only set, now with some adjustments, those two are part-dropable, part-purchasable) received a buff in drop-rate because it was not on par with others (though, yeah, ironically they seem to drop more often now xD). The Splendid and Robust sets were added for newbies, so they get accustomed to sets, bonuses and when to choose a set unique or normal loot item of various rarity and I think that's a plus - my brother recently started each class and from what I saw, he does way better than I did back when these were not present (at one point I remember I used to only have blue, as for him - same stage of the game, but had uniques, legendaries and extraordinaries, no Prem.). Also, they now made it feel like every region has one or more sets that represent them in some way, which is a nice touch if you ask me (they've also reworked the uniques you can buy from merchants, making the scale and a bit more useful and not OP, which I think is good, as they don't impact a lot in the F2P vs. P2P/W department).

The Prem. sets have also been reworked (and I haven't really looked for the new stats, only the orb that I randomly got not too long ago which is still rather meh) as were some others that got old, such as the Dark set... but given the low drop-rates, the set's pretty much redundant, even if reworked.

#5 Hehe, the 2H mage deal. Well, FS is indeed great, though it took me some time to master it and realize it was indeed the new best thing as a secondary attack. IDK if making it speed-dependent would be good or bad, but I don't think it would mean much for 1H mages. As discussed in another thread of a returning mage who was used to the 1H path before he went on hiatus, PvP is the field where 1H is still viable... PvE, not so much... but then again, you said you don't do PvP and favor PvE (same here, PvP just for sake of dailies, apart from that I'm not particularly OP there either) and I know where your build preferences lie... still, the mainstream is this; as you said, the "best build" thing that arises. But we've talked in-game about this too and you know that I am of the opinion that what every player chooses and likes is their own business and I respect that, however this "way to go" is not bad if you get nice and cozy with it and, of course, if you have a god setup for it (as with anything else, such as the aforementioned 1H PvP mages) and once you do, you can reap a lot of spoils in a group where others do their part as well - you know, the usual scenario: tank takes damage and holds off enemies (but does little to no damage) while the damage squad ravages the enemy numbers from a distance because if they got hit too much, they'd be done for xD; in this case, if both roles are executed well, both gain a lot more from this complementary teamwork than if either tried to do both things at a time - like a mage using his Guardian and Mind Control to "tank". Of course, a good group is not always easy to find/form xD.

#6 HP pots are not an issue, as _Baragain_ said. Only Universal ones exist and drop now and with drops, bets and dailies, it's not hard to grow a mostly larger-than-you-need supply (even more so now that the dedicated slots for potions take them away from your inventory). Personally, I go from 200 - 300 back and forth, and it's never been a problem.