Strive: Conquest - Bugs and Suggestions
Hello Strive4Power and everyone in the community. I come back to you with another massive review. I'd have liked to link my old one here, but I couldn't find it. The last time I played this game was one or two years ago, and I must say I am impressed with the evolution. The new training and mastery systems are great, and the story is coming around neatly. That being said, after some 50 to 100 hours of gameplay, I have noticed several bugs and things that could be easily added to the game to improve the overall experience. I shall start with the bugs.
Bugs
- When I used a healing spell Healing Light before combat, it killed my character and gave me game over;
- Tags being displayed in the character description;
- {x=y|element} in the ability description;
- Main menu window constantly open in the background;
- Desires during Sex don't correspond to things the person is willing to do. For instance, a character that has disgust towards anal willing to be penetrated in the ass;
- Some interfaces, like the Factor Upgrade screen, have a weird period when they can't be interacted with (select other characters, close, etc);
- Dungeon map gets out of boundaries;
- The game has a weird mouse input delay sometimes that made me think that the problem was my mouse, but it (mouse) works normally outside the game;
- Sometimes number hotkeys don't work properly (pressing 3 to skip a day gives command of 1), or not at all;
- It is said that Lilia lost her virginity to the Player even if the player don't seduce her;
- Mae doesn't get really pregnant if you don't put her powder in the bowl (I recruited her after the ceremony);
- Lilia's marriage refusal text is wrong;
- Lilia's abandoned Grove hideout has rebel enemies instead of cultists;
- If you enslave Lilith's fairy "friend", nothing happens, no new slave added;
- Service income falls almost 10 fold out of nowhere;
- Lira is a virgin if you recruit her, even if MC is male;
- When trying to marry, the church mentions a conflict even before anything happens (before act I);
- Dwarf king speaks always as if you tried to rob him;
- Can't leave items for later in Tower of Dream;
- Several values are in float instead of int;
- Fixing the Scales tells wrongly in the journal to go to the workshop instead of the palace;
- Several texts are in capital letter and without spaces.
Screenshots of some of the bugs cited:
Suggestions
- Some mechanics, like the mastery points, need a tutorial page;
- The log is really confusing and hard to follow. About this I'd suggest a dedicated Log tab to organize the household, similar to Masters of Raana;
- Add what I would call a challenge class, a class that requires prerequisites, all other classes in the same branch, and a small quest to be completed. For example, if the player character has scholar, caster, arch mage, warlock, and other mage classes, and has 150 of wits, the mage guild will give a quest whose reward, among good (maybe unique) gear, is the Magus Supremus class, which not only enhances wits, spell MATK, crit, etc, but also has some unique skill/spells;
- Add exclusive guild bonus (if player reach 25k or something of guild points, special bonus, or maybe guild ranking from associate to main collaborator. This should exist to give at least one reason to keep doing the quests after the player becomes rich;
- Add magical, military, and crafting jobs, like enchanter and healer; guard, ranger, and soldier; tailor, blacksmith, cook, and engineer. They would be similar to services, but requiring the magical, fighting, and crafting classes instead. As of right now, aside from the few moments when one of these activities are required by the player (cooking in bulk, crafting personal armor and weapons, or upgrading the mansion), the classes are almost useless. To add even more value to this, there could be a city influence, similar to the guild points, which is gained in much slower rates by having our characters working in the city. The Aliron church could also have it's own points system, and acolytes, priests, and bishops could go to the church and give the player the popularity/influence points. This may sound like a lot of work, but is basically ctrl+c ctrl+v of the guild system with different flavor text and items. There should also be quests and faction reputation in the major centers (elven and dwarven kingdoms, beastkin village, etc). This would all serve to to upgrade market and slave market, and maybe even more rewards if the dev(s) is(are) willing. More in point 14;
- The guilds should have an exclusive reward for joining them in the beginning:
- Fighters: some huge bonus to combat mechanics (like ambush mechanics or something), and special training for EVERYONE (like how you can upgrade body in Slave Market, but now with exclusive upgrades;
- Workers: some special upgrade to the house, special training to everyone (again, like the slave market upgrade stuff), and a special blueprint to each item type;
- Servants: extra lucrative service jobs, exclusive upgrades to the house, and better costumes;
- Wizards: magical upgrades to the house, special training to everyone, and exclusive magic body modifications or potions.
- New Classes:
- A Master Chef class that can be bought in the Servants Guild;
- Magical Knight class that can imbue elements in the attacks and needs caster and Knight classes;
- More artistic classes beyond bard and dancer for characters not in the harlot line, like painter and sculptor. These classes give poor reward in the beginning, but raise in value with ability mastery
- Farm produce should be usable in crafting;
- Captured bandit chiefs should have better stats (mainly authority) and fighting classes;
- Could make stamina costs proportional to party size, as incentive to more risky yet rewarding play style;
- Anastasia's children should have the Renown Royalty class by default;
- Mae should have special class Shaman of Rundas;
- Lilia's quest writing is overall weird. Without the instructions in the jornal, the player gets lost a lot;
- Consequences of being mayor, like being able to invest in Aliron, change taxes, better prepare/arm each guild for the cult threat or god/demon that they'll propably release in the end of the game. Maybe the city officially helping aliron chunch with food, upgrades that affect the slave market or slave quality, laws/investments that improve the merchandise in the market, the same way (and same interface, maybe) we do with our mansions. Maybe even missions like alliance/subjugation of x (x=beastkin, elves, dwarves, etc). So the player could have access to their market (maybe Build Road upgrades required, further road upgrades reduce transporting costs, hence lowering prices). If player also has personal good relations with the people in question, allow upgrades like Better Hunting Tools for Beastkin, or Better Gathering Tools for Elves, etc;
- Show the class required for the conversation options. It makes easier to replay the scenes;
- Great shields would be nice to have and should be craftable;
- Implement classes exclusive to the other main locations (Elven capital, Beastkin tribe, Dwarven Capital, etc) that can be bought from them after a quest or something, maybe involving new recruitable characters;
- Allow to rename items in the enchantment menu.