Overall, I love the direction of the new UI! New classes, factor training, etc, all make character progression satisfying! Too many Other great things to call out individually, but overall, loving it!
Some critical observations/bugs, in no particular order:
- Selecting a travel destination is a bit clunky. Having to pick a destination then back out a level to pick travelers feels cumbersome.
- Awkward to deselect a social skill if you change your mind, or there are no valid targets. Would be nice to be able to simply click the same skill button again to unselect it (similar to how most other navigation UI elements work).
- Character Info/Details UI is also hard to get in and out of. Usually have to go to Gear to find the exit button. Also strange the “Confirm” button on the Details page doesn’t close the UI.
- The crafting menu sometimes only comes up partially, and requires choosing Smithing to proceed to actually choosing recipes to craft. (Seems like this can happen even if you don’t have a forge yet?)
- The crafting Return-on-investment is weak. (Thoughts on this below)
Suggestions/Discussion:
The resource system feels really flat right now. In my latest play through, I rushed the forest and mountains for wood/bones to create top-tier items before trying any dungeons out. Ended up OP, but also killed the fun. It would be nice if it mirrored the character progression curve, which is extremely cool right now.
Some thoughts:
- Limit Resource Types by Region. Ie. Farming is exclusive to the plains, lumber/hunting exclusive to the forest, stone/metals exclusive to the mountains, fishing exclusive to the ocean, and monster bits exclusive to the underground.
- Upgrades required to access higher tier resources. Ie. Forest initially only has wood, needs an upgrade to access magic wood; mountains initially only access stone, need an upgrade to access iron, etc. this would probably mean bringing the core resource regions closer to the plains?
- Building / Resource Upgrades require appropriately skilled followers. Ie upgrading forestry to get better wood requires at least one character with the Worker job, etc. Maybe only characters with the relevant skills can perform the upgrade job itself?
- Building / Resource Upgrades require “crafting exp” to level up. Ie. You need to create some amount of that crafting good, or harvest some amount if that resource, before the upgrade option appears.
- Update crafting ROI to match “real world” rules-of-thumb. Short versions:
Lowest quality goods are often worth less than their raw materials, since any random person could fashion a piece of junk. ;)
Each major quality tier improvement increases performance by approx 10%, and increases price by approx 10x. Example: Magic Wood should be around10x the price of Wood, and Iron Wood should be 100x the cost of Wood, roughly. (Current power scaling on items feels about right already)
Value-added markup is usually around 100% (or usually you charge 2x your costs). This applies at each stage of production: resource gatherers charge twice their collection costs per unit, manufacturers charge twice the raw material cost for wholesale, and merchants charge twice the wholesale cost to customers. End result is usually round 8x markup over original collection costs. Example: Raw Mithril Ore should be sold for roughly half the price you could sell a finished mithril sword. (This gets a bit weird when the only merchant in town is operating as both wholesaler and consumer retailer. Maybe each region lists different goods as wholesale vs retail? Local goods at wholesale prices, and imported goods at full retail (Ie 2x price)?)
Note: This would also add a large benefit to opening your own shop, and being able to charge markup (instead of paying it), but at the trade off of not having exact control of when goods sold. (Maybe a random total value of goods sell each period, and random items are selected from shop inventory?)