Hi guys & gals.
Wanna congratulate OOO on making a great game! I'd like to share some suggestions I have.
Specialization:
I don't mind that SK doesn't have classes. It might actually be a good thing that you don't have to "lock" your character to be this or that. You can chose to focus on swords, guns or bombs or use them all. Freedom is good. I think there should be more possible roles though, such as:
* Tankers - Can keep their shields up for longer periods and can recharge their shield faster
* Supporters - Has some abilities to aid their comrades with buffs, heals or such
Alternative sites:
I think the clockworks is great with it's random elements and rotations. It can become a bit monotone however. What about expanding the game world on the surface as well?
In-game information:
Certain item descriptions and game aspects doesn't seem to be in-game, but only on the wiki. For example, my Calibur sword has no description of how its charged attack works (it's a 360 degree spin).
Stratum and gates:
I think this system is a bit too complex to understand for a beginner. I'm not quite sure I get it all yet. There's a heavy use of colors, background-colors and icons, but there should also be some kind of in-game explanation of this. The hover popup doesn't really say anything - this would be a good place to put a textual version of that information.
It's also a bit difficult to understand the meaning of the two titles of these individual maps.
It would also be great to have this map somewhere more convenient during play - it's a bit clunky to use the main menu for this.
Perhaps the gate creation time could be lowered a bit? That way there would be more variation. Also it would be easier to affect the final theme.
Camera:
It would be nice to have the option to adjust the camera somehow. I'm thinking tilt and zooming.
Quest system:
I'm generally not a fan of the usual quest systems in other games because the quests are so much alike and you just don't care about actually reading the text. I think SK should have some kind of quests though, but made with careful consideration and limitation. Perhaps you could expand on the artifact thing.
Set bonuses:
The wiki mentions bonuses for certain equipment sets, but it doesn't seem this is described elsewhere. I'm unsure if these are actual set effects or just a summary of the effect of it's individual parts. I'd like to see more such set bonuses though. I think you could expand these effects to affect other game aspects as well, such as luck maybe (affecting treasure/monster drops). There could also be penalties to make up for the bonuses.
Chat scrolling:
I think the scrolling possibilities should be improved. It's a bit tedious to roll up.
Minion health:
How about a health bar for your minions (mechas)?
Alternative paths:
How about adding more elevators/paths in the clockworks? Say, for instance, if you want to enter the previous/next stage on the same rotating level ("cogwheel"), there could be a connecting bridge/portal for that. Maybe elevators could even go upwards, not just downwards. Perhaps you could even transfer onto a whole different cogwheel. Such paths could be spread about on a stage, maybe only after defeating an arena/boss or you have to make a choice what part to unlock - causing you to have to beat the previous/next stage or go down a level. I think more possibilities and unpredictability could spice things up.
Material drops:
Limit dropping of materials to half tiers (stratas?), so that a 2* item can only be obtained in the first half of tier 2. The higher the grade, the lower the drop rate should be.
Replay value:
There's basically no good reason to make new characters - you can just re-equip your first character. There's not enough character-bound elements to make it matter. This makes the replay value suffer.
Gate positions and expiration time:
I think the gate positions should be fixed. It's confusing when the leftmost gate suddenly one day is a different gate that you expected. The rightmost gates will never be active. Also, there should be a clock telling when a gate will expire.
Market area:
Maybe there should be a dedicated market area map in Haven, where the auction house could reside. Currently, since regular chat is map-wide, the chat in Haven gets flooded by messages from people trying to sell and buy stuff.
Energy trade increments and/or average price:
Since there's no increment on energy prices, it's hard to get your energy sold/bought, and the top offer list won't show what the market value really is, since it only has room for the 5 top offers. I suggest defining a incrementation of 10 or even 100 to avoid all the silly pricing. Also would like to suggest showing what the average price is, or making the list longer, or turning it into a bar chart or something.
Mist energy density:
The mist energy is collected very slowly. I'm really okay with that, but perhaps more active players could receive some little boost while they are hunting. It could be affected by the depth you're currently at, being most dense at the core. There might be a problem with abuse however. There must be a solution to avoid that of course. Perhaps it can be based on playtime instead.
Belt expansion:
Quite often you will have to leave a lot of usable items on the ground because your belt is full. How about offering the possibility to extend the belt? Something along the line of trinket/weapon slot upgrades.
Additional obstacles and challenges in the clockworks:
The game has a lot of interesting elements like brambles, spikes and traps. The Romulus twins update also gave us rockets. These things reminded me somewhat of an old Nintendo 8-bit game I used to play ages ago, which was called "Solstice". The game was an rpg/puzzle game that had a lot of such obstacles and I think some of them might be interesting to see in SK. Mind, much of the puzzles in that game was incredibly difficult, too much so for SK, but a few concepts are do-able. I'm just going to throw some ideas:
- Conveyor belts
- Moving blocks (2D/3D)
- Disappearing blocks (?)
- Water/liquids (?)
- Permanent spikes
Things mentioned by others:
- Material even sharing
- Chat tabs
- Spectate mode
- Visualization of variants
Toodeloo~
Specialisation in SK is achieved through equipment loadouts; in extremis by the UVs of that equipment. You can approximate a Tank with, say, Heavy Plate gear, and firearms and bombs are essentially support weapons already. The problem with having character-specific roles is that, with a traditional character class system, you're pretty much stuck that way once you've picked one; the dynamism and flexibility of SK's purely equipment-based system is an important part of the game's character. By the by, healing will never, ever be something achievable outside of drops and recharge tiles - I'm pretty sure Three Rings have made statements to that effect.
I know they're mentioned vaguely in the wiki, but I'd actually be kind of sad if set bonuses got implemented. I like mixing and matching armour pieces; getting my buffs and resists configured to suit my playstyle or weapon loadout is very satisfying to me.