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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 18:06:01 GMT -6
So here's my quick list of impressions that I had:
I really liked what I was playing but mostly wrote down issues that stood out to me. So don't worry if this sounds a bit negative. I still loved the Beta overall!
- The opening instantly gave that special feeling of starting up a Castlevania game for the first time! It was amazing! - Voice acting is ON POINT! I really liked pretty much all of the VO!
- I liked to see Dominique having hair animations. Why does Miriam not have that? It could be done in exactly the same way, right?
- The signpost in front of the village with those arrows pointing in random directions and leading to... nowhere in particular...? What is that supposed to tell anyone, let alone me as a player? What was the thought process here? - When the text is too big for the textbox in dialogue there should be little arrows telling me that I can scroll. I didn't notice that I could and it just looked like a bug to me. - There should be a little indicator in the crafting menu of what I can make (such as an icon next to items I have the ingredients to). That way I wouldn't have to scroll through the entire list just to see if I have the sufficient ingredients for each individual item. - A way to quickly switch between special and infinite normal ammo on guns would be highly appreciated. I don' t want to lose rare ammo for every candle I shoot.
- There should be a rattling sound when I jump on those big chandeliers in the castle - The ghost's death animation is weird for a ghost. It falls to the ground like a solid object. Not very ghost-like. - My shard-ghost looks to similar to enemy ghosts. I can never tell if it's friend or foe. Consider a palette swap. - Bat Feather?? - When attacking destructable walls there should be an effect of little pieces flying off in addition to some dust. Especially there needs to be more of such an effect when the wall breaks. Right now it looks like it just pops out of existence. - There should be a push animation when you run against boxes or walls. Running against walls on the same spot looks very jarring, especially with 3D models. - I loved the look of the save room. I think that the level music should completely fade out in the save room to give it more of a distinct feeling of safety. Consider some ambient noise like in Curse of Darkness. Those save rooms had an amazing atmosphere in my opinion. - I wasn't able to cut off morte's head anymore. That used to be a lot of fun in the old Demo. Why is that gone? - We need an effect shortly before loot disappears. Right now it disappears with no warning which feels unfair. - I think that enemies turn into orange specks too quickly most of the time. Leave the corpses around for some time. The orange specks coming so quickly feels dissatisfying. - Sometimes the dialogue fade for really short pieces of VO is far too long. - Right now there's no sound effect when I enter a new area. Previous Igavanias has a forboding effect making it really special every time I entered a new place. - When Morte explodes due to a fire attack, there's no sound effect matching the explosion. - There should be some splatter when you hit an enemy. (blood / black goo / dust etc. depending on enemy type) - I really like the big rat. Such a creepy enemy! Again, fades into orange specks way too quickly upon its death though. - The blood red room in the garden looks damn cool! It's not currently used for anything though. Why is that?
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 17:34:18 GMT -6
Thank you for pointing that out! I think they definitely made the right choice here!
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 17:29:30 GMT -6
XombieMike Again, I'm sorry, Mike. I just don't know how to (or if I can) delete a thread or move posts to another thread myself. I didn't mean to push any workload onto you and didn't mean it like that. Thank you for keeping this place in order, I really appreciate it.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 17:21:08 GMT -6
Pure Miriam Bullet souls may always have been more abundant than the others but in this demo all we got was bullet souls and bullet souls that go into a certain direction. There was one enchant shard but it was unfortunately broken... I hope they change it up a bit more in the final game.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 17:17:45 GMT -6
The current state
I have some problems with the way quests were handled in the beta - to the point where I'd rather have no quests at all.
So this lady just lost her loved ones and the first thing she really wants is you just killing random mobs as an act of revenge... What the hell...
I mean, we're not even talking about specific enemies that have killed her loved ones. These are just any mobs of the same type!
This makes absolutely no sense to me and on top of that they are just plain boring quests. The lamest run-of-the-mill type of quests in the book! Killing an enemy type a bunch of times does not feel like I'm finishing a quest. It has no interactions distinguishing it from regular gameplay. I'd just go off and kill monsters on my way anyway. Why is there a quest for this? The rewards for these quests are just as pointless as the quests themselves and can be obtained through other means so in my run I didn't even bother after I beat the first one. It isn't even worth coming back to her after playing around for a bit and accidentally finishing quests through means of normal gameplay. These quests are totally devoid of meaning or player agency.
Now... enough ranting! Let me propose a different way of presenting similar quests that I think makes a lot more sense both in a narrative and ludic way:
A new model for quests
So she lost her relatives right? Okay, solid story to begin with. Let's say a quest works like this: Story: she wants you to go to the place where demons have captured or killed someone she cared about. The deceased body is still there and she wants you to retrieve it so it can be buried. The demons who killed her relative are also still present. She wants you to kill these demons too - this is out of a thirst for revenge but now it makes sense because these are the exact demons that killed the person she cared about. When you get back to her (either with the body or with the message that you buried the body on the spot), she has a good reason to be grateful and even give you something personal that would be impossible or hard to retrieve through other means.
Gameplay-wise the mission would be separated into four parts: Story, Exploration, Combat and Reward & Closure.
Story: She tells you about what happened to her relative and about the monsters who did this. This doesn't only inform you about what you're going to fight but also adds player motivation through the narrative element. Done well, this could lead to the player feeling the need for revenge themselves because they now know something about the deceased one.
Exploration: The player receives a description of where to search for the demons to kill. This could be a room anywhere on the map. A marker on the map would be fine too but I'd like a good description more as it fosters true exploration as opposed to just going to a well defined point on the map. The player can go out and find the described room for themselves. If the player enters the room before the quest is activated, it's just a normal room. If the player enters with the quest activated, this is where the Combat phase starts.
Combat: This one is significantly different from the way it's currently handled in that specific exciting and challenging encounters with a set amount of enemies in the same room at the same time can be crafted. Kill 8 Mortes? Easy. Boring, in fact. Kill 8 Mortes surrounding you all at once? Now that's a bit more of a challenge! I imagine that the door would close behind the player once they enter the combat room. It would be similar to the way this was done in the PS2 Castlevanias in numerous areas. Once all enemies are dead, the player gets a message that a quest has been fulfilled and the deceased one can now rest in peace. This ushers in the final phase of Reward & Closure.
Reward & Closure: The player returns to the questgiver. As you tell them about avenging her loved one and giving them peace there are three kinds of reward for the quest:
- Narrative reward - the questgiver now has a proper reason to be grateful and express her gratefulness to the player.
- Item reward - the questgiver gives the player a hard-to-obtain or unique item with a story to it, making it feel special.
- Gameplay reward - the next mission is now unlocked starting the cycle again, giving you more interesting missions like this with added challenges.
As an aside: the final relative on the list could still be alive so the last quest unexpectedly becomes a rescue mission. The saved relative can then be another person in the village to give you quests of a different kind. This would also provide some additional closure to the story arc of this questline.
Advantages of this model: - It makes sense narratively
- It's more motivating both for story and gameplay reasons
- It has a proper dramatic story arc for each quest
- It isn't THAT much more work than the current system (a bit more work to set up the specific encounters and decide on rooms but the benefit is worth it)
- It rewards and encourages exploration
- It sets up specific, exciting combat situations that you wouldn't have during regular gameplay
- It rewards the player in many ways
Thank you for reading!
Do you too have issues with the current system? Is this just me? How do you like my proposed model? How could the model be improved? Share your thoughts!
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 16:01:47 GMT -6
I generally enjoyed most of the individual shards. There were too many trigger shards for the beginning though. I got new trigger shards left and right so quickly that I didn't even get to really try all of them in battle. Where were the other shard-types? I also thought that the drop rates were a bit too high. They basically front-loaded the trigger shards to the point where I was left confused on what to use. At the same time there was only one enchant shard, some pretty cool directional ones and none of the remaining categories. I think that at some point I was pretty much spoiled for choice when it came to trigger shards.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 15:50:53 GMT -6
This bug has already been reported. Please check before you post a bug for an existing report! Sorry about that. I had a lot of bugs on my list and no time to look through the entire forum to check for every one of them. Feel free to delete any thread I made that has already been adressed.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:54:50 GMT -6
When I landed on this staircase it locked me in the falling animation and I could not move or attack anymore. Backdashing lifted the curse!
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:52:50 GMT -6
These trees look particularily odd...
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:50:58 GMT -6
When you open this door, some shadow artifacts (probably from the light bake) remain. They disappear once you leave and re-enter the room.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:48:53 GMT -6
Sometimes the Silhouette shader doesn't work for Miriam's body. Once I leave and reenter the game, it works again. (I'd rather remove this shader all together as it breaks immersion for me but that's another topic for another thread)
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:45:20 GMT -6
Miriam has a very well defined shadow. The sign next to her casts no shadow at all making either Miriam or the sign look out of place.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:43:06 GMT -6
Again, not technically a bug but I think that these trees should not be (badly cut out) billboards if they're so close to the camera. It's way too obvious that they're just flat images at this distance.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:40:08 GMT -6
This is perhaps not so much a bug as it is bad asset placement. You can clearly see the tree graphics in the background being cut off at their roots.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:37:02 GMT -6
When Gebel stands like this with the book in his hand, the book is clipping through his body.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:35:24 GMT -6
The water splash VFX starts appearing once you jump on this platform or the platform straight above it. Strangely enough, it only appears if Miriam is facing right and lands on the left side of the platforms.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:32:24 GMT -6
Miriam runs against an invisible wall here. Collision doesn't match the visual boxes at all.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 14:29:28 GMT -6
Here Miriam says "wake up these muscles of mine" but the text says "wake these muscles of mine up".
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Post by Yän on Jun 28, 2018 18:54:17 GMT -6
Ah, that's funny I guess that would be a decal not moving along with the environment.
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Post by Yän on Jun 24, 2018 16:06:08 GMT -6
purifyweirdshard Absolutely! Per track credits is something I wish we had for a lot of the Castlevania-titles too - I have no choice but to ascribe everything to Yamane even though I know it's not true. It's the standard procedure with albums to write down who has written and performed what on each track and I'd love to have that for Bloodstained's official soundtrack!
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