Feedback after a few hours
SorcererKing Forums
Love the idea - but its pretty clear that it is still alpha. I am sure some (hopefully most) of this is already planned to be fixed, but I will just dump everything here anyways.
The Good:
Good graphics.
Much improved economy vs FE (although costs could use some rebalancing - it seems very easy to get a few production buildings and then just spam whatever unit you prefer)
GUI setup is spectacular (with a few exceptions)
Stable
Needs work:
Auto-used integrated graphics by default. Perhaps this explains why some other users are complaining of terrible performance?
Shard attack messages can get spammy / frustrating - If I can't reach a shard on the other side of the map, hearing it is under attack every other turn gets old.
Can't figure out outpost upgrades.
Hard to get certain crafting components, would enjoy either buying with mana or producing from city (would help with lack of things to build past early game)
An indicator of city growth is needed
Healing is frustrating - have to craft potions just to heal my troops. Even worse with randomness or loot drops - may not have enough to craft anything!
Heal ring doesn't grant heal ability.
Paladin building doesn't work.
Cities desperately need a production queue. Rally point would also be appreciated. A mid-late game teleport unit to army / hero would be awesome.
Stunned units still seem to participate in flanking
Being pushed 4 range is kinda excessive, especially when going through terrain features.
Inventory system is frustrating to manage. I don't like having to craft things 1 by 1, then give them 1 by 1 to each unit. At that point, even FE's designer was better than this level of micromanagement.
Few graphical errors - boundaries between tiles sometimes show up, water is occasionally screwy, and fog of war often looks fakey / sharp corners.
Neutral (camp) city ranges are very hard to see sometimes
Why can't I change research? This is very frustrating sometimes. Especially if there is a misclick when first choosing research.
Sovereign upgrade tree needs some balancing.
The bad:
Combat feels very simplified. Why were criticals removed? If elements are a big deal, why are the resistances gone?
The game often auto-combats for me, and usually manages to screw up when it does.
The enemy seems to magically be able to settle any fertile region, even if my army just cleared out a city there 5 turns ago and blocked the only entrance since then. Extremely frustrating.
Battle maps get boring. Please add terrain features - hills, thickets, healing shrines, whatever.
Limited content - I have seen only a few enemies, and a few low level sites. There seems to be a decent amount of items, but I don't see many besides basic armors / potions.
Hero trees don't have as much choice / interesting level ups as in FE.
The very, very bad:
Combat is boring. This wasn't true in FE, which was a good combat / quest simulator burdened with a meh economic / diplomatic system. As this is means to be a combat/quest focused 4x, this is a major issue. We were told this would be a highly tactical combat mostly focused on using the correct spells and unit abilities. Currently, this is the farthest thing from the truth.
1) Very limited selection of units, with fairly small differentiation. Admittedly, I couldn't build some units (mages) because I couldn't get crystals, but units mostly have similar stats and the 1 special ability. The 1 special ability is fairly well done, but basic. And when you only have 3 or 4 of them to play around with... it gets old pretty fast. I know you swapped from FE's design system to preset in order to be able to build more diverse units, but as of right now there are significantly less choices.
2) Less combat tactics (in part due to a lesser number of enemy types). When you find yourself using the same soldier / archer stack to kill the same bandit rider / archer / wolf enemy stack for the 100th time, its very hard to maintain interest.
3) Items don't add anything interesting. They are a way to spend more resources for slightly better stats (much as in FE), but they don't give anything interesting or offer any new tactics, only micromanagement (in FE, some items did open up new opportunities).
Hopefully, these issues are because of the alpha state. Here are some possible solutions to combat problems:
If units can't use weapon items, need some choice on creation (eg frost vs flame axe vs axe with circle attack).
Some way to differentiate units. Either some sort of passive upgrade system (preferably with choices - eg upgrade soldier into swordsman or berserker, with different stats and abilities), or do something more like AOW / Eador, where units can get larger bonuses occasionally when leveling up, such as passive or active abilities. As is, units get a nice stat bonus when leveling, but don't get more interesting. This makes me feel less attached to them, and more inclined to mass produce and autobattle (especially with production so easily available), rather than treasure and level up units.
More unit types. Spellcaster units (can get spells from spellbook items?). Units with magic weapon. Beast units. Summon units. Monsters. Machines. Each of these should have special abilities / passives. Each sovereign type should also have a few unique units.
