New AVWW Reviews and GGTL's Livestream Event

[KDR_11k]

RPS tried to like it but failed. Most complaints I've seen are that the combat is not fun.

I haven't played enough DW to judge the series as a whole but my main issue with DW Gundam is that the difficulty is completely wonky, going from too easy to insanely hard and back again at a moment's notice and if you die at any of those spikes you have to redo the whole mission which can take about 40 minutes, many of which are spent farming mooks. The other one I played was Samurai Warriors Chronicles which makes mook killing completely optional and only requires killing leaders or named characters (plus it has the whole RTS aspect where you need to order your heroes around and don't need to do any traveling manually, when you're done in one place order your character to another location and switch to one that's in battle). Too easy to cheese the main hero's super attacks though. SWC was fun, DWG wasn't.

[Huaojozu]

Lot of reviews describe the combat as very shallow and it is hard to disagree with. You could argue that combat is not the main point of this game but you still spend a lot of time doing it that it should be interesting and fun. I wonder if going for Melee attacks wouldnt be an interesting idea. It would give the combat some additional depth, it would give the players more things to find (since you would need all sorts of equipment and weapons) and it would allow for more varied enemies - magic extremely resistant/immune, melee extremely resistant/immune, magic immune with devastating super-short ranged attack making you need a spear to kill it and so on. It may however be too big a change to implement/against design philosophy.

[Cyborg]

Maybe it's just that in a procedural game like this, you don't get those clear checkpoints and goals. Actually, I brought this up about a year ago, basically asking, "so what's the point? What's the goal of this game?" I'm getting that same vibe from the GameSpot review, claiming that the 5 hour and the 15 hour mark are the same except for stats, as if there was no goal or accomplishment.

That's the treadmill feeling, when you are running for hours, and you really don't get anywhere. Other games have cinematic events, story wrapups, this kind of thing to mark time. Even AI war has a definitive ending (although I do wish that we would get some kind of unlockable prizes for achievements). Maybe what Valley needs is more carrots/checkpoints across the adventure to make you feel like you earned something.

[Huaojozu]

That's a great point. Even though there are checkpoints - killing an overlord, they don't feel distinct enough.

I think it would be better for the game to have a dedicated story lasting say 5 continents. At the end of the fifth continent there is the final boss. Beat him and you wrap the story up but open the post game of infinite continents still needing to be fixed (ruled by lackeys of the final boss that refuse to give up). You can still have a story even with a proceduraly generated game it just has to happen in a different way since no locations are set. What is set though is the settlement so perhaps the story could unfold there based on how many missions you did, locations you discovered or NPC's (randomly thrown into locations) met.

[TechSY730]

That's a great point. Even though there are checkpoints - killing an overlord, they don't feel distinct enough.

Well, there are also warp gates, which can sort of let you "checkpoint" through an area (I've used them that way several times), but as noted they aren't very noticeable, even less so than overlords.

It seems that the game actually does have many of the actual things people are saying is lacking, but rather even though it is there, they don't "feel" significant. Like there is checkpoints, but they don't "feel" significant. There is character progression, but it doesn't "feel" significant. There is melee, but it doesn't "feel" worthwhile.*
IMO, these fall under polish, balance, intuitiveness, and "advertising of features" tweaking that can add up to things "feeling" like they are missing even though it is hard to say exactly what. Also, these sorts of things are some of the important things to "hook" casual gamers, but one of the hardest things to do because frequently its nature is qualitative.

*though that is in part due to an objective fact that many enemies are simply better at melee than you can ever be due to many factors, such as knockback, ROF, their melee is passive (automatic, most enemies merely have to touch you to activate their melee, which no penalty to their other attacks) and yours is active (you have to do something, at a possible expense to your other attacks) and there are many of them and only 1 of you

I think it would be better for the game to have a dedicated story lasting say 5 continents. At the end of the fifth continent there is the final boss. Beat him and you wrap the story up but open the post game of infinite continents still needing to be fixed (ruled by lackeys of the final boss that refuse to give up). You can still have a story even with a proceduraly generated game it just has to happen in a different way since no locations are set. What is set though is the settlement so perhaps the story could unfold there based on how many missions you did, locations you discovered or NPC's (randomly thrown into locations) met.

Seems too big to be in scope right now (though you will need to ask the devs), but that sounds like a wonderful idea for an expansion.
AI War did something similar in the Light of the Spire expansion, basically adding a optional storyline to the existing game and giving some very nice rewards and challenges if you decide to follow its path.