Hey Wiings3
I tried to play the game for some time, around half an hour, but hard-bounced a bit after the tutorial of buying linen. Please, do not treat my rambling as "your game is bad" — I am just writing the feedback immediately after playing, so I am trying to preserve a bit of frustration, while trying my best not to sound offensive 😅
I feel that the core game loop is hidden behind a million menus, mechanics, and descriptions. There is too much stuff on the screen at all times that feels not relevant to me as a new player. The worse part is that some hints and tooltips look like they intend to explain things, but they use another in-game terminology that I am not familiar with. So I look at a hint trying to understand what some thing means, and the hint does not explain it.
Here is an example. I go to mercenaries. I see I have a woodcutter. They have "logging 3" written in there. I hover over a mercenary and see "Traits: Greedy" in a hint. I still have no idea what Logging is, but now I also have no idea what Greedy is. Then I look at the right side of UI — and it has Traits and Skills panels with Logging and Greedy in it. I hover over Logging there, and see "Trade levels rise with experience. Higher levels haul more and unlock better sites". I hover over the Greedy trait, and see "Greedy (common): keeps 5% more of the haul".
So now I have more questions. What are trade levels and how are they related to a mercenary? Are "higher levels" related to trade levels, or it talks about a level of logging skill itself, or about mercenary level? Why does the game specify that Greedy is common? What is haul, is it about expeditions, or descent, or both? It feels like the game itself knows about its systems and flexes with that knowledge, while I have no clue what those mean, and where can I get some info on those.
And this is only one "logging 3" resulting in utter confusion of your novice player me :)
Then tutorial asks me to buy linen, and helpfully highlights the "Market" tab. In there, I need to click "all", and scroll through a huge list of items without any apparent order (maybe there is some logical order, but as a novice I see just an unsorted list of things that I don't know about) to find one of them. And I scrolled it twice, because it has so many things, that on the first scroll I missed linen. After that, I checked other tabs, to find "linen" in a "crafted" tab — but I had no idea that it will be there.
After that endeavor, I finally get to the helmet crafting screen, and see "Rolls Common 60%, Fine 28% (+1 stat), Superior 10% (+2), Masterwork 2% (+3). Can roll Nimble, Swift, Precise, Hale, Hasty.". What are those words? Why are they important to me?
Still, I proceed, and tutorial drops this at me:
"Your guild is running
Clear the Webbed Halls and their stairs stay open: the Bone Knight waits above them. Beat him and the deeper sites open to your crews. Heroes eat a ration a floor, so keep a fisher or hunter working. Long orders keep crews working overnight. More heroes and more crews come with gold and reputation. Somewhere below, Aldren is waiting. Esc opens Settings."
AND THAT IS A LOT OF STUFF TO SWALLOW AT ONCE :D. The settings remark was when I decided to go and write the feedback.
So, my takeaway is that I weren't able to engage with a game in full, because I lost a boss battle with the UI and systems presentation.
Also, I didn't get what am I supposed to do while some expedition happens on a timer. Do I wait and stare at it, or do I try to study the UI somehow, or do I go to some other menu for some other activity?
Same goes with the battle. I see I can use some ability that stabs and makes an enemy bleed, as stated in a hint. But I can't make a decision to use it, because I do not know how much damage it will do compared to some other ability. I can't compare them, because I do not get information I need to be able to compare them!
And I loved the visual design! I love deep systemic games. I would love to play more of your game in the future! Just right now it feels like the game does not help me to understand itself enough to have fun playing it