A Big Fat Feedback Thread

Early Access Archive Early Access Game Feedback
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Henlo!

Lynexia here, Long time player no time thread writer.
Wanted to do my bit for early access and give a big ol’ bundle of feedback about the game and how it currently feels to play as a ‘sometimes’ or ‘casual’ player.

Shard Collections
Right now I have one major issue with shards and that is not enough of them. Now I know this is generally part of the game and they shouldn’t just be handed to me willy nilly but I’ve noticed that I get a big fat truckload of higher level shards but almost no lower level shards. This creates a big bottleneck when changing gear with the new set bonuses where I don’t seem to be able to accumulate enough enough minor and lesser shards to catch my gear up in any sort of reasonable time frame. As it currently stands I believe it would take months on end of grinding to to catch up even a single piece of gear without spending real money and without knowing what element is going to roll up on uncommon gear putting that amount of effort or real money into a single piece of gear seems too risky to bother with.

There are a few ways in which this can be changed to help it feel less draining to get gear up to speed that I believe will help take away some of the tediousness.

  1. Allowing the use of higher value shards to substitute for lower value shards when used to upgrade gear. This has a few benefits as it gives players the choice to use their higher value shards meaning they can catch up gear faster but it will also mean they will need to farm more of the higher value shards once the gear is caught up.

  2. A system that prioritises dropping shards that are needed from chests based on the players currently equipped gear. This is a much less business viable option since more shards means less crown purchases but it would make people happier?

  3. Pre-levelled gear from higher level chests; Maybe not super high level gear dropping but maybe if you’re doing difficulty 1 or above gear from chests could start at level 15 rather than level 1.

Start of Battle Board Control

This one is something that has bothered me for a while, basically I find that once I have enough mana, I can essentially take control of the board completely and more or less will not be able to lose no matter how hard the enemy tries. But the thing is that getting that control all depends on my starting board.

I’ve recently found that if I do not get a good starting board I should just retreat and re-enter the battle until I get something that looks useable. In that light I believe there should be some way to influence the board before starting the battle otherwise I’m spending more time in menus than I am in the fights and I assume that’s not intentional. I hoped that set bonuses would be able to fix this issue but from what I have seen of sets thus far that is simply not going to be the case.

Gems over Spells
As a match 3 game PQ3 should be about matching gems but instead is about getting mana to cast spells which is where the real damage is. While I don’t mind if spells are doing damage I do feel like matching gems should be the star of the show and the bulk of the damage should come from that.

Solution to this is pretty simple, nerf spells buff gem damage.

Ending my turn against my will

I understand why the devs might think it’s a good idea to end my turn because there is nothing left on the board to match up. But just because there is nothing left for me to match up doesn’t mean I’m finished. Setting myself up for my next turn is extremely important in my build and as such having the game take absolute control when all matches are used up is very frustrating. I wasn’t done yet.

Simple solution; add an end turn button instead of just assuming I’m done. This will also solve other issues where there are gems that I do not want to match that I am forced to because there’s no other way to progress.

Gear UI
While I have gotten used to the way the UI works now I do feel the need to point out how unintuitive it is to navigate.

I think a much better way to do this would be to just have a character screen with slots on it and my inventory of gear next to it more in line with a more traditional RPG style

Random gem Conversion
While it does seem like an amazing idea to convert gems randomly when I use a spell, start or end my turn in theory. In practice it can sometimes be extremely detrimental as sometimes it will replace a gem that would have otherwise been used to secure a big match or even a stun match.

When this happens it never feels like a win but more like you have literally gimped yourself. I think it would be good if this was changed so that it could not impede on immediate matches available in one move before starting to match.

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I’m in 2 minds about the random gem conversion when spell casting. It was my first line method for setting up stuns (with a stun spell, blackjack in my case) in reserve as a back up in case none were available.

This occasionally set up a few dilemmas (should I use blackjack to finish an enemy off thus saving my gems to damage the next enemy but risk new gems disrupting a lined up stun or essentially waste a ton of damage playing it safe to avoid the unlikely event that a new gem might make a match that stops me from stunning the next enemy.

Without having some potentially risky situations the battle process is rather stale and repetitive.

On the other hand I can see the argument that perhaps the player should have some element of choice in avoiding random gems without having to unequip gear that they’ve spent time levelling up. However I think overall I’m fine with their being some pluses and minuses to bonuses/spells etc, managing that is the fun part, sure fire win strategies are (for me) dull.

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A hearty agreement for all of these:

  • Shard collection suggestions = yes, please fix this
  • Starting boards make or break my success and that feels… dumb
  • Gem matches are worth too little, and it’s silly to me that if you don’t have a color of spell equipped, those gems do ZERO damage, rather than having the equipped spells be a multiplier to some non-zero base damage
  • Gear UI - yeah, it’s not great (but thank you for finally offering more gear loadouts!)
  • Random gem conversion is often more of a hindrance than a help. Especially annoying, I now have to avoid certain items to avoid set bonuses that suck for my character class :confused:
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The problem with combat is that it is reliant on simple stat escalation rather than actual puzzle play.

Off-color matches should either boost spell damage or at the very least contribute to skull damage.

Of course, if the game focused on puzzles for combat, then more of the game would involve common mechanisms like “match X + X = Y result” and “match all colors to do Y”.
Right now the only remotely puzzle related triggers that aren’t either explicitly tied to weapon or spell damage are “8+ combos = Heroic Effort (more damage)” or “row = stun”.

What about columns? L Shapes? Plus shapes? Etc.

If difficulty wasn’t simply “stats x rank” and more about how the monsters manipulate the board, you know, puzzles, then a starting board would be less detrimental because the game would be centered around primarily solving puzzles rather than trying to repeat the same damage manipulation scenario over and over…