Giant Feedback List, Thoughts Welcome!

Hello everyone! Recently a feedback survey of Nightreign got sent out and I spent way too much time on writing everything I thought of. I figured I would post it on this subreddit too so people can add their own thoughts or opinions on what I wrote. Or share the feedback they gave. As stated in the title, this is a long list, so be warned. I copy pasted it straight from the survey.

I really think Nightreign has the bones of an absolutely amazing 10/10 favorite game of all time experience. I still love the game but I think the biggest criticism that I have is the amount of unrealized potential that exists within it. Nightreign just needs more variety, lean harder into the roguelike aspects, things that truly change a run.

Boss rewards could stand to have more interesting options that promote changes of playstyle. Options like the walking effects, sprint, glintblades, health regen flask, and guard counters are a good start. We need more things like those. Interesting things that might not apply to your run or character but greatly increase variety. A few off the top of my head, a legendary reward: after you use your ultimate art a mimic spawns that repeats it. Every time you iframe through an attack you gain a temporary damage increase but reduce your damage negation until you are hit, stacking to the point where a single hit will one shot you. An aura that gives your team the effects of your continuous health regeneration. There's weapon passives that grant bonuses to charge attacks, those should be boss rewards too. Make them stackable even, if you luck into 3 effects suddenly your charge attacks make magma pools, poison clouds, and lightning strikes. Even more highly specific options that are sometimes useless because of your team comp, and other times incredible. A ghostflame explosion if you land a jump attack from high enough up, normally not incredibly useful, but wait, this run you have 2 Raiders so you can use Totem Stela to proc it. Standing in a pool of fire heals you slightly over time, normally incredibly uncommon but this run you have a Wylder with the relic effect that leaves flame after Ultimate Art and a Revenant with a Incant that leaves magma. Some type of buff for being a certain distance from your teammates, useless if you have 3 melee type characters, incredible if your team is an Ironeye and a Recluse. These are the type of effects that are fun to play with and change how you want to fight. There should be similar types of things for the relics as well, less stat changes and more gameplay style changes. The ones that increase damage for each cleared evergaol are a good example. All of a sudden you now have a different focus for what you want to try and do during a run. Something that gives you a buff the fewer flasks you have would be interesting. Now you're balancing having enough healing with getting the most out of your buff. Another example, every flask you use gives you some amount of firebombs, now you can take advantage of the throwing pot buff relics and toss pots around like crazy. These type of effects that change how you play are fun.

While I think adding more variety of effects would be the greatest boon to Nightreign, more enemy variety would also be wonderful. In the current state of the game each Nightlord has their own pool of Night 1 and 2 bosses that never shift, this isn't ideal. It would be much more preferred if they maintained their pools until the first time they were beaten, upon which their Night 1 and 2 bosses would be added to a general pool. That way when you go to fight a Nightlord that you have already defeated you could get any boss in the general pool for Night 1 and 2 fights. In a similar vein there should be more camp and ruin options. One run I played had 3 poison camps and all had the exact same enemies, that really doesn't feel fun. Every Holy Great Church will have the Oracle Envoys as a boss for example. There could be a Haligtree or Cleanrot Knight. If the player can look at it on the map and say exactly what's there, it's not ideal. Hidden or uncommon optional bosses would also be great. Bring back mimics and have them give good rewards. Now people are more willing to open chests in hopes of finding one, or alternately find one when they really didn't want to, thus causing some chaotic fun. One of the best and most memorable moments I've had in Nightreign is when Morgott invaded my group while we were fighting a giant in the mines. All of a sudden there was total chaos as we fought both of them in a tiny corridor. Invader events like these are great fun, times where your plan has to rapidly shift because of a surprising change in events. Moments where everyone pats themselves on the backs for making it out of a hairy situation, or when the party curses the gods for inflicting such a terrible thing upon them. More invader events more often are a fantastic idea. Maybe not every run, because then they would become expected, but significantly more often.

P.S. Add the Pursuer, he fits perfectly. :D

The next thing that should be looked at is event variety/frequency. As an absolute statement, at the current time of writing events are way way too rare. The frequency needs to rise. I should not have seen some of them only once in 100 hours of playtime. I should see at the minimum 1 event per day, more ideally. We need more events and we need most of them to be of the opt in/out variety. Things like the falling meteor or frenzy tower are great examples. Though they both need more locations they can occur at, there are a few of the towers that the frenzy eye could be at, but the event only happens on the south east one. I know there's a similar tower in the north, it should be able to happen there too. Regarding the opt in/out part, if you see these events on the map and your team feels confident you can go and do them. If you're not in a position to get to or complete it then you can ignore it without penalty. Nightlord raids should be rarer then the other types and maintain their forced opt in. The penalties/difficulty should probably be increased too, these events should be big moments where everyone drops what they are doing to run to them. Auger's is currently lacking on this front. Though that does mean their spawning needs to be tuned up to be a bit tighter. Currently they sometime spawn out in the rain or where the rain is closing in and that's not ideal by any means. That needs to be fixed regardless of other changes. I know there's an ant, golem, and frenzy invasion. I've seen them each a single time in 120 Expeditions. I don't know if there's more like those or not, but I need to be seeing them much much more often. If the rewards have to be reduced to make up for increased frequency then tune em down, but we need to see them.

Final point is shifting earth and map variety. Another firm statement, shifting earth is too rare right now as well. So much so that some people currently think they stop happening after defeating the final Nightlord. Moving beyond that, right now we have 4 shifting earths. Mountaintop in the north east, Crater in the north, Rotted Woods in the south east, and lastly Noklateo in the south west. We should really have more, one in the east, west, and center at least. This is a souls game, where's my poison swamp? More then that we really should have the chance for multiple shifting earths to be active at once. Crater and Rotted Woods for example could easily exist within the same map. Currently if you have a shifting earth event you know exactly where the 2nd day circle will be and where the Night 2 boss will be fought. This is something to try to avoid, we don't want a player being able to look at the map day 1 and know exactly what will happen. If there was more than one shifting earth at a time then the player will have to think more about what they want to do and when they want to do it. We need to have more final day circles within the shifting earths themselves also. Right now the only one with variety is the Rotted Wood. On the other 3 you know exactly where you'll be fighting the Night 2 boss. The crater always ends on the surface in the northern part. It could end by the lava where falling-star beast lives also for example. We don't really need another map with its own shifting earths, what we need is more variety within the map that we do have. Reducing as many static things as possible is the ideal. The Spectral Hawk Trees for example, currently they create a sort of circular pathway around the map, why not give them some options. Instead of a circle, maybe they make an X, it's easy to get from corner to corner but anything along direct north, west, east, south is more difficult. Or two parallel lines, I I, or a box around the outskirts. Things that change how you can navigate the map. Another of the more important parts of the map we can look at is that of the Castle. While I like the idea of a central landmark that houses strong foes and doesn't shift like the camps, churches, and ruins do, what we need is more than one landmark. Right now we only have the castle, imagine if there were other options. Maybe a sewer or tomb that you delve into, pushing to reach the bottom and take an elevator up, weighing your chances of making it before the rain can harm you. Or a tower that you have to climb, at the very peak are roosting spectral hawks and you can use them to fly away in any cardinal direction rather then jumping unceremoniously to the ground. More options for the central landmark would greatly increase the variety from run to run.

Now for my very final, pie in the sky, stretch goal type of feedback. Sometimes my team crushes the Nightlord, we prepared well, played well, and we used like 2 flasks total and nobody went down. It would be amazing if we had an option to keep going and risk the run for greater rewards. I imagine an option that let's you fight another random Nightlord without resetting at a grace, maybe they'd be buffed with a random modifier. An endurance run. If you fail you would get reduced rewards, but if you succeed the relics and murk you get would be vastly better. And you could keep going, or take your winnings after every victory. The ultimate challenge of trying to beat all the Nightlords without resting or refilling flasks along the way.

This was a very extensive list of feedback, but I wrote it because I really, really love Nightreign. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. Nightreign the type of game I could see myself playing for years if it gets shined up a bit. I think this game has so, so much potential that hasn't been reached quite yet. I know there's a DLC planned later this year that I already budgeted to get, but I'd certainly be willing to pay for more beyond that as well. I also know that there's going to be enhanced Nightlords released and I love that and am very excited for it. However, the Nightlord fights are what players spend the least amount of their time on, for all that it is the climax of the expedition. Running around Limveld gathering power for that confrontation is where the bulk of players time will be, so that shouldn't be neglected. I think the greatest single line of feedback I can give is that the player should never be able to predict exactly what's going to happen during the expedition. A large part of skill expression in Nightreign should be the ability to adapt.