Legends of Dawn-What kills this game.

crpgnut

SasqWatch
RPGWatch Donor
Original Sin Donor
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
Legends of Dawn has several bugs that make the game a challenge to enjoy, but I've had quite a bit of fun with it for the last few days. However, the game has a fatal flaw and that is level scaling. So bad it makes Oblivion look like it doesn't have any ;) I've been testing the level scaling theory and it shows up everywhere. Merchants sell level scaled stuff, monsters, chests, minerals, basically everything is set up for your current level with almost no wiggle room at all. Now here is where it gets ludicrous: The magic system is such that you will often be out of mana. There are scrolls that will replenish this, but they're set at level one for the whole game. That means to replenish mana, you either just wait around for 10 minutes real time or you read 50 scrolls. There is a cool down on the scrolls too. Crazy!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
Have you put points in the Devotion skill? It speeds up mana regeneration. I haven't played a spell caster so I don't know how much that helps at higher levels.
 
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
9
crpgnut is right, since they went Oblivion, they should have made manaregen item scale too.
I'm copying this to the official forum later as it's definetly a huge flaw and forces players not to go pure spellcaster.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Agreed about the scroll, but are you saying the Devotion skill doesn't scale well either? I was thinking of trying it out but I'll skip it if that doesn't work right either.
 
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
9
Dunno about Devotion I haven't played the game for a few days now, not because of Dark or LoL but because I don't have enough time to play all those games paralelly.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Um, I should point out that level scaling doesn't stop me personally from enjoying it; I was up past my bedtime and was grumpy :)

I've got 69 hours logged in this game already as I love starting over ad nauseum. Mana regen is a massive bite in the butt and I hope they fix it. Melee combat is dull, but there are a great many ways to mix it with magic to make it more fun. Things like stun blasts, debuffers, buffers, and haste spells, all help to keep things lively. At normal difficulty though, only large groups will be a problem. Onesy twosy is easy peasy :)

Also, I am starting to get magical results from crafting but it is tied, like everything else, to your character level. You'll get magic results occasionally from level 4 and up. If you're not using an exploit, it will be very rare, but acceptable. Right now, the game is broken where some recipes do not consume the crafting material used to make them.

Fast Travel is another huge miss. The landmass is huge and it takes about 15 minutes to get back to civilization to drop off loot. They've got to come up with a portal system of some sort. I'd lean towards the Divine Divinity method: You have two teleporter pods, one you drop in town and the other to drop wherever you want. The problem with this is in losing the pods. Two Worlds had a nice idea with pods that could be found or maybe even crafted....
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
crpg keep ideas coming!
I didn't go into the game that deep, but those are all fair objections and I bet devs will be happy to "fix" that game. Unlike, well, forgeddit I'm not saying it for 76567584th time.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
I like the teleporter stones idea.

Just so you know, you can teleport back to town. In the new game screen, click options then controls & assign regenerate to your keyboard. I use back space as I'm unlikely to hit that by accident. Press the key & you'll return to the town provided that is the regeneration portal you currently have active. Of course you still have to run back to where you were but it will save you some time until they implement something better.
 
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
9
Thanks, I was just thinking of starting it up. Seems to be the biggest flaw in CRPG systems, guess it just makes it too easy for the designer to resist.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
777
The problem Karok is that you'll want to activate other spawn points and only one is active. So once you've moved away from the town one, it's a 15 minute real time jog to get back there. You'll be doing this fully encumbered so it takes forever and you're not having any fun while slowly trudging back. This eliminates much of the joy you built up doing the fun stuff. They need a fix. I've not checked today, but the devs have been unavailable for over a week.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
patch 1.05 is out. Doesn't fix your level scaling or fast travel issues but it does give gamers a mouse-click to move and for me I am noticing faith regenerating much faster. I am a bow user so I only have about 50 faith but I am now never out of it so I think they fixed that.

I heard something about some of those other stones can be clicked for fast travel but they are supposed to work at odd times like at night.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,397
Location
USA-Michigan
I hope you're right on the faith regeneration, redman. They guys are working hard on the fixes, but they seem to be clueless on what to focus on first. Fix the base game and then add requested features. They're going the other way; adding features while the base game is still broken. For instance, merchants are supposed to charge different prices based on reputation. This doesn't work and it's a big selling point on the kickstarter page. Another major problem. Identical items don't stack because they're leveled up. What they did is instead of merchant reputation changing the worth of goods, they made it based on level scaling. You go up a level and a pebble that you found at level one is 5 cp and the one you found at level 2 is worth 12 and they won't stack and take up two spots of a limited inventory. This is the same inventory that requires 66 slots for all the lock runes :)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
I spent roughly 12 hrs trying to enjoy this game and I'm still at the first map sorting out things I had to do to progress. I finally figured out how to unlock chests with the runes tho, at first I thought all I would need to do was insert the 2 glowing ones [which were hard to see] but I was wrong, the trick is to link them, HAH. So now the problem is micro management of stackable item since the sort button doesn't automatically do it for you, not fun. The developers did dub this game as old school hard-core so it is ... I'll give this one another few sessions but if it doesn't pick up the pace soon or give me some reason to continue then I'm done with it.

Anybody knows if there are any legendary or epic armor & weapons in this one, then maybe it might be worth a few hours more.
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2013
Messages
4
There are no such items, alien. The game is level scaled so that 95% of everything you find is equal to your level or lower.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
This game is a chore to play ... things need ah fixing to make it somewhat fun.

I also encountered the inventory bug, I crafted some copper bars and still had the nuggets, also the leveled item stacking... c'mon seriously, also the rune stones should not be part of the active loot so it does not take up precious space, IMHO.

Keys --- wtf is that about, why am I finding a bunch of the same keys in loot & why are vendors selling them, as long as I've been into RPGs, keys are quest related specific to a "certain lock" and to obtain it you need to interact with the npcs or containers holding them, not in random swag & purchasable.

I got myself stuck between a building and a hill, I couldn't escape, this was just after completing 3 quests, I had to restart and lose the progress ... sheesh ... I should have tried the "regeneration ploy" if I could do that, duh!
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2013
Messages
4
Regenerate is fine, but I'm almost always miles and miles away from the spawn point when I get stuck, so it's 15 minuts of backtracking each time. That gets old, but I still persist with this game.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
Are you sure there is level scaling in the game. Because if this is the case devs lied to me in the Kickstarter campaign. It's game breaker for me. Here is my comment and one of the devs answer in Kickstarter page:

"Gökhan Halil Düzgünon December 23, 2012Hi, I'm one of your backers and I have some questions about the game. These may seem unimportant for some but for me they determine whether I continue to play the game to the end or not.1) Is there any monster respawning in the game, if there is what is the approach? - No respawn (which I prefer) - Diablo 2 and 3 style respawn (when player quits and restarts the game, all the monsters respawn) - Time based respawn (monsters respawn in an area after a certain time like in M&M 6 or Torchlight games) - Event based respawn (for ex if you destroy the hive all the monsters links with this cease to respawn like in M&M3, Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance) - Constant respawn (like in Sacred games and in most MMOs, which is a dealbreaker for me)2) Is there any level scaling in the game, if there is what is the approach? - None (which I prefer) - Area based level scaling (For example A area between level 1-5, B area between level 3-8, like Kingdom of Amalur) - Full level scaling (enemies level with you, ne sense of character development like in Oblivion, Sacred 2, Dragon Age 2)3) Are the any difficulty settings in the game? For me RPGs must be hard as hell in the beginning and slowly start to get easy with character development. Personally I play RPGs at highest difficulty setting and for some I use mods to make it difficult (like Heartcore Mode for Kingdom of Amalur). Old school RPGs tended to be difficult and show no mercy to the mistakes. For me an RPG must be challenging and makes feel to the player that he/she achieves something.4) I understand that Legends of Dawn's combats will be Diablo style. Are there different attack patterns for different monsters like in Diablo games. Do they use different tactics to the player, surround him/her?5)Can we save the game where and whenever we want? Or there will be checkpoints in the game? Our progress will be saved automatically at these checkpoints at one save slot (like nearly all Diablo style RPGs) or more traditional approach (multiple save slots, save and load any where and any time you want)?"


"Creator Aurofinity & Dreamatrixon December 23, 2012Gökhan Halil Düzgün, We implemented creature respawning for different reasons. One of the main concerns with the class-free gameplay was if some part of the game will be impossibly hard for players. For example, there is part of the world filled with fire elementals. They are almost completely immune to fire attacks (both fire spells and weapons). Let's say player has played entire game investing all his skill and spell points in fire spells and has killed all creatures he encountered so far. In this instance, player will be very hard pressed to continue playing since defeating elementals is extremely difficult for person who plays the game as fire mage and he has no way to wither level up or to collect resources for new weapons and armors. Second problem is that monsters are also source of resources used for crafting. Killed monsters leave behind meat, furs, bones, skins, shells, horns etc. Finite number of creatures limits entire crafting part of the game. That's why we implemented creature respawn. Some unique creatures never respawn. You kill them and that's it. However wolves in the forest or spiders in caves and dungeons appear after certain amount of time has passed. This respawn interval is not so short as in MMOs or even one in most diablo-like games and is quite long actually. Now however you always have options to visit part of the game you visited before and kill some critters that drop that one resource you need to craft your next armor, or to collect item needed to finish quest.Regarding monster level scaling - no, there is no level scaling for monsters. Level 4 spider is always level 4 spider no matter if player is level 1 or level 10. :)Game has multiple difficulty levels. You can play in easy, normal, hard or legendary mode. In easy mode creatures are less dangerous, but your level and skill cap is quite low. You can finish the game but you will not see many items or spells game has to offer. Normal difficulty is what we expect most of the players will use. Hard is for hardcore players only. Legendary is for masochists. Monsters are twice as dangerous, they respawn quicker, they are more aggressive, attack in hordes, items are more expensive and merchants are trying to rip you off with their prices. :) However maximum player level, maximum skill level, maximum spell and crafting levels are almost 50% higher than usual, chests and other itemholders contain more items and you can find and craft hundreds of new items (mostly magical items) not available in easy and normal gameplay modes.As for combat, each monster has different attacks and behavior patterns. Some monsters are pretty much dumb critters, other monsters have multiple attack types. Some creatures have auras, effects which influence creatures around them. For example, when attacking in groups, some creatures have auras that increase armor of creatures around them, or have drain auras which slowly remove your faith (equivalent to mana in the game). Creatures have stun attacks, melee attacks, ranged attacks and special attacks (attacks they can use finite number of times). Also, creatures have moral - some creatures are cowards, you hit them once and they run away and you have to chase them through the forest just to watch them run headlong into river just to try to escape from you. Other creatures are fearless and are very hard to scare. Creatures also have different combat strategies depending on various conditions. When their health is low, some will try to escape, others will try to heal themselves, others yet will try to run to nearest stronger creature in hope that you will not follow. You can also scream your lungs out in hope to try to lure the creatures toward you. Some will attack if they hear you. Others will hide in hopes that you will get near them where they can ambush you. Speaking of ambushes, there are hidden creatures - spiders in the trees, or zombies buried in the ground which show up only when you get very near them. Also, creatures and monsters behave slightly different depending if it's day or night. Wolves at night are much more dangerous than wolves at day. On average, each monster has 1-5 different types of attack. We hope that will be enough to create interesting fights. :)Also, game has unlimited number of save slots with location picture. You can save the game wherever you like. :)"
 
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Messages
1,181
Location
Sigil
@Gokyabgu - I remember that discussion too on the kickstarter. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not playing the game, since I saw the state it was in on launch), but that is about mob scaling. As I understand it LOD is just scaling *items* not mobs. So what they said there is strictly speaking correct. So the moral is that there's more than one way to shoot yourself in the foot with scaling if you are determined to do so.
 
Joined
May 18, 2012
Messages
1,501
Location
Somerset/London UK
From crpgnut's post I misunderstood that monsters also subject to level scaling. Level scaling in items is not a big deal for me.
 
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Messages
1,181
Location
Sigil
Back
Top Bottom