My Thoughts on Anomalies & Gems Beta

[HeatAndRun]

I spent my whole weekend to play this beta, and oh boy this post is gonna be a very looooong one too, like the previous ones I posted.

 

Anomalies.

Except the flood of bugs occured in this beta, I like the overall idea and concept of anomalies shown in this update. They changes every hunt significantly different, thus entering the same Great Rotwood Forest feels different if there're different anomaly factors with it. Particularly, the background music change in Night rooms were truly the banger.

But, it slightly lacks some definitive touch, especially in the RNG aspect. The biggest problem is, the player does not have so many choices to control the consequence of the randomness. Currently, anomalies exist in only one area at a time. Sometimes, the reward is 5 unidentified gems, other times there are only 1 unidentified gem for tier 3 rewards. However, you cannot avoid or change the reward or anomalies because it resets only after you finish a hunt anywhere.

Even during the hunt, the possible desicion you can make is very restrictive. In a hunt you are required to visit the highest level of anomalies in every crossroads. Even doing so won't guarantee the tier 3 reward of anomalies when having some bad RNG. Can't deny the moment of disappointment when I missed 3 unidentified gems as the tier 3 reward, despite I did everything I could...

Basically the optimal choices are fixed in every room, so ironically the gameplay is more linear than the ones in non-anomaly hunts if you're aiming for the reward. For example, you must visit the teffra room instead of the potion room despite your health is very low due to extreme poison rain, because you'll lose the tier 3 reward if you don't visit the teffra room. Also, it makes the 1st and 2rd anomaly factors not impactful, since players will mostly prefer to visit the rooms with 3rd anomaly factor.

And, the reward of anomalies (especially, unidentified gems) are almost the same regardless of the frenzy levels. It means visiting higher levels of frenzies in areas with anomalies are less attractive, as the tier 3 reward will become harder to obtain due to the "uncertainty" of victory in higher difficulty hunts with extreme anomalies.

Possible solutions.

More areas can have anomalies simultaneously. This will allow players to try anomalies with the type of resources they need the most at that point. (in my case, unidentified gems.) Or it could let the player to avoid some nightmare-rish combination of anomalies on the board.

Two or three anomalies can appear in the same room. Since only one anomalies can appear in one room, the impression of anomalies in a hunt feels somewhat random, or inconsistent. One room have pouring rain of poison, and next room, suddenly all rain is gone and the antleers are charging all the way through. If more than one anomalies can happen at the same time, the anomalies in a hunt can have more unity in terms of design or concept, instead of literal chaos with no consistence. Also, the rooms with 2 or 3 anomalies can provide higher degrees of teffra saturation on the progress, so the players won't need to worry about losing tier 3 rewards even after visiting extreme rooms every time.

Higher risk & reward in higher frenzy levels. There could be more tiers of rewards as the frenzy level increases. Such thing like this :

3 tiers in 1st, 2rd frenzy level / 4 tiers in 3rd, 4th frenzy level / 5 tiers in 5th, 6th frenzy level / 6 tiers in 7th, 8th frenzy level.

Also, the chances of multiple anomalies in one room can be increased in higher frenzy levels. For example, in frenzy level 8, every room can have two or three anomalies, and the boss room can always have all kinds of anomalies of that hunt. More danger means more rewards, that's the motto!

Gem slots.

In my personal perspective, restricting the type of gem slots doesn't look like a great idea to encourage player's choice on gem combinations. In Rotwood, the same weapon can have completly different roles combined with different armors. But current gem slot system does not mix well with it.

For example, The hammer Bam Bamboozle have very risky nature, since the hazard idol also gives the +50% damage boost to enemies, so some player would prefer more sustain gem slots with the hammer for survivability, but it does not have any. Or, the Stinger bow can create poison pools with its skill, so it would be very helpful if the blue Acid Protection gem can be used with that bow. But there're no sustain slots. And the Yammo weapons have multiple different armor build with it : The player can act as a team healer with Gourdo armors. Or they can choose the "Berserk" roll with Meowl armors. Former ones will prefer sustain slots. Latters will want damage slots. Current system will not satisfy both cases with one forced yellow gem socket.

Speaking of yellow gem socket, every single weapon has one yellow socket. Unfortunately, most yellow gems have limited and indirect influence on combat situations with enemies, unlike blue or red gems. Eventually, it feels like only one gem slot is available for customizing weapons for your own specialized builds, and cannot gratify anyone - the ones want more materials, more damage, or more healing.

If the player can install gems regardless of the types, the number of possible gem combos will become much bigger. According to my calculation you can have more than 500 combination of gems with any slots. However if the type of gem slots are restricted, only 100 combination would be available. In reality, the most exciting weapon to use in this beta is Proto-Weapons with no gem type limitation.

What if every other weapons also had any gem slots? Imagine, Gourdo weapons with 20% healing bonus, Groak weapons with 60% more hitstreak decay, The Tenderizer with 30 heals on focus kills, The Stinger with 100% poison immunity, Yammo weapons with 500 thorn damage, Bullrog weapons with 30% additional counter attack damage bonus. Everything is possible!

Possible solutions : Change the type of Gem slots by consuming the fortifying ingots. In this update, unsetting the gems requires 3 corestone as a fee, so technically corestones have uses for steady consumption now, and surely there're more to come. However fortifying ingots don't have so much uses. In addition, the supply increased drastically with the introduction of Anomalies. So it would be nice if the ingots can be spent constantly through changing the slot types.

 

Loadouts.

In this Anomalies & Gems beta, huge increase is made into the diversity of player's interactions with possible situations in the game. Spores, poison pools and heavy winds can be appeared in the same hunt. Players can decide whether to choose survivabilty and protection from environmental hazards, or simple damage bonus throughout their choice of equipments, gems and boss aspects.

The possible numbers of this combinations will be increased even more in the future, considering there also will be the foods / potion variants and consumables. Even in this update it already reached some point of complexity, which makes me a little confused every time I try some new combos or change my equipments.

For example, I would try Gustree Greaves with poison resistance gems when the Nocture Grove has poison anomalies on it. But if I will not visit wind / posion related anomalies & areas afterwards, it would be better to unset the gems from the weapons. Even without considering the anomalies, trying opposite combinations like changing into "Reroll Gem & Aspect of Shell Drake" from "Choosey Gem & Aspect of Rook" feels kinda inconvenient when you need to change all the settings and options one by one. It even costs corestones each times you do so, thus not encouraging much attempt or creativity though.

So here I suggest to introduce "The Loadout Presets" in the game.

To be honest, this update reminds me of some part of the Deep Rock Galactic quite a bit. The anomalies are quite similar to the mutators of DRG. And the gems can be compared to that game's weapon upgrades or overclocks. Thinking of the coincidence eventually led me to come up with the loadout system. In DRG you can save your weapons' combinations, modifications, upgrades and passive perks in your loadout slots. And you can change your loadout simply by clicking the buttons a single time.

Similar thing can be applied to Rotwood. Luckily, we already have mannequins in the stock. For now, the mannequins only remember the weapons and armors of the moment. It can have a possibility to be expanded further, like this :

• Now the mannequins also save the socketed gems and chosen aspect of boss rots. (Possibly foods and consumables in the future)
• Imprinting a mannequin costs some corestones. Now unsetting the gems from the weapons doesn't require corestones.
• The Loadout will remain even after picking up or storing the designated mannequins.
• The same gems cannot be socketed in the different weapons' loadouts at the same time.

Such changes can promote the player to try more combos freely (instead of paying corestones every time unsetting a gem) and manage the loadouts at ease.

 

Possible QoL improvements for gems.

- Please ask once more before when I dust gem to prevent accidental misclicks.

- Save the game's progress right at the moment when the player identify the gems. It's so easy to exploit to change gem types by force shut down the program.

- Add a filter to Gem Table to allow the player to sort gems by colors, non-equipped, or favorite mark.

- When the EXP point reaches max at the 3rd level of a gem, reset the EXP meter and gives the player a little amount of gem dust, or some material to boost other gems' EXP.

More concepts for gems.

- Additional crit chances against enemies knocked down.

- Additional crit chances while airborne.

 

That's a wrap! This update gave me a point to try so much things and made me think a lot about it. The execution of this update seems a liiiitle crude right now, but I'm truly sure it'll be fixed and improved eventually throughout the beta test period. Sorry for the bombardement of words without any pictures or videos, and thank you for reading!