hi

i wanted to share some of my impressions on flare 0.15

after accepting wasd-movement, mapentrances leading nowhere and the targetting problems the game does feel like more like a beta than an alpha. it runs smoothly and is addictive like rpgs should be.

wasd-movement:

-allows only 8 movement directions (which makes the gameplay feel slow compared to mouse movement)

-skill hotkeys 5-0 are basically useless and even using skills on 1-4 feels slow between moving

+kiting is realy nice, run away mouseover and spam left/rightmouse while running

i think the best soloution would be to use wasd and mousemovement at the same time so you can move more accurate and spamm 1-0 while moving and use wasd for kiting, of course there would have to be some priorety system in case a player holds down a while trying to move right with the mouse ;)

targetting:

in windowmode(which is standart setting for the version from the ubuntu repo) you need to do 2-3 swings to find out where the monster actually is. in fullscreenmode its way better but not perfect. sometimes monsters seem to be in the same position as the player an can't be hit unless you move one step aside.

showing monsterhealthbars only if the cursor is on the monster would be a soloution(besides that healtbars of dead monsters or monsters that are 2 screens away are annoying)

annother solution would be to activate leftmouse aren't activated if no monster is targetted, this would be needed for mousemovement and prevents accidently using skills while picking up.

using skills:

it seems to me that if your hold down a mouse skill and press one of the keyboard skill hotkeys 1-0 the mouse gets priorety over the keyboard. most players have there standart attacks on the mouse like a single target killer on left and an aoe on right on keyboard they have situational stuff like potions, heal and buffs which they wanna use while holding the standart attack. i think the priorety schould be keyboard>rightmouse>leftmouse. for example if you activate a potion with keyboard while holding down leftmouse which is normal attack one attack should be skipped and the potion actvated instead.

character build balancing:

i think i have found a balance problem with your current attribute/power system

lets compare some character builds

melee:

you'll want to be able to wield the best swords and wear armor and shield(since there are no twohandweapons or twoweaponing) so for itemrequierements you'll want to spent into physical and defence.

the bonusses you'll want are health from physical and avoid from defence, you may want some hitchance from offence but its not really necessary(item bonus)

powers you wanna use as mainattacks are in the physical defence tree which requires the attributes physical and defence. additionally putting points into defence adds points to mental defence so basically you get shield and heal for free. the only other power you might ever want to use is the attackspeed buff from the physical offence tree and you are allready close to unlocking it one point in offence is all it takes and whith higher maxlevel as the game gets developed you'll eventually get it for free by putting points into physical.

all goals(items/bonusses/powers) are consistent with the attributes physical and defence

offensive caster:

you'll want to match the requierements for wands/staffs and maybe wear some armor so you'll need points in mental and some in defence

the health bonus from lvlup is like nothing so you'll want at least one point physical and you'll want all possible points into mental for manaregeneration

the main powertree will be mental offence which requires mental and offence by putting points into mental you get heal and shield for free. the physicaltrees are basically useless for a caster.

so whats clear is that you'll want full points into mental since this adds mana, mana regeneration, enables items enables powers.

for the other attributes theres no consistent way to put them.

if you go full offence you unlock the best offensive spells but the offence points are wasted course you'll never want to wield a bow and since you don't use physical attacks. plus you have verry low health armor and avoid.

or you might put just some points into offence to increase your suvivability by putting the points into physical or defence where defence might be an interesing choice since it unlocks teleport.

ranger(didn't play this yet):

itemrequirements offence and some defence(every second point is useless shield)

bonus all attributes might be ok (don't know about mental since i have no idee how much mana the ranger burns)

powers offence and physical

healer/control caster(didn't play this yet):

itemrequirements mental and some defense

bonus mental and some physical

power mental and defence

this one might be fun a self healing tank with small maximum hp

as you see the melee build has the advantage of reaching his full potential by putting all points in two attributes while all ather build have to make sacrifices on the other hand this means there is just one possible melee build while other builds have the potential to try some stuff.

one way to fix this is to the maximum atributes from 50% to 75% of the maxlevel, can unlock more powers in your maintree without putting much points into attributes with useless bonusses/items. since there won't be more total attribute points the maxlevel of the powertrees will stay the same.

additionally this would open up the possibility for a variety of new builds.

minor stuff i have noticed:

you can have two characters with the same name, don't know if this is a bug or a feature, i think its more a feature for people who arent that creative, like me ;)

the vendor you save from the goblins has many blue items (tryed 3 times and counted 3, 1 and 4) and is verry close to the mapentrance one might consider this exploitable

if you fight an theres loot around most of the times you pick up items while trying to hit the mobs something like diablo 2's \nopickup would be nice

you should add some graphic that indicates stun the first 5 times i got stunned i thought it was a bug plus the char just freezing all animation looks ugly. mayby let the char return to normal doing nothing animation and add some graphical effect floating above the head

those suicide and firespitting spiders should have different colors

some hint that you have an attribute point at the beginning would be nice for newbys

better information on the effects of the powers (how much dmg heal range?) and mouseovertooltips not just in power menu but for hotkeybar too

the dmg absorbed by shield seem to be like double the amount healed by heal. since shield can be casted to prepare for a fight and effectively increases maximum health it should be less effective than heal, maybe swap there position in the powertree

i think you got a really good game in the making, keep it going