Dear Developers... thoughts on FF design.

Dear developers,

Game visuals and skill descriptions are sucks. The rest of this post will be constructive criticism.

I've Played BB for 4 months, they have good, clear, user friendly visuals and descriptions.
The GUI in this, however game is horrible. I am SO CHEEKY to say all this after playing for 2 days but please just hear me out:

I understand you're trying to make a futuristic game but the way it is at the moment makes
everything so hard to read - it's all shades of blue's and greens on shades of blues and greens.
The models are tiny and the designs all look practically the same.

It might be ok if the game was at least intuitive to understand - but it is not.

The skills, attributes & character designs are utterly random.

It's like the illustrators, the 'name-allocaters' & the programmers put all their ideas on the table
and purposefully, miss-matched them, so no-one could ever simply understand what a skill or squad-mate did
simply by looking at it or reading the description.

For example: Twin slashes - twin = two and slashes is a plural, yet the skill hits once. Just a bit harder than normal.

A heavy, lumbering Cardinal flame-throwing, who has an AGI based skill that hits three?
Intuitively this guy does a Blastwave type skill from Bloodbrothers based on something like WIS - SURELY!
Nope: Blast wave is now an AGI skill that hits three random enemies, so it's a re-named Whirlwind then?
[I presume the flame-thrower is broken and he swings it around his head]

'Full-auto' - haha! gotta be a gun that can shoot alot and fast, NO - just hits once, Hard.

A skinny little Mutant with a gun (Ghislandi equivalent) is one of the best Fams in the game, but he looks the same as trash commons.

Devil Dog! that looks cool! gonna be some energy zapping ski.. - *reads skill*

Bubble Drone! that shield! He's gonna boost everyones Def!....*reads skill*

I could go on.

Not say that EVERYTHING is 'Foobarred' in this game, about 20% of the content IS logical but for new players, on a mobile telephone I think all this inane jargon and baffling paradoxes would be quite a deterrent.

So why couldn't we have - like most robots use electricity damage,
most mutants are strong/infectious,
most cardinal all agile,
Humans use guns/tech for skills,
the fams that shoot don't run up to the monster to shoot when fighting they just stand and *-Pyaow-*... ...shoot.

Sorry for the whining, but I just had to let out the frustration . I guess the only thing the developers could do is re-name things now, but I'd hope for future fam releases they would implement these logical ideas for everyone's eye-bleeding sakes.

Yours Sincerely,

Mr. Hat

Puffinhat wrote:

the fams that shoot don't run up to the monster to shoot when fighting they just stand and *-Pyaow-*... ...shoot.[/color]

This always struck me as odd. I assume it's because a lot of the game's mechanics and animations come from BB, where (I assume, never played it) no one has guns, but they really could use some new animations for FF.

I mean, why is my gun-wielding space marine charging up to enemies and headbutting them all?

Actually that's pretty hardcore, but still...

Good feedback. There is an explanation for all of this... which I won't get into.

Do you think people would care if the dev-team ended up changing the skills of all the Commons/Uncommons?

To that effect, after a few days of playing, do you really care about a Bubble Drone? Doesn't it just turn into Fatal Fusion fodder?

I don't think the Rares/Epics should change - many people spend a lot of time, money, and energy getting something like a perfectly evolved Ultra-Mutant v2. Changing that would cause an uproar in the community... but, changing the art wouldn't.

You'll probably notice (at least I hope you've noticed) a significant jump in art quality between character that initially launched with the game, and the stuff coming out in FF's recent events and region expansions.

Thanks again for the feedback. It's all duly noted.

Thanks,
-Marcus

Marcus... are you part of the dev team?

If so I would love to give some feedback as well on the events and some skills that could use some love or attention.

Puffinhat makes a lot of good points but you're right, Marcus, in that it's probably too late to change the mechanics of the current content, other than cosmetics of course.

But there are lessons to be learned and I'm glad to see that the devs are clearly taking them on board as well as suggestions from the community to make a better game all round, as has been seen in more recent content updates. I love this game and seeing both it and the community improve warms my heart.

So thanks devs and players alike, keep up the great work all!

I like the fact that Blood Brothers pioneers things and FF can take the best ideas and port them over here after seeing them in action. Looking forward to the Warlord level cap increases and other nice additions.

Also, I kinda like the look and feel of the game. It's certainly much more interesting than the vampire motif. Being a Mech guy myself, it's pretty sweet. The newer characters are definitely cooler though. Keep up the good work!

LtButtstrong wrote:

Puffinhat makes a lot of good points but you're right, Marcus, in that it's probably too late to change the mechanics of the current content, other than cosmetics of course.

While I will agree somewhat there are skills that need some dev attention. Take the warlords for instance:

Butch and Brodey are perfect just like they are.

Mac's overkill is just horrible as it is; make it hit twice on two random targets at the damage and ability that it has now.

Jade is redundant with Brodey. Change her skill up some to give her something to set her apart.

Duke needs a great heal (heals the entire team). This would make him much, much more appealing.

Mean Mary's "no mans land" skill just doesn't do enough damage. She is laughable to fight against in PvP.

Jesse Bell needs to have the skill involve attacking with squad mates on both sides not just one.

Kennedy uses blast wave which I think the modifier is set too low on, up the modifier and you would have a great warlord.

Nothing in that list would break the game or cause a massive uproar. A lot of people may be happy to find their warlord useful to use outside of getting "free" ammo and movement shots.

I think messing with the warlords is a great start to making positive changes. Look at Blood Brothers, they threw the entire previous warlord paradigm out the window with their latest update. For the better. Now players stuck with the Gray Mage dont have to reroll because their warlord sucks! The stats are the main differentiators. Perhaps they should each maintain a signiature skill that can't be removed, but still the updates were a step in the right direction.

I would love to see a warlord overhaul / balancing on Fatal Frontier some day.

The newer art is amazing, I like it much better than BB. If the Devs went back and updated the art on some of the older fams I think everyone would be in love

I love the style and colors of the menu and enviornment

I agree that the skill animations could use some touching up:

-The AGI skills have a great sound effect but the 'arrow' animation bugs me

-Full auto has great sound effects and the bullet hole animation is perfect but the 'headbutt' bugs me

-Twin Slashes animation and nomincalture probably resulted from the WL having two swords. The animation carried over to the (only?!?) other WIS skill Unstoppable force. I really like the WIS animation tbh.

-I feel like WIS skills should be guns/ranged and ATK skills should be melee to fit the theme but the WL's are backwards (this is really nit-picky and I don't mind it enough to warrant a complete overhaul of other skills/fams for consistency )

There are a lot of inconsistencies between character design, functionality, and nomenclature. Its certainly a bit un-intuitive but the game mechanics are pretty simple and its easy to figure it all out.

Im sure the devs are aware of all of this. Everything is more complicated from the Devs point of view then us players can understand.

Devs: We need a more diverse selection of skills and characters. Updates on art and animations would be sweet too. Warlord updates are coming I'm sure

Thanks once again, Marcus

WOW!
I'm so relieved my post has been received so amicably!
I assumed I was going to flamed & chased right out of town.

Obviously I'd love to see this game make sense and be kinda
like the thinking-mans refuge from the insanity of BloodBrothers.
I think it would be perfect to let BB trial all the wacky player-leaching
ideas and keep this game the slick grown-ups version.

And Yes I would like to see all the skills, artwork & everything make sense.

I only posted because I already like the idea of the game, the artwork looks GREAT
and want to keep playing. I would like to move over to FF permanently to be honest.
It is just really annoying how the artwork, skills & skill names don't match-up and
there is little variety in squad-mates at the moment.

But thank you for the positive remarks everyone!
and "Respect" @ Marcus

While were at it, id like to propose some feature to speed up the game. My limiting factor is time as you will see.

1. I find it painfull to open many coins at the time. Could have a quick button that would skip the animation to get new squad?

2. The fights are sometimes way too long to watch. I sometimes just close the game and reopen. Could we have the same option (specially in raid boss event).

3. Id like to be able to sort the temp wagon by rarity. I sometimes loose lots of time to try to find squad when I open 100+ coins

Thanks for taking care of player base!

Overkill should be renamed to Suppressing Fire. It makes more sense when an enemy has to skip their turn. It also currently causes confusion. When I first started, I assumed the Boomstick guy was the Black Brute equivalent. Anyone coming from BB could easily make that mistake. Plus, overkill implies that something actually dies - that's kind of the definition, but the attack itself does about the same damage as a regular attack, which is extremely underwhelming.